Weirdos In the Workplace

Weirdos in the Workplace is a podcast about building successful organizations through servant leadership, fostering creativity, high performing teams, and trust-based healing cultures. Join us to learn how embracing "weirdness" can lead to better workplaces.

Transforming LinkedIn Bullying Into The #DecideToBeKind Movement ft. Shelly Elsliger 11/06/2024

Transforming LinkedIn Bullying Into The #DecideToBeKind Movement ft. Shelly Elsliger Intro: Shelly Elsliger, founder of Linked-Express, is a celebrated LinkedIn Trainer and Social Connection Maker. Founder of the #decidetobekind movement, she tackles online bullying and promotes a culture of kindness. Recognized by the National Women Speakers and a Forbes contributor, Shelly is a voice for diversity and psychological safety in the workplace. In her personal time, she enjoys pickleball and supports animal welfare in Nova Scotia. Writing a book, almost done, “From Connections to Protection: combating bullying on linkedin” - coming out in early 2025! Stay in Touch with Shelly: To learn more about Shelly and her Services: Bullying on LinkedIn is a little bit more discreet and it's not in your face like it is with some of the other social media sites you have to be very diligent. If you're dealing with a bully, don't think anything goes past them. And just remember that they can just come up like a chameleon and, and, and change their spots. Welcome to weirdos in the workplace. The podcast that celebrates authenticity, transparency, passion, and purpose in our world of work today. I'm your host, Erin Patchell, and welcome to Shelly Ellslager, my friend. Hi, Shelly. Hi, thanks for joining me. Thanks for having me. My pleasure. Uh, Shelley Elsliger is the founder of linked express. She's a celebrated LinkedIn trainer and social connection maker, the founder of the decide to be kind movement, hashtag decide to be kind. She tackles online bullying and promotes a culture of kindness. She's been recognized by the national women's speakers and is a Forbes contributor. She's the voice for diversity and psychological safety in the workplace and in her personal time. She enjoys Pickleball, uh, and supports animal welfare in Nova Scotia. And Shelley, I was so excited just right before the show that you're going to be an author soon in early January, February 2025. Um, book called From Connections to Protection, Combating Bullying on LinkedIn. That's amazing. You're so cool. I love you. It's great to talk about it, actually. Thank you. Getting it out there early. I like that. Yeah, that's good. Yeah, no, no, no. Um, I mean, you're probably one of the most prolific LinkedIn, uh, trainers that I've ever met. Um, so, you know, that's pretty, I think that's pretty neat. You know, you're, you've deep dived right in. Yeah. I don't know my life without LinkedIn, to be honest. I, I, it's just such a big part of what I do and what I help other people to do and achieve. So I just feel it's just a part of my regular everyday life. Every day, but. I've been using and promoting LinkedIn for a long, long time. Yeah, I actually love LinkedIn. I am not a fan of other social media platforms, mainly because I think, you know, the discussion kind of we're, we're going to be talking a little bit about bullying and online bullying today and, you know, and just being a, just a. Big, big jerk all around, you know, people being jerks. Um, but I find like, like Twitter or X, you know, even like Instagram, Facebook, uh, Twitter, YouTube's terrible nowadays. You know, you can't look at a comment section without. Without just having it turn your stomach anymore, you know, um, anyways, we're going to go down that rabbit hole, uh, further, but I want to know, like, how did you get so invested in LinkedIn? Like, tell me what that journey was like for you. So it's interesting how you know my relationship with LinkedIn became more than just the average person I mean I, I was an educator as a career development specialist I mean still am in many ways but that took up a big part of my career so there was. LinkedIn had, like early on, had a contest and about what would you do, you know, if you were a LinkedIn trainer, how would you take LinkedIn and, and make LinkedIn something that would, um, improve, uh, somebody's, uh, life or a group of people's lives. You know what I mean? What would you do? And I had the idea that I. Would create this workshop or series called LinkedIn and High Heels, and there's a story behind that by Hilton, but that I would create something for women business leaders called LinkedIn and High Heels and, um, to, to get them to rise up. So, you know, you can wear anything you want, but to rise up to the occasion, and how you could brand yourself effectively. On LinkedIn and get over imposter syndrome and really create a space, um, as a woman leader on LinkedIn. And so when I presented this, and the funny thing is, is that I really didn't have an idea. So I presented it, won the contest, went to Calgary, ended up, you know, at this conference, which was kind of like the, what I won, um, ended up at a coffee shop. I'm standing in line. I see somebody with the LinkedIn. jacket on. And of course, I know everything there is to know. So I decide that I'm going to pay a latte forward. And I'm going to, all of a sudden I got this idea, I'm going to call it a LinkedIn latte. So person orders and I come up and I say, I'll pay for that, you know, I'll pay that forward. And so then I said, and here's your LinkedIn latte. And then anyway, we ended up sitting down and had an interesting conversation. Two hours later, when we should have been at the conference and networking, we were kind of like chatting. And then this whole idea came up that I, about what I had presented and why I had won and all of this. You know, the whole story behind it, and it, it just, let's just say that coffee, and I think coffee is so powerful in creating relationships and opportunities, and I, I use the LinkedIn Latte thing ever since, but, don't trust anyone who doesn't drink coffee, by the way, yes, but it doesn't even have to be a coffee, it can be anything. It's just that whole idea of social, like I call LinkedIn Latte everything, um, you know, but the whole idea of just. Using something to create connection. And with that coffee, I ended up being introduced to some key players at, at LinkedIn and people who liked my ideas and people who supported me and, and I ended up. Just becoming kind of this. I don't, I don't want to say I was part of the LinkedIn team I wasn't at that point but it was somebody that they were looking at as you know somebody as a speaker somebody they could trust, because at that time we got to remember this is quite a ways back it doesn't happen today. But they were looking for people who needed, who could, you know, spread the word and help people learn about their LinkedIn, uh, learn more about their LinkedIn experience and their LinkedIn profile and optimizing their profile because that's not really what LinkedIn Canada does. It's not what they do either. Right. They're for sales. That's how they make money. So anyway, so it transpired and it grew. And then I ended up actually working with LinkedIn, like working with LinkedIn as an external liaison for University of Toronto for, um, uh, for a three, a three year period and actually working on LinkedIn learning and optimizing your profile. And so that was a significant, um, three year stint of working with LinkedIn, like working in that capacity. So, yeah, so that's how it all transpired. So that's quite a ways back. And ever since then, ever since being. Having the opportunity to present what I would want to do with LinkedIn, um, ever since then, I, I've been a believer and I, I am just promote it wherever it can go. And right now in 2024, it's no longer optional before it was, it's no longer optional today. No, I agree. I'm shocked that When I see people that aren't on LinkedIn, um, and I don't know how they, I don't know how they, they support their own careers, you know, I guess they're just happy with the job they have. And that's great for them. And I hope that they never lose it. No, like that. And that is the issue because many people think that they only should be on LinkedIn for a job. If they're not looking for a job, then hey, let me get off LinkedIn and then go back if I need a job. And that creates so much havoc with your space on LinkedIn. Mm-Hmm. , your, your algorithm. Mm-Hmm. , um, how your algorithm runs on LinkedIn and, and actually you're not, you're doing yourself a disservice because LinkedIn is actually a networking site. So if you're only on there to find a job, then you're taking away all of the, all of what has to happen on LinkedIn to lead up to, to that, you know, you're not building those connections. You're not building trust. You're not showing your expertise. You're not working with the LinkedIn algorithm by, you know, only coming in when you think you should. And that's just totally like a myth. It's just because LinkedIn is at the end of the day, a net, a networking site and everything is grounded in. You're like, let's put it this way. You're like ability score on LinkedIn is how well you network. Right. Yeah, that makes perfect sense. Um, and it's, it's, it's like, you know, demonstrating your expertise anywhere else in the world to, you know, LinkedIn is just, you know, it's, it's, um, Kind of like a microcosm of the rest of the world, right? It's just like condensed into one space. Um, so the opportunity is huge if you can take advantage of it by demonstrating your expertise and like sharing knowledge and ideas with people, you know, connecting with interesting people, getting curious. Um, I do find like, this is why I love LinkedIn so much. It's because it's, it feels like the majority of people there, Have like kind of that growth mindset that you, you want to cultivate with your, in your network, or at least I do. The people in my network, you know, tend to be doing interesting things. They're curious. They're starting businesses or starting interesting projects or volunteering. They're getting involved in their communities. Um, and I think that's amazing. And so when you told me that there's actually, um, this, this rather, you know, surprisingly large group of people that are actually using LinkedIn as like a tool for bullying, um, and then there's sort of like a dark underbelly. I was so surprised. Um, can you, can you lead us into that a little bit? Yes, I mean, it's not, you know, I wish I could say that LinkedIn could hide itself from bullying. I, and I don't say this, and I talk about bullying on LinkedIn a lot. Um, and I don't say it to discourage people from using LinkedIn. I mean, I'm such an advocate for LinkedIn. But I, you know, LinkedIn is one of those sites where people Go in sometimes blindly like they they want to go in believing that we're everyone's professional and everyone is going to take that professional space seriously. And, um, lift each other up and it is nice to believe that and for the most part, bullying on LinkedIn is a little bit more discreet and it's not in your face like it is with some of the other social media sites. So, because of that, many people don't suspect it there. And, but it's, it exists, because at the same time. Naturally, there are people, jealous people, um, angry people, um, frustrated people and LinkedIn can be kind of a really good place for them to, um, take out the, those feelings. And, um, bully or harass people is a way for them to, um, gain power. I mean, bullying on LinkedIn is no different than bullying any place. Um, bullies are, have, um, a need or a desire to, um, lash out at others as a way to mask their insecurities. And when you're dealing with LinkedIn in a professional site. You're dealing with a lot of power players, you're dealing with jealous colleagues, these are just the potential. You're dealing with people who are very opinionated, and I mean that in a very exaggerated way. And you have people who are wanting the attention and not knowing how to get it in any other way. Right? And then you have what I call podmasters. And they are the, the ones that look like they're your best friends and act like they're your best friends and look like they're really looking out for you, but they're not. And they, they go after you and control you in a way to, to, that looks to you like support or feels like support and inclusivity, but it's actually not because as soon as you make a wrong move. You're also from the group, and that can be very difficult for many people. So it exists. It can just be not as not as visible to people looking in as like YouTube, Facebook, Instagram. Right. They can be much more visible. So, you know, my idea is that we have to know about it to do something about it. We don't have to know about it to run away from it because bullying exists everywhere. Um, but we have a chance by learning and opening ourselves up to understanding how it plays out to do something about it when we're in that situation. And I think that that's what's important to me because I've had bullies in my life. And when I became old enough to, to understand it and to do something about it, I decided to become a true advocate and do something about it. And because LinkedIn takes up so much of my life. Learning about some of the stories that I have over the years, just kind of like those stories kind of did it for me like they kind of like the like where I was going with LinkedIn and kind of just created another space that I could that I found myself in been very passionate about because It's not something that's talked about that often when it comes to LinkedIn, but something that's really important to talk about. A hundred percent. And I think it's, it's, you know, when you go on Twitter, when you go on YouTube, it's, you see the comments, it's kind of easy to ignore them in a way because you're ready for it. You know, you're ready. They're there, you're, you're kind of your guards up, you know, and I know sometimes I've posted some, you know, YouTube videos, like weird as in the workplace videos, uh, and there have been quite a few, usually they're in the DEI or, you know, inclusion space. Which is very sad. And those are the videos that get targeted the most, you know, by online bullies and dissenters and people who are just philosophically opposed, you know, to, to being kind to others, essentially, you know, and actually including others and considering others. So, um, which it sounds crazy, but, um, you know, they're, they're, they're out there. So, yeah, but, so, but, but the, the point is, um, you don't expect that on LinkedIn. Right. So, you know, I think that it is. harder to handle when you're not expecting it. You know, when you're, you feel like you're, you know, in a space where you can be authentic and let your guard down and then, you know, then it hits you and then something happens. Um, and that's probably even, that's probably that much more traumatizing, I would think. It is. And, and it's happened to several people and, um, it's, it's so, um, impactful that I mean, you know, I could tear up at some of the stories that I've heard over the years because you, you know, most of us go into LinkedIn with so much trust and we're remote. We're doing is we're going on LinkedIn because we want to open that open our, how do you say that? Our circle of trust. We want to open that by going on LinkedIn. And then what happens when we do encounter a bully, our, our, our power, our trust. Like it, it, we suddenly, suddenly something happens and we're just not expecting it. We're not expecting that that's going to happen. Right? So, so what happens is it just may, it, it, everything it, that we've gone into LinkedIn with thinking about and imagining and, and that, that, that circle that we want so badly to, In large suddenly has been disintegrated with with with a remark or, um, with bullying or harassment and it closes people down it. It it's sometimes unrecoverable for some people, they just can't come back, they leave the platform like it because it's so they just went in there with a sense of trust and they didn't suspect anything. So when that happened, it was so devastating that the result was devastating as well. And that's why I'm happy to be talking about it and writing a book about it. Because. Awareness will is key awareness is that you go into LinkedIn, but you still have to have kind of and I call it like, you know, a bully alert system. And just be aware that it can happen because LinkedIn is not immune to bullying, LinkedIn is not immune to it. It's just. It may show up in different spots. It may hide its ugly head. And it's easy to hide. Bullies can easily hide on LinkedIn because they can use What's there for them, like direct messaging, they can put things in like a really crowded, like, um, let's say a post does really well and they can take that post and manipulate it in some way, shape or form. So there's just little, little way, there's, there's more ways to do it on LinkedIn that is not as outward as you would see on some of the other sites. Yeah, I mean, yeah, I think it's very interesting, especially if you're someone who's new to LinkedIn, you know, that that phase that those first several weeks or months when you're on LinkedIn, or if maybe you're coming back, maybe you've had an account for a while, but you've never really been active, you know, and you decide to become active on LinkedIn, those are like really vulnerable moments, you know, like it's usually people are stepping way outside their comfort zone when they begin to become active on LinkedIn. And so, you know, I can see that that would, that would be very difficult. Um, I have a lot of experience with bullying as a younger person. Um, we were bullied, bullied pretty profoundly, uh, you know, in, in, um, you know, when, in the younger years, um, And, uh, yeah, so I, I mean, I, I've never tolerated it with anyone. It's one of my major triggers. You know, even I've, we've been walking with my husband on the street, you know, seeing kids bullying another kid and I will lose my shit, Shelly. I will literally like, I will, I will go off, you know, and, and I'm not like saying we should go yell at other people's kids or whatever, but it's happened once or twice. You know, like it's just it's just such a big trigger like you should never treat people with disrespect. You know, I get it. I get it. Yeah. I don't I don't sit back and I, I can be pretty quiet, Matt, like my manner is kind of quiet. But when it comes to that I become somebody different. I, I, because I was bullied, um, and that's how the LinkedIn and High Heels came out, which you can talk about later, but I, um, yeah, it's a trigger for me as well. And it's a trigger for me on LinkedIn as well. It's, it's like when I see it, because I became a CSI on LinkedIn for a year and reached out to people who had no, who were no longer active because I did a changemaker series for about three years where I, Every month, pretty much every month, I had a change maker series on people that I had become acquainted with or even friends with on LinkedIn. And suddenly I saw people dropping off and not being there anymore. And so reaching out to them or finding them through another method and then hearing their stories. It just broke me. It really broke me because, you know, what happened when I was younger broke me as well. I mean, I recovered. I took that adversary and, you know, that adverse situation when I was,... /episode/index/show/2351f999-02cb-4568-ab77-a59f33bb3fd3/id/33636167

The Art of Effective Leadership Coaching ft Laurie Fenske 10/16/2024

The Art of Effective Leadership Coaching ft Laurie Fenske Welcome Laurie Fenske to "Weirdos in the Workplace"! Laurie embodies a lifelong philosophy of learning from every experience, embracing each challenge as an opportunity for growth. In 2016, Laurie pivoted her professional focus towards her true passion—coaching. Today, as a MCC level ICF certified coach, she offers bespoke solution-based coaching across North America and Europe. Laurie’s coaching sessions are energized and focused, aimed at significantly boosting productivity, enhancing leadership capabilities, improving team dynamics, and refining communication skills. Stay in Touch with Laurie: For more on Laurie and her Services: Welcome to Weirdos in the Workplace, the podcast that celebrates authenticity, transparency, passion, and purpose in our world of work today. And I'm here with the lovely Lori Fenske. Say hi, Lori. Hi, Erin. Thank you for having me out here today. This is awesome. Awesome. Yeah. I'm super excited to have you on the show. Um, so Laurie embodies a lifelong philosophy of learning from every experience, embracing each challenge as an opportunity for growth. And in 2016, she pivoted her professional focus towards her true passion coaching today as an MCC level, ICF certified coach. She offers bespoke solution based coaching across North America and Europe. So I just want to pause there for a minute, Lori, because. As an ICF certified coach myself, you know, as part of the board of the ICF Ottawa, I'm extremely passionate about coaching. And you know, that cause we've worked working together and we've been supporting each other and have known each other for almost eight years now. So almost since you started coaching, um, I just want to take a minute. To say congratulations for achieving that MCC level, because I know how difficult that really is. I've known people that have been going through that process and it is probably one of the harder things that you'll probably do, I think. for recognizing that. Yeah, it was tough. Um, it, it is what it is and I'm glad to be on this side of it for sure. Yeah, definitely. Um, and the, for those of you who are listening who don't know what we're talking about, MCC is a master certified coach level with the ICF, the international coach federation. Um, and you re you need at least 5, 000 hours in order to achieve that. 2500 hours, 500 coaching hours. Yeah. Um, I feel like it's 40 continuing education credits. It's working with a mentor coach for at least 10 hours, um, for preview, previewing your, your client, uh, recordings, how you show up and then an exam at the end of it. So yeah, it was, it was, um, it was a long journey, but, uh, completely worthwhile. I'm so grateful that I, that I've completed that. Yeah. And I know from a few other people, friends who've, who've gone through it, they say that the 2, 500 hours is like the easy part, you know, that's the easy part. It sounds like a lot of hours and it is, but really it's, um, it's just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to getting that certification, because you have to be like, so good at demonstrating those competencies. And, um, just, you know, in that same vein. So, after I got through it, I had some ideas on how to set people up for success, because it is, you know, grueling isn't an exaggeration. And so I actually put together an MCC mentorship program that isn't just about. The recordings, because that's often what mentor coaching is, is listening to the recordings, giving you feedback. But I've made it about everything, right? About the hours, the recordings, the exam, the competencies, all of it. Because I think that people should go in with eyes wide open. And I, I didn't necessarily, which I think was part of the, part of the big mountain to climb. Yeah. Yeah. Absolutely. Yeah. Yeah. Your expectations need to be set, I think, in order to have the resilience you need to keep going. Yeah. Right. It's like, I don't know if I remember when I was like pregnant with my first child example, some people can relate to maybe, um, I, you know, they say it's going to be nine months. And so, you know, you think that's the end date and then all of a sudden you're overdue and then like those last two weeks are literally torture. Right. But if anyone, everyone told you it was a 10 month process that nine and a half weeks wouldn't feel or nine and a half months wouldn't feel so bad. Right. Right. Yeah, exactly. Setting expectations. Yeah, 100%. So, um, okay. So folks, we're going to really talk today about Um, coaching, coaching leaders specifically, um, Laurie, I, I, you know, I, I introduced Laurie, but I really didn't introduce Laurie. So, you know, I've known Laurie for quite a while. We met, um, like I said, almost eight years ago. And Laurie, I think you're one of the most competent, um, driven coaches and resilient coaches that I've ever met, honestly. And I'm, I'm. I'm just, I'm not just saying that, you know, I don't just say stuff, right. Um, you have like a persistence and a, like, it's like a focus that very few people have, and I know that that's why your clients love you so much. So, um, I really look forward to hearing what you, what all your thoughts are around leaders of leaders. Absolutely. Thank you so much. That means a lot. I have a huge amount of respect for you, Aaron. So that means a lot coming from you. So thank you. I appreciate you. Um, okay. So, you know, I'd love to like, let's begin with like the landscape right now, you know, um, we have a very complex world that feels like it's going very, very fast. Um, I think a lot of people out there will resonate, you know, with that, like, You know, kind of like the constant scramble and we're always told, we're always like told that, you know, if we're not achieving some kind of work life balance, we're doing it wrong. Right. Um, what are the, what are the challenges that you're seeing leaders come in to you with, like, what are they struggling with in their core? Well, um, you talk about work life balance and actually, um, I call it work life harmony because I don't know that those two are ever in balance, but if they can work harmoniously, so giving a little bit this week, getting it back again next week, and that for sure is something, and, and, um, You know, the craziness of remote. So I'm sitting here in Sherwood Park, you're sitting there in Ontario, um, and yet I feel like you're across, you know, my desk from me. With that, um, with that remote work comes just this expectation of never turning it off, right? Never turning it off. And, and so I do see work life harmony a lot. And, um, I, I talk to people about, you know, um, Getting selfish, right? Like, pre COVID, nobody expected you to work 14 hour days from, from your home office. You know, you were commuting, you were socializing, you were doing all of this. So, we do talk a lot about, about slowing down to, to kind of get forward. But as it relates like to the executives or the leaders of leaders that I'm seeing, you know, there's kind of, um, I guess, five top competencies or skill sets that people seem to be really gravitating towards. Emotional intelligence and, um, emotional intelligence isn't just a buzzword. You know, it's, it's something where people really need to know, um, how to manage their personal emotions. They, they need to know how they're showing up. They need to understand the dynamics of those in their, in their, in their life. In their circle, um, communication, you know, being a visionary and, and not only having the visionary, the vision in your own mind, but being able to communicate it transparently and get people energized by it, um, elevating performance, nobody wants to do poorly, but how do great leaders get the best out of themselves, their team, the organization as a whole. Um, I think self awareness is huge. The ability to really understand, um, ourselves, but, but also how do we interact with others, then how are we showing up with them? Um, and then the resilience, uh, you know, I talk a lot about, you know, You want to work with a leader who can get through a storm, but not not know what to do after the storm is a fail, right? They need to have a strategy. They need to be forward thinking, um, nimble, flexible to to really come out the other side with a plan in place that they can then communicate and, you know, get embraced and continue and continue forward. What kind of feelings do leaders, um, at any level, any of your clients have when they're coming to you for support? Um, I think a lot is humility, understanding that, um, there is, you know, coaching is not psychology. I mean, it's, it's, it's not therapy. It's a partnership. And my style of coaching is, uh, you know, through powerful questions, finding solution. So people, I think first come with a sense of humility, um, having to reach out a bit of vulnerability, which I think is actually a very attractive characteristic in a leader. Um, and I wouldn't say hopelessness, but an, an awareness, like I can't keep doing what I'm doing. How do I find something new to do? Right. Yeah, they found they've hit, they've hit the end of their capabilities or the capacities in some way. Yeah, they know they need help. Uh, do they always know they need help? Not necessarily, not necessarily. Um, in some cases I'm brought in to an organization and people are chosen to be part of a coaching program. Coaching programs are often part of a reward system, a merit system. You're seen as an overproducer, um, you're seen as a high producer or high achiever. And so coaching, you know, is put in front of you to just elevate you even more. But sometimes people come to it not understanding that, not understanding it's a time of celebration, but rather it's like, Oh, are you the principal? Cause I feel like I'm at the principal's office. Um, and they're, you know, what coaching. My style of coaching is not for any, for everyone. Um, and so there's a lot, some coaches call it a chemistry meeting, um, but that get to know you, you know, I want to hear about them. I tell them my background. I tell them my belief, what, how I see coaching, my belief in coaching. Um, How I got to be, you know, on this side of the desk, and if it's not a fit, then I'm grateful. I have quite, um, a network of coaches that have different styles than I, and I introduced them to somebody else, because if it's not a fit, it's not going to work for anybody. No. Um, yeah, definitely. Like with a positivist group, we have a coach fit guarantee, like a coaching guarantee. So, you know, if, if it's not a good fit, you know, we'll restart your program with a new coach, or if we don't have a great coach for you, we'll find one. Right. Um, and I think, I think it's so important and I think it's. Um, and I feel like we learned this the hard way, or I've learned this the hard way that if you don't get a good fit coach fit, then it, it, it really, you, you can't have a successful program at all. I think it's yeah. Like second only probably to the client's own desire for coaching, I think. Um, yeah, yeah, I always tell my clients, like, we're going to work hard, we're going to do some heavy lifting and we're going to have some fun because I never want a client to be like, Oh, my God, I'm seeing Laurie today, like, you want it to be something that they look forward to that they're excited to share their achievements with. And I have certainly, um, hung on to clients too long. I know that it's part of the learning and building out a successful coaching practice. So, um, yeah, that fit is just so important. So important. And, uh, usually it's better to quit too soon than too late. It's something I've learned more recently and still probably going to be learning, you know, for the rest of my life, most likely. Yeah. Yeah. There are some clients that just coaching isn't for them. That just isn't. They don't, if they don't believe in the value of it, um, it's not going to work. Not because it's, you know, um, um, like a magic wand, but you have to, I don't push it. I don't pull I'm shoulder to shoulder with my client in their coaching journey. And some people need to be pushed or pulled. And that just, I don't think that that works as well either, but yeah, there's a real element of autonomy and self determination when it comes to coaching. And the client has to drive the process. And that's definitely part of an ICF mindset as well. And I see if, um, Certified coaches mindset. So, um, do you have any good stories? Like obviously not naming any names, but I'm so curious, um, to hear a little bit about, you know, some of the experiences you've had with clients and I'm sure folks listening to this would love to hear, you know, what, what are the kinds of, you know, Developments that you've that you've observed. Yeah. Great question. Aaron and the one that comes to mind and I have her permission because as you know, coaching is 100 percent confidential. Um, but I do have her permission to share this story just because I think it's really cool. So I often, um, at the onset of. coaching. We'll ask a client, you know, what's the legacy you want to leave? Like, how do you want to be known? Because I think we get so committed to like the here and now we forget to think longer term. And, um, she worked in a, in a male dominated, more seasoned male dominated environment. And she was the only female at the C suite table at that point. And so I asked her the question and, and invited her to reflect on it. That was kind of, you know, an action item for her between now and, and when we met the next time. And she came back into the, into the meeting. Um, and, and she was so excited and which made me so excited. And she said, Lori, I came up with my legacy. I know what I'm building. I know what I want to build. And I was like, okay, what is that? She said, I want to be known as a powerhouse. And, and I just thought that that was so cool. And, and so as we got talking, you know, as the only female, she would be asked to get coffee or take notes or, you know, whatever, just not, I don't think from a mean perspective, but it just made sense to the other people around the table and she said, I want to be a powerhouse and I want to work on characteristics that would build a powerhouse. She said, because. I don't want them to be scared of me. I don't want them to say I'm scared to ask for coffee. She said, I wanted them to respect me so much. It wouldn't even cross their minds. And, um, she's still an existing client. She's, uh, you know, been with me typically coaching programs or, you know, about a year. Um, so she's, she's been with me for that length of time. And it is so exciting to see. I think that's a really beautiful thing. And that's why I'm so happy that, you know, her show up as a powerhouse and the success that she's having because of her mindfulness and intention. I'm being seen as a powerhouse. That's beautiful. What a transformation for her. Um, I I would love to be a fly on the wall in one of those meetings and watch her in action and see what, like, what kind of behaviors are she demonstrating, you know, as a result of that coaching with you, that would be so interesting. How do you make someone respect you so much that they wouldn't even think about asking for coffee? It's beautiful. And of course, you know, we dug deep into what characteristics. How are those characteristics displayed and how do you know that you're displaying them, you know, coaching? I mean, we, we like to take one piece to set people up for success and really focus on that, um, change of that one habit of how she was showing up and then change something else about how she was showing up. And yeah, it's been a lot of fun, uh, really a lot of fun to watch her for sure. And it probably takes you back to the five, uh, your five. Yeah. Um, top five behaviors or what are we, what are we calling that? Um, I think the leadership competencies. Okay, sure. Yeah. Um, you know, I, I recently was doing some research for a project that I'm doing in my private practice and, and Forbes even has, you know, like research on this about, you know, what leaders are struggling with and, and it felt affirming that the people I work with. Yeah. This is, you know, global, right? I don't just hear it from one or two clients, I hear it from every client in my portfolio or most clients in my portfolio, but this is like a global thing. Oh, it totally is. Yeah. This is a human thing, right? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. We're all experiencing the world right now. And I don't know. Like leadership is leadership almost anywhere. I don't know. I mean, obviously there's certain cultural competencies that you need to learn if you're interacting interculturally or in, in different cultures, but, um, but the like people are people, right? Like emotional intelligence is emotional intelligence. It doesn't matter where you live. Well, and I think we're all leaders, and that's why, you know, I kind of articulate, um, the clients most prominent, um, or most predominantly in my, in my portfolio are executive, like C suite, um, or leaders of leaders, because I think we all lead. I mean, I, as an individual contributor, I can still lead, I can still impact. But I think it's leaders having to be mindful of their own selves. But also, you know, all of those around them and how they are leading them to greatness. Now, you, we started to talk a little bit about respect in that previous client example that you had. Um, something I think a lot about lately and you know that I've been a kind of evangelist of leadership development, um, since certainly since we've known each other, uh, and something that crosses my mind every now and then, and I'm kind of curious what you think about this is do we know how to lead leaders? You know, do. Do leaders know how to lead people? If every single person's a leader, do we know how to lead leaders? You know, and where does the, you know, one of the things, one of, I can't remember what the quote was, but it's something like to be a great leader, you need to be a great follower. And I think sometimes, you know, there's a tension that I, that I see a lot of the time, um, in organizations around, you know, the, you know, receiving feedback. So leaders are receiving feedback. Sometimes they're really good at taking feedback. And they're very, um, empathic, right. They're trying to serve everyone and stretching themselves then. And, you know, we know that we can't make everyone happy. Right. Um, and then people who are at the individual contributor level, often younger employees have a lot of ideas, you know, and I remember I was the same when I was a younger employee. You know, I, um, I thought I could do everything better than my bosses. And then it's only through experience that I realized like the actual complexity of decision making within organizations is way harder than you think it is. Probably there's a lot more that you need to consider, um, than, than you realize you do. And so are we teaching people to become leaders too soon? Do we know how to lead people who believe that they are leaders? That's kind of the So my background was completely in financial services, where I spent my, my corporate Canada career and, and there was a tendency in financial services because financial services is so much about sales that people can sell really well, well, obviously they can... /episode/index/show/2351f999-02cb-4568-ab77-a59f33bb3fd3/id/33441872

