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Michael Carrese (Host): Welcome to the ASHRM podcast made possible by the American Society for Healthcare Risk Management to support efforts to advance safe and trusted healthcare through enterprise risk management. You can visit ashrm.org/membership to learn more and become an ASHRM member. I'm Michael Carrese. It's almost time for the ASHRM Annual Conference.

And this year there will be two ways to attend from October 10th through the 13th, there'll be an in-person event in San Antonio. And from October 25th through the 27th, ASHRM is offering a virtual program that features a selection of the top rated sessions from the in-person event. Both have the theme of connecting leaders preparing for the future.

It's going to be valuable discussions on COVID and mental health, communicating with patients and families, a leadership simulation exercise, and several keynote speeches among many other offerings. And in fact, we're happy to welcome the opening keynote speaker to our program today to get a preview of his remarks and get you in the mood for the annual meeting, Tony Brigmon is the former official Southwest Airlines, Ambassador of Fun and author of the Fun-omenal Workplace, energizing people and culture with the positive power of fun. He's delivered count them more than 2000 conference presentations worldwide. And we're delighted to welcome you to the ASHRM podcast Tony.

Tony Brigmon (Guest): Thank you, Michael. Great to be with you.

Host: You have probably have gotten this question before. How did you ever end up getting a job called Ambassador of Fun?

Tony: It all started with fun. I began to take very seriously in high school, started in my high school English class with Mrs. Ware who was long on homework assignments and short on patience with characters like me. Came into class one day with a black eye. And she was a, when we got settled in said how did you get the black eye?

And this little fun feeling came over me that I couldn't resist. So I said, I don't want to talk about it, which of course prompted her to push the point. And she said, I want to know how you got the black eye and I was like I got into a fight with a guy who said you weren't the prettiest teacher in school and you could hear these audible groans all over the room. Oh no, no.

Host: A little Eddie Haskell there.

Tony: Little Eddie Haskell and then she said, Mr. Brigmon, you could hear a pin drop in the room. She said you are exempt from this evening's homework assignment, which caused one of the guys in class to yell out. He didn't get in a fight. And Mrs. Ware was on him, like a chicken on a June bug.

realized that, he still gets a pass with the homework assignment. You got a problem with that. He didn't. And neither did I. So I began to take fun very seriously when I saw the serious results. And then at Southwest Airlines, Michael, the long answer to your short question. I was having fun one day in the break room with our employees in reservations, and I started out it got kinda like creating my future in advance in just a fun way. I said you all know him. We all love him. Can't get enough of him here. Here he is Southwest Airlines Good Will Ambassador, here's Tony. They went with it, started applauding, had some fun with them. Then the you put yourself in a situation as a future one as if it's already true, like back to the future.

If it's possible, you begin to get impressions. So, I got a couple of impressions. One of which was to call the president of Southwest Airlines at the time, Howard Putnam, told his secretary to tell him I had the answer, but I wasn't quite sure about the question. That led to an interview. It led to a six month trial and then over time, the title evolved into Ambassador of Fun, because that was our culture of Southwest Airlines.

Host: So you created it yourself.

Tony: Yeah, it's about, yeah, based on the impressions came to me, not from me. So, I got to give credit to the source of those creations. Yeah. But I did act on them and they were pretty scary things to do, but it worked out great for me.

Host: What do you think it was that you said in that interview and in your discussions with the CEO that convinced them to give this a shot? Because I think probably most people would agree, this is the kind of thing that somebody in the C-suite might say well, yeah, maybe not.

Tony: Well, one of the two impressions, I mentioned the second one, the first impression was to call a buddy of mine named Mike Murray, who was a very creative guy. And I said, Mike, I got this crazy idea about becoming Southwest Airlines Goodwill Ambassador. I'm going to need a proposal. I have no idea on how to do that.

And he said well, do you know the new president, Howard Putnam? I said, I don't. He said, do you know anything about him? I said, yes, I hear he's blunt and I hear he's very intuitive. So he said, okay, we got to anticipate everything he'll ask you. You ask him these questions first, it will intrigue him and he won't kick you out.

So, we went through, why would Southwest want a Goodwill Ambassador? How would we pay for it? What if you're not any good? And we came up with these answers. And so when I showed up in his office and he pulled up a chair knee to knee and to ask me what's the answer that you have very bluntly. I said, I have this PR idea whose time has come.

And he said, what's the question? And I said, the question is, will you recognize it? So I said, why was Southwest want a Goodwill Ambassador? He said, why would we? And then I shared the rotary club, they own the town, the Kiwanis love. They manage the town. The Lions love, enjoy the town while all of these people in the civic and service are leaders in their own organizations. I said, I'll go. And they're looking for clean programs in these civic meetings I'll go provide that, have fun with them. We'll collect their cards for drawings. I've come back to Southwest and Mark and he can follow up. Heh, how did you enjoy today?

