Melanie Cole, MS (Host): Welcome to It's Your Health Radio with Henry Mayo Newhall Hospital. I'm Melanie Cole, and you know how we always talk about stress? We always talk about workplace stress and how to mitigate that stress and what you can do, ways to take yourself out of that stress. Well, today we're going to flip that around.

And we're going to talk about choosing your attitude, bringing happiness to your workplace, thereby, helping to reduce stress, because happy people don't really manifest stress in the same way. So we're going to kind of switch it up today. And joining me as Randy Pazen. He's the Director of Leadership and Organizational Development for Henry Mayo Newhall Hospital.

 Randy, thank you so much for joining us today. And to kick things off, let's tell our listeners about the Fish philosophy. What is that and where did it originate from?

Randy Pazen, MA, NAC, Certified Coach, MBTI, Clifton Strengths: Thanks for having me. It's a pleasure to be here. So the Fish philosophy has been around for about 27 years, and it takes a deep dive, if you pardon the pun, into the Pike Place Fish Market located in Seattle, Washington. And the Fish philosophy was discovered by a guy named John Christensen, who owns a company called Charthouse Learning.

He was in Seattle filming for a work safety video, and he stumbled upon this little fish market. If you've never been to the Pike Place Market in Seattle, it's almost like a mall of different shops and fish markets, and there's this little tiny one right at the entrance and they were doing something very unique.

They were engaging all the customers around them and throwing fish and there's lots of noise. And John captured this and coined something we now call the Fish philosophy, which is based on four very simple, although kind of unusual tenets for the workplace. And those would be play, be there, make their day, and as you said, choose your attitude.

Host: That is amazing. I love that story. What a cool way for it to kind of originate. So if these guys are throwing fish back and forth, how would that fit into the professional environment though? Because sometimes they're like, ooh, this is a professional environment. You can't have fun.

Randy Pazen, MA, NAC, Certified Coach, MBTI, Clifton Strengths: Well, it is interesting because they actually address this in the workshop and I've been doing this workshop for about 20 years now, and it's funny, people say that all the time. They watch a film of these individuals. And what's unique about the Pike Place Fish Market, it's probably one of the greatest business turnaround stories ever told.

And we actually have a facet specifically for healthcare. This is my first time working in healthcare, but I've been speaking about Fish, like I said, for over 20 years now. And what's so interesting is, is we all have very serious jobs, but we don't always have to take ourselves so seriously.

And when you look at the Pike Place Fish Market, they were not always like this. About 30 years ago, it was just a regular fish market, nothing special about them. And they sat down with a business consultant and the consultant said, well, what do you guys want to do? And these guys that cut fish and throw fish said, well, gosh, we want to be world famous.

Great. How do you do that? And they coined this philosophy of having a different approach to work. And let me just challenge you, Melanie. What is something you like to do outside of your normal everyday job? Give me a hobby or something you do for an activity outside of work.

Host: I like to cook.

Randy Pazen, MA, NAC, Certified Coach, MBTI, Clifton Strengths: If you are cooking and engaged in that activity, let me ask you this question. Does time go by fast or does time go by a little slow?

Host: Time goes pretty fast because I kind of dance around my kitchen. I kind of have fun while I'm doing it because that's what makes it so enjoyable.

Randy Pazen, MA, NAC, Certified Coach, MBTI, Clifton Strengths: There you go. So time goes by fast. When you're doing this activity, in your mind, are you thinking about better ways of doing it, faster ways of doing it, more creative or innovative ways of doing it, and maybe even cheaper ways of doing it? Dare I say that?

Host: You know, that's a great question. I don't think of faster ways to do it because part of that is the meditational aspect of doing everything that you do when you cook. But yes, sometimes I'd like to have the celery all cut for me, or the onions all cut for me and I bought one of those little things on a TikTok shop that's shreds the cheese a little bit faster. But I mean, you know, not really. I just kind of like to enjoy the process.

Randy Pazen, MA, NAC, Certified Coach, MBTI, Clifton Strengths: I love it. And then if you were watching, let's say the Food Network, do you secretly kind of wish that you were also in that and cooking and doing that activity?

