Teamwork - A Better Way

Christian Napier
00:12 - 00:25
Well, hello everyone, and welcome to a very special episode of Teamwork, A Better Way. I'm Christian Napier, joined by my illustrious, amazing, brilliant co-host, Spencer Horn. Spencer, how you doing?

Spencer Horn
00:25 - 00:30
Man, I'm doing so good. This is a special episode. How are you doing, Christian?

Christian Napier
00:30 - 00:34
I am doing great. Why don't you tell everybody why this episode is so special?

Spencer Horn
00:35 - 01:14
Well, this is, for us, 150 episodes. And we started this in March of 2020, just a little over five years ago. So we're starting our sixth season doing this, and I couldn't be more thrilled to just meet with you when we do this. We try to do it often. This week, we've already done one on Monday. We're gonna do another episode. Next Monday, which hopefully we'll talk about that at the very end, but we've just had so many great guests and it's wonderful that I get to do that with you, Christian. So thank you.

Christian Napier
01:15 - 01:33
No, thank you. I'm grateful for the opportunity. Our episode today is doubly special, not only because it's our 150th episode, and not only because it's our second episode of the week, but we get to end the week on a high note. You've invited a super special guest to join us today, so why don't you go ahead and introduce him?

Spencer Horn
01:34 - 02:07
Yeah, so I'm going to put Curtis up on the screen. Curtis and I, we met through the National Speakers Association, and I am part of a mastermind group with Curtis. I'm so excited for you to meet him, Christian, and all of our listeners to get to know what he's doing. He is making such a difference in the world, helping so many people with his ideas and his upcoming book. He's already written multiple books, but his newest one, which we'll talk a little bit about today, I'm sure, right, Curtis?

Curtis Morley
02:08 - 02:08
Oh, yeah.

Spencer Horn
02:09 - 03:08
Okay, good. But in today's episode, Curtis is gonna really help us, Christian, shift the way we think about emotions in the workplace. And so we're gonna dive into this concept called counterfeit emotions, which is what his new upcoming book is all about. And those feelings that look real, they feel real, they even sound justified. But secretly, they create disconnection, defensiveness, and dysfunction on our teams. And so Curtis, Morley, he's a Wall Street Journal five-time, well, a best-selling author and five-time entrepreneur, and he's an emotional intelligence expert. Curtis brings a powerful message from his groundbreaking work on emotional authenticity, which is something I talk a lot about, and helping leaders recognize when their teams are being driven by fear, and ego or victimhood, and how to break that cycle.

Spencer Horn
03:08 - 03:44
And that's the key thing that he's bringing that is so fascinating, even in the world of addiction or addictive behaviors, to shift the way we think about those. He's really got some great work that I'm sure he'll share with us. But whether you lead a team or you work in one, that should be all of us that are listening, or want to create a healthier culture, This conversation today is gonna give you fresh tools to identify what's really going on beneath the surface and how to lead with clarity, courage, and connection. Welcome, Curtis.

Curtis Morley
03:45 - 03:48
Thanks for having me, guys. I'm so excited about this conversation.

Spencer Horn
03:49 - 04:13
Well, we too, and the theme is counterfeit emotions, really the hidden barrier to team success. So my first question is, you know, you've had this incredible career as a five-time entrepreneur and best-selling author and founder now of Counterfeit Emotions. What really led you into this mission that you're currently on, focused on emotional intelligence and authenticity?

Curtis Morley
04:14 - 05:03
Yeah, like you said, my entire career has been in starting tech companies and creating environments where we do some pretty fun, innovative things, and it's typically been centered around tech. And about seven years ago, I was blessed with the hardest trial of my life, and that was going through a divorce. And it was, it was soul crushing. And at the time, like I had to, there was so much pain that I had to reframe the entire definition of pain and understand it at a different level. And when I did, I realized that I was actually calling pain the wrong thing.

Curtis Morley
05:03 - 05:50
I was, I was labeling misery as if it were pain. And because pain, I thought pain was completely separate than joy and love. And I realized that that is the definition of misery. That misery is the counterfeit of pain. And pain is inevitable. Pain has to happen in this life, whether we want it to or not. And it hurts. But it's a really important aspect in growth, in learning, in becoming. And as we go through life, it's inevitable. But misery, misery is optional. And that's where I kind of got this, this concept of wait a minute, if there's one counterfeit, to an emotion, how many others are there?

Curtis Morley
05:50 - 06:00
And what I found is that for every authentic emotion, there's a counterfeit, except for one. There's only one emotion that has no counterfeit, and that emotion is peace.

Spencer Horn
06:02 - 06:19
Well, very, very interesting. And so share what this, for our listeners who haven't had the seven years of catharsis and development that you've had, what exactly are counterfeit emotions? Describe them. And how do we know when they're showing up on the team?

Curtis Morley
06:22 - 07:07
That's such a great question because when we grow up, we're taught opposite emotions. And it's really interesting because like, let's just take an example of love and hate, right? They're on opposite ends of the spectrum. Love is over here and it says hug. Hate is over here and it says hit, right? And it's so clear to see the differences. We can very easily say hugging is not hitting. But then there's an emotion that slides right up next to love, and that's lust. And if you look, lust says kiss and love says kiss. It does such a good job of mimicking or putting on the mask and saying, I am that emotion.