Great, we're glad you did, by the way, we have a Rapid Rewards Program. Can we get you to give you some good acquainted info? So my part was like a foot in the door. I would go give something to them that they needed, which was a fun, clean, engaging program. And then we would collect their cards. And so it was a great way to get PR for Southwest. And they sent me all over the country to gosh, oodles of civic and service groups. And that really launched my speaking career.

Host: So when did it turn internal? Cause that sounds like a lot of external outreach, but you talk about workplace culture, bringing fun and the results you can get from that.

Tony: Yeah, that's a great question because at the time Southwest was experimenting with a typical training, constructive criticism kind of things, and it wasn't coming across very well. First of all, constructive criticism is not usually very constructive and it really ranges. So, when they started getting all the negative feedback from the employees, this is not fun at all.

The president said Tony why don't you go over there and see what's going on and see if what you can do that might add some fun to this. And so I immediately, I saw that man, there was no energy in the room. And then this is what launched my three E's energize, engage, enrich came to me. Well, the way we energize, you have to do that with fun.

So let's have some fun together. So I'd asked them. What's something that made you smile or laugh out loud recently, and they would share their outrageous fun stories. I would share mine. And then from each of those stories, they became best practices came out of all of those things to repeat things, not to repeat.

We began to have a lot of fun. So, I began to get involved in the internal customer care employee development sessions, and we would give them free passes, two free passes if they came on their days off. And their family said, you're going to go to this training whether you want to or not.

And because it was fun, that ended up being a plus for me as well. So, I got to get a lot of material from these good people at Southwest that I now share with outside organizations.

Host: So what's the payoff? What did you start noticing in terms of the effectiveness of these training sessions, but then on from there, how does having a fun environment really help people work better and be more productive and be more effective?

Tony: When our brains in the state of fun or positive, which is what I call fun, studies show you're 37% more persuasive. You're 31% more productive. And even doctors are 19% faster and more accurate on their diagnosis when their brains are in the state of positive. So, what we noticed at Southwest Airlines, that helped reinforce our culture. So while we were dealing with the same stress that the other airlines were dealing with; under stress, our question that we posed was not why me, it was, how could I, how can we, how can I turn this around? How can we have more fun, get more done, bring out the best in everyone. And of course, when you ask your brain great questions, you get great answers.

So, we begin with the input of our frontline employees to reinvent ourselves so quickly because we had this fun approach to creativity and positivity that our competition could not keep up with this. And we came up with all kinds of innovative things that became unique for Southwest Airlines.

Host: So you talk about energize. You also mentioned engage. Tell us a little bit more about that piece of it.

Tony: Yeah. Cause we energize with fun and we engage with full attention and that's something that they never trained us growing up how to do this. How do you make the person in front of you feel like they're the only person in the room and how do you keep your focus on this, the one thing at hand, instead of all of the things around you?

So I have this slogan, focus on one, have more fun, look at it all and you climb the wall. So, we'll be sharing some positivity best practices about how to engage others in an irresistibly attractive way. And part of that I'll share an actual experience I had with Fred Rogers that taught me why he was so irresistibly attractive and his interaction with people. And we'll actually be sharing that as a positivity best practice with all of the healthcare professionals and risk management at ASHRM.

Host: I think I'm within, either one or two in line in the Fred Rogers fan club. So, anything about Fred I'm willing to listen to. And then the third is enrich, tell me about that.

Dr. Jody Hoffer Gitell wrote a great book called the Southwest Airlines Way in which she was able to talk three airlines, going behind the scenes without any employees, managers present and asking the employees, what is it like to work for this airline? And so when she got to Southwest, what she was hearing was so different than the other airlines, she took a deeper dive and to research that, and what she came up with, there were three things about Southwest that made us different than all the other carriers.

One was shared goals. We had something that we could all get excited about. The other was mutual respect. And the third was with shared knowledge like today, as result of our time together, Michael, we can walk away. Well what would make that even better and we've come away with some knowledge of what can make it even better. So when we begin to share our knowledge with one another, at all levels, we could learn so many things that would translate in the best practices for all of us. So I'll be sharing some things that that at the conference that we can do to actually feed the shared knowledge. So everybody can benefit from it.

Yeah, the title of your talk at the ASHRM conference, FUN-omenal, FUN, FUN-omenal Stress Management, the Power of Positivity to Boost Happiness and Manage Stress. And as you can probably imagine folks in healthcare risk management to have some stressful days, some stressful times so between this mindset and managing a stressful job.

Tony: Yes. First, FUN-omenal is my brand. And you notice how I spelled it differently. I've replaced the first three letters with the word fun, because when we're in that state, we just handle stress differently. So, it's not that the stress is necessarily going to change, but what can and will change, is our approach to handling it. And that's what turns it into a positive. So many of the stressful things that happened to us at Southwest Airlines, like Braniff and Texas International, trying to shoot us out of the sky with dirty tricks that led to our choice to respond to that in a positive way. And of course what goes around, comes around.

And as neither one of them, us airlines exist today. But at the time they were the most profitable airlines, at least in the state of Texas. So, it's the FUN-omenal approach, I have the saying accentuate the positive, smegative the negative and the smegative the negative part is where we think of the worst case scenario.