#Throwback: The Truth About Executive Presence with Eleonore Eaves 10/09/2024

#Throwback: The Truth About Executive Presence with Eleonore Eaves In this #throwback episode of Weirdos in the Workplace, Erin interviews Eleanore Eaves, a brilliant strategist, writer, and coach, about executive presence. Timestamps: 0:00 - Introduction and upcoming podcast announcement 2:00 - Eleanore's background and introduction to executive presence 5:00 - Building and nurturing executive presence 9:00 - Eleanore's personal evolution and role models in leadership 13:00 - Diversity in executive positions 15:00 - Advice for accessing leadership positions 16:00 - The role of appearance in executive presence 17:00 - Closing quote and final thoughts Key Points: - Executive presence is about personal brand, confidence, strategic mindset, authenticity, and personal power - It's not just about appearance, but how you present yourself as a leader - Building executive presence requires honest self-assessment and identifying areas for improvement - There's no one-size-fits-all approach; executive presence should be tailored to individual strengths and organizational fit - The importance of diversity in executive roles and strategies for accessing leadership positions - The value of finding a sponsor who speaks about you in rooms of power - While character is crucial, appearance still plays a role in executive presence The episode concludes with a powerful quote: "She remembered who she was, and then the game changed," Don't forget to stay weird, stay wonderful, and don't stay out of trouble! Contact Eleanore Eaves: Website: eavescoaching.com Stay tuned for Erin and Eleanore's upcoming podcast on modern leadership and decision-making! Script Erin: [00:00:00] Welcome my friends to yet another episode of weirdos in the workplace, the podcast that celebrates authenticity, transparency, passion, and purpose in our wacky and wonderful world today. I'm your host, Erin Patchell. And this week we're doing things a little bit differently. We are going to have a throwback episode. Back in 2023, your favorite episode was on executive presence with Eleanor Eves, the wonderful, inspiring. Amazing. Eleanor Eves, my friend, also one of my colleagues on the ICF international coach federation, Ottawa board amazing person. And we dive into the strategic side of executive presence how to be your full self in today's complex business environments. And I'm really even more excited to share with you that Eleanor and I are starting yet another podcast to be titled a couple months from now. We're going to be launching this and it's all about our modern [00:01:00] and complex leadership environments, how to make really hard decisions as leaders, and how to avoid the kind of herd mentality or echo chambers that, that sometimes As human beings, we can tend to fall into and really elevating the thinking and the context through which we're making really good decisions as business leaders. So that's what we're doing. I'm really excited about that partnership. And we're just going to be dripping out a little more information leading up to the launch. And I'll leave you with a quote as I often do on Weirdos in the Workplace. This one is by Lily Tomlin, the amazing Lily Tomlin. And Lily says, the road to success is always under construction. And isn't that true? So without further ado, stay weird, stay wonderful, and don't ever stay out of trouble.[00:02:00] All right, folks, let's get started. So Eleanor is one of the most interesting people that I know. She's a brilliant strategist, writer, and coach. Her resume includes 15 years working For profit and non profit organizations, London School of Economics, King's College London, and the Government of Canada. Eleanor founded her own consultancy, Eve's Coaching not that long ago. Hey? Correct. Yeah. Yep. And I like to think you do things a little bit differently. I like to think so too. So I'm really glad that you're here to talk about the subject executive presence, because, between my blue collar upbringing and my ADHD, I feel like I've definitely had to learn the hard way about the subject. And to be honest, I feel like I [00:03:00] still struggle with it a little bit, even though I've been in, and been in business development sales for a long time. To me, it is still, it's still like putting on a bit of a mask. So I love to just hear, how did you learn about this and how did it become such a strong focus for you? Eleonore: Oh, darling, come on down. No. You would be the perfect person to be covering this topic. In a nutshell, executive presence is not just about how you look or your background or any of that, right? It's your personal brand. It's your confidence. It's your strategic mindset. It's your authenticity. It's your personal power. It's everything combined and your background and anything, you might have experienced in the past That shouldn't really play into it unless it has made you who you are today in the form you want to be. So that's what we're going to be talking about when we discuss executive presence, is what kind of person do you want to project? What kind of leader do you [00:04:00] want to be? And what does that look like for you? Because everybody has to do this a little bit differently. And as you said, how did I come about today? to doing this? I always thought, growing up that executive presence was about a look, less Eleonore (2): about the character and less about the individual. But what did executives look like? To be perfectly honest, when we were growing up, not to age us, at that point in time, neither of us would have really made up the majority of executives. Unfortunately, we still do not today as well, but we're making some changes. Erin: Definitely. I want to Eleonore (2): be. Erin: Yeah. No, I was just going to say I'm really glad to hear you talk a little bit about like authenticity and bringing your personality into it because I feel like that's something that I definitely preach about a lot and I'm glad to hear that it's not just my imagination that this is, that this is [00:05:00] scaling into positions of power. Absolutely. Eleonore (2): Absolutely. This is why you'd be a great coach in this. I'm serious. You've absolutely mastered it from the very first day I met you. I remember just being in awe, right? You have this natural way of communicating with people and connecting. And that's all part of the executive presence. It's how you're presenting yourself. Erin: You are so sweet, honestly. Eleonore (2): No, I'm just very honest. I call it how it is. Erin: I appreciate it. Yeah, so obviously it's no secret that executive presence is really important to building a leader's credibility and, people listen to you differently and consider your opinions differently. So tell me a little bit about how to, how do you build that? How do you nurture that in yourself? Eleonore (2): First, take a look at your current state. Really have a very raw sense and understanding of who you are, [00:06:00] right? It really does require some honest self assessment and awareness. Because at the end of the day, you're only kidding yourself. Then with coaching with myself or any other executive coach, what we would really look at is to identify areas of improvement. And by that, who do you want to be? How do you want others to view you as a leader? And even if you're not a leader today, what does that look like for you down the road? Right? Eleonore: So Eleonore (2): even if you're not in an executive role today, but you want to be in the future, how do you project yourself so other people intuitively view you as the right fit? Not because of your gender, or your race, or anything like that, because I know we, that, that could be a completely different conversation as to, the executive makeup of all of that. But in terms of how you present yourself, what does that look like? Not just in terms of your clothing as well. [00:07:00] But what kinds of words are you using? What's your strategy? When people look at you, do they view you as being diplomatic? As being out there? What is the approach? So then we, based off of that, we find the areas that you could improve upon. We develop a strategy to get you there, an approach. We practice it, we tweak it as needed. Then we celebrate your successes once you get to that point that you are truly satisfied with it. Erin: That's very interesting, actually. I like I'd never really thought about. Aspiring to an executive role in terms of, your personal style. So just to clarify I've got a very unique personal style, so that I may not be suited to every executive role in the world or every. Organization in the world, but as a career coach I'm not a career coach, but I've worked with so many career coaches and I [00:08:00] know they're really focused on a best fit. So does that apply in this space as well? I assume. Eleonore (2): A hundred percent, right? No one is going to be a hundred percent great fit for everything. You have your friends, you have your nemeses, you have your allies, you have your detractors, you have different spheres of people. A person who could, a person like, let's say, Steve Jobs. Great at Apple. Fantastic. Might not be the best field hockey coach. You never know. Yeah. Erin: He's not alive anymore, so we'll count him out now. But maybe you never know. But yeah, I totally hear what you're saying, for sure. Eleonore (2): So it doesn't mean that one is right or wrong. And that's the other thing we need to take apart is there is no right or wrong. Our person shows up in an executive sense. Even if it's completely different, that might be what the organization needs at [00:09:00] that point in time. Because what have worked in the past won't always work in the future. And in fact, probably shouldn't. That means you're not evolving. That means your organization isn't changing. So every once in a while, you do need to shake things up. You need a rebel in there. Erin: I feel like that is so true now more than ever. Eleonore (2): So it's being true to yourself at the end of the day. And being really honest with who you are, what you want that to look like. And what is the right fit for you? It's not just about what is the fit for the organization, but is this really the right fit for you? Erin: That makes a lot of sense. So I'm curious, how did, like, how did this come to be for you? What was your evolution of your thinking around this? Did you have Great role models in the past or? Eleonore (2): Yes. I was very lucky to have had one of the world's best leaders ever as both a former manager and as a friend now, I'd like to [00:10:00] say her name is Laura Kenny and she was one of the higher ups at Raytheon. She was one of the execs and I absolutely adored everything about her, in a healthy way, right? Of course. But for the first time ever, I saw that you could really be your true self. She was as graceful as Audrey Hepburn, smart as a whip, and just kind and empathetic. And that was her executive presence. She showed that you could be all of those things and also have incredible style. Just an absolute fashionista and, working in a realm that was very much male dominated. Raytheon is a defense company. Yeah. But again, this was a woman who could command the respect of any room she walked into. It was intelligence. It was empathy. It was wit. It was a sense that if you [00:11:00] were on her team, you wanted to do better. You wanted to be better. She encouraged you to. improve not just your output for the company, but your personal development as a human. Erin: Holy crap. This is like an amazing testimonial. Like Laura, if you're out there, I am a huge fan now. And yeah, no, that's like seriously though. But don't you want everyone? I know as a lead, like as a leader, that is how I wish people, or I hope that people will someday. Speak about me. And that is the tension. I feel like that's the intention we need to put out in the universe Eleonore (2): a hundred percent. And we luckily we're starting to have some of those conversations now. Eleonore: So Eleonore (2): when we're looking at executive fit, we're also looking at emotional intelligence. We're starting to really look at the full package of what a person brings. Because that, you're absolutely right, a person like her [00:12:00] could really motivate a team to outperform every other team, and we did. And we took pride in that, but it didn't feel like a horrible endeavor to do that. It didn't feel like we were working overtime. Overall, we had that energy to continue to work that hard because work was enjoyable. For the first time ever, Mondays were fun. Yeah, it wasn't just a paycheck. Erin: And teams get set back so much when people leave. So if you have a leader who can keep people on the team and keep them, not just keep them motivated, but just keep them there present, that's everything these days. Eleonore (2): Absolutely. And we could definitely go into the whole financial chat about what that costs an organization, Eleonore: both Eleonore (2): in terms of intelligence, labor, money for onboarding all of that. You're absolutely right. It is a huge loss to any organization. [00:13:00] Erin: So the conversation about getting women or getting more diversity into leadership positions and executive positions. Because, it's still male dominated the majority of executives are still men, white men. And if they're not, if they're not white men, then they're white women, I'm just curious what your thoughts are around, getting more diversity around the executive table. Eleonore (2): Great question. And I think the approach needs to be very specific to the region right in Nordic countries and Scandinavian countries, we definitely see that the quota system works very well for them. It's well adopted. But there's also to a, we could talk about the differences within the demographics of those regions versus ours, but I think the important thing is finding out what your actual goal is, if you're actually committed [00:14:00] to those goals and it's not just a checkbox, then having some very hard and serious conversations. within the organization to try to see what that means. It's going to be different things for different organizations. And we could talk about the merits of having the quota system in place, but you're absolutely right. One way or another, things need to change. It's not just the right thing to do. It is the strategically right thing to do. Erin: So if I'm a person of, I'm not a person of color, but if I was a person of color, What would you recommend them to do? Like, how would you recommend that they, they access those positions? Eleonore (2): I would urge everyone to get a sponsor. So very quickly, a mentor is someone who speaks to you, Eleonore: and a Eleonore (2): sponsor is someone who speaks about you in rooms of power. So time and time again, we see that women Blacks, Indigenous, people of color We are [00:15:00] overly, and I say we because I know your audience can't see me, but I am a black woman we are overly mentored and not sponsored enough. And you can see why this wouldn't yield the results we want. If someone is just speaking to you, it doesn't actually move the needle. Whereas if they are actively speaking about you and promoting you, yeah, that's when we start seeing changes, right? So get a sponsor. Erin: Yeah. Good advice. So we've talked almost exclusively about character, character of executives. So I guess we could probably conclude that these days character is more important than appearance or does appearance still play a factor? Eleonore (2): Yes, definitely. Appearance still does play some level of a factor, right? As much as we would like to believe that it shouldn't or it does not. It does. And there are some amazing style coaches out there too, [00:16:00] who really help you with that, because it's not just about the clothing you wear, but it's also to how confident you feel in that clothing. So if that makes you put your best foot forward, you speak more eloquently, more strategically you're more of your authentic self, then yeah, get a style coach. If you need help with your presence. And then yes, an executive coach like myself would be more than happy to work with you. And they're speech therapists as well, and I highly recommend them. I had a massive lisp for the majority of my life. So I fully understand how that could both limit your confidence, as well as, Erin: Yeah. We're just about at the top of the hour, and it wouldn't be an episode of weirdos in the workplace. If we didn't close the episode with a little bit of a quote or a story, Eleanor. Eleonore (2): Yeah. And, maybe I'll send it to you as well. One of my good friends, another executive coach Out in Switzerland focusing on [00:17:00] emotional intelligence. If you need that sort of service, definitely contact her and her wonderful business partner Thomas Grom at Cofuturum. So her name is Anna Maria Zumsteg, and I remember one day she had sent me this lovely little picture of a lioness about to sprint. And the caption read, she remembered who she was and then the game changed. So really and truly remember your inner confidence. Remember who you are. Bring that forward and go after your goals. Erin: Amazing. I'm so glad you were able to join me and I cannot wait until you come to join me again. So there I can't wait. Fantastic. That's all for today. I hope you enjoyed my conversation with Eleanor and you can find her at Eve's coaching. com E A V E S C O A C H I N G. com. I love that we ended on authenticity. She remembered who she was and then the game changed. Brilliant. [00:18:00] Thanks for joining me on this journey. I look forward to our next adventure next week. Until then stay weird, stay wonderful. And remember don't stay out of trouble. /episode/index/show/2351f999-02cb-4568-ab77-a59f33bb3fd3/id/33393537