Curtis Morley
07:08 - 07:26
And so to give a very precise definition of what is a counterfeit emotion, counterfeit emotion is an emotion that looks, acts, and feels like an authentic emotion, but instead of taking us where we want to go, it creates these destructive cycles of disconnection in our lives.

Christian Napier
07:30 - 08:13
Well, I've got a question for you here, Curtis. And again, I appreciate you carving time out on a Friday to come and have this conversation with our viewers and listeners. In the caption for the episode, that Spencer sent out, he asked a what if question. What if the biggest barrier to your team success wasn't a strategy problem, but an emotional one? And that got me thinking a little bit, because for folks who are executive level, we're conditioned to use dashboards to get a quick view of the health of our organization, right?

Curtis Morley
08:13 - 08:14
Yeah, yeah.

Christian Napier
08:15 - 08:33
I don't see emotion on most C-suite folks' dashboards. That's a great point. So I'm curious why that is. And in some respects, in organizations as leaders, in some respects, are we measuring the wrong things?

Curtis Morley
08:34 - 09:18
Hmm. Oh, this is such a good question because if you look, the evidence is very clear. The number one indicator of success in business, in life, in relationships, the number one indicator is emotional intelligence. is are you aware of your emotions and do you know how to process emotions? If you wanna take a group of 10 people and say who's going to truly succeed in business, all you need to do is find who is the most emotionally intelligent. And that is the person, regardless of their degrees or their training or any other factor, that's gonna be your number one.

Curtis Morley
09:19 - 09:43
And like you said, most of the time, it doesn't show up on a scoreboard or in your KPIs. It says, how was your emotions today? You know, it's not something that you can put up there next to the sales numbers, you know, on the dashboard. And so, yeah, it's, it's one of the critical factors and yet no one does measure it. No one, no one is doing this.

Spencer Horn
09:44 - 10:11
There are actually some organizations that, um, that have, this is not exactly emotional intelligence, but empathy scores, right? And so, which is some type of awareness of how you connect with others, others' emotions as well as your own. And they actually score that within organizations, but that's very rare. We've been talking about emotional intelligence for over three decades, and

Christian Napier
10:11 - 10:12
yet

Spencer Horn
10:12 - 10:45
still, based on the research that I see, two thirds of people lack some emotional intelligence. And according to some other recent data, between 10 and only 10 to 12% of people worldwide are even very self-aware. And what I mean, of course, we're aware that we exist, but just aware of how they impact each other and really how their decisions and their behaviors are impacting their results. So that number is still so low, why?

Curtis Morley
10:46 - 11:20
Yeah. Yeah. Brené Brown actually did an extensive study, surveyed over 7,000 people and asked them in the moment, she said in right now, what are you feeling? And she asked him, okay, what's, what's happening inside. And what she found, and this was startling. She found that in the moment, people could only identify three emotions. That's it. Just three. Mad, sad, and glad. Are you happy? Are you angry? Or, you know, are you, are you sad?

Spencer Horn
11:20 - 11:20
And

Curtis Morley
11:20 - 11:21
I'm

Spencer Horn
11:21 - 11:28
so curious as to why that is, because that, I guess that's part of the data that's showing how low the self-awareness worldwide is.

Curtis Morley
11:29 - 12:16
Yeah. Yeah. It's, it's because we are, we're practicing how to numb. in our society, we are practicing how to avoid feeling. I mean, you look at these wonderful devices in our hands and the doom scrolling that happens, we don't doom scroll to benefit our lives, we do scroll to numb and distract. And we do scroll to get away from the emotions that are actually bringing important messages into our lives. But they may be a little painful. They may be a little uncomfortable. They may, you know, we may not like them right off the bat. And therefore it's way easier to go to YouTube or Facebook or TikTok or whatever your platform is.

Curtis Morley
12:17 - 12:18
And just, just scroll.

Spencer Horn
12:20 - 12:22
Oh man, go ahead, Christian, I have so many thoughts, go.

Christian Napier
12:24 - 13:10
Well, I'm sorry if I interrupted your train of thought here, Spencer, but I'm finding this conversation super fascinating. And I have a question for you. When you talked about this seminal event in your life, going through a divorce, thinking that what you were feeling was pain when actually it was misery, it got me thinking, when we talk about counterfeit emotions, Is it simply a mislabeling of something that we're feeling or is it more fundamental? Is it deeper than just like I'm using the wrong words to describe what I'm going through? Because the implication of counterfeit, there's some emotional weight to that word as well.

Christian Napier
13:10 - 13:16
And it implies that there's something more fundamental going on than just using the wrong terminology.

Curtis Morley
13:17 - 14:00
Yeah, it's so true. And one thing I want to, I want to preface the entire discussion with is there's no such thing as a bad emotion. So even though we're, we're calling these emotions counterfeit because they look like they act like they feel like that authentic emotion, there's no such thing as a bad emotion. Every emotion we feel is a messenger. The trouble is when we let them become dictators. And I'll let that sink in for a second. Every emotion brings a message. And every counterfeit emotion actually points to the authentic. Every counterfeit emotion validates and gives credence to the authentic.

Curtis Morley
14:01 - 14:42
So I don't want the perception to be, oh, these are counterfeit and they're bad. No, that's not what we're talking about. There is no such thing as a bad emotion. Every emotion brings a message. The trouble is when that messenger becomes a dictator. And so, yeah, getting into the realization that there is a counterfeit, but the counterfeit is not, you know, we don't want to label it as bad, but then going to your question is, is it a mislabeling or is there something deeper? And that is really critical. The reason that I'm so passionate about this is because it's easy to understand opposite emotions.

