430 Unwavering Teams: How Leaders Reduce Friction and Build Trust That Lasts with Eric Termuende

***DISCLAIMER: Please note that the following AI-generated transcript may not be 100% accurate and could contain misspellings or errors.***

[00:00:00] 

Mahan Tavakoli: Eric Termuende, welcome to Partnering Leadership. I am thrilled to have you in this conversation with me.

Eric Termuende: Awesome. Thanks so much for having me. I'm excited to dive in today.

Mahan Tavakoli: Eric can't wait to get some of your thoughts about rethinking work as all of us are rethinking work and how we do it better. But before we get there, we'd love to know a little bit more about you. Whereabouts did you grow up, and how has your upbringing helped contribute to who you've.

Eric Termuende: I grew up in the southeast corner of British Columbia and Canada. My hometown Cranbrook, BC where mom and dad still live, I think it population is 24,000 or something like that. Very much a blue collar town, very resource based. Not quite the size of a city where you walk to the grocery store and you know everyone's name, but many people's names.

And I would say for better or worse, that's one of the biggest pieces of, feedback or observation people make. 'cause they say, Hey you must be from a small town. And again, I'm not really sure how to take that, but [00:01:00] I've decided to choose it to be very positive and that has definitely set the foundation for who I am today and the work that I get to do.

Mahan Tavakoli: People in smaller towns all around the world. I spent many years traveling, end up being a lot more friendly for a whole host

Eric Termuende: Maybe that's it. Maybe that's it. Just very friendly, big smile on my face. Yeah, that, that's the one I'm gonna go with. Thank you for that.

Mahan Tavakoli: Now Eric, you are also somewhat of a new dad, so

Eric Termuende: right.

Mahan Tavakoli: to see.  , What has that meant to you and in what way do you think becoming a dad has shifted your perspective on leadership?

Eric Termuende: First of all, I'm far more emotional than I've ever been before. My daughter is six months old now and, you hear it over and over again. Oh, being a father or a parent is gonna change your life. And I was kinda like, yeah. And now, I have cried more in the past six months than I have in the past 16 years, I would say.

It's been harder to leave [00:02:00] and I've realized, in the idea or the conversation that we're having around rethinking work and some of the work that I've done, I've rethought work completely. I anticipated some of the changes just in case everyone who's ever given me advice was just a little bit right.

Turns out they were in terms of how parenting was gonna change your life and work, as, as important as it is always will be, is not as I as important as it was, a year ago. So it's been a wonderful eye-opening experience that I wouldn't trade for the world.

Mahan Tavakoli: What an outstanding observation. Eric.  as I mentioned, I traveled quite a bit I worked for two amazing leaders, the CEO of the. Organization and the COO of the organization,  one of them had a family of his own. So he related a lot more to the fact that I had to spend so much of my time on the road.

Eric Termuende: Sure.

Mahan Tavakoli: [00:03:00] was also an incredible leader,

Related very differently wasn't able to understand those sacrifices. So I find that. Being able to connect to those emotions can bring out our humanity and leading people. So I wonder why don't more of us do that? Why is it that when we are in the work environment, most employees complain about the fact that they don't feel that sense of emotion, that caring and that empathy.

Eric Termuende: A couple things. I would say, number one, . We're all just doing the best we can to do the best we can. I think we're limited on time. I think we're limited on resources. I think we're limited on help. I think all of us are itching for that next promotion. Statistically, what 40% of the country is paycheck to paycheck?

With the government shutdown that happened in late 2025. You learned that what 42, 40 7 million people were on snap, and I'm not saying that's necessarily the white collar workforce that we're talking about, but I do think that [00:04:00] there's urgency, to get to next. There's urgency to be the best that we can, and the stuff that we're talking about, empathy, connection, belonging, gosh, you know that takes time.

And it's a time spend that has a very positive return on investment, but it's not necessarily one that's seen right away, nor is it tangible which makes it harder to be able to invest that time. What do you think?

Mahan Tavakoli: I think it's a couple of elements. One, of the executives I interact with feel that same sense of overwhelm,

Eric Termuende: Sure. 

Mahan Tavakoli: Mentioned. The other thing is I do think there is a huge blind spot most of us have, so I know podcast listeners are people who are to learn, so have a growth mindset.