Kim Tofin on Teamship and Leadership Synergy 10/02/2024

Kim Tofin on Teamship and Leadership Synergy With over 30 years of experience in high-tech sales and marketing, Kim Tofin shares insights on the critical roles in forming high-performing and high-impact teams. Through personal stories and professional insights, Kim explains how creating a safe space for authenticity and unique contributions can transform organizational culture and drive unparalleled success. Don't miss this in-depth discussion on fostering collaboration, bridging gaps, and unleashing the untapped potential within your teams! Stay in Touch with Kim: For more on Kim and his Services: Within a team dynamic, the weirdos, the one or two or the three can start to feel psychologically safe because everybody allows that weirdness. Welcome to weirdos in the workplace. The podcast that celebrates authenticity, transparency, passion, and purpose in our world of work today. My name's Erin Patchell. And today I'm super happy to bring on Kim Tofin. Hello, Aaron. Nice to see you again. Nice to see you as always, Kim. So to introduce Kim, after 30 years in high tech sales and marketing, Kim began Breakout CX and has thrown himself extensively into the art and science of team coaching and team infused leadership, which I think is something that you coined. Is that right, Kim? Yes. Yeah. Awesome. So now Kim works with national and international companies to develop high performing teams and introduce and build a teamship culture. And today we're going to talk about how curiosity and maybe even a little bit of weirdness can make teaming possible among some other things that we'll get into as well. So nice to have you on the podcast finally, Kim. Yeah, finally, we got past the weirdo point. We got past the weirdness. Yeah. Um, I'd actually, let's, let's let, I want to ask you that question for sure, uh, because I think it's kind of, it's kind of cool, like the evolution of your thinking around the word weird. Um, but I'd love for people to hear from your mouth, like what you do, who you are, just a few minutes about, um, what you care about, why you care about this so much. Yeah, that's a good question. It's a good place to start. I mean, I, as you said in the introduction, I worked with teams, uh, in my career for the part of three decades. And, um, I've worked with good teams, not good teams and terrible teams. Um, but I didn't know about a teaming culture. I certainly didn't know about team coaching or a team ship. And along the way, I began to understand the importance of collaboration and it just stuck with me in every aspect of the work that I did. And so this started to define me and I became sort of enamored with, um, with coaching as it began to emerge. And that was with leadership coaching. And it just has became, become a part of what I really Um, stand for it. In other words, we could say it's my stance of life, both personally and professionally. It's amazing. So you've made it sort of a calling or it's become a calling for you. I did. And, and, you know, um, not to dwell on the matter, but I had a life changing event, uh, three years ago, my partner passed away. And it, and it just opened up an opportunity for me to, to reset, recalibrate my life and focus on what really matters to me and, and grab a hold of my passion and, uh, in a way, give back to, you know, my community, um, our country, um, and, and, you know, all the organizations, whether they're institutional, private, government, um, educational, not for profit, um, you know, It's just, I, I'm so committed to, um, sort of unleashing this potential around teamship and, and that's what I'm doing and I'll keep doing it, um, uh, even with people calling me weirdo. Absolutely. And we're turning that word into, you know, that's the best thing you could possibly be as a weirdo. For the record. So, um, but yeah, there's no question that, um, something like that, like a life change in the death of a partner, you know, and I'm obviously I'm so sorry about that. Um, but there's no question that that changes the way that you think about things, right? A traumatic situation like that, for sure. Yeah. Yeah. Um, you, you start to, um, you go, it's a choice, but I found myself going inward. And tapping into my presence, my core, my strengths, um, it's still a work in progress. Like I haven't got it all figured out, but I would rather be in that process than. either masking the grief or the healing or the pain, um, because it doesn't serve the teams that I coach very well if I'm not true to myself and authentic when I walk in those rooms or when I'm coaching a CEO one on one. Um, it reminds me actually when you, when you just said that, uh, there was a quote from yesterday. I was in a grief and loss workshop, um, with an amazing coach from Ottawa, Dina, uh, Bell or La Roche. And there was a quote that she said, and I'm going to see, I'm just going to do a little search here because I want to say it. Uh, we can't accompany our clients when we are where we ourselves dare not travel. Um, you know, yeah, in fact, I've come across that recently in the last few days and I think it's very powerful. Absolutely. Yes, it is. Yeah. Okay. So today is all about team ship and specifically, you know, the power of curiosity, um, the The power of collaboration, the power of, uh, development, um, Tell me a little bit more about specifically the work that you do like what is teamship? Sure. Um, initially, um, you know, through all my training, my team coaching training, I was chasing down teams that were either dysfunctional or starting up. Or going through a lot of changes, a lot of, um, changes in personnel or changes in ownership and working with those teams became very clear to me that, that teams have such power and such potential. That it's more than just the team, it's organizational impact. And so in the last year or so, I've sort of described myself as a systemic team coach. In other words, it's more than just the team. Of course it is the team and every team has a starting and ending point. No two teams are the same as if the same as no two individuals are the same. Um, and so with that, um, teamship, this term started to evolve in my mind that teamship really should be at the same level as leadership. Um, but it's not and and so it the time is right. I think to introduce this concept now. Teamship itself is being, um, introduced and and exploited very positively by, uh, a handful of organizations, consulting firms in the U. S. And in Europe. Um, and I think there's a couple in Canada, but it's still relatively new. Um, and I just coined this term. Um, Of teamship infused leadership because because leaders are are struggling today. You know, it's not working as it used to. And so my approach is to come in to the organization and and look at what we can do with the organizational health. Um, through empowering, uh, teams and getting teams moving from fundamental to high performing and ideally to high impact. So it strikes me that, you know, your background in sales and marketing probably has a lot to do with the way that you think about business in general, and then how, how the team itself can be impactful. Would you say that's accurate? Yeah. It's, it's an interesting, It's an interesting statement and question. I think, I think we are all kind of salespeople. We're all trying to, to, um, promote or push or sell our, our value, our brand, our ideas, our thoughts. Um, so, so I think that in sales and marketing and how we position those, those, um, services or deliverables, um, yeah, has given me a lot of insights into the real fast movement of organizational dynamics, because everything happens around revenue in the private sector, but it's equally, it happens around government, for example, in, in service delivery. Thank you. Or not for profit in stakeholder value education as in education for the students, et cetera. So, um, and in sales and marketing, there are a lot of teams because you're working directly or indirectly with all kinds of teams, operational teams, customer experience, teams, um, R and D teams, engineering development teams. And, and in my experience, most of that were, you know, those teams were all working in silos. There was very little cross functional, um, value or benefits happening. And, um, the leaders weren't, you know, they weren't paying attention. And so it's, uh, yeah, it, it, it weighs heavily on me and it's great to draw from all those experiences. And I'm actually quite happy that I worked with incredibly, incredibly successful companies, um, and not so successful companies because I know what doesn't work. Right. Yeah. And it's good to draw from that. For sure. I feel like we're kind of leading, you're leading me down a path here that I like, which is towards the The conversation around weirdness, you know, especially, um, you know, when we start to talk about strengths based teaming, uh, or collaboration or breaking down silos, part of me says, you know, well, the authenticity, you know, and having, having different people on a team, having a, um, a cross functional team, uh, makes a lot of sense, you know, and you can't have a cross functional team without a little bit of weirdness and authenticity. Um, tell me, tell, tell everyone, like, if you're comfortable sharing the story about like when I first approached you as a podcast, you know, weirdos in the workplace is definitely there's reasons why we decided to call it weirdos in the workplace, right? Because it does rub people the wrong way a little bit. And, and tell me a little bit about your evolution in like the last, you know, while, you know, as, as that's been kind of evolving. It's a great story. And I'm, um, I've come out the other end of it in a, in a much more informed, um, content, uh, sort of, you know, situation. Um, as you pointed out, to be a weirdo or to be claimed or called a weirdo was a little bit uncomfortable, but that's also a generational interpretation or definition. Um, and, and I, I couldn't sort of get past that. Um, then. In my desire to come on this podcast. I thought, well, I've got to, I've got to work through this. So in one of my team coaching sessions, I actually, uh, used the question. What is a weirdo to you and how important is it to be used or not to be used in this particular team? And it was a check in. It was expected to be, you know, several minutes in a team of seven people. And, and four of the team were under 30 and three of the team were over 55. So there was a big gap in the middle. Um, the conversation went on for 40 minutes. And this is what I love about team coaching is that you go to where the conversation needs to be. And just the, the very topic of weirdos in the workplace. just opened up such enriched and textured dialogue between not just between the two age groups but amongst everybody in the team and everybody had a different perspective of what a weirdo was and it settled down into Someone who's bold, someone who's creative, someone who's not, you know, on the beaten path, um, you know, some, some, someone that can potentially drive change and, and then it morphed into, and then I, I sort of facilitated this conversation a little bit that within a team dynamic, um, the weirdos, the one or two or the three can start to feel psychologically safe because everybody allows that weirdness. to unfold. And suddenly this is where the magic of a team starts to appear. So it's just a wonderful story. And, um, yeah, I think, I think it's the absolute right name for the podcast. I absolutely love that you did that, that you actually went out and kind of workshopped it almost. Yeah. Yeah. I was, it was for selfish reasons, but it, it now is, is part of my routine, right? Because I, I think it, It really helps move the psychological safety bar, right. And the thing is, like, why are we why are we sometimes resistant to words, and I'm the same right there are certain words, but I'm like, it's a struggle for me to feel like I'm that could be part of my identity. But I think the same thing happens if you, you know, maybe you're taking a personality assessment or something and it tells you, Oh, this is, you know, this is your result. This is who you are, you know, and you're looking at it going, I don't think I'm that person. And it rubs you a little bit, right. But it's, it's processing that and opening yourself up to that possibility. That really, um, helps us develop into. like a new identity, right? Uh, or broadens our identity or makes us more agile or adaptive. So, um, yeah, I'm amazed that you did that work. That's so brilliant. Oh, thank you. And you mentioned, you know, the assessments and, you know, we, whether it's something very simple, you know, Myers Briggs or whatever, you know, there's a month there, but, um, I find that doing individual personal assessments In a team coaching environment, um, does set up some risks because people do exactly what you said. They get attached to their own identity and really the secret of a, of a well performing team is that it's about the dance. It's not about the dancers and we don't care what orientation the dancers are. We don't care what ethnicity they are or whatever. It really doesn't matter. We're only focused primarily now there's growth individually, of course, but we're focused on the dance. And how is the dance going to look? in front of the audience or the stakeholders. And, and so we, we, sometimes we have to, I find that we have to spend time in, in team coaching sessions to get those individual assessments on the table and put them through the shredder. Yeah. Sometimes get sort of going in that collective energy. Yeah. I mean, if you're getting, if you're like, I'm a yellow and You have a really rigid, you know, idea of that. That's not promoting the kind of flexible mindset that we need in a team. Yeah. Right. We need a flexible mindset. Um, would you say how, how does team ship and how would team ship in a flexible mindset? How, how, how do you help develop that? Well, I guess, you know, it's, it's a good question. There are a lot of approaches, but I think what I can do is distill down. This is that in a, in a team coaching environment. In the beginning stages. There's more facilitation on the team from the team coach. We're putting together the structure where I'm helping them pull together their charter, their working agreement, and um, so that there's buy in, there's sign in, but everything is flexible. And so no matter What are the stages that we initially set up? I mean, I lay out a template and sort of a shell and I populate it, but it's, it's for them to deconstruct and rebuild it for themselves because they need to own it so that that flexibility, which then brings in trust and psychological safety and candor and all those things start to play all those dynamics start to happen when. They are now in ownership. Um, and yet, um, I'm not just sitting back watching. You know, I'm holding their feet to the fire on accountability. Like they have a charter, they have a working agreement and I won't call them out, but I won't tell them what's wrong is that I will tell them, I think we might be in breach of what you, what the team has agreed to. Is it just me or, or how does the rest of the team. Do you that I should just sidebar that to say that, you know, in team coaching, there's both team coaching sessions where we're working on, uh, development issues and going through their, their development stages. There's success traits, et cetera, but there's also live action coaching. where under very tight NDAs, I'm just a fly in the wall, and we agree upon how I will interact, if at all. But, but that's very, very powerful, because you witness them, and I'm observing them in, in their, in their usual active meetings, right? And they're going through their tasks and everything like that. And it's, it's a good test to see how they're taking how, you know, the same dynamics. And bringing them into their, their day job or into what their team is expected to do. And what are the objectives and what are the tasks? Hmm. Very interesting. Do you find that they bring their best selves to those sessions when you're watching? Or do they kind of like, are you like the, the furniture after a while? You know, it, it's, It's always different and it depends on the issue. And of course, in the beginning, everybody's all suited up, but it only takes one spark and, and then I'm, I'm invisible. Um, and, and I really try to let that go. Sometimes, You'll see everybody, what's the team coach think right now? Because they're already sensing there's a, there's that dynamic tensions, but you don't need me. You already sense it. So what, what's going on? What do you feel? Is it, is it uncomfortable? Do you feel stressed? Has your heart rate gone up? Let's talk about it. Yep. Red flags, red flags. Yeah. Yeah. Awesome. So teamship. A teamship culture. I'm curious about that. And also high impact team. Um, and I know these things go hand in hand. You probably don't have a high impact team without a team culture, a teamship culture rather. Um, what, can you paint us a picture? So what, what is a team sh a high impact team? What do they look and feel and sound and smell like? Yeah. Okay. So maybe not the smell. And it's a good way to frame the question, Aaron, because, you know, we touched on the stages of team development. Um, a high impact team is really at the second to last stage. Now the last stage being The, the team coachings program is really complete and we recalibrate, we reset, we team out. Um, but if we're dealing or if we've developed or we've evolved into a teamship culture, then we're going to look at that and, and see how we can raise the bar within the whole organization. So a high impact team. You know, within my definition and use of the term is a team that has gone beyond high performing. This team has become a catalyst there. Um, they're creating a ripple effect. Of all of the dynamics of what, you know, radical collaboration can do the organization and they're driving change. They're, they're incubating a lot of other, um, you know, either teams, they're influencing teams, or they've got a lot of people that now want to be on a team because just through osmosis. people in the organization, they want to be a part of that positive movement. So that's a high impact team. Now, is it a rites of passage or a milestone that one goes from one to the other? No, it's not like that. But, um, it's a, it's, it's more of a horizon that, you know, we can, the team can aspire to reach. So that's what a high impact team can really do. This notion, it sounds like it's something that kind of goes viral. Like people are noticing, um, they're, you know, there's a positivity, there's, um, an impact, there's an influence, and there's obviously like a high performing aspect of it, I'm sure as well. Yeah, it can be viral. It's, it all depends on, well, depends on a lot of things, but I'll, I'll focus on it depends on leadership, right? Leadership has bought in, or maybe leadership is still at that experimental stage. You know, they don't really have a team trip culture. They're not totally into it, but. They're willing to give it a go because they know that it's work is not working to the level they want it. The organizational health is substandard. And, and so if they're supporting it, then, um, they will remove the... /episode/index/show/2351f999-02cb-4568-ab77-a59f33bb3fd3/id/33228592

The Hidden Insights That Burnout Can Reveal About Our True Selves ft Jennifer Robb 09/25/2024

The Hidden Insights That Burnout Can Reveal About Our True Selves ft Jennifer Robb Intro: Jennifer Robb is an enthusiastic and strategic finance leader with over 15 years of experience in various public and private industries, including transportation, construction, and energy. A few years ago, Jennifer experienced burnout caused by what we would call “old school toxic management”. Through recovery, Jennifer discovered hidden insights about herself and the workplace. She embraced mindfulness, ignited her passion for coaching, and developed innovative strategies to motivate teams in a positive way. Her story is a beautiful reminder that even our hardest moments can lead to valuable lessons and transformative change! Stay in Touch with Jennifer: For more on Jennifer and her Services: Welcome to weirdos in the workplace. The podcast that celebrates authenticity, transparency, passion, and purpose in our world of work. And I'm here with the lovely Jennifer Rob. Say hello, Jennifer. Thank you. Hello everyone. Awesome. Jennifer is an enthusiastic and strategic finance leader with over 15 years experience in various public and private sector roles, um, including in, uh, different industries, such as transportation, construction, and energy. And a few years ago, Jennifer experienced a burnout caused by what we might call, uh, old school toxic management. We're going to talk about that and the process of recovery has led her to discover herself for mindfulness and coaching practice and win win ways of motivating teams. So welcome Jennifer to weirdos in the workplace. Thank you. And thanks for having me. Yeah. My pleasure. Um, so let's share a little bit about yourself, please, so that everyone here can get to know you, get to know your background a little bit, and, you know, especially regarding this burnout, just if you can, if you can kind of lead us, um, on the journey a little bit. Mm hmm. So, I am a CPA. Um, I also have a I studied and worked abroad in different capacities. I'm also a mom of two, which is important, because, you know, everyone has a life outside of work. Everyone is a full and complete human being. And sometimes a lot of these worlds collide, uh, for better or worse. And I went through this period of, um, intense work where I was very capable of doing the work and unfortunately the work just get kept getting piled on. So through COVID there were some, you know, everyone had challenges, right? People were leaving the workplace. They were quitting through vaccine mandates. There were so many changes that were going on and that led, um, me to a position of covering a number of jobs. And it went on for such an extended period of time. It was really hard for me to let go because I loved what I was doing. And I love doing things like innovating and process improvements and making things better. And I didn't see it coming. I just eventually got to this place where I was so burnt out and I was frustrated and cynical and I just didn't realize where I had backed myself into a corner. And I really needed to make some personal changes, to take a break, to let myself heal. When you are clinically diagnosed with burnout, which I was, it's, it's a tough situation. You know, we, we overuse burnout. Um, you know, we say at the end of the week, oh, it's Friday, I'm burnt out. But when you are clinically burnt out, that that's just a different level of burnout. It's one where you need, um, like psychological support and it's one where you need even, um, Rest and recovery, not just physically, but for your brain. And that's really different place to be in. And I didn't realize what it meant until I was in it until it was too late. I think that that's actually really important. And I think you're totally right. We use burnout often. I think people are tired. And they use the words burnout, you know, and I try to, I try to hold a strong line there myself. A lot of people are constantly concerned that I'm going to burn out because of the number of things, number of hats that I wear. Um, and I, what I always say is I might be tired sometimes, but I'm really good at managing my energy. I'm really good at making sure that I'm eating well. I'm exercising, I'm drinking water, I'm sleeping, you know, I'm seeing, I'm seeing my friends and, and I have support, like I'm okay, you know, um, and yeah, I might be tired sometimes and I'll let you know if I'm tired, but I'm not burnt out. Um, but I do think I, and I have, I have also experienced burnout in my twenties and it is very different. It's debilitating. Um, and so I, I, I do know the difference personally, but I don't think a lot of people do. How did you experience burnout? What was the experience for you? So unfortunately it was, it was quite sad because I'm a very goal oriented person and I have a lot of grit, which is great. Like I can, I can like. really dig my heels in, be determined, accomplish my goals. But grit doesn't always serve you well. And what I learned was that, uh, there was a book by Annie Duke called Quit. Yeah. And she, in a way, really changed my life. So thank you, Annie. Um, because she, In her book she talks about when is it worthwhile to grit through something and to bear down and get it done, and when does it not serve you enough, and for me, having my eyes set on these goals, because I wanted to accomplish them. It meant. Then I had to cut away everything else. So sleep, you know, I don't, I don't have time to sleep right now. I've got to get this done. I don't have time to, you know, make sure I'm fed with nutritious foods. I've got to have like protein bars in my drawer. And that's what I would eat all day long. I had an espresso machine in my office like, and come on, it's great coffee. Um, And I, I started working out really intensely as a coping mechanism and it wasn't healthy. When I look back on it, I did it because it was just so intense and it just allowed me to, to just release that energy, that negative energy I felt, but looking back on it now, it was just a coping mechanism. And what happened was at the end, um, you know, I left my job and I kind of collapsed and it was like this. Collapse of physical tiredness, mental tiredness. I literally just stayed in bed for like days on end and my husband was quite worried about me and I tried to, you know, hide it as much as I could for my kids because I didn't want them to, you know, feel as if their mom was going through something traumatic, but it really was trauma. In a way, because I had pushed myself to the extent that I had lost control of my mental composure. I, I, I lived almost on a different planet and I was so hypervigilant, you know, everything had a deeper meaning, everything was sort of out of control. And when I saw the psychiatrist who diagnosed me with burnout, you know, initially I thought I had something like. Um, I was on the spectrum somehow, like I had ADHD or something and he's like, no, you are so burnt out. You need time and space to just calm your brain down, calm your body down and just stay with it. And it's been a long road. It's been. Yeah, it's been like two years, and I'm still, you know, learning new techniques and learning new tools to keep me grounded. And through that experience, I did a lot of coaching, I did a lot of journaling, I did a lot of learning about mindfulness practices, and just being in tune with your body, and learning, you know, some painful lessons about what do I value. Does this serve me or does it not serve me? And it's, it seems quite simple. It's also like a hard lesson to learn when you get there. Yeah. And I find that burnout often, um, it often happens to people who are high performing. You're high performing, you know, that those type of personalities, right. And, and I wanted to be, I wanted to achieve those goals. Like I'm a capable person. If I don't know how to do it, there's nothing that can stop me from learning how to do it. Um, I was, I was very much a person where I would say. Okay, this is my task. I may not know how to do it, but I'm certainly going to figure it out. And I would be really happy with those big challenges. So it was really hard for me to take that step back. Uh, but what it, where it led me to was it, In the end, I wish I hadn't gotten so burnt out, but it led me to a place of learning about, you know, how all these things can benefit me and my leadership skills. So, you know, mindfulness, being, um, being aware and seeing people through not just their eyes and not their viewpoints, but seeing them through their whole lives and what's going on and having more compassion for other people and thinking. You know, that person doesn't seem themselves. They didn't react very well. There's a logic to that and there must be something going on in their life. That's. You know, and, and looking at people as other humans more than employees or, you know, team members, you know, there was a book that I read and I think it was called how, how to be human. I'll, I'll look it up so you can put it in the notes but it really talked about the human side of, you know, understanding what's behind everyone. And even the people that we know really well, we only know about 30%. of what's going on in their life. So there's this whole iceberg below the surface that we're unaware of. And keeping that in mind allowed me to be kind to myself because I realized, you know, other people don't know what's going on with me and likewise. So it allowed me to approach a lot of things with more compassion and kindness and patience. Yeah. And it also gave me permission to forgive people, not, not because Of what they did necessarily, but in the act of forgiving people, I'm not saying I for said it was right what they did, or I'm not judging them. It allowed me to let go of that negative energy. And that was really key for me. I don't forgive people for them. I forgive them for myself. You sound very self possessed, like you feel like you have, you know, you have more control over, you know, your boundaries, um, your, your, you know, your own emotions, um, how your, you know, your interpersonal relationships, um, would you say that that sounds accurate? Um, and it was, it was a journey to get here, uh, used, I had two fabulous coaches that I worked with and I worked at it. You, you can't fake the work. But the work was so rewarding. Right. And that is what led me to really want to do more things in terms of helping people. So, as part of that healing journey, um, I volunteer with the Royal Canadian Marines Search and Rescue. And they offered up this critical incident stress management course. So what we would do is when there's been a particularly traumatic incident, uh, so for example, these are volunteers who go out and rescue people. If they've suffered some sort of emotional trauma, we are trained to go in and help them process that trauma. And I think Getting involved with that was so key in helping me process my own grief and trauma from being burnt out and in the workplace. And then that led me to the new spot about, you know, really wanting to take the executive coaching and become an executive coach, not necessarily to go out and start my own consulting business. That, that may happen, but to also bring that in house to organizations, because I think organizations do lack that skill. And a lot of organizations don't have the money or, you know, the consulting budget to be able to bring that in house. And so, Yeah. And I really believe, you know, I, I really believe in making the world a better place. And that's, that's a big, uh, commitment from an accountant. So I'm not saving people's lives and, you know, I'm not like rescuing people from all these different, um, you know, traumatic situations. But I believe that in whatever capacity you have, you can make the world a better place or not. Yeah. Yeah, total 100 percent your actions have a ripple effect for sure. And we really believe in coaching cultures here. So anytime someone can learn the skill of coaching and bring it into their organizations. That's what I did originally. You know, I didn't. go out. I didn't become a coach and take coach training because I wanted to be a coach like an independent coach. I did it because I wanted to be a great manager, you know, a great people manager. I wanted to be able to serve my team to the best of my abilities. Um, and I knew that coaching was a valuable skill. And so that's, that was the reason why I took coaching. And I think that that is one of the better reasons, honestly, to become a coach, to learn that skill. Yeah, definitely. Um, So obviously you didn't get here on your own, you know, you, you didn't burn out in a silo. Um, I do think that, you know, we have more autonomy than we sometimes know that we do, or we have the skill. We don't always have the skills, right. To set those boundaries, to have those difficult conversations, to like, you know, to, to, you know, You don't have the personal power necessarily, um, in every situation at work that you need to have in order to protect yourself properly. Right. Um, but, but you certainly, you don't get there in a silo, you know, um, and what, um, sometimes the only thing you can do is leave. And I think that you've demonstrated that, but tell me about, you know, without obviously, you know, being discreet about it as you can, um, tell me about the scenario that, how, how did this evolve in the workplace? Yeah. So I, I think I was very naive. Um, and I believed that I could show how important finance and accounting wise and how beneficial it could be for an organization. And I really believe that finance is a strategic business partner. We can serve the organization. We can help the organization. You know, we are service providers to give good quality information that people can make the best possible decisions with. And I was, I was fooling myself. Um, and I didn't realize. That this organization didn't value that. Um, one of the also things like, and I, so I, I do value my own profession and I am, um, biased, of course. I also believe in innovation and being really authentic and, What's really important to me when we talk about innovation is it really starts with diversity of thought. And if people aren't willing to come to the table to discuss and brainstorm different ideas, then they really don't believe in innovation at all. And, you know, there's, I also feel there's a link between DEI initiatives and Diversity of thought. You know, we're really great at saying, you know, we believe in diverse cultures, but do we believe in diverse ways of thinking? Not so sure. In the organizations I've worked at, um, I think we could have done better and, and maybe part of that was, was my fault and I, I own that, but I, I think we need to also open our minds a little bit and realize that brainstorming and diversity of thought Is that first step towards making things better or making meaningful, intentional changes in the workplace? I 100 percent agree with you. Um, yes, I think that there are so many different ways that the brain works in different people. And the only way that we can solve the world's problems that we have today, I think, is to think differently. Um, I think that becomes kind of tricky in a larger organization. I've worked with a few holocracies. Um, which are very, very, very interesting, dynamic organizations, very flat organizations, um, or teal organizations and, uh, they, they have their own challenges, you know, um, there are, you know, and, and, and the teal organizations, the whole holocratic organizations, they really value this as well. Um, It's interesting. Like, I think that we have to take everything in balance. This is where I'm coming. Like, I feel like as I, as I've learned about diversity and inclusion, it's like the pendulum kind of swings all the way one way, and then you realize, you know, if I'm working, for example, if I'm working with a creative team, you know, a lot of creative teams. strongly value collaboration, innovation, diversity of thought, you know, they're chaotic, they're beautiful and they're a chaos. Um, and then often they'll come out with a product that's very interesting if they can work together. Um, but the, it's almost like the more they get to know each other, the more comfortable organizations get. There's so many, there's so many challenges that, that come up with these types of teams as well. Um, so I don't think there's a perfect. Perfect solution, all that to say. I think it's, I think that, you know, we need to manage people's expectations, um, through the process. It's like valuing people's experience, valuing their ideas, but then also someone needs to be able to make decisions, right? Yes. Yeah. And those first ideas, they may not be the right ones. Uh, but they may, they may spur someone's creativity to get you to the right one. And, you know, I think if you're going to pick up a bow and arrow, and if you're going to shoot at the target, I don't think you're going to hit a bullseye the very first time. I think you have to be prepared to miss the mark in the process of hitting that bullseye. And, you know, Making mistakes and making suggestions that ultimately lead to a better place is, is part of the process. And I think it's a really great thing when an organization can be open and they can have brainstorming sessions and keep things moving. Because I think we live in a world where change is so constant and it's so fast. We have to become, we have to figure out a better model. And Right of how to organize things into how to, how to think of these things quickly and efficiently and not, not waste time, so to speak, um, in, in one organization I worked for, we would do these, like, very well intention, intention sessions where, you know, we take a day. The management team would work on certain projects, and we were all just so nervous and apprehensive to share, and because of that, the organization didn't progress. And this was an organization that said they valued innovation. And. I wish I could tell the senior leadership that, you know, when people are not participating, that's a message, right? That's, they, yeah, they're afraid to put forward these ideas, and they just weren't, I don't believe. It was intentional. I think they truly believed they thought of innovation, but that's where I get back to the diversity of thought and having these open, robust discussions that are used to generate like new ideas or new products, new services, new processes. Those are really important. And, um, I totally agree. It's about trust. I mean, trust is the foundation for everything, right? If you can't trust the people that you work with, um, it's going to be very difficult, but people are also very, um, attached. to their own thoughts, especially strong minded people. Absolutely. Absolutely. And it didn't really hit home. Like after, after I got really burnt out, I started taking courses and I took this one change management course and it was so valuable to me because the instructor was incredible. And this was at Royal Roads University. And She told us and, and taught us through like literature and, and different research, all change begins with a loss. And I had never thought of it that way. And it is so true because whether it is a small change or a big change, everyone loses something right off the bat. So for example, if you're... /episode/index/show/2351f999-02cb-4568-ab77-a59f33bb3fd3/id/33131042

