Hello everyone and welcome to The Upstream Leader. My name is Jeremy Clopton. I am excited for a conversation that we’re going to have here today. We’re going to be talking about managing emotions and energy levels. And as we are all getting ready for what might be the busiest time of the year, it’s easy to feel like we react to those things rather than manage them. So it seems like a very fitting time as leaders to have this discussion. And for that discussion, I have with me today, Andrew Donofrio, who is the founder of Andrew Donofrio LLC, an executive coaching and speaking company. Andrew, great to have you with me.
Jeremy, really great to be here. Thank you.
I’m looking forward to this conversation, but before we jump into it, everybody knows where I’m headed. You know where I’m headed. I’m going to start the podcast the same way that I do everyone. And that is how did you become the leader that you are today?
No, I was very blessed. Prior to this career, I had a full career in law enforcement and I was very fortunate to have an opportunity to test for the next rank only four years in, and I was pretty young. I was 24. And I was able to achieve that—I made sergeant at 24—and I became enamored with leadership at that point. And I became a student of it, both practically in the sense of experience, what worked, what didn’t work. It’s a very challenging industry for a leader. You only have a certain amount of tools available to you on the motivation and sort of punishment side, if you will. And there’s some big personalities in that field. So I felt pretty passionate about what leadership could do, the idea of servant leadership, and been a student of it ever since. So I think that through the experience in that career that then translated into the private sector, I think that’s really what did it. And also a whole lot of introspection, a whole lot of personal growth in that time period.
Very good. So I’m talking with a former law enforcement agent about how to manage emotions. Some might say that that is kind of like talking to an accountant about how to be creative, not exactly what’s expected. And after law enforcement, you actually went into tech, correct? If I have that right?
Correct.
You had a tech company as well. So law enforcement, tech company, now you’re helping leaders become better leaders. How did you make the jump from a profession that is not exactly known for being the most emotional or perhaps the most in touch with emotion? How did you make that jump from law enforcement and tech to now helping people figure out how they manage emotions and become great leaders? What was that catalyst for you?
Yeah, sure. So, you know, the area of law enforcement that I fell into, if you will, wasn’t an area when I got into it, and that was cybercrime, computer crime. I had a love for technology, and I saw the writing on the wall, if you will, that this was going to intersect with law enforcement’s ability to solve crime. And so I started to educate myself a lot in technology and I became known affectionately in Bergen County, New Jersey as “The Geek with the Gun.” So people were coming to me and leaning on me quite a bit for resources to be able to help them and empower them. That grew into something that, at the time, the Byrd County Prosecutor had a great vision for. He was very proactive, was a mentor to me, a guy by the name of John Molinelli, a fantastic prosecutor, and he saw the vision for this, and brought me over there, and together we grew it.
I think really what was challenging was doing something new in a field that really didn’t like to rock the boat so much. Now, I had support from the top, so it helped, but I really believe that that required a different type of leadership. That command and control structure, that do as I say, not as I do, that, do what I tell you to do when I tell you to do it, wasn’t going to work if you want to innovate. So I detached, if you will, a little bit from the traditional leadership schools. Now I did all those leadership schools that law enforcement put out, but less militaristic, I went to private sector leadership, started reading guys like Stephen Covey, John Maxwell, went to John Maxwell School, that type of thing. So I really believe that that helped a great deal. Human beings are human beings, whether they’re cops or not. It’s just, how do we motivate them, how do we inspire them, and how do we get them rowing in the same direction. So I think it requires something different. And I think that’s why it was a success.
Yeah, well, it’s interesting you say that because if somebody was listening to you describe that industry doesn’t necessarily like to change. Maybe some big personalities do as I say, not as I do. They might think we’re talking about an accounting firm, not law enforcement. You’re very familiar with our industry—there’s a lot of similarities there when you’re talking about trying to drive change and innovating and that pull of “the way that things have always been done.” So let’s fast forward a little bit then. When it comes to the emotion side, the managing emotions and managing energy levels, when did you realize, and what was it that helped you realize just how important that was gonna be for you as a leader?