So by itself,

Eric Termuende: Sure.

Mahan Tavakoli: audience is self-selective. That said, most of us hear you talking about this and say I do that.

Eric Termuende: Yep.

Mahan Tavakoli: It's for other people. So I think a combination of that overwhelm and a blind spot, and I wonder [00:05:00] how can we overcome both that overwhelm and the blind spot in order to have more  humanity and empathy in the workplace.

Eric Termuende: The funny thing about a blind spot is that you can't see it, and I think the best way to overcome it is to shine more light, where typically there hasn't been light shined before. How do you do that? I think you start to ask people questions that historically you haven't asked 'em. Some of my favorite questions around leadership and illuminating some of those blind spots.

Am I creating an environment where you can be the very best version of yourself? Are your greatest ideas being contributed to this team? Are you able to be the best version of yourself here? Tell me more about what we can do to extract the full potential of our team. What am I doing that's holding you back?

Where might you see opportunities to be more creative and innovative in your role? These are some of the questions that I think illuminate some of the blind spots that, simply [00:06:00] we just don't really know about. I think that these questions are also very much trust building questions too, because if you are expressing the vulnerability to have someone on your team who's very likely, obviously in a junior position relative to you, give you feedback, you advice.

You direction, my gosh, how wonderful is that opportunity for that person?

Mahan Tavakoli: So how best can you do that, Eric?

Eric Termuende: It depends on how psychologically safe. Your team feels right now  if your team does not feel psychologically safe and does not feel that you are trustworthy, which I'm gonna assume that isn't necessarily the case. Like you said, your listeners are of high EQIQ and are here because they want to continue to improve.

But let's just say that is, an anomaly and it is the case. I think you start with an anonymous, Likert scale type with options or opportunity to suggest improvement. But if you do have a team that respects healthy dissent, healthy conflict, headbutting a little bit, in the interest of the team, the individuals, and the organization, I, I would ask [00:07:00] these questions on a one-on-one, and I wouldn't just shoehorn it in either.

I would create a very intentional team development meeting, almost like a hackathon or a workshop that doesn't take half day, that doesn't take all day. But one-on-one 30 minutes once a month. How do we make this experience here at work a little bit better? And I bet what's gonna come from that meeting would be absolutely incredible.

Mahan Tavakoli: I find when leaders incorporate that in their ongoing conversations, it takes out some of the fear that people sometimes might have in giving that kind of feedback. in a psychologically safe environment, when people trust their leaders, they still, the first few times are hesitant.

Eric Termuende: Sure.

Mahan Tavakoli: They want to measure what they say to see what the results and impact will be.

The more frequently you do it

Eric Termuende: That's right.

Mahan Tavakoli: it part of a practice, it's much more likely to get really [00:08:00] good traction.

Eric Termuende: Can I tell you one of my favorite stories that proves this?

I was talking to big audience in DC and one of the CEOs came up to me after, his name was Angel Sanchez and he's the CEO of Phoenix Technology. It's a firefighter helmet manufacturer based outta Riverside in California.

And I was sharing this notion of what I call is a one degree shift, which is like that smallest viable change. It gets us a little bit further from where we've been and a little bit closer to where we're going. Think of it as almost like a. Diet for a personal, use, you just stop adding too much cream or sugar to your coffee or extra dressing to your salad, just like a little small change.

But the CEO angel, he came up to me and he said, I love what you said about the one degree shift. We actually do that at Phoenix Technology every day of the week. I said, really? You're getting this sort of feedback every day of the week. What does that look like? And he said it's not as significant as you think, but for 10 minutes every morning we have what we like to call improvement time.

I said, okay, I'm intrigued. Tell me more about this. He said for 10 minutes. [00:09:00] Every day we improve on something and our goal is to get two seconds back on the assembly line without compromising costs, without compromising quality, and without compromising safety. Said, okay, great. What do you do?

Like, how do you start a meeting like this? And he said something that was super simple to me. He said, we fix what bugs us. I said, wow, that sounds brutally simple. He says, it has to be or it wouldn't happen. I said, okay, so what does this look like? And he said at the front of the room, there's 42 people in front of me.