Boldly Leading with Love in a Cutthroat Environment ft Sarah Boardman 09/18/2024

Boldly Leading with Love in a Cutthroat Environment ft Sarah Boardman With 25 years of experience in HR, Sarah has dedicated her career to empowering leadership teams and coaching emerging leaders in competitive industries. Her unique approach combines bold leadership with kindness and compassion, creating environments where individuals can truly thrive. Get ready to be inspired as Sarah shares her vision of using compassion and humor to unlock the potential in others. Join us as we explore her insights and learn how we can all lead boldly in our own lives! Stay in touch with Sarah: To learn more on Sarah and her services: Script: Just putting put love out into the world and it's not about being perfect it's not about not using your horn or rolling your eyes it's about you know the intentionality of of looking and saying okay you know what there's a better way. Welcome to Weirdos in the Workplace, the podcast that celebrates authenticity, transparency, passion, and purpose in our world of work today. And I'm very excited to have Sarah Boardman on the show today. Welcome, Sarah. No, very excited. Wonderful. Okay, so I'm going to just do a little intro for you first. Sarah Boardman has spent 25 years in HR and now works with leadership teams to take their organizations to the next level. Her particular passion is coaching emerging leaders in competitive industries who wish to lead boldly, yet with kindness and compassion. Thanks for joining. Thank you for having me. I'm excited. Fantastic. Okay. So why don't you tell everyone out there exactly who you are, what you do, your life story and your purpose all in 30 seconds. All in 30 seconds. So actually the purpose part is actually the easiest part. So as part of the coaching process, you know, you do your work on yourself first. And, and the thing that they're sort of the two purposes that have emerged for me, there are my initial one was to be the light that illuminates the brilliance of others. So I love seeing that growth. And then as I started my master's journey last year, the first part of that program was, okay, what is your higher purpose? Like what is your research higher purpose? And, and what sort of came to me and like literally almost a bolt, a bolt of lightning was, um, to create understanding around the link between love and profit. So like love is, is, is the thing it matters. It's, it's not a dirty word at work it's not a four-letter word uh so those are really my purpose and if I actually look back at my life um it's it's been there since the beginning so my parents emigrated from the UK as sort of specifically to have us they had a technology here to fix my mom's infertility that they didn't have there. So, you know, they made this, this giant leap, a large part of it was so that they could have a family. So even though we were separated from our bigger family, we were, you know, we had this unit and my parents, I was just saying to a girlfriend this morning, like, I think my mother created the concept of chosen family. Like they just really created an environment for us where we had that. So we grew up, we were so privileged, you know, we grew up being extremely loved and, and talking about it. And, and again, love was, was always set, you know, every time we hung up, every time we leave the house, every time you, you know, it just was. And, and so I think, you know, the, the, the weirdo part for me, which is why I love the name of this podcast is, is that didn't always translate to, to corporate. And, you know, if I had a dollar for every time that I was told you're too much, I, I would be doing this you know from the Caribbean or you know Vancouver Island or you know somewhere like you know real estate unattainable because that's that's the weirdo part is that you're too much you're too much you're too much you're too much you're too much and so the the inner battle has been that no I'm not I'm not um even something is as you know simple as as being enthusiastic about something like it's it's sort of surprising to me how many people in in corporations are offended by enthusiasm it's like really just saying yeah so it's it's it's just that so that's the the weirdo part and and so five years ago I left I never thought that I'd be an entrepreneur I never thought I'd have my own business I'm like like staunch like employee roots like I'm you know I'm an early adopter I'm someone who wanted the the front of the bus getting people organized but I realized I had to leave to be able to step into that too much and when you do work for yourself and you're you know I I only work with nice people . I have the great privilege of working with some truly truly truly amazing organizations they bring you in because of the too much yeah because of those things right it's like all those things like you're told to stamp down for you know 25 years of my career all of a sudden they're like oh you're so enthusiastic we just love it it's so great you know you bring so much humor to this and I'm like it's interesting actually um I it's something I've mentioned to a few people who've been on the podcast who are also like consultants it works really well as a consultant to have that passion and drive but it doesn't always translate as well into your everyday you know work environment for whatever reason um it's interesting. But I also do think the world of work is changing. And I think maybe businesses are a little more open, you know, to adopting. They're definitely getting there. They're getting there for sure. And that like we've talked about, like, that's what gives me the hope. Yeah. And I think the Gen Z, like you were saying on our previous call, I think they're really starting to drive the bus here. I think they're starting to drive the bus. And I think they're starting to recognize that someone else, so they can drive the bus or they can let someone else drive the bus or they can get off the bus and on the bus. And it's like, hey, it's just a bus. The bus is a construct. It's not the thing anymore. And then, I mean, Gen Alpha is going to do like incredible things as well so you know getting the privilege of seeing that um and just working with emerging leaders who get it like they just get it and they get why and they're very intentional and very purposeful about the way that they want to lead which is really really like it's it's inspiring and humbling but also like yeah like it's about time so it's awesome right yeah I mean I I know I've talked to a lot of people about this there's a few of coaches in Ottawa who really believe that like love is what you know is is the concept is the thing that is going to you know if we can change the world and have like world domination for good like I always say you know love is what's going to change it right um and I know I was never hesitant to to say I love you like to my employees and I know you were mentioning like that's kind of an HR nightmare earlier that might be an HR nightmare um and that's okay it depends but when you when you're in an environment and again love isn't just like I love you it's it's attention it's listening so um in May I went to the IOC conference in Boston and Dr. Robert Waldinger, who's leading the Harvard study on on happiness and life is like an 85 year study. And, you know, he quoted John Tennant, who said, you know, attention is the most basic form of love. So even if we show our team's attention, if we listen, if we regard, if we're caring, all of those things are in this like love bucket that we're, you know, however we choose to say it, it is the only thing that will change things. I think it is taking the hard path though in a lot of organizations, right? Like if you choose to take this path, you're taking the path less traveled. You're taking the path, you know, your competitors may not be taking this path. And so there are pros and cons, right. That we should probably elaborate on a little bit. You know, if you're an organization that wants to take this love approach, this caring approach, the empathy approach, the know the um the grace approach giving people grace and time and space and health and wealth you know and all these things um you may be shocked at how your competitors treat your their employees and that they may be actually getting further ahead of you because of it sometimes yeah again i think it depends what matters to the organization so um like last year at royal roads we were really fortunate to be there on indigenous people's day so we had an indigenous scholar that came in and talked to us and robin ward and she said you know she often gets asked like what is decolonization and what she, she's like, I'm going to give you the really simple example. It's moving from fear-based and command and control to a love-based leadership. And, and I think that what is going to happen is maybe the command and control gets a little bit further ahead for a little while, but it will, it will get stuck or it will, you know, everyone's going to go, oh, wait a minute. I want to be treated better over here. This will slowly, but surely, you know, it is the, the, the tortoise and the hare. I, I just, I can't live in a world where love doesn't ultimately win. And when you, when you treat people with respect and you listen to them and they know they're valued and you know you're you're you're holding you know you're ensuring accountability there's productivity there's effectiveness it's not that it's just this big like you know love circle anything goes done right yeah it's it's how you choose to treat people most people will take that over an extra ten thousand dollars because we're starting to realize the impact it has and and not everyone will and that's okay and that's what makes the world go around but i just i can't live in a world where it doesn't ultimately win or it doesn't ultimately get at least the same because people want to be there they're they're proud of the work they do they love their co-workers they love their passionate what they do they love their job we spend more time with our co-workers than we do with our spouse yeah that's true for sure so like why would I want to work with a bunch of jerks no I'm curious what do you think like love looks like as a business process I I think it looks like asking questions and actually listening and acting on the responses I think it's being compassionate and seeing people. So one of the things I would say in my leadership development is we are a stew, not a bento box. So we show up as a stew. We've got, you know, home, family, kids, parents, you know, society, all these things in this, you know, big, beautiful bowl. We're not like, oh, now it's nine to five I only think about work or this or that like understanding that people have things going on and when you um you know building trust and building relationships and knowing people so that when someone says hey you know what my dad's not doing very well you say okay what do you need to do and somebody goes to work for six weeks from their dad's house right like yeah it's not it's not that hard and so that's that's why I think that even though like the love word has this like big like romantic and you know groovy connotation it's actually the roots of it are, you know, attention, intention, and respect and just respecting the person. So what does love look like at work? It looks as, you know, acting with integrity and, you know, all of the trust things like speaking, you know, not speaking of someone when they're not in the room or, you know, list like really listening to what people have to say, letting people finish a sentence yeah saying what do you think and then actually listening saying oh oh here's a big one that's love apologize i'm sorry i need to i didn't i didn't mean to hurt you i didn't realize that i'm really sorry and here's like love next level make amends right you got the acknowledgement how can i win you trust back i'm really sorry i didn't mean to do that what like how can i help you and then respecting what the person says if they're like i'm just really mad right now i can't deal with it okay you say okay let me know when you are like whatever the case is all of the things that we talk about love are actually just being a good human right and that's where like that human-centered leadership I think that's where emerging leaders are are like absolutely kicking ass and taking names yeah so far above and beyond for sure so far and they just they get it we talk about this stuff in leadership development nobody ever bats an eye I've never once I've I have a leadership development program that I run and I've done it with probably 300 people. And not once has anybody said, well, they should want to do it because I asked them to. Okay. No, people just want to be good because they know how they want to be treated so it's it's really it's really powerful it's incredibly hopeful like and and so energizing like i it is it is honestly the privilege of my life to get to work with these individuals you know across north America so far who want to lead intentionally and they think about things oh have you seen um one of my favorite books is actually called Against Empathy uh The Case for Rational Compassion yes um because what it talks about is when empathy goes bad um the ruinous empathy like the um when empathy goes into its shadow right and so i think it's a really good book uh because it's very well balanced uh you know because we do have a generation of gen zs right now and then Gen Alpha after that and I've got three Gen Zs right that I'm raising I've got 19, 17, 15 year olds and a couple of them have very high empathy levels and so and we're encouraged it's not that we're we don't want to discourage it right and like you're saying you, you're seeing this in your Gen Z emerging leaders, you know, how, you know, how intuitive and empathetic and they've just grown up with specific values and very open-minded, right. Very willing to adapt and willing to accept other people's perspectives. My, my concern sometimes is that, you know, we're not prepared. We're not preparing them necessarily for how hard the corporate world and how cutthroat and ruthless it can be because not everyone has empathy. In fact, the episode that came out this week was literally about psychopaths in the workplace and how prevalent that can be, you know, so we're not necessarily preparing them well for the psychopaths in the workplace. Although one of the things Amy Davies, the guest this week said is that this style of culture, the empathy culture, this like gratitude culture is very difficult for psychopaths. So anyways, I'm curious what you think about that. How can we also prepare? I think it's an and like, how can we also prepare them for this? Right. That's, I mean, it's such a great question because we still have to get stuff done. still have to make the widgets we still have to you know like all of the things need to be done and so i think we're still figuring this piece out but you know empathy isn't at the exclusion of of ensuring accountability and it's not it's not looking at that but what i do see which is really interesting is, is a, I'll call it like a broader self-awareness where people show empathy to themselves. So, so I'm Gen, I'm Gen X. So we just put up with shit. Like we got, we got yelled at, we got, you know, told we were stupid. We got, you know, like, like harassed up the like it's just it just was right it was different it was different in the 80s and 90s and we're like okay i guess this is just the way that it is so no that's wrong and i i have to wonder if if we'd had empathy and there were situations that I left like there were situations where I was like no I'm not dealing I'm not doing with this I'm I'm worth more than this but I think that's that's the balancing piece is is people who who know what it feels like to be led well and with empathy and, and with passion and purpose, they will, they will leave. They will, they will, you know, vote with their feet and get you, you out. So if you treat people like crap, they're going to leave. And so at some point, all the bullies just end up together when it's like, no, I'm not going to do that I'm not going to be treated that way they they will leave and and like my dad you know was at the same organization I think for like 20 something years and before that it was like 15 years we don't see that anymore we do see you know transitions more but from what I'm hearing and what I understand is people are leaving for that leadership culture they're leaving you know for promotion more. But from what I'm hearing, and what I understand is people are leaving for that leadership culture, they're leaving, you know, for promotion, but they're also leaving for like, this is more aligned with how I want to live my life. So we're understanding that the roles that the ingredients of the stew, like you can't have stew without onions, and you can't have, you know, work without challenge, but what kind of challenge? So I think that, you know, the concept of ruinous empathy, that's radical candor, right? We're like, like, everything is okay. It's like, no, not everything is okay. We do have to, we have work to do. And so people are more aware. So they're, they're making intentional choices of what I'm moving to. And so even like I haven't worked in corporate for five years, but even like the last couple of years of that corporate, people are starting to say, okay, what is the management team function like? What is this like? It wasn't necessarily, they were asking questions about the work, but it was more about like, what's the leadership? What's the culture? Like, how does this work? So people are becoming aware of it. So I think, I think people are aware that there's a balance, but I also think that people are internalizing what that balance means to me. So self-awareness is a part, part of the protection I think as well. Right. Oh my gosh. So I have said a thousand times that self-awareness is the most important leadership skill. Yeah, it absolutely is because if you are not self-aware, you can't improve. No, you, it just, it just doesn't work. So that self-awareness and again, that's a journey that never ends. And awareness, it's self-awareness, but it's also just awareness in general, right? It's the external awareness and the internal awareness. We need to be sensing, we need to sense into the environment. Yeah. Yeah, exactly. And, and I think that's where, I think that's where, you know, later generations are just better at that. And, and folks, folks who've done the work too. So like, you know, when I say emerging leaders, some of them are my age, some of them are, you know, like mid fifties and, and it's just, that's where they're in their career or, you know, they made a change or whatever, but it's still that same idea of, of, okay, how did I do? Did I do that? Okay. Yeah. You know what? That went well, that didn't, that didn't like that self-assessment is just become a critical leadership skill. And I, I see people being able to do that. And that's really exciting. So I mean, the leadership anxiety has never been higher. And I wonder how much of our like, this like necessity for awareness and sensing into everything. You know, there's so many variables. And now we're we're you know we're taking it all on ourselves all this complexity we're taking inside of us you know and trying to parse it out as best as we can uh how much do you think that's contributing to the levels of anxiety today for leaders so i have a little bit of a different thought on that and it's it's interesting because as soon as you said leadership anxiety I thought oh fear so you know it's interesting because one of the first things I say in the program is okay I'm gonna like spoiler alert most of leadership is being a good person right yeah and go and be Oh, it's like, you're... /episode/index/show/2351f999-02cb-4568-ab77-a59f33bb3fd3/id/33031592

Cultivating Growth, Belonging, and Diversity in the Workplace ft Jaya Kaushik 09/11/2024

Cultivating Growth, Belonging, and Diversity in the Workplace ft Jaya Kaushik Meet Jaya Kaushik, a trailblazer whose journey began as a new Canadian immigrant and transformed into a powerful force for change in Canadian society. As a Talent Management Professional and because of her lived experience, Jaya is integrating numerous components of diversity, equity, inclusion, and belonging in her work. Her story is one of resilience and ambition, weaving together her experiences from transportation, retail, banking, and leadership development, which has led her to the incredible role of preparing for Canada's first ever Hard Rock Hotel and Casino! Stay connected with Jaya: Script: If you receive a roadblock from one person, always look outside the box. That's what I do. Do not hinder yourself just because you received one no. If there's like one no, there could be four yeses. So just think outside the box. The world is a beautiful place. People are willing to help you if you are willing to receive that help, love and compassion from them. Welcome to Weirdos in the Workplace, the podcast that celebrates authenticity, transparency, passion, and purpose in our world of work today. And what a crazy world it is. My name is Erin Patchell, and I am your host, and I'm here with Jaya Kaushik. Thank you so much for joining us, Jaya. Pleasure. Thanks, Erin Erin for inviting me here to your podcast. Thank you uh okay so folks Jaya is an immigrant a person of color if you can't see Jaya if you're not looking if you're not watching this on YouTube but you're you know watching this on the podcast she is a person of color and a woman who believes in fostering impact through diversity, equity, inclusion, and belonging. She is the talent management lead at Hard Rock Ottawa, developing strategies around recruitment and training initiatives to prepare for the launch of the first Hard Rock Hotel and Casino in Canada, which is really exciting. And I'm really curious to learn more about that as well, Jaya, if you have a few minutes. Yeah, for sure. For sure. Definitely. I mean, a quick snapshot is I relocated my entire life from Winnipeg to Ottawa for this exciting thing that is coming into existence in April next year. We are going to have the first Hard Rock Hotel and Casino. It's right now in 74 countries across the globe. And finally, Canada is going to have its first one. So we've taken over Rideau, Carleton Casino, and we are building a hotel. So it's going to be, the racetrack's still going to be there. We're going to have like 10 restaurant outlets. So, you know, it's going to be a whole new entertainment business with the tinge of gaming added to it. So it's going to be fun, exciting. But the best part about it, Aaron, is, you know, bringing in all those folks. So we're going to be hiring for around 500 folks. So, you know, going to have massive recruitment initiatives. We are starting right now in August up to April next year. So it's going to keep all of us quite busy. No doubt. No doubt. How exciting. I cannot wait to actually see this in action. It sounds like it's going to bring a lot of value to Ottawa for sure. That's great. Well done. Yeah. And also congratulations to you for like uplifting your whole life and moving here. You know, I think that's an extremely brave thing to have done. That's an extremely brave thing to have done. Yeah, I moved quite a bit. So I came as an immigrant in 2019 here in Canada, and I was back there in Nova Scotia. And then, you know, I've always moved for my career. I moved to New Brunswick. And then, you know, there was some readjustments within the family. So I relocated to Winnipeg. And finally, when this opportunity came knocking at my door, I'm like, I cannot say no to this. I mean, I did not have experience in the casino or entertainment industry, but I thought that this is exciting. This is something which I believe in because I really value constant learning involvement, along with bringing innovation through continuous improvement mindset so I'm like what impact can I bring when something is not built but is in the transition phase so that was my motivation to come and join as a talent management lead here and you know move my entire life from Winnipeg to Ottawa. It's been quite a few months. I relocated in February this year, but I'm loving Ottawa so far. That's good. I'm glad because it would be kind of unfortunate if you didn't like it. So because it sounds like you're going to be stuck here for a little while longer. But, you know, I love Ottawa as well. I think that the community here is lovely and the it's so close to so much nature as well if you love nature and um now it sounds like we have a new director of nightlife in Ottawa um so maybe we'll even have some exciting things to do you know after dark at some point uh it sounds like Hard Rock Cafe fits right nicely into the strategy. For sure. I mean, Hard Rock is keeping busy. The amount of professional networks. I mean, I met you at the social HR camp, Erin, and, you know, building that professional network within the community is so amazing. Just inviting all those community partners and building that strategic relationship and just people have been just so nice and kind and they are so open to any opportunity sometimes even if the partnership does not work they're always willing to keep that connection and that's that's really inspiring for me well I think your energy is amazing And I know the last conversation that we had around, we were talking more around, you know, DEI and B and a little bit of the accessibility, because that's kind of more in my, in my purview these days. But your energy around this is amazing. I think that, you know, you have a really interesting perspective on it, that you have a really interesting perspective on it, mainly because it sounds like you've really thought about how to integrate DEIB into the business processes, which I think is really interesting. And one of our previous podcast guests, Kathleen Johnson, a few weeks ago, we were talking about how important that really is, you know, to integrate DEIB as an operational process. It's not just a philosophical values driven thing anymore. What do you think about that? is professional or me being interested in DEIB is what that motivates me. I think when you feel or when you've been through something over a period of time or through your professional journey, that kind of lets you in as in, okay, why am I feeling this way? And if I'm feeling this way, maybe someone else, my peers might be feeling the same way. You know, they could belong to different race, religion, ethnicity, maybe a different gender, LGBT community. But if I am feeling a certain way at workplace, we're in a workplace calls it more most diverse. And, you know, they've won so many awards just because on paper or in reports, they show, oh, we did, you know, this event, we did this awareness day, but they do not know, like, you know, it's not just a checkbox. It's basically how your employees are feeling in the moment. Have you ever, you know, there's always one-on-ones with managers and there's performance evaluation, there's employee engagement surveys, but has anyone gone down that pipeline and asked, hey, has your manager ever, you know, looked down upon you in a certain way because of your culture or because of your identity, or, you know, you've been laughed at by your team members, just because you have a different pronunciation, because you just came from a different country. So, you know, those things get ignored in the process, no matter how many surveys we do, no matter how many one-on-ones we do, no matter how many lunches we do. So it is so important to integrate that. And again, I would say it's not just checking the checkbox or meeting the criteria or winning some awards. It's more about how you're feeling, how you are, you know, how are the employees embracing that culture of the organization. For me, when I join an organization, the values, the, you know, we talk about values, we talk about models and mission statement. It's good we talk about that, but do we actually implement it? You know, when we say we believe in, you know, authenticity or we believe in bringing your best self forward, and then you are actually doing it, but then your manager's like, oh, why are you dressed this way? That's against the, you know, the dress code policy. Or, you know, if I am a Muslim, and I do not want to attend a meeting in the afternoon, just because I'm'm fasting and I want to have my prayers. Why, you know, my manager is not able to understand that or, you know, why am I not feeling, why am I not being felt included? You know, I've told my manager a month ago that, oh, I'm going to be fasting during Ramadan, but still we have a week-long potluck during that same week or same month. It's just those small examples which a lot of folks at works do not realize. And for them, it's quite normal. And you know, that normalization, Erin, passes on to employees like us where we are like, oh, we cannot make any change maybe that's how we are supposed to be or that's how the culture here is specifically for immigrants like I can speak because I am an immigrant myself you know we have a different culture back in our country and we embrace a new culture here but when we are embracing the diversity, we tend to forget that we can raise voice for ourselves, that we cannot say yes to any, you know, wrong actions or any microaggressive behaviors that have been hurled upon us. Right. So the question that the world's becoming more multicultural, right? I mean, there's, there's literally no question. The only reason the Canadian population grew last year was because of immigration. And yeah. And I mean, even the most staunch conservatives that I know who are business owners, you know, you know, some people quite close to me, in fact, they admit that, you know, sometimes immigrants are actually the hardest workers that they can actually employ. And so I think that, you know, if you're a business owner and you're not thinking about how can I make my work, my employees, all of my employees, especially people who are immigrants or, you know, have maybe felt like they didn't belong in some way. How can I make them feel like they belong, like there's a place for them here, like we're taking their culture, their sometimes their religion as well. culture, sometimes their religion as well, and any of the elements that we're not used to, that we don't have experience with, how do we take that into consideration? So how do you do that? My question for you, the big question I think a lot of people think about is how do you find the middle ground when there's so many variables? So one thing we need to realize is that we need to be patient. Right. I cannot, you know, walk into a room one day and be like, OK, you got to understand my culture. You've got to understand, you know, I like this and I don't like this. And this is not part like no it takes time like that's one thing that both the parties need to realize and we need to be really we need to like have that mindset that okay like people are not going to know that I belong to a certain religion and things are done in a certain way in my culture or in anyone's culture I mean I learned so many new things when I came to Canada so that is one thing is realization and acknowledging the fact that it's not going to be perfect you know it's it's it's you know we we always say it's a journey and it's not a destination so how smooth and how empowering that journey can be. You know, what can you take and what can you leave during that journey? You know, we talk about unconscious biases. We talk about microaggressive behaviors. How can we make sure that those can be eliminated during this journey? It could be in the form of a conversation. It could be in the form of sensitive training, right? But a lot of it comes down from leadership, you know, how effective the leadership is at your organization, how inclusive, progressive, or how embracing that leadership is. Because I feel that, you you know leaders have a really really really big impact in terms of how it trickles down to managers supervisors and in general all the team members so leadership representation plays a huge role sensitivity training and just in general, like, I feel that whenever, like, if I'm joining an organization and I know I'm going to have, I'm going to be the only person of color there, right? So maybe kind of educating or, you know, generating awareness through lunch and learn or through coffee and chat, but taking that initiative, being bold enough to take that initiative. And again, I say it, that not to think of yourself as a victim because I feel in most of the cases, like the places I've worked, they have been quite open to the feedback. They've been quite embracing. I mean, I've worked at Hard Rock Hotel and Casino and I think I am the only person of color in my team and probably at site like we do not have, we will soon have a lot of representation. But it's quite fascinating, you know, when I talk about my culture, when I talk about a strategy that can impact someone who is more diverse, or, you know, who has a different representation or an identity. So I feel like there are so many steps, but you got to be, you got to start somewhere. You need to take that initiative and you need to realize it, that it's going to take time. I mean, I came here in 2019, it's 2024.'s 2024 it has taken time you know I was a person who would be like oh why did my manager say that to me and I would be a person who would like who has cried in the washroom and be like why am I feeling that I do not belong here there have been times when you know I want to just run back to my country because I feel I belong there and not here. But then always there is a team member resource group, there are your mentors, there are people who encourage you. If there are some people who are going to pull you down, there are always going to be people who will lift you up. There will always be like-minded people. There will always be people who really want to think from an inclusive perspective and who are going to understand what you're going through, even if they do not have the same skin color or they do not belong to the same culture, they will be there for you. Right. So whose responsibility is it and whose responsibility should it be? Maybe those are different answers. Maybe it's the same answer. I don't know. To really drive the education on this within an organization. As I mentioned, it's a two-way street, right? I mean, in my case, I was bold enough to be like, well, I know I'm not perfect and this is what I do and this is how I was brought up. So being vulnerable from, and I know it takes a lot of courage to be vulnerable and a lot of people cannot do it or are not comfortable doing it but even if you do it with your manager or one level up it can have a drastic change but again it needs to be a two-way street the organizations you know a lot of them I think I was talking to someone from our education group and they were saying that how they incorporate sensitive training or like cultural amalgamation training into people coming into the country or you know who are still adapting to the Canadian way of culture or the Canadian lifestyle so that's a great way we're in you know they can be made aware of certain like say business or professional like educates that we follow here and you know like one one basic thing was like back in my country we'd call everyone sir and ma'am right and like it's it's it's a common thing you know sometimes people laugh at you like why are you calling me sir and ma'am whereas it's it's a cultural way it's a way of respect in our country, right? So just for small time things, if they are trained and if even the managers, supervisors and everyone, like I believe it should not be limited to managers and supervisors. I mean, all the team members, they should go into this cultural immersion training wherein there needs to be a culture that's diverse, there needs to be one company culture that needs to accept. And so I didn't hear human resources anywhere in there. And I know you're an HR professional. So like, a lot of I feel like a lot of managers, sometimes, like, you know, they believe this is an HR core responsibility. You know, the HR should drive all of this. What's your opinion on that? HR, definitely. We build policies. Like right now in my current job duties and responsibilities, I'm responsible for training. So HR has a huge responsibility, but, you know know as HR professionals or like for the outside world we need to realize that we get a lot of pushbacks and challenges as in why do we need it you know what's what's the purpose of this um does it fit into our revenue or does it fit into our budget like what's what's one thing we're going to get out of it you know HR is always thought of like you know we spend money on things right whether it's DEIP initiatives whether it's recruitment whether it's training it's not thought of how we are bringing money back into the organization. So I would say HR has a role, definitely, Erin. And we have a role in bringing this to life or like coordinating this, but this really needs to start from that awareness standpoint view. I mean, what can HR do when we launch a training, we say that it's mandatory and there is a manager sitting there, and what they're doing is basically click, click, click, click, click, and not even learning what is being told them in the training. So how can we force them to do it until unless they themselves do not realize that it is important for them and the other team members? I mean, that's a huge challenge when you think from a learning and development perspective. How can we make it interactive? How can we make it engaging? And at the end, how can we make sure that this learning stays with them? You know, I've seen that, like, you know, when I see some of the training courses, like people complete it like a 30 minutes course probably in five minutes skip skip skip skip skip and I'm sitting there and I'm like what's what's the whole point like you know you you pay the vendors you put this entire training but what if like the other person doesn't want to learn? Yeah. Yeah. We have to teach them or like, you know, we have to engage them in the conversation around why it's important and provide that business case. And that has to, you know, if your leadership can make that case for you even better, because people are much more likely to listen to them. Yeah. I think, why do we have to do that? You know, why do we always need to have someone higher up, right? You know, you got to do this just because I'm your boss. Like that is the mindset I feel as an HR professional or as a DEIB, a person who's really passionate. I just feel how we can, you know, switch that mindset. And, you know, Aaron, sometimes I feel it's simply through a conversation. It's simply through, you know, letting them know that, you know, I know you believe in equality. I know you want the right fit and not a diverse pool of candidates but just think about from perspective of what struggles they've been through or what resources they have not had that is hindering them from like applying to whatever positions we are open I say this because I'd worked with a leader and I was like, you know, we need to do diverse recruitment, as in we probably should focus on LGBTQ, we should focus on women representation, we should focus on this and this community. And he looks at me, he's like, no, we should focus on the best fit. And I'm like, okay, but how's that fair? He's like, because we believe in equality. And I'm like, what about equity? Right. Like, you know, there is that, there's that picture, which shows that there are two people who are standing on a pedestrian and they both like,... /episode/index/show/2351f999-02cb-4568-ab77-a59f33bb3fd3/id/32909987

