Interview with The Love Your Job Coach: Teaneishia Hunter

 

Yesterday was a special episode of my Wednesday at 1 LIVE, where I love to share messages that inspire entrepreneurs to become intentional designers of their lives and businesses by leveraging the power of their brains. I invited my friend, Teaneishia Hunter, to discuss the idea of “tolerating” your job. 

I was sitting in church, a couple weeks ago, when I overheard someone ask a fellow parishioner, "How are you tolerating your job?".  It didn't sit right with me and I couldn't wait to hear Teaneishia's perspective.

Teaneishia Hunter, U.S. Army Veteran and Executive Director with The John Maxwell Team, specializes in professional development and leadership training. Known as the Love Your Job Coach, she's a certified NeuroCoach and DISC Behavior Consultant who has trained over 4,000 people on career progression. Teaneishia is dedicated to helping others advance in their professions and enhance their lives so that they show up and lead in the best way possible—by example. Download Teaneishia’s Free Guide to Change Your Job Right Where You Are.

Read on for our interview + dialogue about all things career advancing and life enhancing.

🎥 Catch the replay

 

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Maria: Teaneishia, thank you so much for joining me today!

 

Teaneishia: Absolutely, I love that you do these, Maria, they really enhance people's lives. And I do want to share. I am excited to be partnering with you to do this today. 

 

M: Your message and how you say it, it always speaks right to my heart. And I just want the whole world to know what you have to say—this is how we start, one little baby step at a time. So Teaneishia, tell me a little bit about yourself. You are a certified NeuroCoach, you are a DISC behavior consultant, and a US veteran. Thank you so much for your service! And I know you've coached 1000s of people in their careers.

 

T: Oh, my pleasure. Yes, I am a US Army veteran. And that is when I really got into career coaching. In the Army, it's like we have our own community, just about any job that you have outside of the Army you have in the Army. You have young people coming in to serve their country, but it's not all just war games and things like that. We had lives. There were 18- and 19-year-olds who, straight out of high school weren't even thinking about this type of thing.

But this would shape everything that came afterwards. I wanted to do something about that! And just being in a leadership position where I was a squad leader, team leader, platoon sergeant wasn't enough. I wanted to do something with that part of their life. We spend a third of our lives at work, about 90,000 hours! And in the military, sometimes you’re at work 24/7, so I wanted to do something about that.

At first I was helping people find their places within our community of the military, and now I get to help a world of people find their places in a huge world! I'm thrilled about what I get to do. I absolutely love it. I hope I don't get too excited

 

M: So tell me a little bit about like leadership coaching and what that is. 

 

T: Leadership coaching starts with self awareness and personal and professional development. When people think about who a leader is, they tend to think you have to be in a certain position. One of the things I learned early on in my career was at basic training (in 2009) when I knew nothing about the military. I hadn't even qualified in my job or anything yet. We were just doing the first few weeks of basic training. I was being called a leader! I came in as a specialist, I didn't come in as a private, but even the privates to my right and my left of me, we were being called leaders. And the reason why is because we influence somebody, somebody is watching you, and you're watching somebody else. So they called us all leaders. My mentor, John Maxwell, says the same thing: Leadership is influence, nothing more, nothing less. So when it comes to leadership coaching, it is about developing yourself professionally first. Then teaching or coaching your coachee on how they can lead others, and teaching them how to have those coaching conversations so that they grow those who are looking up to them.

 

M: Wow, that's huge. It's such a ripple effect. And even for you, it starts with you being a leader for you so that you can lead other leaders. It's such a beautiful ripple effect. And that's what I love about you, you have so many different certifications, so much knowledge that you get to bring to the table. And the big reason that I brought you here today, the thing that put two and two together in my mind, was this story. I was sitting in church with my kids, and right before Mass I heard somebody say, behind me to somebody else, "How are you tolerating your job these days?” And it made me cringe. I thought, “How are these people, number one, talking to each other like that? Number two, how is that even a normal thing to think?” I came into my business because I wasn't tolerating anything in my life. I was going on a rampage, changing everything in my life that wasn't making me happy and ended up starting my business. So I wanted to talk to you because you're the career expert, you have seen people “tolerate” their jobs. What do you think when you hear that?