Like I was thinking this morning. Worst case scenario Michael. He thinks that man, this is the worst interview I've ever had. What would I do if that were the case? I'd say, I would say Michael, what were you looking for that you're not getting so far? So, I would come up with some kind of an answer to the worst case scenario and what that does to negatives, it neutralizes it. So now I'm back to the state of positive where I can deal with it. So we teach, it's not that we're in lala land, ignoring the negatives. We just smegative those negatives. It's about coming up with a plan for worst case scenarios. And then getting back to our focus on what would be great today. It would be great if we had a great interview. If the attendees got excited about coming in person or virtually, and they showed up and had fun with us and learned together with us.

Host: So part of that is if you're thinking through what could go wrong and how you'd respond to it. So you feel prepared for the worst basically.

Tony: Exactly. If we have a saying, be prepared, not paranoid. And when you show up prepared, that fear starts leaning more toward excitement then eventually excitement takes over fear and wins the day.

Host: Now you also in your presentations, talk about preview, here view, review. What's that all about?

Tony: Yeah, the preview is where you envision an outcome as if it's already true, it's I now like to refer to it as writing the history in advance, something I borrowed from a friend of mine. You write your history in advance. Then you step into that history by acting on the impressions like I did in becoming Southwest Airlines, Goodwill Ambassador.

And like we did at Southwest, our preview was to become the low fare high care, lots of fun airline. So as we began to put ourselves into that as if we were already there, we began to get impressions about what kind of planes to fly, about how to do that. Industry said, it's impossible to do a 10 minute turn.

One of the employees said, hey, why don't we benchmark Indy 500 pit crews that led to those 10 minute turns, which they perfected with stopwatches. The preview is all about envisioning an outcome as if it's already true and a daily best practice, I invite our attendees to come up with three outcomes that you would like. It will be great if the podcast went well, it would be great at the conference was the best ever and more and more people. And I'm actually going to create a preview for all of the healthcare professionals and risk management of a future preview that's going to be based on inside information that a source who shall not be named, is providing for me.

Host: Ah, you've been tipped off.

Tony: Yeah, so we've got to have some fun with that, so they can see themselves in a situation that hopefully they would choose to find themselves in, by acting on impressions.

Host: And here view?

Tony: The here view, the wandering mind is an unhappy mind. So that's all about keep bringing our attention back to what am I doing right now? And just repeating that over and over. Okay. I'm looking at Michael here in the camera, I'm just trying to be in the moment so I can be spontaneous and go with whatever comes to me and just trust that. And so the here view is all about keep coming back to the present. That's a great power. Eckhart Tolle wrote a great book, The Power of Now. Where that's where the power is when we can get in that in the to hear zone, in the now zone.

And then of course the review at the end of the day, the best way to end that day and the best possible way is to review what happened, what made that go well? What would make it go even better? And it's these same principles, they're not new, but we just reinforce them in such a fun way that it makes it easy to remember, especially under stress.

Host: So speaking of stress does the Ambassador of Fun have bad days? And if so, how do you deal with them?

Tony: We all have high days and we all have low days. When our high days we send to a have fun things, when we're in our low moments we tend to react to that. So it's not like we're walking along and we're thinking, you know what I could use right now is a depressing thought. They just show up.

When they show up though, it's like our body alarm goes off and it comes up with a little best practice. The law of best practice is what's your practice over and over again, you get really good at, so what I practice over and over again, when I feel stress in my body, I know that's, I'm feeding some thought at the moment, whether it be a depressing thought or an anxious thought.

That if I keep feeding that thought, it's going to get worse. So, that's my moment to try to bounce back to focus on an outcome that I'd like instead. And the main thing I do is I just tell the truth. Oh, here's this thought that this might not go well. So, it separates the thought from me. And then I prefer a better thought. Here's my hope. It went really well. Everybody got something they could take away and use in the real world. So now, I'm back to a positive state, but I had to deal with a negative state and not ignore it.

Host: This is great stuff. I wish I'd interviewed you 25 years ago. I'd have, would've had a much, fruit. much more fun at work and a more successful career. Listen, we're out of time, but I want to thank you very much, Tony, for joining us today.

Tony: Thank you, Michael, for making this fun for me, look forward to seeing everybody at the ASHRM.

Host: Tony Brigmon is the former official Southwest Airlines, Ambassador of Fun and the opening keynote speaker at this year's ASHRM Annual Conference. His talk is entitled, FUN-omenal Stress Management, the Power of Positivity To Boost Happiness and Manage Stress. If you want to hear more from Tony, registration is still open for ASHRM's in-person event in San Antonio.

His presentation will be on Sunday, October 10th at around 4:00 PM. You can learn more and register by going to ashrm.org/annual. This podcast is made possible by the American Society for Healthcare Risk Management to support efforts to advance safe and trusted healthcare through enterprise risk management.

Visit ashram.org/membership to learn more and become an ASHRM member. I'm Michael Caresse. Thanks for listening.