From Chaos to Clarity : Leading Organizations Through Complexity ft Kevin Judge 09/04/2024

From Chaos to Clarity : Leading Organizations Through Complexity ft Kevin Judge Kevin Judge is the CEO and Founder of iNOBL, a strategic business advisory firm with a global reach. A best-selling author, international speaker, and strategic business advisor, Kevin leads a team of professionals that senior leaders trust, to turn strategy into sustainable success. Join us for an insightful conversation on how to go from chaos to clarity, to best guide organizations to harness their potential, and excel beyond expectations! Stay in Touch with Kevin: For more on Kevin and his services: Script: When you're in a moment, one, have that sense of curiosity for yourself, but also if there's somebody that is coachable around you to say, hey, hold on a second, I hear you, you're concerned about ABC. What would happen if you were to stop and think of this in this different way? Mm-hmm. What other possibilities could there be? Welcome to Weirdos in the Workplace, the podcast that celebrates authenticity, transparency, passion, and purpose in our world of work today. My name is Erin Patchell, of course, your lovely host. And I'm here today with Kevin Judge. Say hello, Kevin. Hello, Kevin. No, hello, everybody. Nice to be here. It's great for you to be here, Kevin. Okay, so for those who don't know Kevin yet, Kevin is the CEO and founder of iKnowBull, a strategic business advisory firm with a global reach. Kevin leads a team of professionals that senior leaders can trust to turn strategy into sustainable success. He's also a best-selling author, international speaker, and strategic business advisor. Welcome, welcome. Thanks very much for having me. It's a pleasure to be here. All right. So what are we talking about today, Kevin? Just give me broad strokes. Well, you know, one thing that's caught my attention recently was how crazy our brains are in making up stories about what's going on in our worlds, whether it be driving down the road and somebody cuts you off or the way a coworker responds to an email or the way your boss treats you. Like all of these things, our brains tell us stories and that can get us in a lot of trouble. So what is interesting for me right now is how can we have a little bit more of a view of curiosity to solve some of the problems that don't need to be problems in our lives? And of course, if you want to tie that to strategy and execution, it's about getting away from conflict and better communication and that type of thing to help make the world go around a lot better. Yeah, that'd be nice. There are a few existential crises in the world at this time. So I think I use that word almost every single podcast right now is like existential crises. And it's not surprising that people are trying to find ways to both like predict, analyze, compartmentalize, and like, just, you know, try to like kind of survive through, you know, what's going on today at a micro and macro level. So, you know, humans be humans, right? Well, exactly. And whatever's going on around us, like if you think, And whatever's going on around us, if you think, probably heard this example before where a caveman sees a saber-toothed tiger and they go into fight or flight mode and it's all about survival. Well, first of all, we wear more clothes nowadays, but also, well, many of us do. Some of us. Yes, right. But also, we don't have saber-toothed tigers coming at us. But on a day-to-day basis, our brains don't know the difference between the perceived physical threat of a saber-toothed tiger and a perceived psychological threat. So let me take it into a work environment. You walk into a meeting room that you're expecting to have a meeting with your boss, and HR is there. Oh my gosh, Right. So perceived psychological threat of why is HR here? I'm going to get fired. And if I get fired, everybody's going to look at me and be ashamed of me. My family's going to leave me. I'm going to lose my house. I'm going to end up on the street and I'm going to starve to death and die. I'm going to end up on the street and I'm going to starve to death and die. Now, I know that sounds ridiculous, but that can be where our brain goes very, very quickly when it's not necessarily the fact. Right. Well, I think you've given us an amazing intro to the topic. Let's come up for air. And I just want to ask you first, the first like real question, the most important question, what makes you a weirdo? What makes me a weirdo? When you asked me that the first time I was like, well, I don't know. Am I really that weird? But I'm going to focus in on, it's taken a lot of work for me to not appear as weird as maybe as I, as I was many years let your freak flag fly that's there you go I have a very strong sense of right and wrong and in my younger years there was no gray area like it's either right or wrong the rules are rule you follow it or you don't follow it etc uh and that led to me having super high expectations for myself as well as super high expectations of other people. And I think in my terms, what makes me weird is I really struggled to understand, well, how is it that people are not as serious about these things as I am? And how can they be comfortable with the lack of performance and, and just getting by and not really caring, et cetera. And so it took a lot of work for me to understand people and how they, how they actually think and process and that not everybody's like me. And thank God they're great. Like the last thing that people need is another me uh and thank god very great like the last thing people need is another me like we we need everybody to be who they are i mean not to like go down a huge rabbit hole here but i'm very i'm kind of curious like if you've ever detangled like why you were so motivated like what was it in your dna or in your upbringing or whatever that like drove you in that way that that is interesting that could be an interesting conversation yes yes uh should we get the virtual couch out no it's not my not my thing but yeah um you know what i'm not 100 sure because when i when i look at i have two brothers and i look at them and we're fairly different uh than than each other um but also similar in some ways but my father was in the military my mom was a nurse there was a strict household um but i i think some of it's just maybe it's because i was born in january right? Like I, I, there's a thing, that's a thing, you know? Well, yeah. Right. So I really don't know other than our behavior as we learn behavior, we are either rewarded for it or not. And perhaps how I behaved in the decisions that I made. I had rewards for it either intrinsically or extrinsically was rewarded for those behaviors. And that worked until it didn't work, right? Once I got into my career, that rigidity wasn't helpful all the time. Yeah, no, for sure. Especially in the world today when things are, you know, you need to be more agile and adaptable in a lot of ways. I can see how you would have had to learn that probably. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And it's for many people, that's not something that comes easily. No, no. For most people that doesn't come easily. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Well, interesting. Okay. So maybe, maybe another rabbit hole for another day to go all the way down. Yeah. But you're a strategist at heart. Okay, so you and I, we're both strategists. We kind of work in different areas. We're not like conflicting at all or competing, really. We work with different kinds of clients. But we're both, you know, more on the strategy side, strategy execution. I also do some coaching. Do you do coaching as well? Are you a coach? Yes. I don't do a lot of the coaching myself anymore, but I do coaching usually with executive CEOs. Right. Okay. So you do a little bit of coaching as well or have done coaching as well. Yeah. So the world's basically like it's on fire on fire, you know, and everyone's terrified. Business leaders are terrified. Doesn't matter, you know, small business, medium sized business, large enterprise government, you know, nobody knows what's going to happen next. There are lots of different mega threats, you know, in the world. mega threats you know in the world yep um what are you seeing like just like on a what what are you sensing right now in the world like what are you sensing as like some of the biggest things that people are concerned with day to day that is affecting their behavior i think um and and that's a very broad question. So I'm going to give you a very broad answer. I think one of the biggest questions that people have today is anything that's happening, anything that they read in the news, anything that they see happen on the street, et cetera, is how does this impact me and my future and my ability to be successful in whatever it is that I'm doing, right? To thrive in this ecosystem that we're in. And it sounds like a very selfish question, but it really, I don't think is, right? We're no good to anybody else unless we are strong ourselves. And then once we're taken care of, it's easy to help the rest of the people around us in the world, et cetera. So I think that's the big thing for people is, hey, how are things going to help? So let's take Canadian politics right now. I'm coaching a CEO right now around the strategy for his organization, and he requires some funding through government grants. Okay, great. But what is going to be happening in our political environment come September? Is the opposition going to say, hey, we want a non-confidence vote? Yeah. And that's going to destroy the current government and all funding is going to come to a screeching halt or do we have another year year and a half etc right so those sorts of things are a concern um even what's happening in the u.s for for their politics it's a concern for canadians uh and people in the U.S. alike. So I think for most people, it's like, how are these things going to impact us? And it can be the smallest little thing that puts people into turmoil. How do you see this sphere reflected within organizational behavior? Prime example, and this one's really, really fresh. CEO just let go two of his employees, small organization. Yeah. For various reasons, right? And the story start. Well, why were those people let go? And of course, the CEO can't be very specific on what those reasons are, because you have to value the privacy of those individuals. So there's a generic answer as to why. But people start making up stories. Right. Is it because employee A was no good, they were stealing, or is it because there isn't enough money in the company and we're going to go bankrupt? All sorts of things come out. And so people see this information and start processing, okay, well, how does this impact me? Is there longevity in my career in this company? Should I start looking for work? Or, hey, I'm a survivor. I didn't get canned, but now I've got all this extra work. Or am I going to have all this extra work that I have to do to make up for the people that have left? Right. And when they don't have the answers to those questions, they make up answers to those questions. And I tell you, our brains are masterful storytellers. Our brains, unfortunately, focus in on fictional horror instead of, hey, everything's going to be great. Yeah, that's true. Yeah, that's true. And it seems like in times of stress, you know, that becomes even more true that we fixate on, you know, trying to create certainty out of uncertainty, whether or not it's actually real. It's like a mass there's things we cannot control and we try to control. We spend a lot of energy on that instead of what we should be doing, right? We should be focusing on as an individual, what can I control? Focus on that. And from that organizational perspective, get the work done that you need to get done to continue to perform well, to help the organization advance, to maintain the view that people have on your value to the organization, right? If you start spiraling out of control and become cynical and stop performing because you're just giving up, et cetera, it's almost a self-fulfilling prophecy, right? You kind of end up putting yourself out of work. Yeah. It strikes me that you're kind of the perfect person to help in this scenario someone who you know came from was probably very it was certainly probably still you're still very um disciplined but there's a difference between discipline and rigidity you know yeah um so but someone who was like very disciplined and maybe a you know verging on having too much routine perhaps once upon a time to having to learn how to adapt, being potentially a very good person to lean on in times like this when people have to learn how to adapt. Yeah. Well, thank you for saying that I seem to be a good person for that. So I'll agree with you. Please do. It's also not only for the individual who's impacted, but also for leaders of organizations. Right. So earlier I said when people don't have the answers, they make up their own answers. Well, the answers need to be shared by leaders across the organization. the organization. So what is it that a leader can do to communicate, hey, there is a future and this is how bright it looks and you're part of that. Or, hey, the future is uncertain. I'll be honest. But I really value you. That's why you're still here. And I need your help to figure out what it's going to look like. And let's make this work. Let's rally together to survive this. Right. So whether it's good news or bad news, those leaders really need to communicate with conviction and belief in that future and the people that report into them. Yeah. So we're kind of we're edging towards we're kind of like on the edge of the curiosity cure now, right? Yeah, yeah. We're starting to edge towards that. And it's interesting, because, you know, what you're talking about that balance between like reality and faith, essentially, is what we're talking about, you know, a belief that we're going to get through this, if we can do together and we're going to be honest and blah, blah, blah, right? All the way through. It's like, you know, you want to be honest, but can leaders really be honest? You know, like how much honesty and transparency do you usually recommend? As much as possible. Yeah. Without sacrificing confidentiality. without sacrificing confidentiality. Okay, perfect. So there are times where a leader will be asked questions. They may know the answer, but can't share it. And instead of saying, oh, I don't know, perhaps they should say something like, you know what, that isn't an area that I'm able to speak about now, but as soon as I can, I will share that information with you. Right. Yeah. Yeah. Well, I mean, you want to have, they want you to, they want to know, people want to know that you do know the answer, right? Not that you don't know the answer. That's terrifying, you know? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. We want to know that we're, we want to be confident that our leaders know that the answer is, and it's okay. Maybe if, if it's a need to know that we're going to want to be confident that our leaders know that the answer is and it's okay maybe if if it's a need to know at this point right yeah but the curiosity cures the same you know how much like where's the balance right between the hallucination and the reality when it comes to like you know we're leading with curiosity, how, how far into curiosity do you go? This is a question that I ask myself a lot because I have ADHD and I have a lot of things that I'm curious about. I need some restraint, you know? I am, I'm curious. Okay. Let's, let's back up for a second. Talk about the curiosity curve. So people know what the heck we're talking about. Okay. Yes. Because we've said curiosity cure a few times a couple times yeah right so that that really is about pausing in the moment and asking yourself what you know this something happened and this is why i think it is pausing in the moment and thinking is there an alternate reason why this has happened is there an alternate potential outcome um one one thing i like to do so let's take the example of um uh you're driving down the road and somebody all of a sudden cuts you off right and many people have a negative reaction to that right right? Once they get over the adrenaline rush of swerving out of the way or the near miss. And there are reactions typically are not all that friendly, whether it was yelling or gestures or speeding and catching up to the person at the next light, getting out of your car and hitting their window, like all that road rage stuff. Right. So let's stay away from that. Um, but asking yourself in the moment, what if that person that cut me off actually had positive intent? Right. What could have possibly happened that they would cut me off with positive intent right yeah so you know maybe they were avoiding a squirrel which you know okay but or maybe they were avoiding a child or their steering wheel stopped working i don't know right there's yeah sure so many potential opportunities or maybe it was just a dumb accident that they, they just cut you off and they didn't do it intentionally. Like I know I've cut, I've cut people off by accident without thinking about it. So right. We got to give people a break. Totally. Like I spent like my twenties, I was a little angry and most of my teens actually. Like I spent like my twenties, I was a little angry and most of my teens actually. Yeah. Most of us are at that age. Pretty angry. I was angry, angry at the world, you know? Um, and I, I think I remember like specific moments in my life where it was like all of a sudden the light turned on. It was like, I don't have to live this way. It's only affecting, it's only, the only person that it's impacting in a, in a negative way is me, you know, and I have a choice that I can decide to look at things like you can decide, you know, to look at things through that negative lens, or you can decide to look at things through sort of some rose colored glasses, if you will, you know, my company name is literally positivist group. So, you know, the being positive, it's actually not, it's the name that came from something else. But okay, the fact that it's named positivist, there's layers here, right? The it, you know, it makes me want to commit to constantly looking at things and giving people grace and make and not making assumptions right yeah you know that's funny because both of our company names have a sense of that so i often get asked well what is i noble like where'd you come up with that name? That's a play on two meanings of noble. So noble being how can we do the right thing for people? Of course. And then the other part is noble as in no BS. Oh, okay. So there you go. So both of us, our companies, are really about trying to think of things from that positive perspective yes looking at the world not making it not assuming ill intent but assuming you know either neutral or positive intent right yeah yeah and when we were talking we when we had our like pre, you know, podcast conversation, it just struck me how impactful that mindset is. You know, the folks who I think really try, because it's hard, right? It's hard to maintain that mindset. But there's such a trickle down effect that it just like instantly shot into my brain. Like it affects literally everything in your organization. If you take that approach. Absolutely. Right. It, it impacts, uh, well, I'll step back for a quick second and just say, it is natural for us to have negative thoughts that come into our head right away. So, you know, if you were late for this call, my mind might have immediately said, oh, you know, it's not going to happen. She doesn't like me. She doesn't care, et cetera. And that's natural. That's where our brains go. Yeah. What we need to do is step it up a little bit as individuals and say, okay, I've had those thoughts. Let's push that aside. Yes. And start thinking about what could possibly happen,... /episode/index/show/2351f999-02cb-4568-ab77-a59f33bb3fd3/id/32764307

Beyond Size: Embracing Your Personal Power at Every Weight ft Vinny Welsby 08/28/2024