 

T: Oh, man, first of all, I think that I've been there. That's number one. When I when I saw your post about this on Instagram, I thought the same thing: “How do you talk to somebody like that?” I wanted to know the context around it. And then I got to thinking, “Well, which one would I talk to first if I had the opportunity? Would I talk to the person is tolerating their job first? Or would I talk to the person that's asking ‘How are you tolerating your job?’ Where did that come from?” So many questions that I have around the one question. I want to speak to both, but where would I go first? Sadly, because it is normal. That's the sad part. It is. It is the norm. It's not good, it's not productive. But it is the norm.

When I say that I've been there before, I have. I did a video a couple of days ago and I spoke about myself being a person of ownership. I saw my workplace as my workplace. My team was my team. And when I felt that I didn't like what was going on in my workplace, those were the reasons why I kept going back. I couldn't stay home and do something about it—I had to go in and I had to be proactive. 

So I think one of the first steps for somebody who is tolerating their job is to first of all, stop generalizing. It's not your job that you're tolerating. Maybe it is, but you can't fix that. You can't do anything about it, that’s too broad. You have to first get into specifics. What exactly are you tolerating? What type of behaviors are you tolerating? And when you list those out, when you can put a name to those, you can do something about it. The first step to overcoming a problem is defining what the problem is. So you have to actually say, “Okay, what is it that I am tolerating? Is it a communication between myself and my boss? Is it the fact that I came to work Monday morning, and got this email that a task is due by the end of the day, but I wasn't on the distro when they sent this out last week?” Is it stuff like that you're tolerating? Because that's when we begin to get some solutions? 

 

M: Yes. Yes. That is huge. And really, it applies to all areas of our lives, too, if you really think about it. 

 

T: Absolutely. And the thing is, it applies to all areas of our lives, and you can make changes to what you're tolerating in your workplace by making changes for what you're tolerating somewhere else. And the reason why is because you're that same person when you go to work, when you go home, when you go to church, when you're at the YMCA, when you're at the gym, and your community organizations, with your son at a basketball game, at your daughter's tennis match, you're that same person!

So the things you are tolerating have to do with setting a standard for yourself. There’s something about you that you're either blind to, or that you should work on. But you think moving along somewhere else is going to solve it. It's about working on those things that you see in you. And when you do that professional development work on developing yourself as leader, that's when you start seeing changes in your different environments. You know, there are certain things that I just I will not tolerate, I won't stand for. That had to come from me, defining standards for myself.

So that's definitely where starts, it starts with you defining the standard for you. 

 

M: You just said so much right there. There's so much to unpack. Oh, my gosh. So the big thing is this: Once you define the things that are the problems, it's recognizing there's a pattern, and those problems are showing up other places in your life. We can’t look externally and put the blame on work and compartmentalize. We can't do that because we're one whole person. And there's no such thing as compartmentalizing, really. When we think of work / life harmony, who's in the middle of it? We are! So the number one place to take ownership and leadership is with yourself. And then from there, we're able to incrementally change our outer world. 

 

T: Exactly. And to that point, incrementally, I think about setting a standard.

The standard is your baseline of what it is that you're willing to accept. And that varies for different people in similar situations. For example, money. You determine what this is your baseline, what you will not go below.

At the same time you determine that you're not going to go below your baseline, you're also not going to go too much higher than than. And that's why making those changes incrementally is so important. But when you get to this level, you can see more, and then you can raise your standard. And then when you see more again, you can raise your standard again. 

 

M: Wow. Okay, can you give me a real, tangible example in the workplace? 

 

T: Absolutely. What we're going through now, as far as what they're calling a great resignation, that they're now saying is more like a great sabbatical… A lot of people left their job for whatever reason and when it was time to go back, they decided not to, for whatever reason.

So, is not that some of these people aren't looking for work. But what they're looking for is to be advanced to a level above where they left. For example, they won't go back at $70,000 per year, they want to go back at $80,000 or $85,000. That's a big job. And you might very well be worth it. You’d have to communicate that and show that. Because you’re more likely to go from $70,000 to $73,000 or $75,000.

Money isn't the only way that you're rewarded. Maybe, I will go back for the $70,000, but, hey, before you laid me off, you sent us all home to work. And we perform well here. So maybe I'll go back, but three days a week I work from home. That's a small jump.

Whatever it is that you're looking for next in your career think about how big of a jump it is that you want. If it is a huge jump, maybe consider something smaller to just get to the point where you can see more, and you've experienced more and can do more, and then look for the next one. It doesn't have to be one huge, one huge leap. It can even be lateral steps.