Curtis Morley
14:43 - 15:25
We can see them every day and we have all these should labels on, you should feel this and you shouldn't feel that. And the counterfeits, they do such a good job of deceiving us that we're in one emotion and not another. And a great example of that is guilt and shame. And shame does such a good job of mimicking guilt that even the researchers, even the psychologists, if you look at studies for decades and decades of the past, they'll actually say the guilt slash shame study. They push the two together and they say, no, these are just the same emotion.

Curtis Morley
15:25 - 15:39
So don't worry about it, it's all the same. And it's not true. They're at the University of Oslo out of Sweden. They did a study very similar actually to what Brene Brown did in an independent study. Do they

Spencer Horn
15:39 - 15:47
know emotions in Oslo really? I'm kidding, of course you do in Norway. My wife's people, I love you, just kidding.

Curtis Morley
15:50 - 16:32
I love the people of Norway, I really do. They're amazing. But they found that shame, shame is actually the lowest frequency emotion we'll feel. Shame and apathy are the very bottom of the list. And shame has a direct correlation into bullying, suicidal ideation, addictive behavior, criminal behavior. If you want to get into any of those, you use shame. Shame is a direct path in. Yeah. That's what I want to get into. If you want to get out of those, this was where the breakthrough happened is they separated guilt and shame. And they said, well, let's do that same thing, but let's do it for guilt.

Curtis Morley
16:33 - 16:44
And this was groundbreaking. They found that guilt had an inverse correlation. that you want to get out of addiction, get into guilt. You want to get. And that's the

Spencer Horn
16:44 - 16:44
pain

Curtis Morley
16:44 - 17:27
that you were talking about. That's trying to tell us something and teach us something, right? Yes. Yes. Because guilt, guilt actually comes from a Latin word or excuse me, an old English word in the 1300s called Gildan and Gildan means to repay or make whole. The feeling of guilt is not that I'm a horrible person. The feeling of guilt is I wanna repay you. And it's crazy because guilt, like every emotion has a frequency. Shame is on the very bottom, but guilt is actually a positive frequency emotion. And people are like, in today's world, people are giving guilt such a bad rap.

Curtis Morley
17:27 - 17:32
They're saying, oh, don't let them guilt you. That's such a guilt trip. What they actually are talking about is shame.

Spencer Horn
17:34 - 18:15
guilt on the other hand. Hold on, because this is something I want to just build on that for a second, because I think society is creating a lot of the problems. I mean, we hear all the time, you know, you should be with somebody who accepts you for who you are. You be you and I'll be me. We hear Even in our prayers, you've heard the Irish prayer, maybe the wind always be at your back, may the road rise. Maybe you never have any difficulty in your life. And we actually look at difficulties in a negative way because we think that something's either wrong with you, you've done something bad, if bad things happen to you.

Spencer Horn
18:15 - 18:52
But in society, it's like, we don't want any rocking of the boat, we don't want any We don't want any difficulty. We don't want people to challenge us. Thank goodness my wife doesn't accept me for just who I am. She loves me for all my flaws and weaknesses, but she challenges me to be better. Thank goodness for that, but it's uncomfortable. I think I talked about this recently. I had a difficult conversation that I shouldn't have had with a family member. The next day, she sat me down and said, you know what, Spencer, you created a problem.

Spencer Horn
18:53 - 19:23
And she was right. And I felt guilty. And I was like, she says, you need to call up and apologize. That's not comfortable, right? But we want to avoid those types of comfortable conversations too often, don't you think? Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. Absolutely. So do you agree? I mean, how do you feel about how we, in society, we're perpetuating this idea that we don't face difficulty or we don't face our own weaknesses and challenges?

Curtis Morley
19:24 - 20:07
Yeah, yeah, it really does go back to this. And I know we're gonna talk about one of the dyads or one of the pairings of emotions of kind versus nice. And these are very intertwined, but the whole idea of guilt and shame, there's only four personality types. According to the DSM-5, there's only four personality types that cannot feel guilt. And I'm sure you can guess what they are, the psychopath or antisocial behaviors, yep, nice, narcissist, sociopath, or sorry, sociopath is the antisocial behavior disorder, and borderline personality. Those are the four personality types that can't feel guilt.

Curtis Morley
20:08 - 20:50
You think about if we didn't have guilt in our society, we would be a bunch of narcissists and psychopaths. I mean, that's, that would be our entire society. Guilt is one of the key ingredients that glues our society together. If I hurt you, then guilt is actually the base emotion of guilt is empathy. Think about this for a second. Empathy says, I know what it feels like to be hurt. I hurt you. Therefore, I want to make you whole. I want to repay. I want to get you to a place where the pain I caused you doesn't have to be there anymore.

Curtis Morley
20:50 - 20:58
And guilt says, I made a mistake. Shame says, I am a mistake. Guilt talks to the

Spencer Horn
20:59 - 21:07
action. And that's where this confidence issue that we're having in society could be coming from, right? Yeah.