Yeah, it’s, it’s critical, right? So when we talk about managing people, when we talk about effective leadership, I think the primary skill that most leaders should strive to develop and continue to develop—it’s not something that there’s a stopping point for—that’s emotional intelligence. And when we look at emotional intelligence, Jeremy, it’s the two sides of it: Oftentimes when people think of it, they think about, okay, recognizing what my emotional state is and being able to regulate that. But equal to that is recognizing the emotional state of the person in front of you, and then being able to sort of meet them where they were. And that was, I think, the first area of growth for me and my leadership journey in law enforcement. When you look at it and break it down subjectively, there’s only really 50 percent of that equation that you control, and that’s managing the emotion in yourself, but with that 50 percent you can have a great deal of influence over the other 50 percent.
So if you’re able to recognize what’s going on in you and able to regulate that and meet somebody where they’re at, you can have a great deal of influence over that situation. By addressing what might be difficult or fearful to them and understanding what that is, not hitting it head on necessarily, but asking good questions, you can really meet somebody where they’re at. So I think that is probably the most important thing, developing that emotional intelligence muscle and being able to meet somebody where they’re at.
Okay. Let’s talk about that emotional intelligence muscle as it relates to the 50 percent we can control first. You mentioned that emotional intelligence is the top skill in your mind for leaders to develop. What skills or sub-skills—what exactly does it mean to develop that skill? And what is necessary for an individual to be able to understand and have that self-awareness of where they’re at and to regulate their own emotions, what other skills are required there? Because I know for a lot of folks, when they hear emotional intelligence, it’s like, okay, it’s touchy-feely, I know that, you know, it’s going to be emotions and the things that arguably most people just don’t like to address. So, yeah, I know it’s much more than that. So what skills are necessary to build the emotional intelligence muscle?
There’s a few. The first I would say is acceptance of not everybody thinks the way I think, right? Not everybody has the same opinions that I hold. When we appreciate that and understand that, we can let go of righteous indignation. This was probably one of the greatest challenges for me. And law enforcement can breed a little bit of righteous indignation. We know what’s right and we know what’s wrong, and get on board. But that doesn’t translate into working with human beings necessarily. It might be okay for the law and it might be okay for solving crime, but it certainly doesn’t serve you very well in leadership, because your ability to lead doesn’t mean that you’re just going to lead people like you. You’re going to lead all types of people with various opinions, various backgrounds, various starts in life. So that’s the first component, realizing that not everybody thinks the way you think.
And the second sort of ancillary piece of that is putting down the indignation or the frustration when they don’t think like you, right? When they don’t see it the way you see it. The other piece of that is owning the idea that what affects our emotions is not a situation, is not an event, but it’s our processing of the event. This is the foundation for a lot of philosophy. This is a foundation for many disciplines in psychology. If you look at something like the cognitive model in cognitive behavioral therapy, it talks about being faced with a situation. Think about it in a flow chart, if you will—the next thing that happens after you’re faced with that situation is an automatic thought. It comes to your mind very quickly. That thought will then dictate a chain of reactions—an emotional reaction, a physical reaction, sometimes a physiological reaction. So where do you have any control? You don’t have control necessarily over the top layer, which is the situation. But you do have control over processing the thought, questioning the thought. And so if we can recognize for a minute that that’s really the model, I think that’s the ancillary skill that gives us that emotional intelligence.
Take, you know, one of the things that is maybe very fearful for a lot of individuals, and that’s public speaking. If you say to some people like, “Listen, tomorrow you have to give a presentation to 500 people, here’s your topic.” Most would be like, whoa, you know, and then you think about it and you say, well, what’s the thought behind that? If you drill down, it would be something to the effect of “I’m going to look foolish. I might say the wrong thing. I may freeze.” And then all the repercussions that come from that, all the emotion, the anxiety, the fear that gets welled up inside as a result of that. But if you change the questioning of the thought a little bit and say, well, it’s an opportunity to connect with people, it’s an opportunity to have influence over people. For me, you tell me that I’m going to speak in front of 500 people, I’m excited. I love public speaking. Maybe I’m a bit of a ham, but I enjoy it. So that, I do have hot button issues that I have to work through. That’s not one of them.