 

M: That's great advice. Because even if you did jump into that higher point, you might be overwhelmed and frustrated, and feeling all the things you felt before when you were unhappy. Those things don't just disappear when you automatically hit the next thing. Next level next level. 

 

T: And that's why I say that the number one thing that you have to work on is you. They say all the time that people win the lottery, and then months later, they've lost the money. Why? They didn't have those habits, or those things in place to be able to maintain it. They were still themselves and had the exact same behaviors that they had. It's the same thing in the workplace. That's also why a lot of people quit one job, because they're frustrated, they decide they’re not going to tolerate this anymore. But if they didn't do that self evaluation piece, to see what was really going on, then they go to that next job as their same selves. And they run into the same issues. And I'm not saying because the issue was you, I simply said that was most likely something that you needed to be working on to get you to another level so that you can experience something different if you went somewhere else. 

 

M: This is a great segue into people who have jobs right now. Maybe they are frustrated and are looking around, seeing things that annoy them or frustrate them, things they complain about or are not super happy with. I usually like tell them not to focus on what they don't like. And don't focus on what you don't want. Focus on what you do enjoy, what does light you up, what does motivate you at the workplace.

And eventually, you'll start to see more of that and less of what you don't want. What would be your advice for someone in a situation like that? 

 

T: Yeah. So mine is that perspective, maybe on just a tad bit of steroids? Haha!

For a lot of people, it's so easy to focus on what we don't want. Because we often notice when we're uncomfortable more than we do when we're happy. We can have 10,000 good things happen but we notice that one bad. So for a lot of people who are just used to focusing on the negative, it's a good place to start. I think it’s good to think about what it is that you don't want, but don't stay there. What do you want instead? And that's when you get to focus in on what you do want. So here is the little bit of steroid steroids part: What I do with my clients is a job crafting process.You focus on the tasks that you do, and the relationships or the people that you do it with. And you focus on the way that you're thinking about your job. The task is simply your responsibilities. 

And with job craft you ask yourself what you’re great at you actually enjoy. And you prioritize doing those things and as much as possible. And it requires communicating with your supervisors. And when I work with people, I go through that process of how to communicate with your supervisor because they're going to have a part in it as well. 

The things you aren’t great at, we figure out how you can get those off your plate. One of the things that I've noticed and this was in, in organizations, right? 

Task crafting is about delegating those things, and getting with your team, and working it out. It can be a little challenging, but I can guarantee you, you would enjoy work a lot more if you were doing more things that lit you up versus those that you just completely dreaded.

 

M: It's a matter of listing out the problems and the challenges, the things that are frustrating us throughout the day, and then maybe coming up with options of how to resolve those individually. And then taking action, to really just make a difference. Instead of just complaining all the time, we can take a systematic approach to literally shifting and changing and altering a third of our day! And if we create that better pattern there, we can expand it into other areas of our lives, too. And then we ultimately just evolve our being gradually, which is just a beautiful thing. Right? 

 

T: And I like that you said systematic. Because that is a very systematic process. I am a student of human behavior—I am a NeuroCoach and I do have my master's in organizational psychology. So I I love to study human behavior in the workplace. And I love the brain. 

Motivation is systematic. There is a behavioral brain-based way of helping with this, too, which is another part of my “on steroids” process. People don't realize how much dopamine plays in motivation. We look at dopamine as like this pleasure chemical, indirectly. People look at dopamine as a neurotransmitter but dopamine is a neuromodulator. Whereas neurotransmitters will speak from neuron to neuron, dopamine won't just go from one neuron to the next, it will go from one to many. And so it works on the system on a broader perspective. So now this goes back to how you can fix or work on one area of your life and ultimately fix others. Because dopamine sparks in so many areas, it may not just spark in the area of work. 

 

M: How do you trigger this dopamine when you want it?

 

T: Because because it goes to different places, we can't trigger it exactly. But it all comes down to realizing when dopamine is at his height. Dopamine is not at his height after you've completed the thing when you’re celebrating. Dopamine is at its height in the process. Because it's more about motivation than reward. 

That's also why we say, if you're working toward what you want, every day, you're a success, and you should celebrate. That's why we celebrate periodically, because it's not waiting until we get there. It is a process. The baby steps. 