Curtis Morley
21:07 - 21:38
Yeah. Guilt is such a healthy emotion. It is, it is a critical emotion and it's actually a beautiful emotion. And the reason people don't like guilt is because it hurts and it's meant to hurt. And it's okay that it hurts because that pain moves us to action. That pain says that you need to move. You need to get up and go say sorry. You need to make what you did right. And when we make a

Spencer Horn
21:38 - 22:13
phone call, which I had, and the healing was awesome. Hey, I hate to interrupt, but I've got, we've got every once in a while, we have somebody jump in and Kevin, we're so glad you're back listening and Kevin says, interesting topic on the veils of deceit that separate true success from counterfeit achievements. Our egos seek the simple path with authenticity is long and pain filled journey. However, the joy of truth sustains for life. Thanks for pulling down the veil of deceit. Live authentically. Thanks for joining us, Kevin. Any thoughts on Kevin's words?

Curtis Morley
22:14 - 22:53
Oh, that's awesome. I love that. Thank you, Kevin. Yeah, this whole idea of counterfeiting, it really does play into the ego. The ego wants us to put on the mask. And that's what the counterfeits are. They're these, they're these masks that we wear. And, and because we don't want to be vulnerable, we don't want to hurt, we don't want to feel the pain. And, and when we put on those masks, then, or another name for the mask is the ego. Then, then that's what we get. We get the counterfeit when we put on the ego.

Curtis Morley
22:54 - 23:11
when we let go of the ego and say, you know what? I don't have all the answers, but I'm sure willing to try. And I hurt just like you. And I understand your heart. I can see you. Then that's when that, that ego or that counterfeit disappears.

Spencer Horn
23:24 - 23:37
I don't feel guilt for cutting you off. Sorry. I feel I'm like, yes, I told you I was going to do it. There it is. No shame. That's awesome.

Christian Napier
23:38 - 24:26
He's just trying to, you know, punch or emphasize what you were saying there. So you played a little sounder, but I I've got a comment and then a question. Curtis. I want to go back to what you're talking about, that these emotions in and of themselves are not bad. So that is counterintuitive for a lot of people, because I feel shame, or I feel guilt, or I feel whatever I feel. I feel sorrow. I feel grief. I feel abandoned. and and we think the reason I'm feeling these things is because I'm a bad person right like I There's something wrong with me if everything was good.

Christian Napier
24:26 - 25:26
I wouldn't be feeling what I'm feeling right So not to get too religious here or promote anything but in the Christian faith It's widely believed that Jesus Christ Committed no sin right he was sinless But he felt a wide range of emotions He felt sad at times. He wept. He felt abandoned. And he felt extreme loneliness at times. So if you have that belief system, you cannot reconcile, well, the emotion I'm feeling is bad, this fundamental belief that Christ committed no sin. So again, I'm not saying that to promote any particular system of belief. I'm just saying to underscore the point that it's okay to feel sad or feel lonely or feel whatever it is that you're feeling.

Christian Napier
25:27 - 25:43
It's not a quote unquote sin. And it doesn't mean that you're a bad person if you feel pain or if you feel remorse or guilt or whatnot. So now I'm kind of I just wanted to make that comment and then I'm gonna kind of pivot I agree

Spencer Horn
25:43 - 25:44
with that by the way So

Christian Napier
25:47 - 26:18
so I want to come to the question, you mentioned dyad. I think for a large people, at least younger people, the first time they heard that word dyad was when Star Wars came out with the movie, whatever it was, the last one that was played and there was a dyad in the forest or something like that. So why don't you describe what this term is, dyad, and you mentioned this example of kind versus nice, and I know we want to get into it. So why don't you kind of explain what that means?

Curtis Morley
26:19 - 27:11
Yeah, a dyad is a pairing. So triad, dyad, two and three, it's a pairing of emotions that have an intrinsic tie. And so the tie between these dyads, like we were talking about, is that each emotion is tied to the other. So it's a pairing of emotions that are tied together. And actually, you know, I would love to, I'd love to make a quick comment on what you shared about the Christian belief of, I'm sure that there's plenty of Christian listeners to this, and if not, that's okay too. I think it's really important. There's actually a scripture in Matthew 5, verse 48, that says, be therefore perfect.

Curtis Morley
27:12 - 27:47
And it's interesting because in the Christian world, there's this concept that I have to be perfect. It's in black and white. It's this commandment, right? And the Hebrew translation actually means whole or complete. Be therefore whole. And in the realm of emotions, when we feel these emotions and we're saying, no, no, no, I don't like that one. I don't like that one. I'm going to exile that one out of my life. And ooh, this one hurts. So I'm not going to get into that emotion either. I'm going to exile that emotion out of my life.

Curtis Morley
27:48 - 28:27
And we fracture our soul. We say, OK, I don't like this emotion. You're no longer part of me. You're no longer part of me. And the idea of being whole, is the idea of the acceptance of all of the things we feel, even the hard ones, even the painful ones, even the ones we've dubbed as bad. That once we accept them for what they're trying to do for us and we bring them back into ourselves and embrace those emotions, then we can become whole. But as long as we're exiling and fracturing our soul, we can't become whole.

Spencer Horn
28:31 - 29:18
Well, it sounds like we're now talking about a Harry Potter character a little bit when we fracture our soul. The Horcruxes. Let's get into this idea and let's kind of switch it now into more of a business mindset. Because, you know, how do leaders identify counterfeit emotions and when their team is operating in some of these instead of really having an authentic connection? And I think that the segue into this kind versus nice is really important. I spend a lot of time Curtis, working with executives on effective delegation and behavior correction. In other words, somebody doesn't follow through with a commitment.