So if you look at it, the same situation, just a different thought process. If we recognize that’s the level of attack. That’s the area that we can really drill down on: What are our thoughts about situations? How do we assess them? How do we manage them? Not necessarily change them because they are automatic, but how do we not let them have power over us and not elicit that reaction? How do we reframe them at times? That’s where we have a lot of control. And I think that’s the place to start when you look at emotional intelligence. It’s those two components: It’s not everybody thinks the way I think. And how do I process situations and events in my life? Where does my thought pattern go to? And how do I better regulate and manage those thoughts and the reactions that ensue?
What’s necessary for a leader to activate that “assess,” right? You mentioned that it’s okay. There’s an automatic thought when you’re presented with a situation and you have the automatic thought. And it sounds like what you’re saying is in order to kind of break the traditional cycle, you’ve got to be able to, when you have that automatic thought, stop and step back and assess and say, “Okay, what was my thought and how do I pick a better course of action?” How does somebody develop that muscle? Because it sounds easy for us to talk about, right? Oh, you’re going to go to public speaking. Oh, that’s scary. But what if it’s not right? Okay. In a controlled environment, totally, it’s easy for us to do that. But I’m thinking about when we’re in the heat of the moment, we’re in a situation, we’re leading people, maybe they thought in a way that we don’t think like, and that’s already frustrated us. We didn’t deal with the first part, so we’re frustrated. Now we’re in this situation, our automatic thought is, “Well, of course, they’re not going to do it that way. They don’t understand,” and all the different things that we might spiral into. How does a leader learn to stop that cycle and step back and assess and start to reframe? What works for people?
I think it’s the approach first. So every interaction, particularly challenging ones or potential conflict interactions, or where we have to lay something new out in a field that doesn’t necessarily adopt change well or something new, is the “what if” question first. What if something else is at play here? What if there’s something else behind what I’m seeing? So it’s easy for us to look at someone and say they didn’t meet a deadline, they’re lazy, they’re not committed, they lack a work ethic, they lack the urgency that I displayed. But what if there’s something else at play? And so if we approach a situation with “what if,” it enables us to ask better questions. There’s a world of difference in having somebody that reports to you and telling them “How many times do I have to tell you that when I give you a deadline,” or, “I need you to meet the deadline,” or “I need you to follow up with this client”—whereas when we ask better questions, if we approach with a “what if” model, it makes us more socratic. It makes us more curious. About what might be going on behind the person. And if you really want to effectuate change within a person and ultimately within an organization, you have to get to the root of why: What am I working with here? What other methods? Not everybody thinks the way I think. So what, how do they think? How do they process information? What if they do it differently? How can I get to that? And using that socratic method to get to the root of what might be a challenge for somebody and asking good questions might just enable you to not only have a better relationship and have more influence over those that you lead, but also again, steering them in the right direction in a way that works for them.
Take the issue of working from home, for example, right? And this is such a challenge. Most leaders are like, gotta get back in the office, gotta get back in the office. But what if it’s not that they want to work from home because you know, they’re screwing off, but rather that they’re highly concentrated—nobody comes to their desk. What if we look at it differently? What if we ask the right questions? If we can do it and approach it from that mindset, then I think we go a lot further in understanding the individual and being able to work within the confines of what that individual brings to the table.
I understand now why that’s the second part that you mentioned when you’re talking about the ancillary skills or the sub-skills of emotional intelligence, because it doesn’t sound to me that you can process that “what if” effectively without first accepting that somebody may think differently than you. So let me step back—maybe I should have started here, so I’m going to step back to it: What can an individual do to get better at accepting maybe they think differently than me, and it sounds, at least I’m interpreting it this way, correct me if I’m wrong, Andrew, and that’s okay, right? We’ve got to have that acceptance, like you said, that they think differently than me, and that’s okay. What steps can somebody take? Because again, easy to talk about it, but really hard, in my experience, to apply. I think we all struggle with this, even if you get good at it, it has those moments over time where it still becomes a challenge. What can someone do from an action standpoint to help them accept [that] somebody thinks differently and that’s okay?