So if I can get you to turn on this dopamine by shifting what you do daily, I can get you to your next position. Because I can get you motivated to go to your next position. I can get you to a promotion because I can get you showing up every day with that dopamine release to get you to that promotion. I'm saying I can get you to that project that you've always wanted to work on because I can get you releasing that dopamine to show up every day to get the project.

The dopamine is in the process. It's not the end result.

My “on steroids” approach involves helping you get that dopamine firing daily. 

 

M: So that's the brain science behind what you talked about very early on in our conversation about incremental steps. 

 

T: Exactly. It can certainly be working towards something. 

 

M: That's brilliant. That is the magic right there.

 

T: And that's what I love about what I do. Because there is a lot of great research out there about processes. And I'm so happy that a lot of people are looking more at neural science now. Because processes change but we're wired how we're wired. And yeah, they're finding new things all the time. I don't look at them as they're changing, I look at it as we're growing. That's why I'm so glad that they're looking at neuroscience and the role that it plays in human behavior in the workplace.

 

M: And I'm glad you're helping people leverage that. I mean, we have a brain, let's use it, it is a powerful, powerful, powerful tool. And none of us are using it the way that we could be. I mean, we can literally hack our lives! 

So back to the motivation piece, everybody's motivated by different things, right? Some people are motivated by money, some people might be motivated by service, some people might be motivated by, spending more time with their family. So how do we find our own motivations so that we can hack our lives a little bit?

 

T: You go deeper than the money and you go deeper than the surface. Whatever it is that you're saying you're motivated by? Go deeper. Because underneath that there's always something deeper. 

Okay, we'll take money, for example, because we're talking about careers.

What does the money you get allow you to do? How does that money help you get to where it is that you want to go? That's when you get to that deeper level. if I'm wanting money, because I have mouths to feed, that's a deeper reason. 

What do you want as a result of your motivation? That is how I see it. If I can get people to that level of what is truly motivating them, I can get them to unwire and rewire neurons in their brain. Where their focus is more on motivation than the money—or even the service. 

 

M: You’re driven by something deeper and something personal. 

We've talked a lot about employment and careers. Now, talking about entrepreneurs… I feel like many of us are passion and purpose-led when starting our businesses. Yes, we want to make more money. Yes, we want more time freedom. Yes, we want to make an impact in the world. And yes, we usually recognize our gifts and leveraging them in a way to to do all that. 

I hired a business coach one time and he had me go through and categorize all my tasks into four buckets: What I'm great at, and love to do; what I'm great at and hate to do; what I am not great at and love to do; and what I'm not great at and hate to do. So that I could see my zone of genius—where I should spend 80% of my time. And the other things that have to get done, we get to delegate or bring on team members and ask for support in those areas. What are your thoughts around that?

 

T: I think that's the 80/20 principle in play. I think what he what your your coach had you do is brilliant. And I believe that delegating is definitely a skill that entrepreneurs should learn to do and should learn to do early. 

Building a business is challenging and I understand why a lot of entrepreneurs do it. But if I'm trying to focus on every piece of my business, that's not necessarily considered my zone of genius. Am I going to wake up looking forward to this every day? No. I was doing that and I was not waking up looking forward to it every day. 

It was when I said, “Okay, you know, what, I'm cutting some stuff, I’m going to outsource this to somebody who's great at it, and not do it myself.” I found that I enjoyed building the business so much more. 

And some of those same skills that you learn in the workplace, you carry over with you to entrepreneurship. And some of those same skills that entrepreneurs have, you can take those into your workplaces. They call it intrapreneurship. Some organizations have that intrapreneurship culture, where they’re not being micromanaged, where they have a say, where they’re given a project, and left for weeks or months at a time to do it. They're creating intrapreneurship culture, and a lot of people are being satisfied or fulfilled at work, because they have that autonomy. 

 

M: That is brilliant. That is brilliant. There's so many options out there. And it goes back to that word “tolerate.” What are we willing to tolerate? The definition is: To allow the existence occurrence or practice of something that one does not necessarily like or agree with without interference. And I think a lot of what we talked about today is that “interference,” recognizing the things that bother us. When we set our values, are we going to tolerate these things? And if not, we interfere—we interfere by the way we look at it, we interfere by making lists, taking actions, thinking about solutions, and then ultimately, make a change, which is sometimes the hardest thing for people.

