Ep 09: Leverage Your Character Strengths with Shannon Polly
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In this episode of the TalentGrow Show, I chat with Shannon Polly, MAPP, ACC, a leadership development consultant and an expert on executive presence and positive psychology. Our light and funny conversation will give you great insights about why character strengths are important and how to leverage them using Shannon’s new book, Character Strengths Matter. You’ll learn about how Shannon blends her acting background with her depth of research into happiness and well-being into her work with organizations like the army and corporations, and her unique ways of teaching people to leverage their strengths and become more productive and organizations more profitable. Shannon shares three great actionable suggestions that can immediately give you results in your performance and happiness, but also information about how you can keep challenging yourself and keep learning from her and others to continue that improvement and keep those great results coming.
What you’ll learn:
- How bringing your strengths to your leadership work is so important and how Shannon has co-edited a new book that will help you do it
- What cool new twist Shannon has added to her book that will help your work on your strengths and improve both your leadership skills and team effectiveness
- Discover how character strengths are actually ubiquitous across cultures and across time (did you know that the same strengths that are most prevalent in the US are actually highest all around the world?)
- Which character strengths are most (and least) prevalent all around the world?
- How can you develop your strengths with the help of Aristotle, Oprah Winfrey, and Mother Theresa?
- Why is acting 'as if' is good for learning?
- What is somatic work and how Shannon taps into it in her coaching work?
- What was the amazing and deeply meaningful work that Shannon did with the U.S. Army to create measurable results in resilience, happiness, and leadership readiness?
- Why the science and research on positive psychology can sway both hardened army sergeants and business people to value and seek more training on it
- Why it all comes down to relationships in business and leadership, and why leaders and organizations need to invest in their people
- What secret homage does Shannon make to me (Halelly) in her book?
- What is the problem with authenticity and how our definition of it is limiting our development
- What's Vygotsky’s Zone of Proximal Development and why should you GO THERE?
- Shannon shares a free strengths challenge that starts on August 17th as well as an upcoming certificate program in applied positive psychology that is in multiple cities and coming to Washington DC in the fall of 2015.
- Get not one but three different takeaway actions you can implement to ratchet up your habits, achieving mastery, and increasing your happiness (it's not what you think!)
- What’s the unexpected indirect connection between doing nice things for others and feeling happy?
About Shannon Polly, MAPP, ACC
Shannon Polly, MAPP is one of the first 150 people in the world who have received their Master in Applied Positive Psychology (MAPP) degree from the University of Pennsylvania under Dr. Martin Seligman.
She is a leadership development facilitator, coach, speaker, author and founder of Shannon Polly and Associates, a leadership development company in downtown D.C. Shannon works with Fortune 500 companies in two domain areas: executive presence/presentation skills and positive psychology. She is passionate about giving people the confidence to present themselves powerfully in front of a room and overcome the anxiety that often besieges public speakers. Shannon uses the empirical research from positive psychology with her organizational clients to foster positive and flourishing workplaces. She is equally as passionate about sharing the science of well-being and increasing the ‘tonnage of happiness’ in the world.
She has been an assistant instructor in the MAPP program at the University of Pennsylvania. She has developed curriculum for the higher education version of the movie, Happy, and has taught resilience to over 1,000 Army sergeants for the Master Resiliency Training (MRT) program for the U.S. Army. The Army is the largest consumer of positive psychology in the world today and has plans to train all 1.1 million soldiers in resilience.
She holds a graduate degree from the London Academy of Music and Dramatic Art in classical acting and a B.A. with honors from Yale College. She is also a graduate of the Georgetown Leadership Coaching Program. She is a contributing author to Positive Psychology News Daily and is a contributor to the book Positive Psychology at Work (Wiley, March 2011) and a contributing author (along with Dr. Martin Seligman) to European Handbook of Positive Psychology (2013) and the co-editor of Character Strengths Matter: How to Live a Full Life (June 2015). Her work has been featured in the Huffington Post, Psychology Today, Live Happy magazine and the Toronto Star. She is an ACC coach certified by the International Coach Federation. She is also certified to deliver the MBTI, Leadership Circle 360, VIA character strengths survey and StrengthsFinder2.0 assessments. She is a co-founder of Positive Business DC whose mission is to increase productivity and profitability in the nation’s capital.