'cause that's how many are on the team right now. I say, Hey, what's bugging you today? And inevitably, if not one, two or three people will put their hands up and share something. Small 'cause they do this every single day of the week that's bothering them. And we try and fix it. I said, okay, so what have you done?

He said, we fixed how we put the tools away. We fixed how we clean the bathrooms. We fixed the, the materials that we use, the drill bits we fixed, performance management, feedback, onboarding exit interviews. We've fixed everything. And I said what have the results been? He said, every single day we hear something new.

Everyone has a voice. Not everyone has to share it every day, but our [00:10:00] organization has grown a thousand percent over the next, over the last 10 years. Our people don't leave. 'cause everyone feels like they're important and they, we care for them, which of course we do. And if they do leave for whatever reason, they outgrow our organization or wanna move on, that's fine.

We've got a lineup of people around the front, around the back of the plant that want to work for us because our people love their work so much because they're, they matter, they're heard from. And I think this is what it all comes down to me and talk about creating connection about voices.

Psychological safety, trust. There's no stupid ideas. They look at a small change every single day of the week and the business results, they speak for themselves. Sure.

Mahan Tavakoli: What an outstanding example, Eric. We can spend the rest of the hour just focused on that and so many leadership lessons that come from it. of the things I wanna underline though is that it, a lot of organizations, people get that feedback not on a daily basis, but nothing is done with it, which is. What kills people's [00:11:00] willingness to share feedback? More than that, what kills it is if there's a negative reaction to it,

Eric Termuende: Sure.

Mahan Tavakoli: a lot of times they feel like the feedback goes into a black hole and nothing happens

Eric Termuende: It does. Yeah, it does. Statistically, and don't necessarily quote me on this, it's an old stat now, but roughly, I call it napkin math anytime. I'm just making something up that's directionally correct. But my napkin math said that 24% of engagement surveys are acted on in any way, shape, or form, which means that 76% of 'em, they're done, they collect dust for a year, you pull 'em off, 11 months later, wonder why nothing's changed or got worse and start the process over again.

I've got a theory that we don't have. Survey fatigue. I think we have inaction fatigue, and if I think that I'm gonna answer a survey only to have those answers collect dust for a year before I'm asked again, why would I bother? But if I know that my opinion is gonna matter, that there's gonna be actions taken and that I have a voice that's louder than the one I thought that I had, my gosh.

Sign me up. I'll do as [00:12:00] many surveys as you want.

Mahan Tavakoli: I love that. We don't have survey fatigue. We have inaction fatigue.. Now, one other point that you also mentioned in there, and I know you're a big advocate of, is that one degree shift.

Wait a minute, Eric. Everyone's talking about transformation and

Eric Termuende: Sure.

Mahan Tavakoli: about one degree shifts.

Eric Termuende: How do you walk a thousand miles? Just one step at a time. How do you eat an elephant? Just one step at a time. I think we can have massive transformation goals for sure. I think I could probably lose 25 or 30 pounds for sure, but that's pretty overwhelming.

It doesn't mean it's any less important. It's pretty anxiety inducing but it's no less important. It's pretty I don't even know where to start. I think you start with making the smallest one degree shift you possibly can, and so I, sure. Massive transformation. Yeah. Who doesn't think that There's a little shiny object over there, we call massive transformation, I would say.

What's the smallest transformation you can make right now on your journey to [00:13:00] massive transformation? Let's just take the Moneyball approach to transformation. Let's get on base before we get across home plate, and I think we can get enough people on first base and second and third, we'll finally get enough people across home to win the game too.

Mahan Tavakoli: That's a very different mindset, and I love it, Eric, for so many different reasons, including the fact that when we talk about massive transformation, besides the anxiety. A D and everything else that you mentioned, organization and the leadership team or whoever is responsible for it, spends a ton of time

Thinking about it, planning it, trying to make it happen. the time they finish the thinking and the planning, the transformation

Eric Termuende: Yep.

Mahan Tavakoli: need will be different

Eric Termuende: That's right.

Mahan Tavakoli: that they have planned for. 

Eric Termuende: That's right.