Host: Yeah, sometimes, I mean, I see a lot of cooking videos on social media. I, I spend a lot of time and then I bookmark those recipes and I do try them. That's why I'm into sourdough now.

Randy Pazen, MA, NAC, Certified Coach, MBTI, Clifton Strengths: Here's the interesting thing. If you were to take cooking and we'll call that an activity that you like to do and a playful activity, I would challenge you to say that that playing is a mindset and nothing more than a mindset.

And some people will say exactly what you were alluding to is that, wow, we have a serious job. We can't play at work. The only time you can play at work is when your boss is on vacation and I don't think that's true. I think that playing is just nothing more than a mindset that you can bring to work.

And if you do that, if you capture that same energy that we just described, you'll probably want to do that activity more often. You probably won't be so inclined to miss that activity. So in other words, call out of work to go do something else. You'll probably find better and more creative and innovative ways like you did with the food chopper of ways of doing your work.

So play is nothing more than a mindset. If we bring that to work, our days in our workplaces are going to be so much better and so much more engaging.

Host: I agree with you, and as somebody who is lucky enough to love my job, Randy and I love talking to doctors and interviewing people and being behind the mic and that, but when we think of people who say, oh, don't take pictures, don't just be there, be present. When we think of work, not a lot of people want to be there and be present.

They'd rather be doing anything else than being at work. They'd rather be staring at social media even while they're at work to kind of make the time go by.

Randy Pazen, MA, NAC, Certified Coach, MBTI, Clifton Strengths: Exactly, and that leads into the next tenet of the Fish philosophy, which is, that being there and in today's world, it is so incredibly difficult, especially if you're in a leadership role to be fully present at any one moment. There are so many distractions we have. If you're in the medical industry, you've got patients, but you've also got customers.

You've got cell phones going off and maybe even a beeper going off and instant messaging going off, and it's a ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding. And again, I'm not a clinician, but I do know this, that we are all somewhat addicted to that chemical dopamine. Every time your phone dings, you may not want to actually get the text message, but you want to actually enjoy the ding because someone has paid attention to you.

And every time it goes off, we get more and more of this dopamine and it's, it's so difficult for us to actually put things aside and focus on the task or the people that are right in front of you. One of the best leaders I ever met was a man named Bob and he worked for Northrop Grumman and he had this incredible habit and we all say we have an open door policy, but how often do leaders when they open the door and people walk in, they immediately grab their phone or start typing on their computer. What Bob would do, and I watched him do this for a number of years, he would pivot in his chair to sit away from his computer. He would sit back in his chair, put his hands behind his head and look at you, and as if nobody else in the world existed except for you and Bob. It was an amazing demonstration of how you can absolutely be there for somebody else. And it's wild how busy we all are in today's world, but if we can just take that moment to be there and connect with somebody else, it is absolutely amazing.

Host: Well, I think that is great because I completely agree and I think that connection is what gives us that more feeling of satisfaction. So, when we think of work-related stress, sometimes if we want to do that connection to our colleagues and that sort of thing, sometimes that can create more stress even. There's workplace drama and there's projects to be done and there's long hours.

So when you think of workplace stress and we're trying to mitigate some of that, what do you think of?

Randy Pazen, MA, NAC, Certified Coach, MBTI, Clifton Strengths: It kind of leads to this third principle, which is make their day. And again, this is my first hospital. Most of my career has been with Fortune 50 and Fortune 100 companies doing exactly what I do now, which is leadership and professional development. But what I've learned about working at a hospital is there is such a diversity of experiences. And let me just give you an example of our hospital here at Henry Mayo. If you ride up in our main tower and you get off the elevator, you're now in labor and delivery. Labor and delivery for the most part is a pretty happy place. I mean, sure they have some bad days, but for the most part, labor and delivery is a pretty happy place to be.

And if you were to walk down the hallway, you now find yourself standing in front of the surgery suite and surgery's a wobbler. It can go either way, some days are really good, some days are not so good. And then you walk a little further down the hallway and you might find yourself in front of our ICU unit.

And in some days in ICU, they can be pretty sad for the people. Now you are talking about the same employees, wearing the same uniform, getting the same training, yet a vastly different experience with their days. And one of the things that we've done to help make other people's days is we've tapped into psychological safety.