Yeah, I think that it’s appreciating the individuality of people and looking back into your own past and history where somebody maybe that led you thought differently and you saw things differently, and how did you maybe lead from behind or communicate that to an individual. But I also think that developing that muscle, that skill, can happen in everyday life. You know, one of the things that I’ll do in a workshop, oftentimes, I’ll use this example: If you’re driving down the road and somebody cuts you off, right? And you’re immediately filled with that anger, right? The indignation of “rude, pushy, dangerous” are all the things that pop into our head when somebody cuts us off. And then the reaction happens, you start yelling and screaming, you might lay on the horn or hopefully you’re not. And yet if you were to drive another mile and you saw them pull into an emergency room, go to the door and pull their kid out of the car? Your entire mindset would change about what happened there. And what I’m suggesting is that when we go in and we’re working with individuals, we don’t know—we don’t know what they’re carrying, we don’t know necessarily what’s going on in their life entirely. We also don’t know the way they do process the way they think.
But it is in essence, not necessarily to get overly personal, but it’s in essence, our job to know as leaders to at least appreciate the way in which they might think, and what they might be carrying and how that’s impacting them at work. And what can we do to assist in that, to get better at that? And again, it comes down to that question. But if you start with the mindset that there’s differences and that people are carrying things, then I think that helps in every situation to ask better questions to go in and not take everything that’s coming at you, is what I call a mirror bias. That it’s a reflection of me somehow that that individual is coming back with. It might very well, and we’ve seen this, we really think back, we’ve seen it time and time again, we make assumptions about what we think people are doing and why they’re doing it, only to be found out later that we’re completely wrong. It might have nothing to do with us or nothing to do with what we perceive is going on with that individual. Rather, it was something entirely different. Again, it’s asking good questions, it’s coming in with the right mindset.
Yeah, so we’ve got to stop assuming and start understanding perspectives, which what I’m hearing here is the core of emotional intelligence is humanizing the people that we work with and humanizing ourselves, because that’s what it takes to do that. Let me take this now to a practical application situation: So I’m approaching it through the lens of, I accept somebody operates in a way that’s different from me, thinks differently from me. I’m okay with that. I’m asking the “what if” questions, and they’ve got all these reasons. I’m sure that somebody that’s listening to this is thinking that’s lovely, but how do we then bring accountability back into the equation? Because I know that from talking with a lot of leaders, that’s always the fear is, okay, well, if we humanize people so much and we do all of this to understand, do we just have to give up on accountability and standards of excellence? I don’t believe that to be true. Knowing you, I know you don’t believe that to be true. So how do we balance all this with accountability and excellence as a leader?
Right. That’s a great question. I mean, as a leader, too, it’s not just our job to understand, it’s our job to improve, encourage, and grow other individuals, right? So by not setting a standard, by not setting an expectation, then we deny them of that opportunity. It’s one of the things we deal with in delegation all the time. You know, it’s what I call leadership arrogance or leadership laziness. Leadership arrogance is, “Nobody can do it as well as I can do it, so I’m just not going to ask them.” Leadership laziness is, “It’ll take me longer to teach them, so I won’t teach them.” But when you do that, you deny the individual an opportunity to grow. I would submit they’re not mutually exclusive. So if you’re a leader who sets a standard and we should be right, we should set a standard for our organization, for our firm, then we want people to rise to that standard. Now, either they’re willing and unable, or able and unwilling, or they are willing and able, and that’s going to be fleshed out pretty quickly. But it doesn’t exclude you from appreciating where they’re at. Take, for example, feedback in a review. You might be the type of person—I know I am. Don’t give me a compliment sandwich.
Yes. Right.