Her strengths are: Social intelligence, honesty, kindness, humor and perseverance.
RESOURCES
Shannon Polly’s business, Shannon Polly & Associations
Shannon’s book, Character Strengths Matter: How to Live a Full Life
(read my review of it on my blog as one of the five books I recommend for your summer reading)
Connect with Shannon on LinkedIn, Twitter, Google+ or Facebook
Free challenge by Shannon’s colleague, Michelle McQuaid: http://strengthschallenge.com [Week of August 17th]
Check out the Certificate in Applied Positive Psychology Program (in 7 cities in North America and soon in Washington DC)
Get new research in the free Positive Psychology monthly newsletter
The Harvard Business Review article I mentioned, “The Authenticity Paradox” by Herminia Ibarra
Vygotsky’s Zone of Proximal Development
The Power of Habit by Charles Duhigg
New book by Tom Rath, Are You Fully Charged
My podcast episode featuring Larry Gioia about his Pittsburgh Kindness Initiative
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: Hey there. Welcome back to the TalentGrow Show. This is Halelly Azulay, your leadership development strategist and this is episode nine, which features my friend and colleague Shannon Polly. Shannon has a background in theater and in positive psychology. So she and I talk about the way in which she marries those two in order to help develop leaders and people in organizations and improve their well-being and performance. We talk about things like strengths, like going outside your comfort zone and like improving the way in which you build your habits. Shannon leaves you with three very specific actionable takeaways that you can absolutely implement right away to create better well-being for you and better performance for your organization. So, check it out and thanks for tuning in to the TalentGrow Show.
Welcome back to the TalentGrow Show. I’m Halelly Azulay, your leadership development strategist and I am here with my friend and colleague Shannon Polly, MAPP, ACC. We sometimes have a competition in my field of how many letters you can have behind your name and Shannon is winning! Let me tell you a little bit about Shannon. Shannon is a leadership development consultant, a facilitator, speaker and coach, and she specializes in two main domains or areas – executive presence and positive psychology. She is the founder of a company called Shannon Polly and Associates, and she works with executives, with managers, with employees in creating high performing managers and teams. And she helps people create well-being and performance in the world place. Shannon has a Master’s Degree from the University of Pennsylvania – that’s her MAPP, which is a Master’s in Applied Positive Psychology. She’s one of the first 100 people in the world to have that degree, and her ACC stands for Associate Certified Coach, which means she is certified by the International Coach Federation as a coach. She got her certificate in that from Georgetown University. And, Shannon actually has a degree from Yale in music and dramatic arts. So, that’s a lot of the official background on Shannon. Shannon and I have worked together many, many times on teams where we get to coach people together and facilitate workshops together, and I just admire Shannon so much. And the thing that is most recent to admire about Shannon is that she has edited, co-edited a new book called Character Strengths Matter: How to Live a Full Life. Shannon, welcome to the TalentGrow Show.
Shannon: Gosh, Halelly, that was a lovely introduction, and there’s no competition. My husband thinks we’re silly for having all these letters after our names, but thank you for the introduction!
Halelly: You’re welcome, and I know that you’re competing, but I’m kind of a competitive person, so I’m like, “Man, I’ve got to get some more letters!” It’s the alphabet soup. So I introduced you a little bit, but I’d love for you – as all my guests – to tell a little bit about your professional journey. How did you get to where you are today? Can you give a very high level overview for people that are listening to get a sense of your professional journey?
