Rewiring Workplace Culture: A Brain-Based Approach with Lisa Marini

Tim Carroll (00:02)
Welcome to Culture at Work, the podcast that explores how to maintain a strong corporate culture in a rapidly changing world. I’m your host, Tim Carroll, inviting you to learn from industry leaders on how to build an exciting culture to bring people back to the office and inspire them like never before. On today’s episode, we have Lisa Marini, author of the couple’s playbook, Relationships Are a Team Sport, Set Yours Up to Win, is a brain-based performance coach in Denver, Colorado,

who focuses on human behavior and habits using the perspective of neuroscience. She left a 17-year-long career as a lead supervisor for a general contractor, building large multi-family dwellings to found her private practice in 2017. Lisa graduated from Colorado State University in 2000 and has since gained certifications in many modalities, including brain health coaching, hypnotherapy, brain spotting, neuro sculpting.

neuro-linguistic programming, heart math, and emotional freedom technique. Lisa supports her clients in making lasting life changes, finding new perspectives, shifting mindsets, and building the life of their dreams. This is a fantastic conversation about how mental health can affect culture at work. Let’s get right to it. Lisa, thank you so much for being with us today. And this is…

It’s always an interesting conversation that I get to have, but this one, I feel like it’s an important conversation, even more than maybe the rest. And that is because we’re talking about mental health and how culture can affect you personally and how you personally can affect culture. But want to start with how we always do. And that is just to ask you, how would you define culture?

Lisa Marini (01:52)
Yeah, it’s a great question. Thank you so much for having me on. It’s wonderful to be here. You know, when I look at culture, regardless of it being in a workplace or the culture of your family or just in general, I think there’s so much to be attributed to attitude, to behavior, to, you know, people’s intentions behind things, perceptions. I think there’s just so many things that make up culture.

Tim Carroll (02:14)
Attitude, I feel, can affect everything, right? I mean, I believe that’s the one thing we can bring to a situation is our attitude. to me, we could probably begin and end right there with that and how that could affect other people and how that could affect you if you just bring the right attitude to the situation, right?

Lisa Marini (02:36)
couldn’t agree more. And it’s so interesting how attitudes can be contagious. So if I bring the right attitude, and maybe you’re not in the best mind state, your attitude might change and vice versa. If I’m not coming in with the best attitude, that can be very contagious and it might affect you as well. having a very intentional mindset and way of showing up really matters.

Tim Carroll (02:57)
Well, hey, I’m going to put myself out on the limb here. so I do something and you can tell me whether this is is right or wrong way to handle things. But I prescribe to the fake it till you make it with in regards to attitude. You know, my answer to everybody, you know, how are doing today? Fantastic. That is my standard answer. Whether I really am or not, I feel like eventually. The words will follow will go in the.

the attitude will follow. So is that the right way to handle something?

Lisa Marini (03:34)
Well, I’ll never be the judge to tell anyone anything’s right or wrong, but I will definitely say from a brain-based perspective that the brain cannot tell the difference between a thought and reality. And, there’s so much to be said for having, you know, your thoughts aligned to a better state, a better environment. And if you start believing that, you start thinking it, you believe it, creates your reality. And so you’re actually those thoughts, that behavior, that attitude drives your reality. And…

You know, it’s sort of, I’m sure you’ve seen where people talk about, you know, the moment that you think of a yellow car and then you go out and you see a bunch of yellow cars. Previously, you wouldn’t have known how many yellow cars were out on the street. It’s the same type of thing that your thoughts really do drive what you’re going to see. And so I love that you show up saying you’re fantastic because then your brain’s going to start scrolling the environment to find all the things that are fantastic to align with that declaration, that proclamation that you’ve had.

Tim Carroll (04:32)
It seems to work well. I heard once, are you having a bad day or did you have a bad moment that you’re soaking for the entire day? So when I heard that once, it plays in my mind all the time. And so just want to put it out there and then maybe I’ll just eventually start to feel better. And to me, it works.