Mahan Tavakoli: Making those smaller , adjustments, degree shifts, part of the ongoing culture of the organization is much more suitable to long-term effectiveness.

Eric Termuende: I think you raised a really good point. The world around us is moving so much faster than it ever has before, and [00:14:00] only a fraction of the speed that it will in the years to come and. The goalposts change, in that time. My biggest problem, if we're talking more personally now, my biggest problem with a five year goal is the lesson that we choose to ignore three weeks into that goal, because.

It doesn't fit with the goal that we set three weeks ago, which is, could be an entirely different world than the one we're living right now. And I personally, I don't really set structured like tan like goal. I set directional goals for sure, but the specificity of the goals that I'm setting.

I think are uneducated because of the person that I'm gonna become on that journey to achieve the goal that is made when I was a previous version of who I am now.

Mahan Tavakoli: I love that Eric, one of the futurists whose work I love from institute for the future. Bob Johansson , talks about the fact [00:15:00] that as we go through. Greater change and uncertainty. What we need is clarity with flexibility rather than certainty.

Eric Termuende: Sure.

Mahan Tavakoli: what you are doing with your goals is you have clarity of direction

Rather than certainty

Eric Termuende: That's right. Interesting. Great distinction. It is a great distinction. I haven't heard it phrased like that before, but I absolutely subscribe to that way of thinking.

Mahan Tavakoli: Now one of the things that you talk about, you describe unwavering teams, what to you makes an unwavering team? I.

Eric Termuende: A foundation, a deep foundation of trust. Because the, while the world around us may change faster than it ever has before, that turbulence does not have to be felt necessarily on the team as well. And I think we see this on airplanes. If you wanna talk about turbulence specifically, you see the experienced flyers who have done this a hundred times before and you hit turbulence mid-flight, and they're just like reading their [00:16:00] book as if nothing's going on, and then you hear some less experienced or fearful flyers who are literally shrieking because this is literal turbulence that they weren't necessarily prepared for.

I actually think that's a perfect metaphor for the change in the uncertainty that we're feeling in the workforce too. I think that if we are able to build a team that trusts. Each other that understands that uncertainty and turbulence is a requirement and necessity for us as we move forward and can ride through that turbulence without flinching.

These are the ones who are going to live longer, happier, and with a stronger team around them too. I can't help but think you hear all the time. I'm no life scientist or anything like that, but I just hear that trust is, or sorry, stress is the root of most illness that is, I'm gonna put, for lack of a better phrase, self-inflicted.

I think that you can run through this turbulence and the uncertainty of the world around us. As if we're stressed and worried about it. Or you can build a team that can be unwavering throughout it. And that foundation [00:17:00] of an unwavering team is a team that trusts each other, trust their abilities, and to your point not necessarily the certainty of exactly where they're going, but the clarity on the direction they want to go together.

Mahan Tavakoli: I love that analogy. It's so visual and I relate to it so well, Eric, as

Eric Termuende: Are you a rieker? You're a rieker on the plane.

Mahan Tavakoli: No. Exactly as you said, you.

Eric Termuende: Yep.

Mahan Tavakoli: who the frequent flyers are

Eric Termuende: Yep,

Mahan Tavakoli: they're not the ones grabbing on to

Eric Termuende: that's right.

Mahan Tavakoli: seats.

Eric Termuende: That's right.

Mahan Tavakoli: 'cause they know this is okay, this is part

Eric Termuende: Which is part of it.

Mahan Tavakoli: Now the question is, how do you build that in your team though?

Do you trust falls or do you share deep, dark secrets? How do leaders go about building that kind of trust to make their team unwavering?

Eric Termuende: I heard late night karaoke and a few drinks is a fast track to trust, for those folks who are not necessarily interested in that, I would say that the fastest way to build trust is to get to know each other outside of work. And I've got countless stories that [00:18:00] demonstrate this, but one of my favorite examples I like to share, this is a stretch.

You're gonna have to work with me. As I say, True Trust is a lot like gas station sushi. Okay? And you're gonna, again, I say this is a stretch, but work with me on this one. I'm from Vancouver. I live in Vancouver now. I've been here for a decade. I love sushi. I'm a connoisseur of it now, and I'm like an inch away from mercury poisoning, which is an entirely different conversation.