Spencer Horn
29:18 - 30:05
The organization is hurt. The executive is frustrated, so they jump in and take back authority, and they think that they're being a good boss because they think they're giving authority to people, but then they take it back because they don't like the results. And instead of having a difficult conversation, like we've just talked about, to actually help the employee become better. I'll give you an example of what I'm driving at. I remember out of college, and I've talked about my mentor Kelvin Cullimore on the show many, many times. I was this kid, you know, think I knew it all, but I was running a director of operations for this publicly traded company.

Spencer Horn
30:06 - 30:33
And I wasn't meeting Kelvin's expectations. He sat me down, Curtis, and very kindly let me know that I was failing. And said, this is what I need you to be able to do to succeed. I'll give you six months to make these corrections. And if you can't, then I'm going to have to make a change. Was that a nice conversation or a kind conversation? That was

Curtis Morley
30:33 - 31:17
so kind. So it's funny because I was having this conversation with one of my friends. He, he runs a multi-billion dollar organization and we were talking about kind versus nice. And he's like, Curtis, where were you last week? I just pulled my entire executive team into the boardroom and I pounded on the table and I said, stop being nice. And And he's like, I don't want an organization of yes men and yes women. I don't want you to tell me my ideas are great when they're not great. I want you to give me direct, honest feedback and I want you to do it in a kind way.

Curtis Morley
31:18 - 31:54
He's like, Oh, if you were only in the board room, like I, you said it so much more eloquently. Like I just want people to be authentic, but I also want them to care enough about the company and to, to be direct, to have direct conversations. And that doesn't mean that doesn't mean that we're mean because the opposite of uncentered, if we've got a pendulum, the opposite of uncentered is still uncentered. If the pendulum swings from one side to the other, I'm going to be nice over here. Nope. I'm going to be mean over here.

Curtis Morley
31:55 - 32:34
That's not what we're talking about. When there's no more need for those mood swings, that's where we find kind and kind is direct. Kind is direct in love. Like the fact that he gave you that opportunity, incredibly loving, incredibly kind, because number one, you probably felt it yourself. You probably felt like, I don't, you know, I'm not feeling like I'm doing the best job here. And then he gave you the opportunity to say, here's the direction that I need you to go. Let me help you get there. And I'm sure that,

Spencer Horn
32:42 - 33:17
That's exactly, yes, that's exactly what he did. And then the six months was up, uh, courtesy promoted me to be the vice president of the company. But if he, if I would have been defensive about that, then, you know, I could have quit, but I wouldn't have been able to change the behaviors in my leadership to be more effective for the next place that I went, I would run into that same problem again and again. So he was absolutely kind. in helping me understand what I needed to do to help the company succeed and succeed personally as, you know, as a working professional.

Spencer Horn
33:17 - 33:32
So he did care about me and, and I knew it came from, from love. And so it was, I agree with you. It was very kind, although it was very uncomfortable, again, discomfort and pain, which, uh, Kevin likes to, likes to point out is, is a wonderful teacher.

Curtis Morley
33:33 - 34:21
Yes, yes. Pain is, I actually, you'll see on my blog in two weeks, I'm publishing an article called I wish you pain. And, and I don't know if you've heard the Andy Grammer song called I wish you pain. It, it is beautiful. It is so beautiful because he truly understands. the important nature of pain. But going back to kind versus nice, the nice isn't actually a virtue. We think it is. We think, you know, Santa has his naughty and nice list, right? And Bambi's best friend Thumper, he taught us, if you can't say nothing nice, don't say nothing at all, right?

Curtis Morley
34:21 - 34:41
You think about that statement. That is horrible. Teaching our kids that if you can't placate, if you can't subjugate your own opinion and be sweet to somebody else and just take their opinion, then what's the alternative? shut your mouth, go to the corner and don't say anything. So Disney

Spencer Horn
34:41 - 34:43
problem started years ago.

Curtis Morley
34:44 - 35:33
Oh yeah. Oh boy. Disney. Oh yeah. The, this whole idea of, of if you can't, if you can't be a yes man, then the only other alternative is keep your mouth shut. And, and that means I don't care about you enough to have difficult conversations. NICE says that the number one motivation behind NICE, it's actually a defense mechanism to avoid conflict. So we see conflict and Nye says, ooh, don't want that. I'm going to subjugate my opinion. I'm not gonna have hard conversations because I don't want the conflict. So in order to avoid the conflict, I'm gonna put on a big smile and I'm gonna be like, oh, you're the best.

Curtis Morley
35:33 - 36:07
And yeah, whatever you say. And oh, it doesn't matter. Oh yeah, you're great. And that doesn't serve us. When our total motivation is to not rock the boat, that means we're never gonna row the boat. We're never going to progress the relationship, the organization. We're not going to be one of those people that are moving the company forward. If our purpose is to not rock the boat, there's no rowing going on. Because when you row, there's some rocking. It happens.

Spencer Horn
36:07 - 36:35
You know, one of the biggest challenges to team performance, I think, are posters where you see people in a rowboat. They're all wearing these tight uniforms. They're all rowing perfectly together on the serene water. That's not what it's like. You're like hitting each other's oars, and it's water's coming over the side, and uniforms fit differently. But I think we have this idea that it should be perfect, that we should have no discord, that we should have harmony in all cases. And if we don't have that, we don't have a true team.