We’ve heard that in interview, right? I don’t want to, I don’t want a compliment, “You do this really well, but this, but then you do this really well.” No, that’s not me. That’s not my personality. My personality is, “This is what you need to improve. This is how I see you getting there. Great. I got it. Give me the roadmap. If I have questions, I’ll ask you questions. If I don’t, you’ll see me in six months, and I guarantee you we won’t be talking about this again now.” Others not so much, right? So by starting even a review when I work with reviews on folks, and they have challenges with reviews of their people, I often say start with, “How do you prefer to receive information? How do you prefer to receive feedback, constructive or otherwise?” And see their reaction because they might not necessarily tell you, but the reaction will tell you, right? So it’s that idea of, you know, “Oh, whoa, whoa, whoa. Is it going to be that bad?” Or now, you know, right away, it’s going to be personalized. So you can, you know, make some adjustments. And that’s a quick snippet, but that’s the piece of it that we want to appreciate. It doesn’t exclude them from getting the feedback, right? But the humanizing of an individual gives you the ability to do it in a way that they can receive it right.
Now, ultimately, at the end of the day, there’s some people that just aren’t able or aren’t willing. And so we have to hold the standard true to our organization, true to the firm, what we want to accomplish, how we want to serve clients. And if they can’t be a part of that, well, then at least we know we did everything we could and invested what we should in that individual before we cut them loose and sent them to an organization where they could thrive. It just wasn’t ours. But I don’t think they’re mutually exclusive, Jeremy. Hopefully, I kind of answered that.
No, spot on. I mean, you know, what you’ve said, I mean, it reinforces the fact that by humanizing and understanding people, accepting where they’re at, understanding more, asking the “what if,” actually provides you a better opportunity to drive accountability because it becomes more individualized and more impactful because it’s not, you know, do it exactly the same for everybody, with the understanding that not everybody’s going to react the same way. I mean, you see that at all levels of all ages of people that coaching, feedback, mentoring, all of it—it’s received differently by everybody. And it’s so easy once you get into leadership to think, “Okay, well, now I get to have it my way.” And you know, it’s more reward centered thinking of, “Well, I’m the leader, so I get it my way,” when in reality, it’s a responsibility, which is, “Now I’ve got to figure out how do I connect with you your way.”
All of that said, this episode’s going live here, uh, in the middle of Q1—it’s getting ready to get busy. Everything that we’ve talked about to this point is going to improve a leader’s ability to connect with their people. At the same time, there’s a high likelihood it’s also going to be a bit exhausting, because it’s going to be new, it’s not necessarily going to be easy, it may lead to high levels of frustration. What are some steps that a leader can take to actually manage their own emotions better without regard for necessarily in situations with other people, but they’re overwhelmed, they’re frustrated, the anxiety is through the roof—what can leaders do to effectively manage their own emotions so that when they get to these situations with their team, with their superiors, with clients, they’re able to be more effective rather than already be at wit’s end and just completely you know, on edge before they get there?
Yeah, great question. So, you know, you know this from my personal life. I live with this, right? I live with a partner who’s about to hit tax season as well. She’s entering it also. So, you know, I absolutely get it. I think there’s some terms that have been bandied about that I think are overused a little bit, but have relevance here. You know, this idea, this notion of self-care and that type of thing. I think it’s important. And I do think that it’s important to recognize when the pot’s boiling over a little bit, but trying to be proactive before it gets there. One of the foundations that I’ve incorporated in my practice—when I first approached coaching, it was very much leadership, professional development. But I found that people came into a coaching environment with everything, and it sort of caused me to form this presupposition of human behavior that says we’re horrible at compartmentalizing. So, you know, if one area of our life is sacrificed or not firing well, it’s going to impact the others. Think about relationship challenges and how that impacts work, work challenges and how that impacts finances.
So I kind of have this six-domain approach. I won’t go into detail about it, but it’s the holistic approach to life. It’s this idea that we want to round off the other areas. So from a relationship standpoint, it’s preparing the spouse—this is what we’re, you know, we’re entering, you know, Sarah and I had a conversation about these are the two late nights that I’m giving. And this is what Saturdays are going to look like. Got it. Understood. Right? I know my responsibility with the dog. I know my responsibility with the house chores and that kind of thing. So I get it. So that’s the balance piece that she’ll bring into it. But it’s also taking the time. Appreciate the fact, another presupposition, that we don’t do well at multitasking. So the idea that we’re going to try to divide our attention on many tasks at one time really just inhibits our ability to accomplish one in a reasonable amount of time. So try to put that idea down, that you’re going to do multiple things at once. Now, yeah, you’re going to get distracted.