But, I was filling up my, my my, my car at the gas station the other day, and I was feeling a little bit hungry. So I walked in and there it was in the cooler, which we can agree is not really a cooler. It's fairly warm. But the light was shining on it just perfectly, that the reflection off the plastic lid showing right in my eyes.

And I had to go take a look at this. And I'm thinking, as a connoisseur of sushi that I am, this looked really good. And for 3 99 what a steal. You know what I mean? But did I get it? Of course not. I wouldn't be here today if I got it. For all the reasons we know to be true, but I'm leaving the gas station.

I'm thinking to myself, why didn't I get that sushi? It looked good. The price was right. Everything seemed to be [00:19:00] perfect. But I concluded that I didn't get the sushi because I didn't know anything about it. And because I didn't know anything about it, I didn't trust it. I didn't know if it had been there for five minutes or five days.

I didn't know if it was caught fresh in the harbor or if it was shipped across from the Atlantic coast, and because I didn't know these things, I just couldn't trust it. And I found the same thing happens at work. Are the people around us skilled? Do they have the education, the qualifications, the requirements?

Like sure, they wouldn't be in that job if they didn't. But does that mean that we trust them right away? Does that mean that we can have an unwavering team? Absolutely not. You have to build trust, earn trust, gain trust. And I'm not saying that you have to skip these steps and assume trust, but what I am saying is the more you get to know about the people you get to work with, the faster we'll be able to build trust.

And I'll give you one more quick analogy on this one. I heard from, Brene Brown, a real up and coming speaker? No, I'm just kidding. She's one of the greatest ever. 

Mahan Tavakoli: She hopes to grow up to be just like you, Eric.

Eric Termuende: Yeah. Right. She said this marble jar metaphor that I really liked, and for [00:20:00] every positive interaction you have with someone, it's like the equivalent of putting a marble in the jar.

And the more full that jar is, the more you trust someone. The more you do a small favor, the more you ask a thoughtful, insightful question, the more you get to learn about your two daughters or the life that you get to live, or the fact that you're going to volleyball practices or volleyball games or volleyball is the center of your life right now, the more I know about this stuff, the faster we're gonna be able to build this deep sense of trust.

The other analogy that I heard is that we need to trust, treat relationships almost like our bank accounts. And the more deposits that we make into these bank accounts not withdrawals, the more we give to these relationships, the more these accounts grow and the faster you earn an increasing amount of interest on these relationships as well.

And I found that's a really cool way of looking at how to build trust and unwavering teams.

Mahan Tavakoli: , What an outstanding analogy with the sushi. I am glad you didn't get that, or we would've had to cancel our podcast recording

Eric Termuende: I'm really keeping our meeting in mind here. I wanna be [00:21:00] careful. Yep.

Mahan Tavakoli: I do appreciate that. What I wonder about that trust though in the organizations, Eric, is that, it primarily something that is up to the individual? So is it up to Mohan and Eric to try to find out a little bit about each other do you see teams and organizations that structurally approach that well?

Eric Termuende: So both is the answer. The risk though, from a structural standpoint is that if you try to force this stuff too much, it becomes super uncomfortable. And I think you hear this. And trust falls and stuff like that, it's ah, I don't wanna do that. Or I don't know how many times you've heard this before where it's oh, tell me two truths and a lie about you.

And I'm like, God no. That's the last thing I want to do. And so I think when you try and force these things too much it can have a really negative effect when you try and force vulnerability, when you try and force connection. It doesn't work so well, but when you invite it and create a safe space for these conversations to [00:22:00] happen, I think that's the why, conferences and retreats and events that's why all this stuff works so well.

That's why people spend millions of dollars on this events business a year is because when you can hear somebody invite or an idea or plant a seed, and then you've got o an opportunity to network and connect after and talk about these things. The real value of the conference is not the keynote speaker.

It's the conversations that come after the workshops, after the keynote speakers, when everyone has shared an experience together and is able to reflect on that. So I think the onus really is on the individual for sure, and the secondary opportunity for the organization is to create a safe space where these conversations can happen without trying to force it too much.

Mahan Tavakoli: This connects to part of our earlier conversation. Give people the directionality and the intention behind it

Eric Termuende: Yep.

