Jackie Insinger on Valuing Values

Jackie Insinger is a best-selling author, keynote speaker, and a sought-after leadership and team dynamics consultant. Jackie combines the science of positive psychology, which we talk a lot about in today’s conversation, with revolutionary tools and programs to help leaders increase authentic connection, performance, and fulfillment. Jackie works with teams to build a culture of trust, while guiding them to become more aligned, communicate more effectively, collaborate with ease, and support each other more efficiently. Her trainings lead to measurable increases in productivity, performance, and engagement within an overall enhanced culture. In turn, she hopes they see a positive ROI for the company’s bottom line. Jackie cares about the individual, but she also cares about teams and cultures, and at the end of the day how can we improve performance of our organizations. She has a psychology degree from Duke University and a master’s from Harvard. She has worked with individuals and teams that have positively impacted thousands of people and businesses throughout the world. She’s been featured in Forbes, Inked Magazine, Entrepreneur, Fast Company, California Business Journals, CEO Worlds Magazine, HR.com, and many other outlets. Her book Spark Brilliance, which we talk a lot about in today’s conversation, has hit best-seller in five different business categories.

I think you’re going to find this conversation to be refreshing. Jackie is authentic; she shares some of her own personal story, some of her own personal challenges, and how that adversity has shaped how she’s helped see the world. You’re going to find Jackie to be upbeat and positive, but she also combines that with depth and an authenticity that makes her extremely relatable.

Jackie had a number of amazing insights during our conversation. Some of them include:

“Emotional contagion is the spontaneous spread of emotions from person to person or through a group, which could be good or bad depending on what we’re spreading” (5:15).

“As a leader, you can inspire an outlook on the layer below you and the layer below them with just how you chose to show up in a meeting, in a moment” (5:50).

“How we show up to our lives in any relationship will spread to the people around us” (6:00).

“When you’re in a remote working environment, how the leader shows up in the meeting will determine that emotional state and that outlook that people take on the rest of the day until that next meeting” (7:50).

“You can avoid something. It doesn’t mean it’s not there” (11:20).

“Emotions are there for a reason. They’re there to indicate something to you” (11:45).

“No emotion is a bad emotion” (12:05).

“The more I honor and pay attention to [negative emotions], the less scary they are” (13:50).

“When you look at the emotion before it becomes a big deal, sometimes you can have the thing not become a problem” (14:45).

“Avoiding conflict as a coping mechanism became ingrained in me” (20:35).

“That fear state, even though it wasn’t the ideal state, gave me the drive and the fuel to move my life forward in really positive directions in a very accelerated way” (22:55).

“I was driven from a fear state. And I’m so grateful for that because that’s not often what happens from a fear state” (25:45).

“How do you give [your kids] a scaffold, but not start them too far ahead where they don’t have to learn?” (32:30).

“Gratitude is the quickest way to change your brain. And it’s proven [through MRI studies] to change your brain” (39:00).

“Every night before bed, [everyone in our family] says three things we’re grateful for” (40:00).

“If you’re not curious, you can’t create those authentic connections, you can’t have the same level of effective communication” (46:20).

“As a leader, the number one skill we need to tap into is curiosity” (46:40).

“There’s a huge value in sitting down and having a conversation” (52:20).

“The goal isn’t to get back to normal, because the absence of sadness is not happiness. The absence of sickness is not health. The absence of burnout is not thriving. Normal is a baseline where all of the good stuff starts” (59:45).

“I think of the science of happiness as a limited term that diminishes the power of positive psychology” (1:01:35).

Additionally, you can follow Jackie on LinkedIn and Instagram and check out her website here. You can also connect with Jackie via email ([email protected]).

Thank you so much to Jackie for coming on the podcast!

I wrote a book called “Shift Your Mind” that was released in October of 2020, and you can order it on Amazon and Barnes and Noble. Additionally, I have launched a company called Strong Skills, and I encourage you to check out our new website https://www.strongskills.co/. If you liked this episode and/or any others, please follow me on Twitter: @brianlevenson or Instagram: @Intentional_Performers.

Thanks for listening.