Curtis Morley
36:38 - 37:24
Yeah, yeah. Here's what's so beautiful about kind is nice says, I'm going to avoid conflict at all costs. Kind says, I'm not only going to resolve, but I'm going to transform conflict into connection. Kind sees the picture completely differently. Nice says, if your opinion is different than mine, then we're gonna have conflict and we have to fight about this. Kind says, if your opinion is different than mine, I can value that so much because you have had a different life experience than me and you see different things than I do. I can grow and you can grow and together we can connect around the differences.

Curtis Morley
37:25 - 38:02
Kind doesn't just avoid conflict, it transforms conflict into connection. And as a leader, you read some of my bio, I know it's in the description. I've started and run many companies and I used to get the biggest pit in my stomach when I had to have some type of disciplinary conversation with an employee. And I would just fret and I'm like, oh, can I put this off? How many days can I put this up? And here I am the CEO or president of the company. And I'm just like, I'm just sick to my stomach because I have to have this conversation.

Curtis Morley
38:02 - 38:47
And I used to call them big, hard conversations. Now I actually look forward to these exact kind of conversations because they're no longer big, hard conversations. Now I call them big connecting conversations. Because at the end of the conversation, no matter what, the other person is gonna know a few things. Number one, I care about them as a human. Number two, is that I care enough to have a conversation that invites them into growth. And that's the bare minimum. That's like the baseline. From there, it's just icing on the cake. And so these kinds of conversations, they no longer give me ulcers.

Curtis Morley
38:49 - 38:56
I'm done with the ulcers. They're now conversations that I look forward to because at the end of it, we're gonna be more connected

Christian Napier
38:57 - 38:57
than

Curtis Morley
38:57 - 38:58
when we went

Christian Napier
38:58 - 39:50
into it. So if I try to synthesize what you're saying here, Curtis, Coming back to the idea of emotions as messages versus dictators, in the kind versus nice situation, in the nice side of the fence, the dictator is fear, right? Like, I'm afraid. Like you were saying, I don't look forward to this. I'm gonna have to have a hard conversation And so we're afraid, and we become a slave to the dictator of fear, whereas kindness requires courage, right? But if you have that courage, it's then liberating. And now you've done it enough so that you've been able to successfully hold the fear master at bay.

Christian Napier
39:52 - 40:20
kind of realize your full potential by having these, quote unquote, connecting conversations. I'm curious to hear from your perspective on how these counterfeit emotions and these diets, when you take a close look, they reveal their masters, they reveal the dictators. That was so well

Curtis Morley
40:21 - 41:05
said, that was perfectly said. And this idea of, yeah, actually Spencer asked a question earlier is how do we know the difference between an authentic emotion and a counterfeit? And there's four criteria. There's four criteria that lay out how we can identify very clearly a counterfeit. a counterfeit from an authentic. The first is connection. Does this emotion connect me to myself, my true self, to others, to God, my higher power, and to truth? Does this emotion connect me to all those things? So criteria number one is connection. Criteria number two is direction. And this is fascinating.

Curtis Morley
41:05 - 41:53
When I did the research on this, I was actually quite surprised. The authentic emotions, they have three directions. They move us forward, upward, or they bring us together. Those are the directions that authentic emotions take us. And I thought counterfeit emotions would be the opposite, right? I thought, oh, that's easy, but it's not. It's fascinating. There's one direction for a counterfeit emotion, and that's back to itself. That emotion only leads back to that emotion. Anxiety breeds anxiety. Fear fuels fear. Anger, anger just creates rage and more anger. They all come back to that emotion themselves.

Curtis Morley
41:54 - 42:43
And so that's the direction. So connection, direction. The third one is exactly what you just said, is motivation. What is the motivation behind this emotion? And every authentic emotion is motivated in two things, love and surrender. And every counterfeit emotion is based in fear and control. Those are the underlying or the meta emotions is what I call them. Motions that flow through other emotions. And so you're right on it's, it's that fear. So connection, direction, motivation, and finally valuation. and I put them all with a shun so that it would be easy to remember. And the valuation part, authentic emotions say our worth is infinite and it's divine.

Curtis Morley
42:44 - 43:24
and the counterfeit emotions. They say, not only are we worthless, so let's put our starting point at zero, but we're worth less. Meaning now that I'm at zero, now let me compare. Well, I'm not as tall as Spencer, or I don't dress as well as whoever, or I'm not as rich, or I don't have the cars or the watch, so I'm not only worthless, let's start at zero, but now I'm worth less and less and less and less. And so that valuation piece of what is this emotion value of me at? If it says, I have infinite worth and infinite potential, that's authentic.

Curtis Morley
43:25 - 43:37
If it says, no, you're pretty crummy, you, you, and by the way, you're kind of losing your hair and you're getting old and all these things, that's the counterfeit.

Spencer Horn
43:51 - 44:42
Hey, I make getting old and losing hair look good. What are you talking about? Curtis, one of the questions that I had for you was how do these counterfeit emotions impact breakdown in communication and low trust? And I feel like you almost just answered it because what I heard is when you're having these fears and frustrations and anger, they actually just keep circulating and it's like you get into a, you get into a, an Eddie of, you know, uh, of the spiraling behavior that keeps you stuck. So then the question is, is if you're in that behavior, that spiral where there's low trust and poor communication and conflict, how do you shift out of that?