Shannon: Sure, I would be happy to. It has been an interesting journey. So I majored in theater studies at Yale, and I went to drama school in London with the intention of becoming a professional actor, which I did for 11 years. And I had a great time traveling the country and doing my three lines on As the World Turns and Law and Order and all those sorts of things. And I loved entertaining, I loved performing, and I liked making people happier. And then I started to get a little bored with musical theater. That’s terrible to say to my friends who are still in theater, but I personally wanted to find a way to impact people on a deeper level, on a more sustainable level. So I thought I could make people happier for two hours while they’re watching a show, and maybe for a little bit afterwards as they’re reminiscing about it, but what can I do to help people on a deeper level? And so I started to look into PhD programs in psychology, because I’m fascinated with the way that people think, which is why I got interested in delving into character and I realized that a PhD program wasn’t really me. Sitting across from someone who has issues is not my forte. My forte is really taking people who are already high functioning and helping them perform even better. So I looked into various programs and what attracted me about the program at Penn was that it was based in science, and based in research. And I’d already been doing, teaching executive presence in business, and translating the skills of the theater to businesspeople, which was really exciting. Because all of these things that I spent years learning, I found were really translatable. And people found it interesting that they could just adjust their posture and suddenly appear more confident and feel more confident. And I wanted to add to that toolkit.
So the MAPP program at Penn, part of my thesis was actually to design training to deliver in businesses to increase well-being and productivity and it also links to profitability, as you mentioned. And it really seems exciting to be able to increase well-being and affect people on a deeper level through both facilitated sessions but also one-on-one coaching. So, I had these two areas and I’ve actually started to merge them together, and was just presenting at a conference, an International Positive Psychology Association conference on positive presenting. So combining the positive psychology and executive presence, and it’s exciting to see that the research in the social science is actually catching up with what we theater people knew, which is that you can try on new roles and it actually affects your cognitive part of you and now I’m able to test it. So that’s a little bit of my journey.
Halelly: And it’s really fascinating and I love to watch you work. A lot of the times we’re actually working in parallel, not in the same room, so I often am bummed out because I really like to watch you work. It’s just really interesting to see how you do that so masterfully. You blend that background in theater with that really deep understanding of psychology and facilitation. And then you’ve brought in coaching into this too, right? So what is the kind of work you’re doing with coaching?
Shannon: Really been interesting to merge these two interests as well. So, in coaching, I work with people on a one-on-one basis, obviously, but I bring a lot of Somatic tools to the table. So –
Halelly: Just explain what Somatic means, just in case someone listening doesn’t know.
Shannon: Sure. It’s more of a body-based technique. So, frequently, the psychology part, I will bring in some cognitive, mental techniques of how are you thinking about your thinking? And this person in your office who really activates you, let’s think about what those thoughts are in the moment. And how can we change the thoughts, a little bit of cognitive behavioral therapy that I’ve used in working with the Army. And then I like to match it with some physical work as well, because I know from my training in the theater that if someone is sitting across from me and they’re collapsed in their chest or sternum, that impacts their emotional well-being, but it’s also an indicator of something that’s going on. So sometimes I’ll have a female client who wants to move up to the next level. I’ll say, “Well, let’s try something physical. Why don’t you sit with your feet on the floor and your lower back against the back of your chair and your shoulders back and up and how do you feel now?” And sort of check in with them on a physical basis. And it’s worked really well. People, we’re not disembodied heads wandering around. We do have a body attached to it, and sometimes it’s nice to have another way with a client.
Halelly: You said Army, and I don’t know if people know what you did with the Army. Can you tell a little bit about that?
Shannon: The Army is actually the number one consumer of positive psychology today. All 1.1 million soldiers are getting trained in positive psychology, and I had the honor of being one of the first trainers on the team. I’ve trained over 1,000 Army Sergeants and we were training them in how to be more psychologically resilient. So how can they think about their thinking? How can they leverage their relationships? How can they leverage their strengths in leading their troops? So, we would have 150 or 200 group of Sergeants come to Philly and a big team of us, about 20 of us, would train them and it was a training trainer model. So we were training them to go back and train their Privates. And it was the most meaningful job I’ve ever had. I literally had a Sergeant say to me at the end of the training, he shook my hand and he said, “You’re saving lives, which is more important than taking them. Keep doing what you’re doing.”