Lisa Marini (04:49)
Yeah, it does work and there’s actually science behind why it works. So I love that you’re doing it. you know, we’re naturally predisposed to see the negative in our environment just as a way to be safe. Our brains do scroll the environment for things that can be unsafe. So it does take extra effort to see the positive, but we actually can create when we start thinking positively.

and we do it more and more, becomes much easier to do that. It becomes now your disposition and how you show up. And I’m sure you’ve seen people that are always rainbow and sunshine and you’re like, wow, how do they do that when life is so hard and difficult? But the science behind it is they’ve changed their brain. They’ve actually grown parts of their brain that allow them to do that. And anybody can do that, which is really cool.

Tim Carroll (05:35)
So I think this is a good kind of bus stop of the conversation to just align everybody with what you do and what a brain coach can do and what you do for people on a daily basis.

Lisa Marini (05:48)
Yeah.

And I don’t know, you heard of Brain Coach before? Is this kind of a new concept for you?

Tim Carroll (05:54)
concept. I got to be honest, the first time we met I was this was intriguing to hear about a brain coach.

Lisa Marini (05:59)
You’ve heard of life coach, you’ve heard of coach, you’ve heard of all the. And if you look at that, what is the source of every decision you make, every behavior you have, every action you take, every thought you think the source of it is your brain. So we can go out and learn so many wonderful things from a life coach or from a nutritionist or a physical therapist or a trainer. But if we’re not learning how the brain works.

we’re doing a huge disservice to ourselves because I’m sure that you know that there are times that you are a really compassionate, loving man. And there are things that probably, you know, some kind of irk that happens or something throws you off your game and maybe your compassion is not there. You might find yourself a little bit irritable and maybe you feel a little Dr. Jekyll, Mr. Hyde. Have you ever had that experience? And you’re not a different person.

Tim Carroll (06:55)
Of course, yes.

Lisa Marini (06:59)
Right? It’s not that like you’re, an entirely different person that something came and possessed you and now you’re not who you think you are. Right? And there’s actually science behind that. And so when you’re hungry or there’s some other stimulus, your brain shifts and changes and it goes into a protective mode. And so your behavior changes because it thinks that there’s danger, even though there really isn’t, or it’s trying to self preserve. And so when we understand how the brain works,

Tim Carroll (07:05)
usually because I’m hungry.

Lisa Marini (07:27)
We can then access all of those amazing skills, tools, things that we’ve learned throughout our lifetime. It’s just we can’t access them when we’re in the wrong brain state. So that’s what I help people understand is how to navigate how the brain works so that we can be the best versions of ourselves without having to like white-knuckle it and hope for the best.

Tim Carroll (07:47)
Right. what were some like aha moments as you started down this path and you were in a different industry and saw a need for this and went down a different path. So what were some of the kind of my goodness moments as you were starting out down this road that really kind of got you hooked on this idea of brain coaching?

Lisa Marini (08:12)
Well, I didn’t even know brain coaching was a thing either. It was a surprise to me when I started to discover it. you my previous lifetime, I was, you know, a construction superintendent. So ran $80 million projects as a lead superintendent. And you can imagine as a woman in her 20s, how difficult that might be for my age and for my gender. There are very few, even now in the industry, in that role.

And so stress was a major issue for me. Stress for me showed up in a couple of ways. Number one, it was very physical. So I had tons of hair loss. I had memory loss, which scared the living out of me at 30 years old, late 20s with massive memory loss. And the thing that really scared me was my chronic migraines that ended me up in the emergency room many times.