And if you, if buy into that theory, which I do, for every negative thing that happens to you, it takes about five positive interactions just to bring you back up to level, not to necessarily make you high or joyful or anything like that, but just to get you level. So one of the things that, that we do here is we've implemented this thing we call the ten-five rule.

And if you are 10 feet away from somebody, we ask you to have some sort of non-verbal interaction, a wave, a nod, something to acknowledge them. And if you're within five feet, you might just want to say, Hey, how's it going, Melanie? How's your day going? What can I do to make your day better? And there's a million ways we can do that from things that are so simple, like you walk by a copy machine and maybe you're not even using the copy machine or the printer and you see that it's out of paper. You take a second, you put some paper in so the next person that comes along doesn't have to do that. It seems so easy and silly, but it's the littlest things that we do that make a difference, which has got, it has to be the reason why I'm working in healthcare now.

Because I just had knee surgery about a year and a half ago. And when I woke up, I was extremely hungry and I looked at the nurse in the recovery room and I said, Hey, listen, I know that nurses hide food. I have friends that are nurses. There's my wallet is underneath my bed in one of those plastic bags.

There's a hundred dollars in the wallet. Please take the hundred dollars. I'll trade you a hundred dollars for just a sandwich. I'm just, I'm starving. And the nurse kind of laughed at me and she walked over to her desk. I could see her desk from where the recovery bed was. And she reached in this drawer and she got a, a handful of graham crackers.

She brought them over and I wolfed them down. I don't remember tasting them, but I was just so hungry and in that moment, which probably meant nothing to her. She's probably done that a thousand times in her career. It meant the world to me, and I went from being a little bit cold and maybe a little bit scared and unsure of what was going on after this knee surgery, to feeling very warm and comfortable and secure and safe because I knew that somebody cared about me, and it's the littlest things that we do each and every day that makes a huge impact on people's lives. And in that spirit, what I now do is if I see somebody, a clinician who does something particularly great for a customer or family member, I'll give them a graham cracker and we call that award, are you ready for this, creativity, a Grammy. It's just those little things that we do every day.

Host: That's really fun.

Randy Pazen, MA, NAC, Certified Coach, MBTI, Clifton Strengths: It makes a huge difference for people.

Host: It does. And making someone's day doing those little things really does make all the difference. So let's talk about the last principle, which is choosing your attitude. Why is that so important and how do we choose our attitude? Because let's face it, Randy, some of us just have bad days and you can try and choose your attitude and be this upbeat person all you want, but then you really feel like crap and you don't feel like being nice to anybody.

Randy Pazen, MA, NAC, Certified Coach, MBTI, Clifton Strengths: Hundred percent. I've been speaking about this for so long, but I have to tell you that it was a, a friend of mine that really solidified how and why you do this. It's very simple for you and I to say, Hey, everybody, choose to be positive and do cartwheels down the hallway.

Easier said than done. There's a, a gentleman named Charlie Plum and he is out on the speaking tours and he wrote a book called I'm No Hero, and Charlie's story is a fascinating one. He was a POW during the Vietnam conflict. And he very sadly spent almost six years as a prisoner of war. When I first heard Charlie's story, I was doing an offsite and I was telling a story about my own military background and someone said, wow, you sound just like this guy, Charlie Plum.

You should look him up. And I thought the story that I heard was so ridiculously farfetched, it couldn't possibly be true. So I looked him up. It turns out we lived about 20 minutes from each other and I called him because I'm very tenacious and he invited me over and we met and we talked and we had this amazing conversation of what it was like to be a POW because my job in the military was to rescue POWs.

And it was the first person I'd ever met who had actually been one. I made a mental note at the time of how positive Charlie Plum is, and then I ran into him a few years later, again at a conference. And again, this guy is just so pumped up and I read his book and it's a sad story. I mean, he was held captive without a piece of paper, a magazine, a newspaper, communication, anything for five years, almost six years.

And the thing you note about Charlie Plum when you meet him, he's one of the most positive guys you've ever met in your life. And that's saying something from a guy who does cartwheels down the hallway every day. And I finally asked him, I said, Charlie, I don't get it, man. How are you so upbeat every day?