Beyond Size: Embracing Your Personal Power at Every Weight ft Vinny Welsby “You don’t need to be healthy to be worthy human being” Fierce, hilariously honest, and an A-list advocate, Vinny Welsby is a fat activist and diversity, equity and inclusion leader. They are a world-leading expert on dismantling anti-fat bias and diet culture, a TEDx speaker, podcast host and best-selling author. Vinny is trans-non-binary and is dedicated to shifting how society views fat and queer bodies through education and compassion. Stay in touch with Vinny: Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/fierce.fatty/ TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@fiercefatty Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/fiercefatty/ Twitter: https://twitter.com/fiercefatty_ Pinterest: https://www.pinterest.ca/fiercefatty_/ YouTube: Email: For more on Vinny and their services: Script: My first real job, the head boss called me Miss Piggy behind my back and to everyone for two years. I only learned of it after I left and a colleague finally came clean. Almost daily during lunch, there was talk of eating, quote, healthy and statements that made me feel paranoid about what I ate in public. There were definitely jokes made by my boss about fat people. were definitely jokes made by my boss about fat people one of the most memorable ones for me experiences was the time i cheered during a meeting and my boss responded with hey you burned a calorie no Welcome to Weirdos in the Workplace, the podcast that celebrates authenticity, transparency, passion, and purpose in our world of work today. And you know me, I'm your host, Erin Patchell. And today I'm here with Vinny Welsby. Welcome, Vinny. Hello, hello, Erin. Thank you so much for having me. I'm so excited to talk about fat stuff with you today. I am so excited to talk about fat stuff because, you know, very near and dear to my heart, literally and figuratively. Yeah. Vinny is a fat activist, in case you didn't notice and a diversity equity and inclusion leader they are a world-leading expert on dismantling anti-fat bias in diet culture a TEDx speaker and I watched it it's fabulous podcast host and best-selling author then he is trans non-binary and is dedicated to shifting how society views fat and queer bodies through education and compassion i already love you so there you go thank you oh my gosh where do we even start um i was listening to your tedx and there was one moment i mean there's a few moments that stood out for sure and a surprise towards the end for anyone who's going to watch. I won't say anything more about that. I'll just leave the intrigue right there. But when you said you don't need to be healthy to be a worthy human being, that literally just brought so many tears to my eyes because it transcends everything it's not about being fat right it's about being a person and all the work that we've been doing lately at positivist group and at the train to help project um maybe we'll talk about that at some point i think people who've been listening kind of know a bit about it but um i i just want to just kind of lay that out because um you can be healthy and fat right but you don't have to be healthy what what are we what are we even talking about why are we bringing this you know why is this even a conversation in in this day and age so i just wanted to say when you shared that I it really really struck home with me yeah because I think like that that line of it's kind of the I don't want the right word for but that zinger or the like the full stop because um people like to say it's not okay to say it's okay to say that it's okay to be fat uh because uh fat people some fat people are unhealthy and some people will say all fat people are unhealthy well it that doesn't matter even if every single fat person is super super unhealthy it doesn't mean that they're a less worthy person and so where people go from there that's kind of like well okay well what can I say to that there's not that much you can say to that really apart from okay yeah you know but some people will say no if you are unhealthy then you're a terrible person or whatever but uh that's their stuff oh yeah I don't know let's let's back up a little bit because I feel like we're going I just I brought it really deep really fast so let's come for air um tell me about how in the world this became your focus uh yeah so it is out of out of necessity out of selfish desire of of uh needing this in my life most of my life i thought that fatness was uh the worst thing that i could be um and i would do everything i could to not be fat i thought that becoming smaller would change my life would make me more confident would make me more lovable would make me uh you know money rain down from the sky and have hunky celebrities calling me up asking for a date and um when i did temporarily become thin and it's most people's stories that they temporarily lose weight because diets don't work for the vast majority of people when i did temporarily become thin none of those things happened uh yes I experienced more privilege because I had a smaller body however the way that I viewed myself um wasn't changed and my abilities to do the things I wanted in life didn't change um and it was really really painful for me as it is for many people and then one day after many years of dealing with this stuff i saw a message on the internet this is about 10 years ago that said it's okay to be fat and i was like get the fuck out of here what do you what do you mean it's okay to be fat um this was so revolutionary for me i had never considered um that this was an option and i continued reading it was reagan chastain's blog dances with fat i remember exactly where i was sat in my bed with my then boyfriend who had told me that he was less attracted to me because i had a slightly bigger body um and turning around to telling him like did you know this did you know that fat people could be healthy and did you know that uh that you can accept yourself the way that you are and that fat people deserve like dignity and respect? And, you know, it was life changing. From that moment onwards, everything shifted. And it's been my mission and it's been my life's calling since then to share that same message that you're worthy. You always were. You always will be. Having a bigger body does not mean that you're worthy you always were you always will be having a bigger body does not mean that you're less worthy wow oh I wish that I could internalize that message you know it's going to be a struggle for me to get through this conversation without crying I'm just going to let everyone out there know because like I've been a fat girl my entire life yeah I've been a fat girl and everything that comes along with that you know all of the social rejection that comes along with that like you can tell it's very hard for me to say this and you know it is it is so painful for so many people because we've been told what fatness means is abhorrent is disgusting is a failure and how is that not so painful it is it really is especially imagine being a child oh i'm sure that you know how this feels right yes oh it's just life fucking up stuff these these and all that is is anti-fat bias because those things aren't true it's not true that you're uh you know this terrible human or i am or anyone else who has a bigger body or anyone who has a body that's outside social norms it's just not true it's an opinion it's a dominant opinion um and the moment that we can start unlearning that bias that we have internalized we can be free and that freedom from anti-fat bias oh oh my goodness it's so fucking good honestly i gotta say it's it's really good it's so nice it. It's interesting because, like, you know, I watch you. You know, like, I watch you and I've seen your TED. And, you know, I've been kind of following some of your social media stuff. And you do seem so free. And I feel like people think that I feel that way. You know? Like, I will go to the beach. Like we went skinny dipping at a resort, you know? Like, you know what I mean? Like there's like these things, like I'll do them and I will be unapologetic about it. But it doesn't mean that I act free, but I don't feel free. How do we go from, I mean, a lot of people don't even act free, you know, it's like fake it till you make it. I'm in that phase, I think. Yeah. What do you think that people around you are thinking when they see you skinny dimping or at the beach or whatever? Like, are you thinking about what they're thinking? I hope that they think that I don't care you know I hope that they think that like there is a person who is having fun you know and being herself and that's what I want that's what I believe that they are seeing um so it's not them it's not me thinking it's them it's really me like yeah so what's your brain saying then um in the in that moment I don't care you know it's in the other moments that um when I'm in the change room and something doesn't look the mirror is like you know it's like whoa that looks really bad or you know when you look at all the cute things that you would want to wear if I look at my daughters who are literally perfect um in the stereotypical sense of the word you know and you're just like thank god that they're perfect you know it's so much easier for them yeah yeah so you're it's that internalized like uh you saying oh I don't look right and my body's wrong or whatever it is that's coming up. But you're you're hoping that people outside are are saying good for her. You go you go and do your swim thing. And so it's. Yeah, I have I have very optimistic ideas of what people think. Yeah. I live in a little optimism bubble. But you know what? I don't think that's a bad thing. No, no, I think so. So when I'm talking to people doing like one-on-one stuff, I'll ask them like these questions I was asking you because, because, because a lot of times people, it'll be people have different stages of, of, of unlearning anti-fat bias. A lot of times people will say, people are looking at me and saying that i'm disgusting and um then when you when you've worked on anti-fat bias stuff that will start to fade away and you'll have a more generous view of how people might be looking at you because you're also looking at other people with a generous lens when you're really really deep stuck in anti-fat bias you're thinking about other people being like, oh, gross that they are unattractive. And you're looking at yourself. Oh, gross. I'm unattractive. Once you start unlearning anti-fat bias, you begin by looking at other people with love and compassion. And then the next stage is looking at yourself. So from what you've told me, it sounds like you've already done a lot of work on this stuff and you're taking action. So if anyone listening is kind of in a similar position or if they're thinking other things about other people, wherever you're at, it tells me that you've done so much. And also there is the possibility for that shift so that you can take that compassion you're giving to others and give it to yourself in those moments of like what in the changing room what would if i was stood next to you and i and you said oh i don't look good like what would i be saying i'm like what the heck you know i mean sometimes it's valid sometimes it's like oh you know what maybe that's not the right fit or whatever it is like color yeah yeah yeah yeah maybe that's not the right style for you like I think there's some validity to it do you think I would say you if you said oh I don't look good I'd say yeah that's valid I mean I hope if it were true you would say that I don't know because I wouldn't look at I wouldn't look at someone's body and say, oh, that's not right, or you don't look good. Like, it just wouldn't come. I couldn't, in my brain, I couldn't see it. So anyway, anyway. But this happens at work, and that's the thing. It's like, I strongly believe, and I have heard this story from other people just before you and I started chatting this story from other people just before you and I started chatting. I had a friend text me. I'm like, oh, you wouldn't believe, you know, what I'm doing next, like podcast with you. And we, you know, a lot of, it's funny how people who are overweight often attract other people who are overweight. And a lot of my friends are a little bit overweight, a little bit fat. And they're okay. You know, we're solid, like we are like confident fat ladies, and that's fine. But they were saying that they had a wicked story about a boss, they had lost 50 pounds in the workplace. And it was like wild, you know, how, how differently they were treated all of a sudden. It was very obvious. This is a real, this is actually, I think, a huge problem in the workplace. And I strongly believe that I was, I've been held back because of my weight, you know, and that's a problem because I'm smart. Like, you know, like everything else aside, the way I look aside, like I'm a hard worker and I'm smart and worker and I'm smart and diligent and I give a shit. And I think those qualities should far overweigh what I weigh, you know? Exactly. And I feel like a lot of people in bigger bodies, they're actually harder workers than people in smaller bodies because they have to prove themselves. So they're just working their fingers to the bone and being perceived as lazy because they have a bigger body which is which is really unfair and what's really driven this home for me is recently i have i've just completed it and i can send you a link to it um is a fat at work report did i tell you about this before oh no remind me yeah it's so i've done a survey with 336 people asking them about their experiences at work and these are all people in bigger bodies um and i've done an analysis and report from that survey and the the stuff that the stories that people have shared are horrific heartbreaking unbelievable when i say unbelievable 100 believable but still you're thinking how do people like this exist in the workplace it's so cruel right um so what we learned from this this report was that um the percentage of fat people that have um said that they've experienced anti-fat bias in the workplace is 95.65 percent oh wow yeah now that is gargantuan. It's just every fat person has had shit experiences in the workplace. And then if we put on top of that the marginalized identities, people who are over the age of 50, people who are racialized, people who are disabled and have a lower economic status they are all experiencing this anti-fat bias more more in their life and had have had feel like they've had a greater impact on their career so um this is this anti-fat bias in the workplace a lot of people say does it exist is this a thing not only does it exist but it's a huge thing it's a massive problem and no one's talking about it which is not literally no one's talking about it when I saw what you do I was like oh my gosh yes like we talk about diversity equity inclusion and accessibility and i think people with disabilities also it's not talked about enough so we're talking about that more as well but this is literally never talked about and first person i've ever heard talk about i know isn't it weird and the thing is fat people are the largest marginalized uh group in most societies so it's you know the statistics something like 68 percent of women are plus size so if we're thinking 68 percent of the workforce depending on the company um 68 percent of those people have experienced uh almost all of them have experienced anti-fat bias in the workplace and not just like a little bit these stories are egregious really really not cool wow yeah so what do you do i know that you're working hard obviously you're trying to enlighten people get the word out you know you're you're you're like becoming an influencer you are an influencer but i can see that you're like, you've, you're on a mission. Oh my goodness. Yeah. What do we do? What do we do? It's hard. It's really hard. You know? I don't know. What do we do? Go and have a nap or something. Watch some Netflix. Relax. But actually I ask people like, what, what do they need? What makes, what would make things easier? like what's the most essential things it's really really sad but this most like the beginning stuff is uh really basic human uh necessities like having access to a washroom that they can use um having a place to sit having um if they wear uniform clothes to wear so that's the first thing really basic really like basic stuff and so you know how have we not already got the these basics covered but that's the first thing is making sure that we've provided basic amenities if we're in the workplace um the next thing that we need to do is we need to gather data because um almost every single um workplace that asks demographic data will not ask about people's body size they have no clue how many fat employees they have unless it's for wellness initiatives or or for the insurance and then they're not using it as a demographic for for diversity reasons um and they don't know what the fat people's experiences are um and so we need to be asking this this question like what's your body size and if you feel comfortable sharing and how, how's your experience in the workplace? So once we've got that data, then we can provide training and start shifting attitudes. Um, and what I do is I start with the DEI team or company leaders because so often a lot of, uh, shit is coming from people's bosses um is uh let me do you want me to tell you some of these stories from like people's bosses yeah okay let me let me let me go let me go to the bosses section because i've so with the stories i've kind of um put them into different categories um so many bosses saying like terrible shit so uh an office manager once said to my face that she would rather die than be fat one of the most memorable ones for me experiences was the time i cheered during a meeting and my boss responded with hey you burned a calorie no um i once worked for a men's health organization and i was told i needed to be smaller from the executive director to reflect men's health i am a woman it made me feel terrible most of the discomfort i experienced at work was pressure to diet and to keep weight off almost daily during lunch there was talk of eating quote healthy and statements that made me feel paranoid about what i ate in public there were definitely jokes made by my boss about fat people um this one person my first real job the head boss called me miss piggy behind my back and to everyone for two years i only learned of it after i left and a colleague finally came clean um yeah so the stories go on and on and on uh about you know food shaming and commenting on people's bodies and on an employee's bodies it's just fucked up it is it's totally fucked up um what do you think people are specifically afraid of like these bosses in particular like what is it that they're so afraid of fat bodies um i think it comes down to, are they a lovable, worthy, worthy human? Because if they're not maintaining a smaller body, then they are out of control and they are bad and they are not lovable. They are, they are to be rejected from society. Because of all of this anti-fat bias we've internalized we see fatness as this almost death sentence so why wouldn't they be terrified of being fat or becoming bigger it makes total sense and because everyone else not everyone but most people also have that same fear of being fat or being fatter, that we all bond on this communal shame of, oh, I'm being naughty. I shouldn't eat this like sliver of cake. And, oh, I had a bad weekend eating this or I should really lose weight or whatever. That really is for many people very bonding because we all have those same fears so yeah it's a very very normal part of our culture as we all know and what can we if you're a leader if you're a leader listening to this you... /episode/index/show/2351f999-02cb-4568-ab77-a59f33bb3fd3/id/32640537

Purpose + Profit: A Misfit's Honest Entrepreneurial Journey So Far 08/21/2024

Purpose + Profit: A Misfit's Honest Entrepreneurial Journey So Far From the challenges faced to the victories celebrated, your host Erin Patchell, shares valuable insights on the good, the bad, and the ugly of her entrepreneurial journey so far. Stay tuned to find out what it takes to be an entrepreneur in today's world, and how to celebrate the small milestones on the path to success! Stay in Touch: For more on Erin, her services, and her entrepreneurial journey: Script: We're helping businesses become more inclusive and prove that and demonstrate that every single day. So it's not just a checkbox. It's actually real. Welcome back to Weirdos in the Workplace workplace the podcast where we celebrate authenticity transparency passion and purpose as entrepreneurs and business leaders i'm your host erin patchell and today we're diving into the exciting milestones for the positivist group which is my company and our software software platform we're developing called cludi which is my company, and our software platform we're developing called Cludee, which is formerly known as the Train to Help project. And the reason why I'm sharing all of this, I'm a huge believer in transparency. And I think it's really important, especially for new entrepreneurs to hear from other entrepreneurs along their journey. And I'd love to share a little bit about the good, the bad and the ugly as we go along in this journey. And I'd love to share a little bit about the good, the bad and the ugly as we go along in this journey. And it hasn't been easy. So I hope that comes across when I'm chatting. It is not an easy process. It is a constant, constant learning as you go and, you know, seeking and sensing into the environment and asking a lot of questions and asking yourself a lot of questions. So without further ado, today we're going to talk about where we are now, what it's been like to pilot the learner side of our platform with 40 live participants, and what is next on the horizon. And yes, I said pilot with live participants. And for those of you who have done this before, you may know how completely insane that really is. So why did we create Cludee in the first place, just to take a step back? Our mission at Positivist Group has always been to make it profitable for businesses to do the right thing. It's a tough economy out there and we need to accept as business owners, every possible strategic advantage that we have. And one of those strategic advantages is to create business models that are built around and clearly demonstrate business as a force for good. And I know I, my friends will probably laugh because I always say this, but I joke around a lot about like world domination for good. You'll probably hear those words come out of my mouth almost every single day, world domination for good, but it's not really a joke. It's our philosophy. world domination for good, but it's not really a joke. It's our philosophy. So if you take two customers who want to purchase a good or service, let's pretend you're going to buy a fridge and you give them two options. So two fridges, two different companies, identical variables, the quality of both fridges is the same or good. The warranty is the same. The investment cost is about the same. They're both convenient to purchase from. The service is accessible. The atmosphere of the business is nice. But the only factor that changes between these two fridges at these two different businesses is that 50% of the profit that they get from one fridge and one of the businesses is going to the food bank, let's say. Meanwhile, 100% of the profit from the other fridge and the other business is going into their shareholders' pockets. So I think it's pretty obvious that unless you're one of those shareholders, the decision's kind of a no-brainer. Almost every time when I explain this to people, they're like, obviously I'm going to pick, I'm going to buy the fridge where 50% of the profit's going to a charity. Business as a force for good makes sense. Business is a force for good makes sense. So if you've heard me talk about this in the past, you know, also, probably that I have physical and neurodevelopmental disabilities, and I'm fairly public about them. I have other disabilities as well that are suspected, but not officially diagnosed. So I don't really talk about those. But even before I recognized that I had disabilities, I was kind of treated like an outcast. And I don't know, it was kind of chicken and egg. I don't blame anyone. I think it was, I didn't know how to be included just as much as people didn't know how to include me. But I was treated like an outcast and it took me many years to understand how I belong and where I fit in and how to be a social person. So something I do care about deeply and something the team, a positivist group cares about deeply as well, because we all have lived experience with this, is disability inclusion. I also strongly believe that people need people. And I think that's a fact. People who are excluded socially probably need people even more than everyone else. People with disabilities also generally just want what everyone else does and what everyone else takes for granted. Like just to go for coffee with a friend, to go to the store, to buy a gift for a loved one, to socialize without causing a disturbance or to be made to feel welcome and not made to feel like a burden. We know that small businesses particularly struggle with accessibility, even to the level of basic compliance, which is frankly a pretty low bar. With how competitive it is in the market right now for businesses, particularly retail business and brick and mortar business, it's even more important for people with disabilities to feel included and respected in every single customer interaction. For one, they make up over 27% of the Canadian population over the age of 15, if you can believe that. And that's a true fact from Statistics Canada. People with disabilities also spend $55 billion every single year. And that number is going to be increasing. Why? Because we are making it easier and easier for people with disabilities to work. People with disabilities have disposable income. They are consumers and they want to spend their money. They want to live like everyone else, you know? So let's let them, let's help them and give them a great experience, you know? And that's exactly what Cluedy is designed to do. When you become a Cluedy, you know, we're helping businesses become more inclusive and prove that and demonstrate that every single day. So it's not just a checkbox. It's actually real. We're providing transparency around that. We're helping businesses get the training and resources they need to provide an exceptional customer experience while also making it easier for people with disabilities to navigate the world with more confidence. So we're about four and a half months into the actual development of this platform, which is like, sounds like nothing. We're moving extremely quickly. And the last five months have felt like a whirlwind. We surveyed first like back several months ago. I think it was just about the time I did episode 11. So episode 11, I also talked about this project as well and where we were at that point. Around episode 11, we were surveying customers with disabilities. We surveyed over 50 customers with disabilities and we're still talking to people constantly. This is a never ending learning. But at this time, we've surveyed 50 customers with intersectional disabilities to understand the good, the bad, and the ugly of their customer service experiences when they go and finally venture out to the world. We interviewed a couple of dozen business owners as well to understand their thoughts around accessibility and whether they were AODA compliant and they weren't. In fact, 97% didn't even know they were supposed to be. These are small businesses, by the way. Larger businesses over 20 employees, there are huge fines if they're not compliant. But the smaller businesses under 20 employees, while there are still fines, they kind of fall through the cracks because it's not really monitored as much. So in the past five months, we also completed the Invest Ottawa Ignition Program. And I went on stage and we did our pitch. Every single one of the program participants did a pitch. And that was really fun pitch competition. Now we're taking advantage of the Flex program, support for business startups. We participated as a vendor in the Adaptive Living Expo. And it was extremely validating to talk to so many people with disabilities about this new venture, Cluedy. And they had huge enthusiasm for what we're doing. So that is really heartening. We attended the Collision Conference, which is North America's largest tech conference, talked to numerous founders and funders, understanding, you know, getting understanding of the lay of the land, how does this work, as we're becoming a technology startup, becoming a CEO of a technology company, there is a lot to learn. And we took away so many insights and growth opportunities from that. And just this Wednesday, we finally launched our pilot phase of Cluedy with almost 50 participants. The goal was to test the learner side of the platform in a real world setting because this platform includes the AODA compliance training that we're calling it Disability Inclusive Customer Service. So that was the platform, the side of the platform that we were testing. And we wanted to see how our training would perform, how users would interact with the content, and most importantly, whether Cluedi could truly make a difference in enhancing accessibility and inclusion. So what does the pilot look like? Like I said before, the largest pilot, I've run many pilots in my life so far. This is by far the largest. Normally I have up know 12 to 15 participants um we had over 40 participants almost 50 participants employees business owners from retail stores restaurants and service-oriented businesses uh we decided to do it live so they were all doing and testing the platform together, providing feedback in numerous ways. We actually basically updated the platform. We had a little button so that any time throughout the entire journey on the platform, as they were exploring through the platform, they were able to provide feedback at any stage. And we knew exactly where that was within the platform. They also were able to write their feedback on a card. And then we held table conversations as well with a facilitator. So we gathered even more feedback that way. These people are on the front lines of customer service and they interact with the public every single day. So getting their feedback was really critical. The pilot did involve that comprehensive training program that I mentioned, covered everything from AODA compliance to practical strategies for engaging with customers that have disabilities. The training was totally mobile based, which is the reason why it's mobile based, at least right now. And that's going to be the primary modality going forward is because people in those brick and mortar businesses don't often have access to computers. Although we are creating different versions so that, you know, there's different contexts that can be used. And not everybody has a phone, we learned. In fact, quite a few people said that they have quite a few employees who don't have phones, which means that they probably won't actually have access to a computer either. So we're going to need some kind of analog method of doing the training as well to make sure that we're including everyone. So that was definitely something we learned. And I honestly, I think I was a little bit naive because I had absolutely no idea there were so many people that still didn't have phones these days. So that's a learning. Yeah. So, but busy employees need convenience factor. After the, it had been something on our minds, but we definitely decided to do an audio only version as well. And we think that will be very popular, uh, especially for employees who are, you know, rushing around, they can pop the audio version in and, uh, do, do some training in between, you know, or when, when they've got a free moment. Um, but the feedback we received overall was incredibly insightful. So many people reported that the content was engaging and informative. They had new perspectives on how to approach customer service. A lot of people mentioned how to communicate with people with disabilities. That was extremely insightful, that module that we did. So, you know, all in all, some really amazing feedback, positive and constructive. People really liked the real life scenarios as well. We took actual real life scenarios from real people with disabilities that they encountered in customer service environments and, you know, kind of like a what not to do. And I think that was very enlightening because there's quite a few scenarios like not moving a person's wheelchair. That isn't always necessarily common sense, you know. It doesn't, it's not instinctive. We don't understand it until we've learned it. So we also discovered some major areas for improvement. A couple I mentioned already. Some people wanted more interactive elements and case studies specific to their industries. So anyways, all of this feedback is extremely valuable. The good news was that the actual technology itself, everyone found to be really easy. So that's good news. The actual software was really easy to access, even for some of the older adults in the audience felt that it was super easy and straightforward. So that was good news. So we've already had several stories about employees who felt more confident and prepared to serve customers with disabilities once they've completed the training. I followed up with a few people already, and they have really great things to say. So this is only the beginning, and they're going to be getting even more and more out of this platform as we continue forward. And I'm really excited to see how this continues and how the trajectory grows and how they're growing as people through the process. But of course, it was not without its challenges. We definitely had a few glitches, mainly related to the Wi-Fi in the building, which we knew was going to be a problem. And we had created some, we had managed that as best as we could, but we still had some challenges around the wifi. But, you know, everyone typically understood and we were able to manage it without any issues. But I would say if you're, if you're listening to this, cause you want to do a live pilot yourself, I would definitely find somewhere that has a very strong wifi connection or limit the number of people in the pilot and make it a bit of a smaller pilot. Because there was a bit of an overload despite the fact that we had, like I said, done everything we possibly could to mitigate the fact that the Wi-Fi wasn't as strong as it probably should have been. So, okay. What is next for Cludee? So we are in the process of refining the platform based on the feedback of the pilot participants. We are looking for at financing options now in order to fund the next four to six months of the project. I'm really hoping to bring there's one person, especially who's currently working as a contractor. And I'm really hoping to bring them on as a full time employee because they're extremely valuable. And they're just such a great fit for this project. But we'll see how it goes. Hopefully in the next update, the next, you know, I'm doing every 10 weeks, I'm going to provide an update on the Cludee platform. So hopefully the next update, I can say like, hooray, we've secured some financing, you know, and we're full steam ahead. So, but because we don't have the financing or funding right now, so we're, you know, either a loan or equity funding from investors, we are planning on getting this to market ASAP. So that's really our focus right now is creating the administrative side of the platform so that people can actually go on the website and purchase this product. It'll be the training just to start with adding features. We have so many amazing features that we're going to be adding over the next six months that we're really excited about. But AODA training is really important and a lot of businesses are not currently compliant. So we figure there's a market for that even without the rest of the platform completed. So that is how we're handling, you know, needing to get to market really quickly is really like what is the increment that is valuable that people will be willing to pay for. And that's what we're starting with, you know, and if anyone out there is also bootstrapping a company, you know, that might be a good way to think about things. So, but yeah, we're, we're also in the meantime, we're enhancing the content, we're adapting it to different provincial legislation across Canada. We do intend on moving to the United States as well, but we're going to launch across Canada first. We're improving the user interface just a little bit, a few little tweaks, and then preparing for a broader live launch across Canada, hopefully in October. Our next steps also include expanding the pilot to more businesses. And we're interested in bringing on another pilot, a separate pilot for people who have lived experience with disabilities. And that will be a paid pilot just to make sure that the content is as inclusive and effective as possible. And we're also intending on adding on new modules as well. So this is the Disability Inclusive Customer Service course and then micro learning modules. We'll be adding at least one a month as a value add for all of the members, for all of our Cludees out there, our Cludee businesses. We're also adding new features like the ability for businesses to track their accessibility improvements over time and receive personalized recommendations for further enhancements, as well as the Cluedy grant, which is our own grant to enhance accessibility in small businesses. And we are funding that from the profit of the company. So as a social enterprise, I think I've mentioned before, Cludee is a social enterprise, which means that half of our profit will be going towards a grant for small businesses. So in closing, I want to thank our pilot participants for their enthusiasm, honesty, and commitment to make Cludee a success. This is just the beginning. I keep saying that, but really it is. It is like, you know, getting to market is literally the beginning. So we're even like pre, we're still pre-revenue. We're really, really at the beginning. But I'm kind of excited for you guys to come along this journey with us. And by the time we have our last episode, at the end of January 2025, we should be getting some traction, you know, so that would be the that's the plan. But we're super thrilled to have such passionate businesses and individuals becoming Cludees. And we're excited about the future of Cludee and the impact that it will make in making our world more accessible and inclusive. So stay tuned for more updates. And as always, we welcome your feedback. If you're interested in joining the Cludee community or learning more about how we can help your business or possibly partner with us in other ways, visit our website or reach out directly to me at erin at positivist.ca, E-R-I-N at P-O-S-I-T-I-V-I-S-T dot C-A. And I'm on LinkedIn pretty frequently. So feel free to ping me on LinkedIn. That would be linkedin.com slash I N slash Erin E R I N dash patchell P A T C H E L L. Thanks for listening until, until next time, stay weird, stay wonderful, and don't stay out of trouble! /episode/index/show/2351f999-02cb-4568-ab77-a59f33bb3fd3/id/32573902