And here I was, a single mom with small kids, really affected with my health. Every doctor I went to said, it’s stress. And they wanted to hand me some Zoloft or some pills. But what really intrigued me was how it affected my behavior so much, that I had done decades of personal development work. I mean, at that time, maybe 10 years of personal development work and really knew.

how to be a great leader, how to be a good listener, how to resolve conflict and running those large scale projects. You can imagine I had to have a lot of those skills to manage conflict and manage some big personalities. And there were days that I was really good at that. And we’d have sub meetings out in the construction trailers where everybody was getting along really well and the synergy was great. And then there were times that…

it wasn’t. And I would find myself being incredibly argumentative. I would, you know, be really aggressive and angry that my very worst self would show up if somebody had pissed me off or a deadline was missed. And it was just this really ugly version of myself. And I would come home on those days with these small children and I would just snap at them or, you know, just, God, it’s such a, I look back and it’s, and I’m embarrassed to think that that’s how I was with my children. But

I didn’t know any different. I didn’t know how to handle that or navigate it. And I thought I was broken. I thought there was something wrong with me. And I ended up at a conference with a neuroscientist and he was teaching about the brain and he put an image of the brain up on the screen and he says, this is what happens to the brain under stress. And that was literally the biggest aha moment I had ever had because I went, my God, this is physical. This isn’t me just trying to out tough stress or just be stronger, better.

tougher. was that there was a biological reason that I was behaving the way that I was. And it was such a relief to me to say, my God, okay, I don’t need anger management classes. I mean, probably at some point I did, but it wasn’t that I had to do this big character overhaul. It was how do I manage the biology of this? How do I manage this organ that controls everything? And it just became such a

much easier puzzle to solve versus the other unknown ethereal like, oh my gosh, there’s some bigger issues here. It was just a simple, oh, I just have to fix my brain. And that’s where I dove in and really started to study it and learn how the brain actually works and why it does what it does.

Tim Carroll (11:41)
Please forgive the next question because I’m going to ask a question that I think probably just is takes a lot of work that you do down to maybe one or two steps. So I know what I’m about to ask. There’s a lot that goes into it, but you know, we, we work in a, in a stressful industry and I see people that have migraines and all the physical manifestations of what you’re talking about. And are there

One or two tips, tricks that you can give something that they can do to head down a path to mitigate those.

Lisa Marini (12:15)
Yeah. And I love the question because this is why I do the work I do because I do want it to be these little bite-size, tangible, applicable tips that, you know, if I were to say, my gosh, Tim, you got to go in and you have to read all these books and do all this research. So when I lead companies, that is my intention is to go in and to have some really key things that are going to make massive amount of difference.

Tim Carroll (12:31)
Well, that’s what I would think.

Lisa Marini (12:40)
So I want to just give you the extremely high level of two different brain states and then how to address it. So we essentially live in one of two brain states. We’re either in a limbic state or in a prefrontal state. The limbic state is the fight and flight response. And these two brain states compete for resources. So it’s really binary in a sense. And I know this is very grossly oversimplified, but we live in one of these two states. And when we’re in that limbic state, the fight and flight, we don’t have access to

critical thinking, logic, strategy, kindness, compassion. We literally are defensive. And so when we’re in that state, we either shut down, we are reserved, we’re quiet. We see those people that just stonewall or they get really quiet. That’s more of a flight response. And then we see the people that are a bit more aggressive, that they’re snippy, they’re sarcastic, they’re passive aggressive. I tend to fall in that category. And so…

When we’re in those states, your brain actually thinks it’s in danger. Your brain has no discernment ability to distinguish an actual danger, the house catching on fire, versus a thought or worry. So maybe the thought or worry is, I didn’t make the deadline, or my boss is upset with me, I’m gonna get fired, or I don’t have enough money to make my mortgage.

And they can be much more trivial things too, like, wow, he didn’t call me back. He might not like me anymore. Or just little, anything can trigger us into the limbic response. The brain just simply goes, my God, there’s a danger you need to protect yourself. So when we go into that limbic state, so many of us think when we are stressed, we either have to just, like I said, a million times, tough it out, or we need to do something like yoga.

or meditation. Now I’m not saying there’s anything wrong with those. I teach those, I teach meditations, but there is a very physical part of stress. When we go into that limbic response, we release adrenaline, we release cortisol, we go into a sympathetic arousal state. So that’s what we have to address, is that arousal state. And one of the absolute best tools that you can do is shaking your body. So if you were to stand up and physically shake,

Every presentation I give or when I lead companies, I have the whole group stand up and everybody’s shaking and they’re like, what are we doing? But when they sit down, there’s a difference and you can see the difference in their face. You can see it in their body. Their body just, you know, is presented different. And I ask them why they think it works. Why do you think shaking your body works? Well, the answer is, you know, that we’re dealing with the stress hormones that have been released. So do you have a dog?