Curtis Morley
44:45 - 45:30
That is the right question. That is exactly the right question. With Counterfeit Emotions, every dyad... has a model of how to get out of the counterfeit and into the authentic. So every single one of these dyads, like we talked about first, is when I recognize I'm in the counterfeit, it's actually validating the need for the authentic. So in this case, since we're talking about kind versus nice, there's a model. There's a model to be able to say, okay, how do I get out of nice behavior? and into kind behavior. And, and just to lay out what is nice behavior, right?

Curtis Morley
45:30 - 45:52
Um, good example, spinach in the teeth, right? You see somebody with this big green leaf hanging out of their teeth. What does the nice person do? The nice person's like, Oh, I don't want to embarrass them. I'm not going to laugh at them. No. Yeah. That's the mean person. I knew I would

Spencer Horn
45:52 - 45:54
upset Christian. I don't do that.

Curtis Morley
45:57 - 46:33
The nice person is like, well, I don't want to, I don't want to embarrass them. So I'm going to let them be embarrassed in front of 13 other nice people before somebody that's kind will actually say something. Right. But one of the other nice behaviors is what's called the covert contract. The covert contract is a behavior that says, I'm going to be nice to you. And it's actually a manipulation because you don't know we're signing this contract. That's what makes it covert. But as soon as I do something nice to you, guess what's expected back in return.

Curtis Morley
46:34 - 47:12
at least that much. And if you don't give that back to me, well, then you broke the contract, which means if you look at the bylaws and the sub clauses, that means that as soon as you break that covert contract, I can go behind your back and talk bad about you. And that's a very common behavior with nice people is you never know what's happening behind closed doors. And so you've got these nice behaviors and how do you break out of those? Well, it's interesting, especially with the team dynamic. Nice is never safe. Kind is always safe.

Curtis Morley
47:13 - 47:59
And the reason why is the model starts with boundaries. The model of being kind, the very first step is boundaries. And it's interesting because I've spoken on this topic, I don't even know how many times now. And one group, very affluent, had at least eight figures in the bank, very prominent group of business owners. And I asked this question, I said, who right now can clearly articulate a boundary that they have in their lives? And you just heard crickets, chirp, chirp, chirp, chirp. And all of a sudden, one guy, he timidly raises his hand. And I said, great.

Curtis Morley
47:59 - 48:40
And he goes, don't do drugs. And I'm like, yes, that is one. But the fact that we don't know how to effectively set and keep boundaries, that's where the lack of safety comes in. And the nice guy or the nice girl because they're going to do whatever someone else says, they're going to be the doormat to them. They don't know where they end. They don't know where their furthest boundary is. And if that is, you know, if we set boundaries and we say, you know what, I'm going to only come 10 feet from the edge of the cliff.

Curtis Morley
48:40 - 49:13
That's my boundary. I will only make it to 10 feet. I won't go beyond that. I'm not going to go nine feet, eight feet. then we feel that safety. But if we don't have those boundaries, then someone can say, hey, go walk right up to the cliff. You know, actually lean over the cliff. And then all of a sudden we're falling off. And because we don't have those boundaries, we don't have that sense of safety, but kind is always safe because the number one thing kind starts with is boundaries, which means that I'm safe for me.

Curtis Morley
49:14 - 49:16
I'm also safe for you.

Spencer Horn
49:26 - 49:31
I'm three for three, four for four, whatever it is, Christian. You know

Curtis Morley
49:31 - 49:32
what the problem is?

Spencer Horn
49:32 - 49:36
He doesn't stop talking. That was kind

Christian Napier
49:37 - 50:32
of Christian. Well, the time has absolutely flown by here, Curtis. And so I'd like to ask a question, and then I'll give Spencer an opportunity to ask a final question as well. When it comes to the various dyads, how many of them are there? Is there a ranking of the dyads or are there some that are more important than others to focus on? Or does it really depend on the individual and you start working on the one that you're weakest on? As you go through and as you help clients who are maybe struggling or C-suite folks who need to learn these skills, what's the process that you go through to kind of help somebody go from the counterfeit to the authentic?

Curtis Morley
50:34 - 51:18
Yeah, there's 36 dyads in total. And it's funny because I did focus groups for a couple of years and we did this exercise with sticky notes and I literally have thousands of emotions. I store all my emotions right over there on the shelf. All my emotions are on the shelf. Put your emotions on the shelf, Christian. Yeah. So there's no, no, don't do that. But there's 36 of these dyads and, and actually like, um, coming up, we're doing an event called CEO by design on April 24th. Um, here, and it's, it's a specifically for CEOs and each, each thing that we're going to tackle.

Curtis Morley
51:18 - 52:00
So if it's leadership, then there's a handful of dyads in leadership. If there's teamwork, there's a handful of dyads in teamwork and some overlap. relationships. You know, there's a handful of dyads in relationships. And so there's these buckets of dyads that apply specifically to certain business needs. And so, yeah, with this CEO by design event, we're gonna be talking a lot about kind versus nice. We're gonna be talking about power versus control. We're gonna talk about belonging versus fitting in. It's gonna be, yeah, the actual name is the high price of nice. and how much is it costing your business?

Curtis Morley
52:01 - 52:16
And it has direct measurable expenses of being nice. And so, yeah, did that answer the question? Is that there's these buckets of dyads that address individual or particular issues?

Christian Napier
52:18 - 52:32
Yeah, that answers the question. And we should put a link to this event and anything else that you want, you know, to books or whatever in our show notes, Spencer, so that our viewers and listeners can have access to these. Spencer, go ahead.