Public Speaking Made Authentic ft. Alex Keenan 08/14/2024

Public Speaking Made Authentic ft. Alex Keenan If Alex Keenan is known for anything, it's for knowing how to take the “ick out of public speaking"! From public speaking at conferences to courtrooms to crowded bars, Alex has learned a thing or ten about authentic audience connection and making public speaking a fun and crucial skill for success. With a deep understanding of how to bridge gaps between people - and a gift for helping her clients find the strength to confront their fears - Alex helps her clients speak confidently, find the right words, and build a stage presence that is powerfully authentic. As Alex says weirdos, let's take the "ick out of public speaking and start showing up sauthentically"! Stay in Touch with Alex: LinkedIn Profile: Facebook: Instagram: YouTube: For more on Alex and her services: Script: That means two things. It means that you can, you have a lot of leeway to just be yourself and not really worry about what people are saying. It also means that you have to work a lot harder than you think to get noticed and to get people to retain your ideas. And so I think it's a question of, you know, go out there and be who you are and don't stop being who you are and don't stop saying what you have to say. Welcome to Weirdos in the Workplace, a podcast that celebrates authenticity, transparency, passion, and purpose at work. I'm really happy to have Alex Keenan on the show. Welcome, Alex. Thank you. I'm so happy to be here. So Alex takes the ick out of public speaking. She's spoken everywhere from conferences to rooms to crowded bars and learned a thing or two about authentic audience connection. She works with businesses, professionals, and change makers who recognize that public speaking is a crucial tool for their success. And I would say if you're a person who has a message, you have something important that you want to share with the world and that you want to get it out there, but you're a little too afraid to take that first step, this is the perfect podcast episode for you. I'm really excited to chat with you, Alex. Thank you. Awesome. Okay. So let's just give you an opportunity to tell everyone about yourself. You know, what is it that has motivated you to, to do this in the first place? Yeah, I think people are really interesting. Like, how do we connect with each other? Or how do we kind of fail to connect with each other? And what's what's going on in that space in between? So I came through a career change, I used to practice law, which I'll get into that it was it wasn't the right fit for me. But I did learn a lot about how you know how do you show up how do you think on your feet and put your best case forward be persuasive and I combine kind of that background with you know I do comedy so I used to be an improv teacher I've done stand-up and then so there you learn how to be more authentic, how to really engage with a group. And I kind of, I bring these things together. And mostly I work with professionals and business owners on how to promote themselves professionally. But I really think that we need to let go of this idea that professional communication needs to be boring and soulless and robotic. And we can bring who we are into the way that we communicate, the way that we express ourselves and how we, you know, show ourselves to the world. Yeah. I'm so glad to hear you say that. I mean, and that there's a perfect segue into like, you know, I'm, I'm definitely a weirdo. I can't not be a weirdo. Like if I'm talking into a group of people, it's going to bubble out no matter what I do to try to keep it under wraps. Do you identify as a weirdo at all? I sure do. I sure do. Has that influenced the work that you do, do you think? So I, you know, there are a lot of there are a lot of rules of public speaking and communication that I just, you know, don't worry about it. Don't start with a quote, you know, like don't picture the audience in their underwear. Don't don't obsessive about whether you are using filler words. Filler words are communication. And I think we really need to be strategic. And I like to be kind of, you know, data driven and analyzing, you know, how do we communicate with each other and what's the impact that it's having? And so sometimes I work with clients. I don't just do public speaking. I also work with people who are trying to be more effective in their workplace communication. And so, for example, sometimes I get women who come in and say, oh, the, you know, the men that I'm in meetings with say I use too much upspeak. And so I'll start with, OK, here's what upspeak here's why can I swear on here I yes please do and also I don't know what up speak is for someone you know for someone to yeah you know pretend that you're not a professional because you have a certain vocal habit oh you mean like what's it called yeah yeah like when you know like your voice kind of goes up. Oh, yeah. Is there another word for that too? I can't remember. Yeah, I think there's, there might be another word for that as well. I can't remember, but yeah. Okay. So it's when you're like, I've noticed that actually it's interesting you say that because on my first, if you listen to a lot of my first podcast episodes, it's one of the things that I gave myself feedback on that I've been trying not to do anymore. Is that like, da, da, da, like kind of like ask you like, almost like you're asking a question. Is that what you're talking about? Yeah, exactly. But it's really interesting because there are people who, especially if women are doing it, well, you know, kind of like judge and say, it makes you sound insecure and it, you know, it takes away your credibility. But if you, you know, if you look at the science and the linguistics behind the use of that technique, just to name one, there's a lot of subtlety. And it depends on who is using it and what their position in that relationship is. And so just kind of flattening it down to this is annoying and it makes you sound insecure is, you know, it's simplistic. Yeah, it's very simplistic. And it kind of flattens out the communication that takes place within that vocal habit. And so, you know, we start with that conversation, but you should not have to change everything that you are just to be accepted in your workplace. But, you know, if it is holding you back, here are some options and you can choose how you go forward with this. Here's how you can train yourself to make a choice about whether you're going to use that or not. And bring that out in whatever way is going to get you the results that you want and allow you to be authentic when you feel you need to be authentic and to adapt when you feel you need to adapt. Yeah. So, oh my goodness. Yeah. There are so many things that like looking back, especially on the podcast, because when you're podcasting, you don't get a lot in real life, you don't get a lot of opportunities to actually listen to yourself talk over and over and over again, like recorded. Right. I think podcasting and, you know, is one of the opportunities, obviously. And so every week I would listen to, especially when I was in the first season, when I was editing everything by myself and it was constant critique. It's funny because we're, I don't do that to other people, you know, like I do to myself, but how many people are still, I wonder like, what is the judgment? I don't know that we're there yet. I think there's still a lot the judgment? I don't know that we're there yet. I think there's still a lot of judgment out there for the way that we present ourselves professionally. Yeah, I think there absolutely is. I'm sorry. I turned my phone off. Absolutely. Yeah, there is a lot of judgment in, you know, in many respects. And that's sometimes why people come to me is because they're getting that judgment and people feel absolutely entitled to say, I don't like the way you speak. And I don't think there's, there's an easy answer to that. I think part of it is education. Part of it is normalization. You know, the way that one generation speaks becomes, you know, the norm when, when they grow up. And so it's, you know, it's constantly changing. But I think there is a lot of power in being able to identify, you know, listen to yourself in a recording, say, okay, this is what's happening. And I didn't realize it. What can I do about this if I want to do something about it? Right? Yeah. And then you have the autonomy to choose. Exactly. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah yeah but I think you were not alone in not liking to listen to it I don't like to listen to myself I'm good now like now that I've done it a hundred times I'm like okay now I like the sound of my own voice and I'm like yeah bring it on yeah good good no it's gotten to the point where I'm like it's too much now I'm like okay Erin you gotta you know relax well and I think it comes from when you're hearing it once in a while what you're hearing clashes with what you actually think you sound like and so it's this weird um you know disparity between your expectations and what you're distorted yeah yeah and if you're used to hearing yourself on recording you're just okay that's what I sound like and you can just move on from that but it takes some time it's true um but you can definitely like my voice has changed you know the I don't even know if it's changed for the better to be honest now that I'm like sometimes I go back to those first episodes and I'm like oh I feel like I feel like my voice was I feel like things were a little more natural back then um and not I don't know maybe I've yeah, putting on too many airs now or something, but whatever, we evolve. Maybe I'll go, maybe I'll devolve and then that'll be better. But I think I've told you this before about my journey into being able to speak in front of people and that, and you were also, I think, pretty shy growing up. Oh yeah. From what I, yeah. Yeah. We were both big time shy. And so I would love to have a conversation about that because I think a lot of our weirdo followers out there who are listening to this, you know, we're passionate people like weirdos, especially, or the way that I define it, at least, you know, folks who are, have a bit of a chip on their shoulder. Maybe they haven't always felt included. There's something maybe a little bit different about the way they think or unique about the things that they're interested in. So usually very passionate, right? Like focused and passionate, sometimes hyper-focused on things. Uh, and so having something to say, right. Or something that you want to like an agenda, you've got something, some way you want to change the world usually for the good, I hope. Um, but just feeling blocked on like how to get past that first step, um, for people that are out there who want to take that first step. And they're like, I think I'm motivated to take that first step. What would you suggest, recommend? I think the first thing is, you know, give yourself a break. A lot of people, you know, they fear public speaking. They fear, you know, speaking up and kind of judge themselves for that. But it's so normal, right? Most of us didn't learn how to do this. for that but it's so normal right most of us didn't learn how to do this we were just kind of thrown into okay you're in class and you need to give this presentation in front of all the other kids and some of them might be bullying you and just go for it and do well and then we get into the work world and it's the same thing get up and talk about your work so you know um we can all we can all silently judge you or at least that's how it feels and you know there will be consequences if you don't do well but we're not going to bother giving you the time to learn it. And so we, it kind of almost sets people up to fail. So I think, first of all, you know, giving yourself a break and recognizing that the reason it feels so negative might be because we only do it in these situations where we're forced to, and there could be negative consequences. And so one thing that I recommend to people all the time is if you want to get better at this go do something you think is fun you know um like some some people I know um some of my clients some of my friends love Toastmasters and that's terrific for them I quit Toastmasters four times it wasn't fun for me and that's fine it's just a personal thing my thing was improv yeah and it was it was great to just be able to get on stage in front of people and let loose and not worry about what was going to happen because once that scene is done that scene is done and nobody thinks about it again and um and so that was kind of my pathway to be able to just show up and and not worry about how I was being judged for some people it might be you know you want to you want to run your book club or you want to get certified to teach the fitness class that you like taking, right? Whatever is that thing that's going to get you in front of people and you're excited enough to do it, but that overrides the fear that you have of it. That's your path to overcoming your fear and to starting to enjoy it. Right. Yeah. So you can take like really baby steps, like getting in front. I think my first thing was like corporate training, right? Like going in and internal training first, like training my team, like first a couple of people, then more people. And then, you know, external to the corporation. So like, you know, doing work with clients and getting in front of people and doing stuff like that. And then it was workshops, like public workshops. And then, you know, it got bigger and bigger. But like starting even back before that, before that was sales, honestly, like, when I was like 1213, I couldn't even make a phone call. Like I was terrified. Like, did you ever go through that? Like? call like I was terrified like did you ever go through that like um yes yeah for sure I couldn't I couldn't even pick up the phone to I'd have to write down a whole script it was like calling my friend to go on a you know go out to the movie like even even something like that yeah it was extreme like I'd literally have to write out a whole script um and then it was literally practice and practice and practice and practice. And then in my 30s, I started in business development, like kind of like thrown into it. And I had a list of people I had to call. And it was like, yeah, it was like cold calling. But the nice thing about cold calling is like, there's no pressure, really, you know, it feels like pressure, but there's no, like, there's nothing, nothing's going to happen if they say no and they won't talk to you and nothing's going to happen if you like bungle up that phone call. Cause they will never remember you, you know? Yeah. Yeah. They don't know you. They're total strangers. Right. Yeah. That's such a great point. Yeah. So people get a lot of anxiety around cold calls, but I think it's like one of the lowest risk things that you can start on if you just need to practice talking to people. Right. Yeah. Yeah. And you know, there's going to be a certain failure rate. And so it's not personal. No. I mean, maybe it is, but like you're learning, right? Yeah. Like start on like low risk potential client or leads or whatever. Like don't start on your like you know the highest the most important people to talk to exactly yeah yeah yeah anyways yeah so I never like I never really thought about it in those terms but you're absolutely right yeah sales was really helpful and now I feel like I can talk to anyone unless it's certain situations that get my like guard up or whatever and then I'm like back to square one. So how did you end up in a situation where you, you are terrified to talk on the phone and you're suddenly you're doing cold calls. Like, how did you make, I mean, that was like, there was like probably 12 years in between those two, you know? So it was a long time. Cause I didn't really start, I didn't start in business development until I was like in my early thirties. Um, but even at the beginning of that, like I would have a whole script written out and I would know what I was going to say. And then after like the first thousand cold calls, you know, I could throw the script out and, um, you know, it was just, it was just, my boss was like, I actually wasn't even my boss. It was, I felt like I needed to be useful in a different way. Um, and so I pushed myself to do that because I was like, I want to be like beyond a doubt useful. Right. And so to, to me, sales is like, you know, every business needs sales. Like you're pretty much always going to have a job if you're a great salesperson. Right. Yeah. You know, so to me becoming like, you know, absolutely without a doubt useful meant like contributing revenue generation. But not everyone goes that way. That was a motivating factor. Yeah. Yeah. So yeah, there's a strong desire behind it. Exactly. That's factor. Yeah. Yeah. So yeah, there's a strong desire behind it. Exactly. That's key. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And how about for you? What led you to this? Oh, it was a long and winding road. So I am, yeah, I was very shy growing up and it took me a long time to get over that. I mean, I think, so law school did it, I think, but in a really weird way. So in second year, we had to do, it's called a moot. And so it's basically a mock legal argument. So you get your case and you have to come up with, you know, your arguments for or against it and you present it. And they, you know, they had professors, they had upper year students and they had lawyers from the community as the judges. And they would just hammer you with questions. You would get maybe one sentence out and then they would just start asking you questions. And I did do great at this. It was not, you know, it was not my top strength. And I was still very nervous at that point. And the practitioner, the lawyer who was on my judges panel, heckled like he made fun of me and you just have to stand you just have to stand there and and answer the questions and stay calm and um it was awful it was awful but then you know I got got down from there and sat down and I'm like oh I am not dead I guess it's fine right and um yeah I survived this. And so what's the, what's the worst that anybody could do to me? And then, you know, I practiced law for a while and sometimes you're getting up there and the judge is cranky and they're just not buying what you're trying to sell them. And you just have to, you know, commit and go for it and hope for the best. And sometimes it was, sometimes it was awful. But then there was one day I sat down and, you know, I had it was it was a really challenging day. And I sat down and went, Oh, was that fun? You know, like my heart was beating, but not in a negative way. Right. You know, fear and excitement are so tightly tied to each other you know like that's why people love horror movies right and sometimes you get to this point where you realize you're you're not experiencing it as fear anymore you're just like you're just amped up yeah and that's when it shifts because then it's not negative anymore it's it's just a thing you do and you can feel good about it that's true that that that definitely happened to to me as well or happens to me pretty much every time I go on stage. It's like I'm terrified and then I settle into kind of like a kind of like alert but like ready state. And then somewhere between the beginning and the end, it's, there's like, it's like, I'm doing the thing. And then at the end, once I've decompressed, it's like, now I'm just excited. Like, when can I do the next one? Let's go. I'm like, yeah, the adrenaline's going, all the good hormones are flooding and everything. It's like, it's over. You know, do you find you get into that state of flow while you're speaking yeah um but that actually was really difficult for me to learn how to do it and sometimes... /episode/index/show/2351f999-02cb-4568-ab77-a59f33bb3fd3/id/32507372

Resume Building Tips for Misfits and Weirdos ft Steph Gillies 08/07/2024

Resume Building Tips for Misfits and Weirdos ft Steph Gillies Having had 32 jobs in 15 years, Steph Gillies has amassed an ample amout of experience to learn how to perfect the job search! Now as a professional resume writer and career coach, Steph Gillies helps individuals embrace their identitifies and land their dream jobs in a competitive economy. Since 2020, she has helped over 1000 people improve their branding, tailor their resumes and land their dream jobs! So folks, take your pens and papers out, and get ready to take notes on tips and tricks from the resume whisperer! Stay in touch with Steph: Instagram: @destinationdreamjob For more on Steph and her services: Hiring managers are going to see the same resume, like that looks very similar from like 10 different people. And if you can really showcase your uniqueness and what sets you apart, that's really what's going to stand out. Welcome to Weirdos in the Workplace, the podcast that celebrates authenticity, transparency, passion, and purpose in our world of work today. My name is Erin Patchell, your host, and I'm here with Steph Gillies, who is, well, how about we just let Steph say hi for now. Hey, how's it going? And now I will introduce you. So Steph is a career story coach helping individuals embrace their misfit identity and land their dream job. She's had 32 jobs in 15 years and through that experience she really learned how to perfect the job search. When she was laid off from what she thought was her dream job in 2020, she jumped full-time to business as a resume writer and career coach and has since helped over 1,000 people improve their branding and land their dream job. Welcome to the podcast. Yeah, thank you so much for having me. My pleasure and we kind of got the opportunity to work together a few years ago, which is how we met. Yeah, unfortunately, not too closely. But I always heard such great things about the work that you did. And yeah, so you're you're a real pro. Oh, thank you. Yeah. And then I heard about you through, you know, that same organization and the great work that you're doing with your new company. So thank you so much. Yes. OK, so before we get started, why don't you just tell folks a little bit about yourself other than, you know, maybe something that's not in your bio? Like, what is it that brings you joy? Yeah, I think that, you know, working with people over the past few years, there's a few things that I've really learned and that I really love to share with people that I've learned from different people. You know, when I grew up, when I was younger, people always told me, you know, you got to go to school, get a job, work there until you retire. Right. That was the message. You know, a lot of baby boomers passed on that message to their kids. And I was one of those people who had that message passed on. And, you know, after, you know, helping a thousand people with their personal branding and, you know, their career story, it's quite interesting to see how many people, you know, don't have that linear career path and how many people have made complete changes in their life. And so I'm one of those people who've made lots of different changes throughout my career. You know, I have multiple passions. I'm very excited about different things. And, you know, I think that I know this is supposed to be about me and I'm not talking about me at all, but I think that's just really, you know, what I'm passionate about and what my message is, is to really teach people that you don't have to just be one thing. You know, you can be whatever you want to be. If you want to change your job, you know, five times you go and do that. If you want to marry multiple jobs together, I think that's also really exciting. And so, yeah, so I think that's kind of what I'm really passionate about and kind of a little bit of my own story as well. Yeah. Okay. So let's a little nugget from within that, like finding that thread. So I think a lot of people have a hard time with that when they're multi-passionate and, you know, maybe they're curious about lots of things and they want to dive into lots of things and live lots of different lives, like especially career lives. You still need to find that thread through everything. Like what is it that connects all the dots so that your next employer, you know, can understand your story. So maybe we can take that and table it and talk about that a little bit later because I think that could be yeah for sure yeah so uh what makes you a weirdo Steph Gillies um well you know I call myself a misfit because I never really felt like I fit in you know growing up I went to an all girls private school um I wore a kilt every day to school and I've worn a dress maybe three times since then. You know, I never really, I never really felt like I fit in with all the girls and, you know, but I wasn't, you know, boyish enough to fit in with the boys. And so I was always kind of, I was always kind of different. And I went to church for a while and I would ask a lot of questions and they would tell me to stop asking questions because it's just about, you know, whatever the message was that they were giving and that didn't work for me either. And so, and then, you know, as you, as you shared in my bio, I had 32 jobs in 15 years and every time I would get into a job, I would get really good at it and then I would get bored. So I'd move on to something else. This was before I knew what informational interviews were, and I probably could have saved myself a lot of time had I done a little more research, but that's okay. It's part of my story. And, you know, it was a lot of fun. Honestly, I had, you know, at one point I had like four different jobs. They were all part-time and I just, yeah, I was just marrying different passions together, trying different things and trying to find out what fit. And so I think that, you know, in my 30s has really been the time where I have embraced a lot more of who I am, rather than trying to fight it or trying to hide from it. So I, you know, this in the past two years, I shaved my head and got my nose pierced. So you know, it's been a lot of fun. Yeah, yeah, absolutely. You can be whoever you want to be. you know it's been a lot of fun yeah yeah absolutely you can be whoever you want to be I think that's like a general sense that especially younger people have today the you know I'm raising whatever three uh gen z kids gen z yeah that's right oh my gosh my brain is like not it's like not computing all of the different generations these days. What are they all called again? Yeah, so three Gen Zs and they are fully whoever they want to be. You know what I mean? Like they literally don't care. They're just like going to be who they are. So I think we need to prepare for that too. Totally. Yeah, it's a different world now than it was for sure when I was growing up. Yeah, exactly. Yeah, don't put baby in the corner. Yeah. It's a different world now than it was for sure when I was growing up. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. Don't put baby in the corner. Yeah. That was not the message at the all girls Catholic school that I went to. So Oh my gosh. But it's okay. So you've worked with, you've helped over 1000 people improve their brand branding, their career stories and land their dream job. How did you end up in this niche after having, you know, what was it, 32 jobs in 15 years? Yeah, it's so when I had done all those jobs, I was kind of, you know, trying to, I'd always been interested in business. And so I was like, what could I do? And I found, you know, Career Profession professionals of Canada. And I was like, oh, there's a resume certification. So about nine years ago now, I took that certification. And I was like, maybe I'll do something with it. But then I was full time in the nonprofit world, which as most people know, it's a lot of work, you know, you're often overworked and underpaid. And so I was just busy, you know, doing that. And I wasn't really focusing on, you know, you're often overworked and underpaid. And so I was just busy, you know, doing that. And I wasn't really focusing on, you know, my business in my spare time. So I only wrote a few resumes. And when I was laid off in 2020, it was kind of a decision point for me. I had to decide, you know, do I want to go back to work in the nonprofit world, which I wasn't super excited about? Or, you know, should I just dive in and start a business? And so I took some time to think about it and I did decide to dive into business. I had a part, I did get a part-time job while, while I was off and then I completely quit it. And I started two businesses actually, but the other one didn't work out. And one of them was writing resumes. And I thought, you know, this will just be temporary. It's something that I know how to do and I'll, I'll get good at it. And then, you know, I'll just figure out what I want to do. And here we are three years later, I'm still doing it. You know, I love, I love helping people, you know, figure out that career story and really helping them to identify what sets them apart so that when they are applying for jobs, then they can, you know, stand out in the job application process because, you know, everyone and their dog says they're really good at teamwork. So how can you set yourself apart from the people who are like, Hey, I'm great at teamwork, you know, because we all say that in our resume. So my clients don't, but like, no, I'm not good at teamwork. Like, no, I hate that. Yeah. Oh yeah. I have people that were like that. Yeah. Don't put that in there. That's not true. Right. Like, yeah. Well, and knowing, knowing your strengths, right. Not just knowing your strengths, knowing your, you know, your purpose, your interests. So diving into that, how essential would you say that is in terms of the job search like today compared to the way it was when you first started? Yeah. You know, with remote work, I mean, I started my business right in the middle of the pandemic. And so things were changing, you know, as I started. But I noticed that, you know, pre-pandemic, you know, they said the stats are the average application gets about 250 applicants, which is a lot. You know, when you think about that, that's a lot. But nowadays with remote work, we're talking like, I don't know the exact stats, so don't quote me on this, but we're talking like, I've heard recruiters say they get like 5,000 to 2,000, sorry, 500 to 2,000 applicants per job application. So that's crazy. Like, how are you even supposed to navigate that many, that many resumes? Like it's not possible. So that means that the, for sure. Yeah. That means that it's so much more competitive than it was before. And I would say that's, that's more true for entry level positions rather than, you know, if you're mid-level or senior level, director level, you're not, your competition is not as high because, you know, there's just less people who have the experience that you're bringing to the table. And so this is more for those entry-level positions like customer service roles, you know, office administration, you know, types of roles like that. They're really getting a lot of applicants because people can apply now from all across Canada to the same role if it's remote, of course. Yeah. So, you know, you're literally the perfect person to be talking to this audience because a lot of our listeners are multi-passionate, multi-hyphenate generalists, weirdos, rebels, like don't fit neatly inside a box, have a little bit of a chip on their shoulder, you know, want to try different things, maybe didn't feel like they were a right fit in a lot of places. So like, what, what kind of advice do you give to people right now in this economy, when they have that sort of that, that, that, you know, they need a purpose. They need, they need to be passion driven. Yeah. I think when you're, when you're really looking at the job application process right now is the best time to really lean into your uniqueness, your superpowers, you know, what sets you apart. You know, the hiring managers are going to see the same resume, like that looks very similar from like 10 different people. And if you can really showcase your uniqueness and what sets you apart, that's really what's going to stand out. So an example I have is I have a client who is a death doula. So she helps people transition into the next life. And that is typically I would like two years ago, I would say no, we're not going to include that on your resume. Like, that doesn't make sense. It's not relevant. And she was applying to sales roles. But now we actually incorporated that into her resume and into her story because it's a huge part of showing how she can really relate to people on a different level. relate to people on a different level. And so, you know, if you have two sales resumes that both are very similar, but this one person has this really strong empathy that she brings from, you know, a different certification and something different that she does, and she's able to, you know, really relate to people from all different walks of life, you now start to see a difference between these two sales resumes that are almost exactly the same. And so really diving into, you know, what are those things outside of work that you can leverage? Like someone else I know does, you know, triathlons, you know, different things like that, that showcase that, you know, they, they have drive and dedication, you know, anything that you can think of, that's really going to set yourself apart and, and explaining why, like, it's not good enough to just put like, you know, triathlon finisher, right? You need to explain why that's important. You know, what is it about the triathlon that you think would be beneficial to this, this role or this position or to who you are. And I think that's really where you're starting to see the differences, especially with recruiters. Um, I was talking to a recruiter recently and he said the most frustrating thing he finds is when he sees a whole bunch of resumes and none of them say why they want to apply to this position, right? None of them have drawn the line from A to B. They're all just like, you know, the same, the same resume that they're submitting to everything. They're not like, this is why I'd be the best fit for this job. This is why I'm applying to this job. This is what sets me apart, right? That's what he wanted to see. So I thought that was quite interesting. And is what's the best way to articulate that or where is the best? Is it like in the email body? Is it the cover letter? Is it within the resume? Like, how do you do that? Yeah, I mean, it's really, there's no rules in terms of where to include that because that is a different, that is a different take than it used to, you know, than two years ago. So definitely the cover letter is an easy place to include that. But I, but for this, um, for the sales client that I was sharing, we put it right in the resume. You know, we put it right in that top paragraph because we're showcasing what sets her apart and why she would be the best fit for this position. And so instead of just, you know, having a top paragraph that's like four sentences that are pretty general about why you'd be the best fit, this one was very targeted using, you know, her empathy and her other experience to showcase why she would be the best person for this position. Because typically hiring managers do look at that resume first, and they kind of, you know, at that point they decide, you know, is this a keeper or one to get rid of? And then they'll review the cover letter after, you know, maybe look up LinkedIn. Um, but they're not looking at all the documents for all 500 people who are applying to the role. Right. So that first part of your resume is the most important real estate. Cause that's really where they're looking first. of your resume is the most important real estate because that's really where they're looking first. Interesting. And in terms of like, I'm assuming employers are still using ATS systems, the automated, I don't know what it stands for. Applicant tracking systems. Yeah. Applicant tracking system. Can you tell I'm not a recruiter or in recruitment or in this field at all? And nor do I use them, by the way. So applicant tracking systems, I'm assuming are just like being used more than ever, probably. Is that true? Yeah. So I mean, there's like hundreds of applicant tracking systems out there. So it's hard to say, you know, what, you know, some of the features are. But what I've noticed is generally speaking, applicant tracking systems aren't eliminating people without a human eye. So typically the resumes go into the applicant tracking system and then the human, the recruiter is doing this keyword searching. And then they're doing that searching kind of based on the keywords that they put in the job posting and then finding which resumes pop up based on that. I mean, that's not a hard and fast rule because a lot of ATSs out there do their own thing and who knows what they all do. But if you have like, you know, specific qualifications, like it requires a bachelor's degree and you don't have one, then yes, it can eliminate you. But typically it's, you know, the hiring manager who's doing the searching. Right. Okay. Yeah. So, I mean, education is probably still the number one thing. Is it still the number one thing that, um, that businesses are looking for these days in terms of, you know, um, like qualifications, like basic qualifications? Um, I think it depends on the company, honestly. I've seen, um, you would be surprised by the amount of executive resumes I've written that don't even have an education section on the resume because they don't have any education. They have a high school degree that they diploma that they have from like 25 years ago. And so it's really not as important as it would have been, you know, 10 years ago. Education was everything. I think now once you hit 10 years into your career, you're really they're really looking at that experience over your education. Because like, for example, a client of mine is in software engineering. And he had a Bachelor of Software Engineering from like 1985. Like, that's not even relevant. Yeah, not even relevant anymore. not even relevant yeah it's like not even relevant anymore the systems he was working on in school don't even exist so yeah so I think that I mean I think education is important but I also don't think that it's everything you know it's it's I'm not a huge post-secondary person um I think that you know you have a bachelor's degree it's good enough you don't need to go back for too much more unless it's something you're really excited about but um I think I mean you know, if you have a bachelor's degree, it's good enough. You don't need to go back for too much more unless it's something you're really excited about. But I think, I mean, if you're applying to schools, like universities, if you're applying to banks, any of those more traditional fields, they're going to be looking at your education. But if you're looking at, you know, more new age organizations, you know, anything in software, you know, any of those companies that are more forward thinking the education is definitely less important interesting okay well that's definitely new um canadian job market like you know it how would you describe it right now i would say it's competitive um i would say that the typically people you know, the stats were that you would get a new job in three to six months. And I would say that, I mean, these are my own stats that I'm just making up, like the ones that I'm sharing that are updated. I would say now most of my clients are seeing more like six to nine months just because it's taking because the competition is higher. It's taking longer because you have to apply to more jobs. And networking is just... /episode/index/show/2351f999-02cb-4568-ab77-a59f33bb3fd3/id/32383862