Tim Carroll (15:25)
We do.

Lisa Marini (15:25)
Yes. Yeah. does your dog shake when there’s thunder or fireworks? see it. Well, so they’re mammals. They have the same biological response that humans have. So their body floods with adrenaline and cortisol and they actually know how to deal with it. They dissipate it by shaking and using up those hormones. Humans don’t. We think we’re really tough. We think we can outthink it. And that’s the biggest problem is that we try to outthink it. So we lay in bed and we ruminate.

Tim Carroll (15:30)
Thank much.

Lisa Marini (15:52)
and we try to solve our problems intellectually, which then causes more limbic response states because we overthink things. And then if we’re worrying, we move ourselves back into that limbic state because the brain doesn’t know the difference. And then we release more adrenaline and then we’re wide awake and we wonder why we can’t sleep. So we ruminate and we fall into this pattern over and over. And so there’s just such a misconception that we should outthink it. We should problem solve it somehow. We just really have to be physical about it.

And for some flight response, people doing the yoga or breathing or those types of things can be very helpful. But honestly, since it’s a biological thing, that is the number one tool that I can give people. And it’s hilarious. Like people from 10 years ago, they go, gosh, I still shake all the time. And it’s the biggest tool ever. Now, it may cause a problem if you’re the only person in the company that knows it and you stand up from a board meeting and you start shaking. So you might call night club. But it’s helpful when the entire team knows, this is what we’re doing and why we’re doing it.

And when we down regulate that limbic response, that then allows us to access those prefrontal states. And when we’re in the prefrontal state, that is the best place for us to have better attitude, better behavior, better intentions, better perception. So when we talked about company culture, when we’re in those prefrontal states, we can be in those better states. It’s so much easier to say, yeah, I’m in a good mood. I have good intentions today.

When you’re in Olympic state, it’s out the window. You’re in protect yourself at all costs kind of mode and you don’t care if you’re snapping at someone. So culture comes so much from those prefrontal states as well.

Tim Carroll (17:31)
we’re going to break away for just a quick message and we’ll be right back after this. At Working Spaces, we do much more than just sell furniture. We immerse ourselves in the culture of each and every client and then create spaces that inspire. Inspire creativity, inspire productivity, and inspire connectivity.

So if you’re looking to create an office space that inspires your employees to want to come back to the office, collaborate face to face, and do their best work every day, contact Working Spaces. Working Spaces, the innovative leader in office furniture and design since 1999. Now in six markets nationwide.

Welcome back to Culture at Work. The shaking I love and yeah, I think it could be awkward if you were doing it knowing what you were doing. So maybe, you know, the whole company needs to do that. But that seems to be a proactive response. I go back to these migraines and I don’t get migraines. Thank the Lord. But from what I understand, they’re very painful. And so I don’t know if shaking is going to… Are you…

Is it too late when it starts to manifest it in that way?

Lisa Marini (18:49)
Well, sure. mean, yeah, I’m not going to shake off a migraine, but if I had that tool, you know, two weeks prior to a migraine and I dissipate my stress and I lower my cortisol levels, you know, which create inflammation in my body, when we have chronic amounts of cortisol, it damages our cells.

and then it releases free radicals, which creates inflammation in the body. So if it was something that I’m doing and it’s a consistent thing and it’s, you you’re not gonna go to the gym and look, come out after day one and look like Arnold, right? There’s a process to it, but it’s something that can actually in the moment when you feel that trigger, when you feel that like the anger, you wanna hit send on that email that you just angrily typed out, that’s a great time to shake.

And so a consistent pattern of that can keep it from a migraine, right? When we’re at the migraine stage, we’ve gone too far. It’s clear we haven’t taken care of ourselves.

Tim Carroll (19:41)
So you mentioned you do work with organizations. And so what other ways are you seeing when you’re working with companies that the individuals or baggage that we may bring can affect company culture?