Halelly: Wow. Oh my God, I love that!
Shannon: It was a really amazing moment and it’s just indicative of how deep this work can go.
Halelly: And usually, I think that a lot of people in business – and one would think that maybe the tough guys in the Army would kind of be the same – they look down on things that have happiness or positive or well-being in the name. It almost, they kind of look at it derogatorily as if it’s something that’s fluff and here we are, doing important things in business, and we’re trying to make a profit or trying to change the world or trying to save lives, blah, blah, blah. And here you come with your cute little “let’s be happy” stuff and of course, it’s so much bigger and so much deeper than that.
Shannon: Yeah. I think that it’s really the science and the research behind it that sways both hardened Army Sergeants and business people. And also the example of the fact that it is working in the Army and increasing well-being and resilience. And it’s also linking to leadership outcome. They haven’t published the data yet, but they are tracking the strength and the well-being of the Sergeants and people at various levels who are taking the global assessment tool, which is the tool they use. And it is showing leadership outcomes for people who are getting promoted. So there are definite outcomes there, and you know, it’s always the “soft skills” that drive the business. People don’t leave jobs, they leave people. They leave managers they don’t like. And it comes down to relationships. And I think really good leaders know they have to invest in their people, otherwise they’re not going to have any people to manage.
Halelly: Totally agree. I totally agree. You know, that’s one thing actually that I think has definitely drawn me to you and your work is that we both share this passion for positive psychology and great interest in it, and of course you have some more training in it through the University of Pennsylvania program, certainly. So now that you’ve put together this amazing book, when I heard that you were putting out a book about strengths – which I’ve written a little book about it – and I am a huge geek about this kind of stuff, and the importance of being aware and leveraging your strengths in your day-to-day work. And I always try to bring that to the leaders that I work with, so when I found out that you’ve got this book coming out, I was extremely excited. And this book is really neat because it goes into the character strengths that were originally developed by Chris Peterson and Marty Seligman who are two of the leaders in the world of positive psychology, and the VIA Strengths Survey. And then the idea that you have in your book is that it goes into every one of these strengths and not only explains what it is and how to use it, maybe more successfully, but you also have this really kind of cool twist on it. So I’d love to hear you talk some more about how this book came together and what this cool twist is that you’ve been using, and how do you hope that people in organizations – especially leaders and aspiring leaders in organizations – can use the insights in this book to improve their leadership skills and their team’s effectiveness?
Shannon: That’s a great question and a great explanation of the book. Thank you Halelly. The book came about when Chris Peterson, who was a pioneer of character strength, passed away almost two years ago. Long before he should have. And we were really shocked and the first thing we did was to start a scholarship in his name at the University of Pennsylvania. And that didn’t feel like enough. It didn’t feel like we had honored him or carried on his work and so Kathryn Britton, who is the co-editor of Positive Psychology News, which is a wonderful online publication decided what if we put together a book about character strength using some of the articles that had been written on Positive Psychology News? And Kathryn has curated over 1,300 articles on Positive Psychology News, so she is an expert on what is there. So we started to pull the articles and since both of us have fairness as a top strength, we actually took the name off of the articles so that we could really just read them and have an independent reader read them and choose them based on their value and not based on who it was. Because obviously we know a lot of the people who have contributed the articles. So we did that and then we had a few holes where we were missing articles and we commissioned people, and to be honest, along the way there were a lot of times where we weren’t sure we were going to follow through on this project. Because it’s a lot of work, it took us almost 18 months. It was really a labor of love. Do we have time to do this? We both had our lives, and there were a couple points along the way we were like, “I don’t know. Nah, we should … let’s keep going with it.”