Mahan Tavakoli: and they can carry it forward

Eric Termuende: Yep,

Mahan Tavakoli: than structuring

Eric Termuende: yep.

Mahan Tavakoli: fake environments to force this on people. [00:23:00] So clarity

Eric Termuende: Yep.

Mahan Tavakoli: rather than specific actions that take the humanity out of that interaction.

Eric Termuende: . If you want to create these conversations, if you wanna create this sort of this crossroads where people can connect, create, or facilitate a remarkable experience. Now you're gonna think perhaps that this is a little overwhelming, a remarkable experience.

First of all, that sounds really expensive. It's not. When I think of remarkable, I think of something worth remarking. Okay. And so if we were to share an experience. I were to say, what'd you think about that thing that we did at lunch? Wasn't that crazy? By the way, you were telling me about your two daughters, right?

Volleyball is really big. How does that relate to your family? What are you looking forward to or something like that if you can create, that's the way I see my job as a speaker. My, my job as a speaker is to create a remarkable experience, meaning that if someone's got a samosa in one hand and a Bud light in another hand at the cocktail hour that night.

And [00:24:00] they're standing across this bar table from somebody else who also was at my keynote. And they've emailed each other for eight months, but they've never talked before and they don't know necessarily how to break the ice. And they said, what'd you think about that knucklehead at lunch? Who talked about gas station sushi and truss?

Like that was funny, wasn't it? And they said, yeah, that was pretty funny. I actually had gas station sushi last week. I know exactly what he was talking about. And it breaks the ice. And now they can have a two hour conversation and carry that momentum into the next conversation they had rather than.

Going to bed early or leaving the site altogether. Man, I'll tell you if I'm able to do that a few hundred times a night after after I'm done speaking, my gosh, that is it. And you don't necessarily need a speaker to do that, of course, but you do need to create a remarkable experience, meaning a re, an experience that's worth remarking so that we can break the ice and have the conversations that are required to build that deeper sense of trust in the first place.

Mahan Tavakoli: Love the idea of those remarkable experiences and experience that people can remark on

Eric Termuende: Yeah.

Mahan Tavakoli: then [00:25:00] connect and

Eric Termuende: And then connect. Use that as the conduit. Yes, a hundred percent. Remarkable. Could be horrific by the way, because I think it could be humorous too. If you had a really bad experience and people laugh about then I think, you obviously don't wanna do anything, dangerous or that could reflect poorly on you or the brand, I'm sure we've all seen those movies before that are so bad that you just can't help talking about it and laughing about it, remarkable. It doesn't have to be the best ever. It just has to be worth remarking.

Mahan Tavakoli: Those shared experiences and that shared language is really important. Eric, I just wrote a piece put up on LinkedIn in that my girls are really into six, seven. Not sure if you've heard of it or not.

Eric Termuende: I have.

Yep.

Mahan Tavakoli: they love six, seven and teachers are going crazy with six, seven. But in our home, we are using six, seven all the time.

And I tell the girls I'll be home in six, seven minutes and they're crack up. They

Eric Termuende: Yeah. Yeah. Nice.

Mahan Tavakoli: It's helping us connect at a

Eric Termuende: That's right.

Mahan Tavakoli: way. We get the grandparents doing six, [00:26:00] seven, part of what I've seen in the best teams is that they actually also encourage an element of that through

Eric Termuende: Sure. 

Mahan Tavakoli: We feel like we have an inside language, inside connection that separates us in a positive way

Eric Termuende: Yep. Totally. And again, a as long as it's not forced, nobody forced six, seven on the girls or the family, but you grabbed onto an opportunity and that I think is super important. I think we can do that at work too.

Mahan Tavakoli: Outstanding. Now, another thing that gets in the way of many organizations is that in getting the work done, there is a lot of friction and I find in n. To be more adaptable, more agile, that friction gets in the way of the organization. You talk a lot about reducing friction. What are the biggest friction [00:27:00] points in organizations and how can leaders look at reducing those friction?

Eric Termuende: I think there's really only one major one, and it's connection or communication with the people around us. There's always friction, depends on what source you read. It seems like there's, for the first time ever there's 94 generations in the workplace. I, it seems like the number grows every time that I hear it.