Lisa Marini (19:57)
my gosh, think about your own limiting beliefs. I’m not good enough, I’m not smart enough, I can’t get something done. Just that individual perception of yourself then starts to have other people react to you and wondering, gosh, what’s going on with this person? They might think, they’re mad at me. So can be, that whole thing can get really distorted. But I would say additionally, just kind of what I explained with that limbic state versus prefrontal state.

When we’re in those prefrontal states, that’s where, like I mentioned, the company culture is gonna be a lot better, because people are gonna look out for each other. And they might see somebody who’s distressed or upset and go up to them and say, hey man, do you need some support right now? Is everything good? If people are showing up in these limbic response states and they’re in their own mind, they’re in their own worry, they’re not gonna see somebody else being distressed or upset. They’re gonna be so self-focused. It’s really hard to be a servant leader.

When we’re in limbic states, it’s hard to look out for everyone else and everything becomes so self-centered if we’re not in that frontal brain state.

Tim Carroll (21:03)
You’ve clearly I’m certain because there’s bad culture all over the place. I’m sure you’ve been in organizations that have you have noticed may have challenged or challenged culturally, you know, internally, right? And what are some things that you feel that that individuals can do to help change that, you know, taking it on themselves? What can they do individually short of leaving? Right? I mean, that’s that’s that’s one way but

You’re in it, you like it, but you want to just change the current culture. What are some things that you feel individuals can do?

Lisa Marini (21:40)
That’s a great question. And yeah, I’ve seen it and it’s really unfortunate. I do a lot of leadership trainings within organizations and it’s so unfortunate when there’s so many good people in one spot and a dysfunctional culture. It’s our natural tendency to point fingers. It’s a natural tendency to say it’s the leadership’s fault or my manager’s fault or there’s a bad seed. And I think in that we become…

the victim of the circumstance and we try to think that it’s other people’s problem and we’re just going to sit around and Eeyore our way around the office or just be angry. And honestly, I think the number one thing people can do is to keep themselves in a good state and look at it like they have a force field around them. That no matter what my manager says, no matter what that person over there is saying and doing, you can’t affect me. These are your thoughts, that’s your junk, that’s your anger.

it can affect me. And the more that we can self-regulate and stay in our truth and stay in our good positive mindset, that can be contagious as well. And somebody might say, gosh, you’re always in a great mood. I know you’ve hung around people like that where you’re like, man, I’ve had a rough day. I’m going to go hang out with that person over there because they just seem to bring my mood up. And if we can truly stay in our own state, then we start to believe that reality that things are good, just like the yellow car.

Gosh, I could sit here and be frustrated and see everything wrong in this company and why everybody’s screwing up. What we focus on grows and that’s our reality. So when we can focus on the good and maintain our own positive mindset and start seeing the good things, then we see good things, right? It is only perception.

Tim Carroll (23:21)
So again, I’m going to throw this out there, see if my thought process is on track or off and feel free to say it’s off. But you hear people say, you know, well, they made me feel bad or they make me feel whatever. And I’ve always thought and I heard this long time. That’s not my thought. I heard this many, many years ago and I always think about it is that you can’t make me feel anything. It’s my choice to affect me. Right. mean, is that the right way to look at?

Lisa Marini (23:50)
That’s absolutely right. I I’m trying to think of an analogy of how you could be more, more distinguished in like seeing something that if it was, I had a piece of cake and I said, here, eat this. And you’re like, I don’t want to eat it. And I’m like, you need to eat it. And then you eat it. And you say, made you eat it. No, you chose to eat it. Right. It’s different. so hard to see because it’s not a tangible tactical thing about you made me feel some way, but no, it’s no different than the cake analogy.

You didn’t make me feel angry. I felt angry based on your behavior or actions, but it’s a choice. And that’s a really hard concept, I think, for people to realize that our actions, our behavior, our mood, our perceptions are a choice. But it is gonna be the most liberating and most powerful thing anyone can learn when they recognize, have a choice to feel angry. I have a choice to feel happy. If they can see somebody over there who normally triggers them, that gets their goat, that pushes their buttons.

and they can look at them and go, and watch it as if it’s a soap opera, watch as if they’re watching a movie, and realize you don’t have an effect on me and they choose to not be bothered by that, man, that’s an incredibly powerful tool.