Spencer Horn
52:33 - 53:16
Yeah, no, send those to me. There was two other dyads that we wanted to talk about we didn't get to, like determination versus stubbornness and curiosity versus suspicion. And I think that both of those are very powerful. And I think curiosity is such a powerful emotion. versus, especially when we're talking about team trust, right? And instead of judging somebody else's motives, how do you know what those motives are? Well, we ask them, but too often I think we judge. And, you know, there's actually a psychological term for that and where we We assume somebody's, you know, what's going on with them by their impact that they have on us instead of being curious, which is so, so powerful.

Spencer Horn
53:16 - 53:20
Well, we're going to have to have that discussion another day. But

Christian Napier
53:20 - 53:21
what I'd like to

Spencer Horn
53:21 - 53:46
do to end is to do something a little bit different. I want to do a little rapid fire team truths with you, Curtis. And so I'm just going to, I'm just going to do a little lightning round here. I'm going to give some, um, questions really rapid fire. I just want you to give like one liners. Okay. Just gut instincts, just cut it really, really short. So first a word your team should use more often.

Curtis Morley
53:49 - 53:55
Oh, could we do the opposite? The one that there would be best to stop using is the word show.

Spencer Horn
53:55 - 53:56
That's my next question.

Curtis Morley
54:00 - 54:23
What's a word you should use more often? A phrase to use more often is, is tell me more. Excellent. That's curiosity. Well done. Okay. A word or phrase that you should use way less. Should, should and shouldn't. They are so full of shame. They are so full of shame. Stop shitting on yourself people. We got to stop shitting on ourselves. That's right.

Spencer Horn
54:24 - 54:26
One emotion that's overused in business, but usually fake.

Curtis Morley
54:28 - 54:33
Ooh, control. Control is definitely a counterfeit that's used in business.

Spencer Horn
54:34 - 54:36
What's more dangerous to a team, fear or pride?

Curtis Morley
54:40 - 55:02
Ooh, I'm going with fear. I'm going with fear because fear actually fuels pride. Excellent. Okay. Best way to build trust fast. Ooh, best way to build trust fast is to be vulnerable. is to be real, to be authentic. Yeah. If you want other people to open up, you got to open up.

Spencer Horn
55:03 - 55:06
One book, every business leader should read besides your own.

Curtis Morley
55:08 - 55:35
Besides Counterfeit Emotions, which is coming out of May next year. Yeah. You can talk about that in a second. Business book that every, every leader needs to read. The, Yeah. The, if you're an entrepreneur, I would say the e-myth revisited. Um, if you're, if you're a business person, um, probably seven habits or atomic habits. One of the two.

Spencer Horn
55:36 - 55:46
Okay. Authenticity in one word. What's authenticity in one word? Uh, real biggest myth about emotions at work.

Curtis Morley
55:48 - 55:55
Oh, the emotions don't belong in the work environment. They absolutely do. Great.

Spencer Horn
55:55 - 56:01
Last one. You're building a dream team. What's the first quality you're looking for?

Curtis Morley
56:01 - 56:09
Emotional intelligence. Yeah, you already said that. Emotional awareness and emotional intelligence. Christian?

Christian Napier
56:11 - 56:13
All right, I enjoyed that rapid fire round. That

Curtis Morley
56:15 - 56:16
was fun.

Christian Napier
56:17 - 56:47
Yeah, Spencer has no qualms about putting anyone on a hot seat. So you handled it with a plum, I would have to say there, Curtis. So thank you very much for indulging us. And more importantly, thank you so much for sharing such incredible knowledge and insights and wisdom, really, with our viewers and listeners. And if they want to connect with you, if they want to learn more about the work that you do, with respect to emotional intelligence and counterfeit emotions, what's the best way for them to reach out and potentially connect with you? The

Curtis Morley
56:47 - 57:20
website counterfeitemotions.com. If you wanna reach me on social, it's either my name or Authentic Curtis on all social. And then we have a very active Facebook group as well that I'll actually be releasing pre-read chapters of the book and getting people on the beta readers list. And so if they wanna enjoy that, then that'd be great. And if they want to attend the CEO by design event, I can send you the info there.

Spencer Horn
57:21 - 57:32
Yeah, and I'll put that link up for sure. Christian, how do people get a hold of you? Because I just want everybody to know how amazing he is. And I'm always praising Christian's brilliance.

Christian Napier
57:34 - 58:03
Well, and I try to respond by doing Red Iguana with you, Spencer, on occasion. And, you know, sometimes footing the bill for that. Thanks for the question. LinkedIn is easy. Just look up Christian Apier on LinkedIn. You'll find me there and happy to connect with anybody there. And Spencer, if people want to connect with you, you've been helping folks develop high, I say folks, organizations develop high performing teams for decades that

Spencer Horn
58:03 - 58:03
are

Christian Napier
58:03 - 58:11
run by good folks. How do, yeah, how do, business leaders or aspiring leaders, how do they reach out and connect with you?

Spencer Horn
58:11 - 58:25
Altium Leadership, that's A-L-T-I-U-M, leadership.com or LinkedIn. Hey, Curtis, thank you so much for coming. When I play this sounder, hang on even after it gets quiet for a second. Thank

Christian Napier
58:25 - 58:38
you guys. All right, I guess I gotta take us out. So Curtis, thank you again. Spencer, thank you. Viewers, listeners, thank you. Please like and subscribe to our podcast. We'll catch you again soon.