There are things that I implemented at firms to limit distraction, which ultimately limits frustration. Something silly like on a cubicle, I have “Head down and in the zone,” which means that you shouldn’t approach that person. You can flip that and say available for conversation, which means that they’re not head down in the zone. So somebody can chat and take a break with them. But, you know, maybe it’s red blocking on calendars. But for ourselves, maybe it’s moments of mindfulness. Maybe it’s a five-minute. I’m going to get up from my desk. I’m going to take a walk outside. I’m going to do some breath work, whatever practice that looks like. There are so many you can do and so many you can incorporate. You know, if you just simply search on the Internet for a five-minute mindfulness practice, it’s something you can do right at your desk, right at your cubicle. That’s a big part of self-care: Don’t sacrifice the nutrition. Don’t sacrifice the sleep to the extent that you can. Don’t sacrifice the exercise. It may not be to the level you did it before—maybe you’re getting 45 minutes to an hour every day, but in tax season, you can’t do it. Okay, but what can you do? Can you do 10 minutes? Can you get three 10 minute blocks? Two 5 minute blocks? Whatever that might look like, making some level of activity. Don’t throw the entire thing out. So really, I think it’s very, very important to take care of the physical aspect, the other areas of our life that negatively or positively impact us, to make sure that those are in check, and what areas we do have control over to then manage the work and the emotions that come with the overwhelming amount of work during this time of season.
You said something there that is so important—something is always better than nothing. And, you know, we tend to, I know at least a lot of the accountants that I work with are a lot of—I should rephrase that, a lot of the folks in accounting firms that I work with, because we’re at the point where now our professions, we’re not all accountants, there are plenty of folks that are not accountants—but most that are in the profession do tend to have that all or nothing mindset. “Well, if I can’t do the full workout, then I’m not going to do the workout.” I know I get into that as well as like, man, I’m so busy. I can’t go spend that half hour. I can’t go spend that hour. But to your point, I could probably go spend five minutes. I could do 10 minutes. I could walk around the house real quick for something just to get some steps in, just something to take that mental break, like you said. And that’s such an important reminder that when you get busy, taking just little breaks is still just as impactful sometimes as taking a huge long break. And you probably come back a little less stressed.
The other thing that you said there is setting the expectations for yourself, for others that you have relationships with can be so incredibly important. And you and Sarah actually, and for those that are listening to Sarah Krom, the managing partner at SKC & Co. is the Sarah that Andrew is talking about. They did a wonderful office hours at SKC, back in, what’s that?
November or December.
Yeah, I can’t remember exactly the month, but it was a holistic approach to living your best life. It was a phenomenal discussion. I would encourage everybody, if you go to SKC & Co’s website, you’ll find that in the resource section, office hours. A wonderful discussion between the two of them on that holistic approach.
So we talked a little bit about the holistic, the whole self, you said the six domains, and we’re going to encourage folks to reach out to you and get on your website to learn more about that because I know that’s something you’re very passionate about. What about managing energy levels, right? We talked a little bit about the physical side of it and not skipping all those things because that allows you to manage your emotions better. How do you manage those energy levels? Because you said, right? There’s going to be late nights, I’m going to stay up, I’m going to work on things, maybe it’s 10 or 12-hour days. And it’s so easy in our profession, and many others for that matter—but especially in ours—to think that, well, if I just sacrifice maybe four hours of sleep, I can get four more hours of work done. And we end at the end of April or the end of March or whenever it may be for someone completely sleep deprived and thinking, “Oh, we’ll just catch up in May or we’ll catch up in June,” or whenever it may be. We all know, by the way, that day never comes. We just tell ourselves that. How do you manage your energy levels when you have that high risk of just really burning the candle at both ends?
Yeah, the piece that we really want to focus on is that everything that we want to accomplish is carried around by a machine—all the intellect that we carry around, all the ability to execute is carried around by a machine, and there’s fundamentals to it. So the notion of I’m going to catch up doesn’t work on a number of levels. Even if you had the time to catch up, that’s not the way our bodies work. You can’t “make up” for lost sleep. It takes much more than you think to sort of get your mind and your rhythm back right again.