Tim Carroll (25:03)
think we’d have a lot better organizational cultures out there if everyone could just have that mentality. Nobody can make me feel any way. I’m going to choose joy.

Lisa Marini (25:13)
It’s hard

to choose joy when there’s like a difficult conversation. We might just choose to not react. But I love that, you know, then afterwards to choose joy. Like I’m really proud of myself for not reacting. I really feel happy and joyful that I did that.

Tim Carroll (25:27)
You didn’t do a really good job today. Okay, I’m to find joy in that somehow. Yeah, I guess my head doesn’t work. All right, so I, you know, I believe that and we talk about this at Working Spaces all the time that what we do is important because we create environments where people feel like they can do their best work. And if they’re doing their best work and they feel really engaged and happy and fulfilled that

translate to the home where it can make the home life better. So I do believe that there is this crossroads as much as you may hear somebody say don’t bring your bad stuff from home to work. I think it’s impossible and vice versa by the way, but how can we mitigate that? What are some things we can do to help help us from bringing the baggage with us and maybe leaving it at the door or helping us?

deal with it appropriately so we don’t have any of that baggage.

Lisa Marini (26:27)
the one thing that we bring with us everywhere we go.

Tim Carroll (26:30)
Well, I would say the thing at the beginning would be the attitude, but…

Lisa Marini (26:33)
We have the attitude and where did the attitude come from? Our brain. Our brain is with us. When you’re going to keep hearing me preach about the brain, but it’s the work that I do and I believe in it so much that our brain is always the CEO. It’s the thing that’s going to determine everything. And so what happens is if we have a conflict at home, let’s say we get in a fight with our spouse and then we go into that limbic state and we bring a limbic state into work. And so it affects our workspace and vice versa. If everything is great at home.

we’re going to bring a prefrontal brain state and a good attitude to the workplace. Or if something negative happens at work and we missed a deadline or we got in trouble or we screwed something up, we keep that limbic response state in our brain and we bring it home. Right? So we have to find a way to sort of, you know, check that at the door, if you will. You know, if you had mud on your boots, you’re going to take your boots off before you come into the house and the other way around. And so really, you know, my answer to your question is how are you navigating your brain states? How are you

regulating your nervous system because it’s not the external environment we need to fix, it’s the internal environment. And it’s a much easier thing to fix because it’s personal and we can know how to do it. And then we don’t have to try to control other people’s behaviors or actions. So if we can just manage our own, we’re good, we’re golden.

Tim Carroll (27:48)
Well, fantastic. I could really speak to you for hours. What if, if I know we have people in organizations, not just in, our commercial furniture industry, but other organizations, if they were interested in this may be the first time they’d heard of a brain coach, but they hear something here that really intrigues them and want to engage with you to into their organization. How would they do that?

Lisa Marini (28:14)
Yeah, they can just reach out to me. That’s probably the best way. ElMarini.com is my website and I can send you all my contact info. You know, it’s amazing to work with organizations, regardless of how deep I go into it. You know, some companies I come in just to do, you know, a single presentation to introduce the brain states, to give somebody a new perspective. And then there’s other companies that I do full leadership programs with, and then they tack on one-on-one coachings. You know, there’s a whole different spectrum of services that I

can offer but you know truly my my intention is to help people have some freedom have some new ways to show up in the world and the only way to do that is to understand how the brain works so in any way I can support people that’s what I’m here for.

Tim Carroll (28:58)
You’re doing great work. It’s unbelievable. I’ve it’s unbelievable. I had never heard of a brain coach before. I’m so glad I have now and I love that there there are people like you out there helping us to understand how our brains work a little bit more every day. So thank you so much for being here and thank you for what you do.

Lisa Marini (29:15)
I appreciate you. Thank you so much.