And it, and we're supposed to be like flabbergasted every time. No wait, really? Oh, no. But it, the implication is that this younger generation is so foreign and so alien to like the workforce that we have to change everything to be able to figure them out. There's some sort of an enigma or something like that.

Sure. This generation grew up with different tablets in their hands or technology that they were listening, watching, or, songs they were listening to. But I think the biggest gap is the communication and understanding gap between any generation in the workplace or any sort of initiative we're trying to develop.

And so when I think of reducing friction, [00:28:00] I think of trying to find common ground, and I think of trying to find the root of the friction first. So I typically ask five questions to find the root of the friction. Number one, where's the problem? That's a pretty easy one. It's usually where the friction lies.

You ask, what should I be doing about it? And then usually you get some sort of surface level response, and I'll go through an example in a second. Then you ask, what should I really be doing about it? Sorry. Yeah. And then just then you find the root of the problem and ask what the smallest viable change is that you can make from there.

If I were to take a personal example. Let's just say I wanted to lose 10 pounds. Okay? So what's, where is there friction? I'm too heavy. There's friction literally in my thighs. I need to be able to lose some weight. What should I be doing about it? I should be going for a run or eating better.

Now where is that going wrong? When I look at when I look at, I just, I'm not getting out enough. And I'm not, I don't have the time to cook. So where is it really going wrong? I realized that there's not time in my calendar to make space for cooking [00:29:00] or make space to go to the gym. And so then I asked what should I really be doing about it?

What's that one degree shift I can make? I realized the smallest change I can make, the one degree shift that I should make is not to force myself out to go out at eight o'clock or 10 o'clock at night. It's to create a space in my calendar, every day moving forwards. That gives me opportunity or time to cook your time to go for a walk.

That cannot be booked over. And so the one degree shift is not to force myself once I'm already exhausted and burned out and fatigued to do more. It's to create time in this space so it's time in my calendar so that I can do something. And I find that ability to reduce the friction, which was time in this case, not necessarily effort, was what would get me on my path to, getting an alternate or a better result.

Mahan Tavakoli: And that takes. Reflection taking a step back,

Eric Termuende: Totally.

Mahan Tavakoli: , One of the things that I find, as you also mentioned there is a sense of overwhelm. Therefore, leaders aren't [00:30:00] doing that,

Eric Termuende: That's right.

Mahan Tavakoli: for themselves or the teams they're leading.

Eric Termuende: Yep. A hundred percent. A hundred percent. What have you found, what have you found to be a good tool or a good opportunity or a good tactic to reduce friction or gain a general consensus or communicate more effectively with the people around us?

Mahan Tavakoli: I couldn't agree more with you that relationships are critical the other element that I know you also touch on as well that. While a lot of leaders. Talk about a different kind of leadership, more empowerment, trusting their teams, so on and so forth. still many control mechanisms that cause friction in the decision making, in the actions, in the experimentation in the organization.

Eric Termuende: Sure.

Mahan Tavakoli: there is. clinging to control.

Justification for it. This is a slide deck that's gonna go to our board, so I need to review it.

Eric Termuende: Sure.

Mahan Tavakoli: that's gonna go to a [00:31:00] major funder, so I need to look at it. So there is additional friction of control put on organizational actions.

Eric Termuende: I agree. And that to me goes back to the marble jar. If you're looking to be able to trust someone on their slide deck that's going to the board, you better have a jar full of marbles, right? You can't have a jar half full of marbles in a situation like this, because you will not have built the foundation of trust required to be able to delegate something of such importance to somebody who could perhaps even do a better job than you or I could, but you gotta fill that jar first.

Mahan Tavakoli: a critical part of the way you view our need for rethinking work is that greater human connection and trust . Now, at the same time, there has been a lot of. Conversation around ai. AI has been introduced into the workplace. In some organizations, AI agents are starting to do a lot [00:32:00] of work. Salesforce has done a ton of work on AI agents and let people go as a result of the work of AI agents. Wonder how you think AI will interplay with these humans? And how that will impact the trust that you think is so critical in rethinking work.