The other piece of that is going in with the idea and knowing this that you’re not really different physically than most other people—meaning that yes, if I sacrifice those four hours of sleep, I can get more done, but to what cost? What does the next day look like? What is that afternoon like? How many mistakes am I making? Am I truly accomplishing? Is four hours of work actually really one hour of well-rested work? It’s really understanding that the desire may be there, but the physical machine needs certain things, and it needs sleep, right? When we look at a holistic approach to physicality and energy levels, it’s sleep, hydration—critically important—decent nutrition, and exercise. And so when we incorporate those four things into a mindset, we can bring the right level of energy. Would it be better to accomplish a great deal in a two-hour span, than so-so work in a four-hour span. And if you can appreciate that mindset and know that that’s a part of those four components, hydration, sleep, nutrition, and exercise, and we incorporate those in our lives, we know we bring a better game, and so we’re not doing it from a place of exhaustion.
Going back to that exercise piece. One of the things that I would encourage people and that all-or-nothing thinking, which I applaud you for bringing up because that’s what we call a cognitive distortion that we’re all guilty of. There’s many of them, but that’s one, that’s one of the primary ones and very prominent in law enforcement, very prominent in the accounting field for sure, is the idea that of exercise snacks—exercise snacks, or mindfulness snacks or meditation snacks. They are five or ten minute snacks, they are little breaks that we take. They are resets. Find the time. Build it into your schedule. You complete a task, reward yourself with something. If you can block five, ten minute snacks throughout your day, then that wouldn’t be a lot. But even if it were four, you’re talking about 20 minutes out of your day, five, six, a half an hour out of your day. It’s a reset. It’s a way to approach it. Continue to make sure you’re hydrating. Don’t get, you know, into that quick grab of bad food, plan ahead for that, and the machine will function better. But that’s just the reality of who we are as physical human beings, and I think it requires planning.
Yeah, that’s a great reminder, Andrew, because those four things that you mentioned are the first four that go out the door when we get the busiest and we think that we’re, by skipping those things, we’re actually more effective when in reality we become less effective for more hours and that’s such a bad place to be. Let me ask you as we conclude the session here: Somebody’s listened to this and thinking, all right, I know that I’ve got some things to do, what are some resources that you’d recommend? Is there a book, a TED talk, podcast? What is your go-to resource for somebody that’s looking to start to make positive changes in these areas of either managing emotions or energy levels?
Yeah, I mean, on the book front, geez, there are so many. One of my favorite from a leadership perspective is Think Again, right? You know, that’s sort of the questioning of the way you think and the judge and jury that sits in our heads and how to overcome that. There’s Atomic Habits, which I also love, which is talking about stacking good habits and developing good habits that bring us in a positive direction. And the last one, I just think from a mindset standpoint—I give this not just to leaders, but to anybody that’s client service, is it’s a unique kind of improvement book, if you will, but it’s called Go Giver. And yeah, it’s a great book. It’s a great mindset book for how we approach the world, how we approach others, and how we approach our clients for sure, and those that we lead. So those would be my top three on the recommendations. And then you have your industry leaders, right? Anything you can read from Stephen Covey, John Maxwell, Simon Sinek has great, great TED Talks, podcasts, YouTube channel. He’s phenomenal when it comes to mindset and leadership. So those would probably be my top choice.
I appreciate that. And how can folks find you, Andrew?
Sure. My website, AndrewDonofrio.com. That’s great. Andrew@AndrewDonofrio.com is my email address. And I’m happy—you know, not even from a monetary standpoint—I’m happy to meet with anybody one-on-one that, you know, wants to have an individual session that just talks about some of the struggles that they’re experiencing as they approach tax season or some of the things that they want to accomplish, but have been running into roadblocks with. I’m more than happy to help them and meet with somebody.
I appreciate that. Thank you so much. And all that information will be in the show notes for anybody that’s listening and you can find Andrew’s contact information there. Again, Andrew, thank you so much for joining me today on The Upstream Leader. It’s been a great conversation.
My pleasure. Thanks for having me.