And he shared with me that the one thing he learned being in captivity is that they took everything away from him, and I mean everything away from him, but the one thing they could not take away was his ability to choose to have a positive attitude, and every morning he would get up and face his captors with a smile on his face and be in a good mood if for nothing else, just to confound them.

And that, that really hit home for me personally, having spoken about this for years and years and years, it is the one thing that we can do. It's not always easy. Listen, I'm not going to lie to you and tell you that I'm always pumped up. I try to be, but there are days like, like anybody else, where we have a bad day.

And, one of the things that they do at the Pike Place Fish Market, is they have sat down and come up with a list of rules and behavioral norms. This is how we're going to behave. And when organizations and teams do that, when they have a set of rules, principles, whatever you want to call them, when somebody strays and listen, we all have bad days, right Melanie?

We get a ticket, we get a flat tire, we forget our lunch at home. Something happens. We all have something that happens. When you come into work or some other activity, and if that place has a set of agreed upon rules and norms, the leader of the team doesn't have to sit there and say, you know, Hey Randy, how come you're a grumpy gus today?

How come you're not being positive? The team will do that on its own. The team will buy that person a cup of coffee, or dare I say, a bag of Garrett's popcorn, if you happen to be in Chicago or something, they will do something to get that person back up to where they need to be. And the leader of the team doesn't have to do that.

The leader can actually focus on the things that the leader needs to, and that's, you know, strategy and moving the team forward or whatever your KPIs are. That's what the leader gets to do. And the team will manage itself to a degree. And that's why this is so important in the business world, because we want people to have a great attitude.

 The only thing the differentiates most organizations from their competitors is the service they provide. So, in our world, it's our patient experience. It's our customer service. But you can take that story to any business, any industry, because listen, I don't care if you buy an Apple phone or a Samsung phone or a Motorola phone, the thing that you expect when you buy that phone is when you take it out of the box, you push the button, it turns on, and it works a hundred percent perfectly every time. That's the minimum expectation. Or if we were back in school, we might call the C grade. The only way to get the A grade is to provide your coworkers and your customers, or in our case, our patients, with amazing human service.

That's why this is such an important part of the Fish philosophy. Because it is the absolutely the one thing that we all have control over. Again, not always easy, but it is factual. You can choose how you look at every single thing in your life. Whether it's I'm going to be negative and cranky, or yeah, you know what, I can make it better.

And if I can just take one more second. One of the things that I've learned how you do this. You know, a lot of times we beat ourselves up if we do something that's a mistake or we don't know how to do things. And what I always tell people is, listen, we don't want you to make mistakes.

We want you to try new things and take mitigated risks. And, and you know what? If something doesn't work, instead of saying, oh wow, I made a mistake. Gosh, I'm so dumb. You might want to say something to the effect of, well good, I'll never make that mistake again. I learned from it.

Good. I not going to do that again. So if you add the word good, to that sentence of, wow, I made a mistake. Good, I won't do that again, you'll turn your attitude around. The same thing with, if you don't know how to do something. It's like, wow, I don't know how to do something. I'm so dumb, blah, blah, blah.

If you start saying that, you're going to start believing it. Our, our brains have not developed that much, and if you tell yourself over and over that you just can't do something and you're dumb, you'll, you'll start believing it. But if you add the word yet, to the end of that sentence, wow, I don't know how to speak French, yet.

I don't know how to work a machine, yet. Again, you'll be able to choose your own attitude internally. And make yourself feel a lot better.

Host: What a great segue into our ending of this wonderful conversation. Randy, you've given us so much to think about and such great ideas, and that negative self-talk is really destructive. It's insidious in our own minds, especially we women. We do that to ourselves. We look at ourselves and say, ugh, ugh, I'm so fat.

Or look at those thighs. But you've brought a whole new way of looking at that and I love your suggestions of yet and good. And I thank you so much for joining us today and at Henry Mayo Newhall Hospital's Online Health Library, you can find more tips and resources for managing stress. Just type the word stress into the search box at the top of the page, and you can find the health library at library.henrymayo.com.

That concludes this episode of It's Your Health Radio with Henry Mayo Newhall Hospital. I'm Melanie Cole. Thanks so much for joining us today.