And the twist you talk about is an idea that I actually had back in 2009 when I had Chris Peterson as my professor, and that was to pull monologues and speeches, modern plays and speeches and poems that matched each of the character strengths. And I talked to him about the idea and he said, “Oh, that’s a great idea,” and it was one of those ideas that was just on the back burner and has been on the back burner since 2009. And when this project came up I thought, “Wouldn’t it be interesting to pull those monologues out and see if that would work as part of these chapters?” So we have 24 chapters – one for each of the 24 character strengths – and the research on character strength that Chris did was funded by the Mayerson Foundation, out of Cincinnati, and they have shown that these strengths are ubiquitous across culture and across time. So, from Aristotle to it’s been tested with Masai warriors, to Mother Teresa, we all have the same strengths to varying degrees. And actually, the same strengths that are most prevalent in the United States are the most prevalent in almost all countries around the world. Kindness, fairness, honesty is most prevalent all around the world, self-regulation, modesty are lower all around the world. So, that’s something that’s really fascinating and why it’s a great tool for leaders, because it’s not just a North American tool. That’s one of the criticisms of Strength Finder is that competition is maybe a North American strength but if you went to Asia, that might not be considered a strength in Asia.
But back to the twist, your question – so the twist is, as an actor, from Stanislavski if you act as if you are a character, you’re acting as if you want to play Cyrano de Bergerac and you’re wooing Roxanne that you start to become that character. And kids learn this, right? Your kid says, “Ba-ba, ba-ba,” and you start to complete the word for them. You say, “Oh, look, isn’t she a genius? She said bottle.” And we don’t say, “No, honey, it’s not ba-ba, it’s bottle. Get it right! Not going to give you your milk!” So we do that with kids. We help them develop in this way but when we get to be adults, we tend to say, “No, you’re not allowed to try on new things. You are such and so.” And I actually made an homage to you in the book, I don’t know if you know this, but I wrote a line and said, “You can’t both be a businesswoman and a ballroom dancer,” because you are of course a businesswoman and a ballroom dancer.
Halelly: Thank you.
Shannon: Have to share that. You’re welcome! So the twist is that the point of the passages in the book are that you’re supposed to read them out loud. If you read aloud the speech, Oprah Winfrey accepting her Emmy award, it helps embody the strength of kindness. If you read Mother Teresa’s speech accepting her Pulitzer Prize, it helps to embody humility. And there are monologues from Shakespeare and from Lorraine Hansberry and all sorts of wonderful playwrights that are meant to be read aloud, and we’ve lost that art of reading aloud. And there’s a lot of research on reading aloud and how it helps you develop vocabulary and it helps you embody these strengths. So that’s the twist of the book. And I think people are finding it interesting.
Halelly: It’s definitely unusual, and I love it. And it kind of brings the theater out, this is where you’re making a contribution with your background. And this idea of acting as if – that’s really interesting. I don’t know if you saw the article in the Harvard Business Review back in the January/February 2015 edition, the cover article was “The problem with authenticity, when it’s okay to fake it until you make it.” So interesting because people say you have to be authentic, and the author of the article and also a book about this is kind of saying we’re not making an exception in … our definition of authenticity is so rigid that people are sort of using it as a crutch, not to learn new skills. Because they’re saying, “I’m just being me. This is who I am, or this is how I am and I’m sort of owning that and being authentic.” Whereas actually to learn a new skill, there’s a paradox where you have to be in a zone that’s not comfortable and that’s not natural to you, and where you don’t feel really like yourself, but you’re not being really, really fake. You’re just trying on a new skill until it becomes yours.