 

T: I think the best way to interfere is to speak up! We can assume that our bosses and our manager or supervisor know us, and that they must be able to tell that I'm not great at something. We can assume that they can figure all that out. Maybe they can't, and maybe they don't care! Maybe that fire is on them. As long as you’re getting things done, and the bottom line is being met, he doesn’t care. But if you speak up, maybe a resolution can be found.

It's about assessing the situation first. And like I said at the beginning, not saying “I'm tolerating my job” in general terms. What exactly are you tolerating? Assess the situation. And speak up. 

I think another huge part of the process is learning when, and with whom? Do not vent! I don't care that you and your co workers go out for lattes, for lunch, and drinks after hours. Now, yes, you can you can express some things about work if you choose to, and express some of your challenges that you're having. But we're not talking about venting. No, find somebody else to do that with. And I'm not just saying to vent to your friends. No. You have to choose the right friends, too. 

I can vent to some friends and just go on and on and on and on. But if it's not productive, what am I venting for? I can get stuff off my chest in the mirror! And I know people probably think differently from that. And that's fine. There's no right or no wrong way there. But when I vent to my best friend, she's asking questions. And she's helping me so that I go back the next day and I actually feel better and I'm actually taking steps to improve.

And it goes back to those standards. What is the most important standard? I learned is as a byproduct of another lesson from my very first leader in the army in my very first duty station. This is the army, right? Rules, regulations, policies, standard operating procedures, nationally and internationally. He asked me, “What is the what is the one standard, the only standard that really matters in the Army?” He said, “The only one that matters is the one that you enforce. That's the only standard that matters.” 

Now, he meant that they all matter. But if you are a leader you have to enforce it. Because if you're not going to enforce it, it doesn't matter. So the byproduct of that lesson is, that the most important standard that you can set when it comes to tolerating your job tolerating anything, or just any area of your life, is the conduct that you set for yourself. There is nothing that you can do to make anybody else do anything other than what they want to do and what they decide to do. You're the only person that you have control over.

It doesn't matter what is going on, you you show up, and you do what you're supposed to do. Because you have to understand it's about putting pride aside, putting bitterness aside. You have to understand that you're not showing somebody else who you are, you're showing your brain who you are. You're saying to your brain, this standard is acceptable. 

At the end of the day, you can say you did well, but look at other areas of your life. I bet those same things that you're doing in the workplace, where you’re cutting corners, I bet you're doing it in other areas.You are one person. The underlying motives behind your behavior is coming from one mind. Be a leader, you show up, and do what you're supposed to do, so that at the end of the day, you feel good. 

 

M: It's being a leader, being an intentional leader in every area of your life, having integrity with yourself, telling yourself you're going to do what you say you're going to do. Showing your brain with your actions, with your thoughts, that you are who you say you are. And that's how you're going to show up in the world and every area of your life.

I can tell how passionate you are about this!

 

T: This is a third of our lives, just about 90,000 hours! What are you trading your life for? At what cost? 

 

M: And that's why people need coaches. 

 

T: Exactly.

 

M: They have the answers inside of them. We're not here to tell them who to be.

 

T: Right, you're the expert on you. A lot of people look for answers outside of themselves. Because they're trying to get a clearer picture of the entire process. When all you need right now is the next step. You know, your next step. I may let myself off the hook. But if I have a coach or somebody to have me accountable, who is holding my vision for me, and not willing to let me off the hook, I actually get to where I want to go. And I get there faster. And I go further than I thought that I could. You know, it goes deeper than holding a vision, it is about asking the right questions. Because you might think that you've tried everything, you might think that you've thought of everything. But when you're speaking you're still hearing what’s in your head. As a coach, I'm listening to you. I'm taking my notes. I'm writing stuff that you're saying over and over again, I'm noticing things that take a blind eye to you, you think that is normal. That's just the way that you do things. You're not easily identifying that “this point right here” is what it is holding you back.

 

M: It’s usually one thing down, holding you back. Teaneishia, tell us about the link you're gonna share in today's live.

 

T: It's a guide book called “Change Your Job Right Where You Are” which is the one of the basic activities that I take my clients through. I don't believe that you have to wait until you get a new job before you experience fulfillment in your life. I don't believe that you should have to. So this guide book is going to walk you through it—it is going to give you some tips on how to go through that process around changing your your tasks, your relationships and some of your cognitive thinking about around the work that you do. Is is enough to get you started. And I can help you from there.

 

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