Eric Termuende: , I think that the trust that we're gonna have to be able to have is still going to be with the person who's using these tools. And so the question Mahan is do I trust you and your ability to utilize these tools, it's not necessarily about the information, it's about your due diligence that you've taken in order to find out that the information that you got from these tools is true, is reputable, is correct.

If I trust you in your ability to use these tools, then I don't think it's necessarily gonna change. If I see that at the bottom of the email it said. Would you like a shorter, punchier version of this email then? I've lost trust in you, not trust in the tool. The tool is what you can choose whether you wanna trust that or not, [00:33:00] but I think the trust is gonna be in the individual and how they filter the use of that tool to get the best results done.

I still think that the buck is gonna stop at the individual that you've chosen to get this information from., 

Mahan Tavakoli: Whether it is at Microsoft now with the coding

Salesforce or some of the organizations like Amazon that are testing this, at the end, is a human judgment that plays a role.

Eric Termuende: That's right.

Mahan Tavakoli: the trust has to be there for the human making, the judgment

Eric Termuende: Yeah.

Mahan Tavakoli: the actions of the ai.

Eric Termuende: . When we talk about work, the funny thing is, in all of these conversations we're talking about white collar work, and that's what, 40% of the workforce, then there's trades, then there's blue collar, then there's, everything else. And so we think that the workforce is gonna be dismantled because of ai.

Maybe a fraction of white collar work the way that we know it to be today. Maybe Amazon, maybe Microsoft, maybe Salesforce. Sure. Then there's the other [00:34:00] vast majority of the workforce that I think that will use this as a tool and not necessarily a replacement that we could still have a ton of optimism for,

Mahan Tavakoli: That is very well stated. A lot of times when I talk about work, I'm talking about knowledge work professionals,

Eric Termuende: Yeah.

Mahan Tavakoli: right. That's

Subsegment of. Work. Now, another thing that you emphasize is that yesterday's best practices aren't necessarily tomorrow's, Eric. So what do you think will be tomorrow's best practices

for organization? 

Eric Termuende: I think a best practice will be to continue to get to know the people around us better. It will be to continue to practice new tools. It'll be to continue to try new things, to have a growth mindset, to be learning, to be agile, to be resilient.

Those are evergreen, but the only constant moving forward is change, and we gotta be ready for it every step along the way.

Mahan Tavakoli: And in order to be ready for that change. What do you think it will take for organizations [00:35:00] to prepare most effectively?

Eric Termuende: So leadership yesterday, or like last chapter of leadership, had the leader setting the goal and the leader telling the individuals on the team how to get there and he or she could do that because they'd already been in that role before they'd been in the job for 30 years.

They'd worked their way up the rankings and now made it to the C-suite or whatever it is. Leadership today, I think looks a lot different. I think the leader today needs to set the goal for sure. It needs to be crystal clear on that direction and on that goal. However, I think the leader needs to empower their teams to figure out how to get there the best way possible because the tools and the world that junior folks in our organizations are using.

Today in the world they're living in is vastly different than the world that same CEO 20 or 30 years ago lived in. And so I think we need clarity on where we're going and autonomy and delegation on how to get there as fast as possible. And I think that's the way organizations will be able to capture the full potential and the speed of change in the world around us is by [00:36:00] leveraging everyone in the organization and their unique skills, capabilities, and talents to get there.

Mahan Tavakoli: That is a huge shift in mindset for many of us

Eric Termuende: Yep,

Mahan Tavakoli: grown up in a slightly different world.

Eric Termuende: sure. Everyone, anyone who's over 30, has grown up in a different world, and that's where the opportunity lies and that's where the excitement is.

Mahan Tavakoli: It is exciting as we go through this, and that's going to require all of us to rethink work. Now, I know you speak on this, Eric, you've written on it for the audience to follow your writing and work, where would you send them to?

Eric Termuende: I would just check out air term money.com or find me on LinkedIn. Those are the two places that I'm gonna be spending most of my time and I welcome the conversation.

Mahan Tavakoli: I really appreciate your thoughts on rethinking work  Thank you so much for the conversation, Eric.

Mond. 

Eric Termuende: Thanks, Mahan. you. Be careful about that gas station sushi, and we'll talk to you soon.