Shannon: It is not natural for me to go to the gym and lift weights. I would much rather sit on the couch and eat potato chips. But I don’t say to my trainer, “You know, that push-up, it really doesn’t feel authentic to me today. I would rather not do that.” It is, I get this question all the time about authenticity, and I want to go back to the word you said which is the zone. You’re moving, people often say you’re out of your comfort zone. There’s actually a phrase that a Russian psychologist used called – his name is Vygotsky – and he called it the zone of proximal development. So you’re growing into your ZPD, or your zone of proximal development, where you’re performing a head taller than you are. So you’re living into this development. You are both what you are and what you are not yet, at the same time. And that’s like the example with the ba-ba and the bottle – the baby is not yet saying bottle. But the baby is living into that. And that’s the same thing when you’re trying on a new tool or a technique or you’re trying to learn how to be more empathetic with your employees or you’re trying to learn how to delegate. You’re right, it doesn’t feel natural, because it’s not you yet. But you’re learning. And that’s what growth and development is all about.
Halelly: Really awesome. Thank you for sharing that, good. A couple more things before we wrap up – I wanted to first of all think about what is on the horizon for you. I know that putting together this book was a huge undertaking, so kudos on that. That’s a lot of work. And I know that now you’re probably in the book marketing frenzy, which is almost like a full-time job. So good luck with that! And so maybe there isn’t really time for a lot of new and exciting things, other than that, because that’s plenty of new and exciting, but is there something that is like a new project or research that has your attention, that has you excited about something that you’re planning to do in the second half of 2015 in the near future?
Shannon: You know, I do have something really exciting, and I can’t talk about it yet. Which is torture for me. Because the ink is not yet dry on the contract, but it is very big and it would be bringing positive psychology to a large number of people on more of a global scale, which is exciting. So I’ll have to circle back with you when that comes through. But I do have, I am excited to do more workshops on strength and leveraging the book, working with some organizations to bring that to fruition. And I have a colleague who has a strength challenge out, so I can share that with you. It’s a free survey that I can share with you to give to your listeners.
Halelly: Oh great. We can put that in the show notes, sure.
Shannon: Yeah. And in the fall, another colleague – we’re partnering with her – she’s bringing a positive psychology certification program to the Washington, D.C., area, so I can also share some of that information with you as well. And they’re partnering with my other sister organization, Positive Business D.C., to bring that to the D.C. area. So they’re in about six cities all over the country, and Toronto, Canada. It’s called the Certificate in Applied Positive Psychology. So I can share some of that with you as well.
Halelly: Fabulous, that is very exciting. And by the way, Positive Business D.C., I’m pretty sure you are one of the people who launched that organization, right?
Shannon: It’s true, yes, along with Donna Hemmert and Marcia Moran, we did. And you were a fantastic speaker. So I got to see you in action, even though we normally work together in separate rooms.
Halelly: Thank you for that opportunity as well, and I admire that you started that organization and what it does. So kudos to you and your partners on that.
Shannon: Thank you so much.
Halelly: So I want to bring ideas to people and I want to expand their thinking, but I also want to have listeners walk away with really specific and actionable takeaways. So, what’s one specific action that listeners can take today or tomorrow or sometime this week that you think is going to help them ratchet up their leadership skills, especially given the domains in which you’re an expert?
Shannon: I don’t know if I can limit it to just one. So, maybe I’ll throw in a couple. The first one is I actually learned at the IPPA conference in Orlando is some new research on habit formation. That willpower and cognitive effort is not really the way to create change. As we know, some of the research is showing that willpower gets depleted at the end of the day. There’s conflicting research on that, but new research from Barbara Fredrickson out of the University of North Carolina has said it’s actually positive emotion that helps motivate and embed habit formation. So, if the unconscious positive emotion that she calls like an opioid, but actually the liking of an activity – like running, for you – actually drives people to continue with that behavior. So, if you’re trying to make a habit change, figure out how you can as Charlie said and evoke the power of habit. How you can have a cue for the habit and then a tiny reward. So one of my colleagues says that in order to read more books, her cue is when she wakes up in the morning, the habit is 10 minutes of reading her book, and her reward is that she can’t turn on her email until she reads the book for 10 minutes. So, trying to think about how to embed positive emotion is one thing I would leave your listeners with.
The second thing is from Tom Rath, who has a great new book out called Are You Fully Charged? And he said the famous research on the 10,000 hours, what people need to become an expert in something, that if you look deeper into that research, those people that completed the 10,000 hours who were experts also got eight and a half hours of sleep a night. So, you can’t become an expert if you’re only getting six hours of sleep. That four hours of sleep deprivation is equal to drinking a six-pack of beer.
Halelly: I know some really drunk people in the workplace!
Shannon: It’s true! It’s amazing how they function at all. And the third thing I would leave people with is that valuing happiness actually leads people to be less happy than if you value positive experience, positive interactions, and doing something for someone else. So, you don’t want to focus solely on money, but because money improves your evaluation of life, but not your emotional well-being. So try to figure out what you can do for someone else tomorrow or today that can make your life more meaningful.
Halelly: And you’re saying that by doing something for someone else, your life becomes more meaningful and therefore you feel happier, is that it?
Shannon: Exactly. That we evaluate ourselves by observing ourselves doing things. So when I observe myself doing something nice for someone else, I think evaluate myself as, “Wow, I’m a good person.” So here’s a good example – Borders had this jar where anyone could put a dollar in and if people needed a few bucks for something, parking or whatever, they could take money out. People saw themselves as more caring and compassionate and as a result, they were more engaged and committed on the job.
Halelly: I like that. That’s really good, and it’s so specific and actionable, so one of my other podcast guests, Larry Gioia was the guest in episode four I think. He started this organization called Kindness Pittsburgh, where they encourage people to do sort of random acts of kindness for others, but to track it. And then when you do something nice for someone and you give them this card, I think they eventually will be able to go and log that into a system or an app or something, and then eventually it’s going to give people their kindness quotient so they can constantly up their kindness quotient. Isn’t that cool? It sounds like it’s on the same wavelength, but that’s much more complicated. And what you’re describing, it’s quite easy to do.
Shannon: That’s very cool.
Halelly: Good, I hope that people will take you up on that and thank you for giving us three for the price of one! I appreciate it. Always value on the TalentGrow Show, right? Thank you Shannon. So how can people learn more about you and stay in touch before we wrap up?
Shannon: They can go to my website, www.ShannonPolly.com. And if you sign up for my mailing list, you can get a free white paper on positive business communication, which has some more interesting research in it. I’m on Twitter, @ShannonPolly, and also @PositiveBizDC.
Halelly: And Shannon is, I don’t know how she does it, but she is always up on the latest research. She is just like a treasure trove of amazing information, and then she’s really great at translating that into application and business. This is the value that she adds. So you should definitely check her out. You should definitely get her book, and Shannon, thank you so much for sharing some of your insights with us on the TalentGrow Show, and I hope that you make today fantastic.
Shannon: Have a great day.
Halelly: Thank you.
I don’t know about you, but I’m feeling happier already just by listening to that. And Shannon is such an interesting person. She always brings so much great high energy and tons of value and knowledge, so I hope that you learned a lot of things and that you will go and implement some of the suggestions that Shannon made. If you’re interested in taking that free strength challenge, she mentioned her friend and colleague is putting on, the link to that is in the show notes. Also the link to Shannon’s website and her ways to get in touch with her and her book which you should definitely go by. That certificate in positive psychology that she mentioned, as well as a way to sign up for that newsletter that she mentions where you can get tons of free updates about positive psychology every month in your mailbox. Head on over to www.talentgrow.com/podcast/episode9. And that’s where you can get all those links, and if you like this episode, please share it with others. And of course, go over to iTunes and leave a rating or review, I really would appreciate it. Thank you so much for tuning in. It makes me so excited to be able to share knowledge with you. I really would love your comments, so leave a comment on my website or hit me up on Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook, wherever, whatever social media platform you like to hang out, because I’d love to hear how to make this even better for you. Thanks for tuning in. I’m Halelly Azulay, your leadership development strategist. 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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