Unmasking Corporate Psychopaths ft Amy Davies 07/31/2024

Unmasking Corporate Psychopaths ft Amy Davies Amy Davies, CEO of HR tech and training firm First30 and author of “A Spark in the Dark” is a specialist in employee onboarding, retention, and outplacement services, having gotten her start at major companies like Unilever, Rogers and Mars/Wrigley. With her experiences personally and professionally, and armed with knowledge derived from Robert D Hare and other researchers, Amy is spreading awareness on the inconspicuous psychopaths that are found in the workplace. In this episode we dive into the three types of psychopaths, the best ways to protect yourself, how to identify them and more. Hang on tight, because the "blood hungry" psychopaths aren't the only dangerous ones. Prep your ears for an honest and thought-provoking conversation on the psychopaths found in corporate! —- Stay in touch with Amy: LinkedIn: Instagram: @amydaviesfirst30 Read the book: , Ph.D Script: When you feel too good around someone or they're coming on really strong, stop and say, why do I feel so connected with this new person in my life so quickly? Welcome to Weirdos in the Workplace, the podcast that celebrates authenticity, transparency, passion, and purpose in our world of work. And I'm here with Amy Davies. Amy, say hello. Hello. Great to be here. Very happy for you to be here. Amy is the CEO of First30, the author of A Spark in the Dark. She's a specialist in employee onboarding, retention, and outplacement services, having gotten a start at major companies like Unilever, Rogers, and Mars Wrigley. Amy also has a new book coming out soon called What Employees Want, Proven Strategies to Attract, Retain, and Engage Talent. And she's the proud owner of a beautiful Doberman named Riker. Yes. And as I was telling you, that is the most important role that I play in life. I'm really his servant. That's basically how it works. Dobermans are beautiful creatures. Oh,'re very nice very nice how old is Riker tell me more Yeah well he's three and a half and for any of your Star Trek fans out there I'm a big Star Trek fan I maybe will hold back from calling myself a Trekkie but I do I am a bit obsessed and there is a character William Riker in Star Trek and so and he's universally liked and a very compelling character and he's the second in command so he's considered number one to Jean-Luc Picard so that's why right that's where Riker's name comes from. Sorry, I'm nerding out now, but I can't. So do you see like, like cosplaying in your future with this? I don't, you know, I don't get too into it. It's actually something my son and I, we got into watching Star Trek together and I find there's so many lessons for kids to learn about compassion, about different societies and acceptance. And there's a lot of moral, great moral lessons in that show. And I think when you only see it from the perspective that it's about like weird aliens, we get a totally different view, but there's a very, there's is so ahead of its time as well it's so so interesting so highly recommend i never really watched the series but i loved the movies when i was a kid star trek movies like next generation or i can't remember there's a few of them but yeah yeah anyways i'm not a big trekkie myself but if you ever get into it, we'll talk. Yeah, okay. Yeah. I guess we will, I'm sure. Okay, so we are on a podcast. This podcast is called Weirdos in the Workplace. So before we kick things off, I'd love to know, Amy, you know, is have you ever felt like a weirdo or a rebel, or just not quite fitting in at some point in your life? And tell me about that. Well, one of the reasons that I started my own business and always knew that I was kind of designed to start my own business was that I never felt like I could just go tow the company line. That was just never me. I never enjoyed being part of an in group where there was people that were in and then there was people that were out. And I could never go along with a company strategy just because the company said this is our strategy. Even if I could put a smile on my face and move forward, I really struggled with it internally when I wasn't bought in to what the decisions the business was making. And the biggest thing for me is that I found and wrote a great book about this called Think, Do, Say. And, you know, companies saying a lot of things that I knew from the inside that they weren't actually doing. So I never felt like I fit in to companies, even though I really liked the people I worked with, I really enjoyed it. But I kind of had an entire career where I always felt like a little bit of an outsider. And much like HR, it's your job to put the third party hat on. I had a role in businesses that required that I was almost I had to be objective in my role. So I actually had permission to sit a little outside and comment on what was going on inside. And that felt very comfortable for me. So yeah, to answer your question, basically my whole career, I felt like even though I presented like an insider, and I'm sure many of us go through that, we are saying all the right things and we're smiling and nodding, but inside we're feeling dramatically different. What led you? Was there like a moment or a culmination of moments that led you to starting your own business? Well, I worked for another entrepreneur fairly early on in my career. We had a complicated relationship, but I really did admire aspects of his business, of his business acumen. And I learned so much from him. And I did really well at the company. And it was the first time I realized that I can do this, like I could actually, I'm not a salesperson by, you know, the traditional view of what a salesperson is. But I realized that I was really good at building relationships. And I got him a ton of new clients. And I thought, oh, my gosh, if I can make him all this money, certainly I could do this for myself one day. And that started me off on the path of becoming an entrepreneur. So while I say we had a complicated relationship, I really appreciate what he taught me. I learned so much from him. And so I am very grateful for that experience. But it is and I'm learning now as a business owner, how difficult it is to run a business. So I can empathize more with what he was going through when I worked for him on in the very early stages of building his business. Yeah. And I know we've both worked for like inspirational bosses, we've both had, you know, not so inspirational bosses, probably or people that we've worked with or people we've, you know, friends who've worked with people, you know, and, and that kind of leads us to, I think our topic. Great segue. Great segue. Just for the folks listening, you know, Amy and I had a chat probably what it was like a few weeks ago maybe a month ago um and you know talking about like what are we going to talk about on the podcast and amy brought to me this idea of you know something that was a little bit different and i thought it was amazing and all amy i'd like to like what how did this you you thought i would want to talk about my something to do with my actual products and services but no I suggested we discuss this book called Without Conscience and it's called Without Conscience the Disturbing World of Psychopaths Who Live Among Us or the Psychopaths Among Us by Robert D. Hare. And he's actually a Canadian. And he's a world-renowned criminal psychologist who is a member of the Order of Canada. He created the psychopathy checklist, which is widely used in the criminal and judicial system in more countries than just Canada. So for once, we have the leading thinker in a space. And so my life has been touched by a psychopath. And I think most people's lives have, I believe, I'm going to say I believe that I lived with a psychopath for eight years of my adult life. And when I moved away from that situation, I really felt strongly that I had something went terribly wrong. It was an awful situation. And I thought, how can I protect myself? And I think like many of the people who are your listeners, they've had an experience where they've worked with someone, maybe it's someone in their personal life, but maybe they've worked in a place, and I've had this experience too, sadly, where they feel that they are dealing with someone they can't reason with, who acts out in anger, who treats them really poorly, no matter how they change their behavior, that person stays the same. And I, and I think that my intent with this, having this conversation today, is that I want to do what Dr. Hare is aiming to do. And that's to spread awareness about psychopaths, because I find I present I do corporate talks as well. And I'll talk about psychopaths during these talks and what I've learned from dr hair and there's always giggles in the room always and i want us to get to a point where it doesn't feel like someone getting up there talking about extraterrestrials uh it's about someone getting up there talking about a real problem dr hair and there have been estimates that are higher um but he talks about maybe 1% of the North American population being non murderous psychopaths. But there are estimates that raise it to about four to 5%, with five to 15%, showing some like who are borderline. And so this these are people are murderers. Is that what you're saying? No borderline psychopaths. Okay, gotcha. We can get into it in more detail. But the way to think about it is that there's a very small percentage of psychopaths who are actually blood hungry, like Ted Bundy or Jeffrey Dahmer. That's often the visualization we have of these people or the people like, Dr. Hare talks about it a lot in his book, Hannibal Lecter, right? I wish that what we could do is take all of these, like, especially in the media, they create these monstrosities of people, these evil geniuses who are murderous and compelling, remove that from your mind. That is not the reality. These people, when you dig under the surface, are very, very base people. They're very boring if you remove all the bells and whistles. But I do think that we have to realize that this person is someone we might get on the elevator with every day. There's someone we'll like bump into at the grocery store. We might meet them on a Tinder date, right? So we have to be very careful. And there are ways that we can protect ourselves from these people as well that I think will be really important to talk about today. But I thought it would be helpful to talk about today. But I want I thought it would be helpful to talk about how Robert Hare defined psychopaths, but also what their brain activity looks like, because this is not just a airy, there's nothing airy fairy about it. It's grounded in research and science. And so I thought it would be helpful to maybe pull out a quote from his book, if that's okay. Psychopaths are social predators who charm, manipulate and ruthlessly plow their way through life, leaving selfishly take what they want, and do as they please, violating social norms, and expectations without the slightest sense of guilt or regret. So that's how he talks about what a psychopath is. It's important for us to recognize, though, they've done tests on the minds of people who are psychopaths. And what they find from a neurological perspective, is that the for our brains, we have the amygdala and that lights up when exciting things happen. And we you know, we get it's our kind of reaction to rewards. But in a psychopath, this lights up far more strongly in response to reward stimulus. Oh, interesting. Yes, but there's more. There's the prefrontal cortex, and this is responsible for empathy, the regulation of our emotion, emotions promoting pro-social behavior. And there is reduced connectivity between the prefrontal cortex and the amygdala in people who are psychopaths. So your rewards are going crazy and the lighting up and not connecting as well with the prefrontal cortex. There was some really interesting brain science that he included in that book, actually around like the left and right brain and how they regulate emotions as well. That was, I thought, very fascinating. I would highly recommend folks to read this book if you're finding this conversation interesting right now, because you'll see that it goes so, so deep. It's just like Alice going right down that rabbit hole right um and storytelling that he he produces as well so many stories about psychopaths and many stories about psychopaths in the workplace which I found really interesting um it was written oh sorry about that oh go ahead yeah it was written in a time before trigger warnings but I want to put a trigger warning, like huge red flag. It was a really hard book to read. And I have a headache right now. And I think it's because I spent the weekend finishing my research for this podcast. And it's, yeah, I'm not gonna lie. Like when I first started listening to the audiobook, because I'm not going to lie. Like when I, when I first started listening to the audio book, cause I'm an audio book girl, I was like, what did I do? This is, it was really hard. It was hard to read. And it's especially hard to think all of us have a little bit of trauma probably going on, you know, and it is a little bit triggering, but if you can push past it, you know, really, really worthwhile. Yeah, it is worthwhile, because being aware is your first line of defense. And, and I'll give you the example, okay, because these are people who are, they mimic the behavior that gets them what they want, even though they don't really understand. And it's described in the book, I don't know if you remember this, and correct me if I'm getting the quote wrong. But they know the words, not the music. Yes. And so they're learning over time. And that's why they're able to be so charismatic and charming at the beginning. And they do. And so what I do now, is if you are engaged with a new person in a workplace, imagine, and I want you to build this picture for yourself, you go into a workplace, imagine, and I want you to build this picture for yourself. You go into a workplace and there's someone that's super helpful. Not everyone that's very helpful is going to be a psychopath. And so we have to be careful. But it's that person who's like, if you have any issues, I'm the person to come to. I'm going to help you out. Don't, you know, don't get too close to so and so because they're blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, right? don't you know don't get too close to so-and-so because they're blah blah blah blah right so this is the person who and they make oh wow i your experience is just incredible someone i know knows you and they said this and and you start feeling really connected with this person they're flattering you they're love bombing you they're being your support system they're telling you like little secrets about what's going on to help you understand your colleagues. They are doing exactly that. They're love bombing, right? So when you feel too good around someone, or they're coming on really strong, stop and say, why do I feel so connected with this new person in my life so quickly? It's so hard. Yeah. Like, like, I'm like, I kind of do all of those things, you know, but I'm, I'm definitely not a psychopath. Like, after reading the book, I'm like, I can definitely self diagnose myself as certainly not a psychopath. Thank God. But yeah, you and I met, I felt really good when we met and I uh you and I spoke but I never felt like you were coming on too strong you were like let's do this let's get on to yeah right but I never felt like you were trying to skip phases in our friendship right you know I didn't feel like you all of a sudden wanted to be my best friend. And when we look at romantic relationships, and I know we're here to talk about the workplace today, but I think it's important also, since we're on the topic to talk about this. Imagine in a romantic relationship, there's a really great book called Women Who Love Psychopaths. And they are I can't actually I might have that title wrong. So I might come back to that. Women Yes, it's called Women Who Love Psychopaths is by Sandra Brown. And she explains that what psychopaths do when they're entering a new relationship is they throw out an empathy hook. And by what I mean by that, and what she means by that, more importantly, is they are testing you to see if you're the type of person they can manipulate. And I was this person. And this is what I learned from researching all of this in the workplace. And I was the fixer. I was the mother. I was the person you could go to. And I'd be like, oh, my gosh, that person did that to you. I'm so sorry. Let me help you fix everything. Right. I never would ask you, Aaron, person did that to you. I'm so sorry. Let me help you fix everything. Right. I never would ask you, Aaron, why did that? Why do you think that person said that to you is, you know, sounds like you might have been blah, blah, blah, right? I was not that person. You weren't the skeptic. The psychopath does not want a skeptic, right? And so I was that nurturer and that, you know, helper, and I thought I could change everybody. And that is why I used to say to my friends, I'm like, I drive men crazy. But it wasn't that at all. I was just psychopaths just loved me because, from what I can tell, just because I was that person, and I was falling for all of those empathy hooks, right? And so we want to be careful that we're asking those questions of people, or even to ourselves in a workplace, let's say, if they're talking about a lot of conflict all the time, and talking about how they're the victim, because psychopaths are always the victim, they're never at fault in their minds. So we have to really start asking ourselves, why are, why is there so much issues with this person? Why do they seem to have an issue with everyone, right? Well, and, you know, especially in the workplace today, when being vulnerable is so valued now, I think more than it has been before. That, you know, we have to buffer ourselves with some kind of armor against, you know, being taken advantage of, right? Yeah, I think it's amazing that you're that kind of person, right? That I think that you, you know, that you're, you're so generous and loving and wanting to protect people and, you know, wanting to, you know, to give yourself. And it really sucks that there are people out there that take advantage of them. And correct me if I'm wrong, but I was it something like 20% up to 20% of CEOs, or there was a very high percentage that I'm recalling of, of leadership, people in leadership positions positions i don't know if it was 20 i never know how accurate those stats are because how would they actually know who is this i mean based maybe on their behavior but i would even think that dr hair would say it's impossible to give an estimate but what he what he does say and what is widely known is they're attracted if there's a well they're attracted it's like a drinking hole, they're attracted to it, right? So if there's a way, if investment banking is a great way to, white collar crime is huge among psychopaths because they, you know, look at Bernie Madoff. I've never diagnosed him myself, nor could I, nor am I qualified to, but I'm sure there's widely held beliefs that he is a psychopath. Politics attracts psychopaths because now they can control lawyers. And it's still going to always be a very small percentage. So I don't want to cast any shade on these professions. But these are people that like power and control the military, police. Right. like power and control, the military, police, right? So if we think of those types of areas where they can be seen as important, have power and walk away with a big wad of cash all at the same time, that is what they're attracted to. Yeah, and these are the successful psychopaths that he talks about. Yeah, so these are folks that, you know, are living... /episode/index/show/2351f999-02cb-4568-ab77-a59f33bb3fd3/id/32209427

Why Being a Generalist Might Be Your Best Strategy ft Julie Lavergne 07/24/2024

Why Being a Generalist Might Be Your Best Strategy ft Julie Lavergne What works for other might not work for you. What if your key to success was to not have a niche? What if tring to focus on one thing was actually hindering your path success? Founder and CEO of 8Ball Clarity, the host of the podcast The Generalist Advantage, former executive with nearly two decades in a global tech company and holds a masters in Engineering, Julie Lavergne is the quintessential Generalist who challenges the trend and notion of focusing on one niche. Stay tuned for a direct and thought-provoking discussion on the beauty of the generalist and how it might be your key to success ;) Stay in Touch with Julie: Script: Choosing a nonlinear path is unheard of. Every time I reinvent myself, I have to reinvent my brand. I'm going to go and disrupt myself and prove that I can do this. How do we help generalists understand their value and help them explain their value? The common theme was always like, oh, what about this piece? Okay, go do this piece. And then what about this other piece? Go there. Having a generalist must be, it must feel like having like a cross-functional team in one person. We have so many interests. We want to do good in so many areas and trying to pick which one that with our limited resources. Welcome to Weirdos in the Workplace, the podcast that celebrates authenticity, transparency, passion, and purpose. And of course, I am your host, Erin Patchell, and I'm here with the lovely, I am your host, Erin Patchell, and I'm here with the lovely, amazing Julie Laverne. And Julie is the founder and CEO of 8 Ball Clarity, the host of the podcast, The Generalist Advantage, and she loves to minimize thinking waste and help organizations, teams, and leaders to make better and faster decisions. You are in the right place, Julie Laverne, my friend. Oh, thank you. What a lovely intro and lovely podcast host. So thank you. Thank you. So question of the day for those of you who do not know Julie, which is maybe one or two of you, because you're very popular, especially in Ottawa. I want to get to know you a little bit. So tell me about yourself. And also tell me about like, what makes you a weirdo? Oh, that's interesting. I just, I had a talk just recently. And all I did was like, why am I being asked to talk? And I realized is because I just make my own path. And some people could resonate with that. But I've often asked why fought the system? Why are we doing it this way? And I kind of like, why do those rules exist there? Why are are we thinking this way and so maybe that's a little bit of what makes me um good to have but also really annoying to have perhaps in the meeting room of you know going back of asking why um and so if you're asking a little bit of my journey uh it's I I started as an engineer uh because I couldn't fathom, I wanted to help people. Like this difference between science and engineering was like, no, no, I really want to build things that helps people. So that started with engineering. And then I made my way having a lot of different roles and made my way to HR executive and now founder. And that's probably what made me a generalist, but I'm sure we'll get into that. Oh, we'll definitely get into that. So yeah, today we're going to be talking all about what it's like to be a generalist, the journey to being a generalist, and how maybe being a generalist could solve some of these problems that we have in the world today. And I know that is of deep interest to a lot of the people who listen to this podcast and we're all very well aware um of some of the ways you know that our world is you know sometimes daily feels like it's imploding so true yeah yeah and from the macro to the micro you you know? Yep. Yeah. So, yes. So you went from engineer to HR executive and now founder. Julie, wait, before we go any further, though, like how the heck did we meet? Like, I literally can't remember. I just feel like we absorbed each other into each other's lives somehow. I feel too. How did this happen? I don't know. I want to credit the LinkedIn world. How did this happen? I don't know. I want to credit the LinkedIn world. I find, you know, sometimes like like-minded, you know, people kind of find each other on there somehow. And that's, that's how, that's what I'm thinking. But obviously we have lots of friends in common. We end up in the same circle sometimes. Yeah. I started talking and go, let's do more of that together. I feel like I need to go back in time and figure out how this happened because I just enjoy you so much. And I really resonate with everything that you say, especially when it comes to like being rebellious and questioning. And I think that's such a good trait in people. Like, I don't think that's something that's annoying or should be bad or should be annoying at least. You know know I think it's so good to be able to question things and find the holes and provide more context because the more context we have the better we can make decisions and I know you're going to probably tell us a little bit about that too but anyways I just had to I was just thinking like how the heck did I did we meet and I have no idea well can I just say thank you for saying that, like, just going back to like, thank you for saying that's okay to be that way. Because I think a lot of generalists would feel that it wasn't, it's not always embraced. And I could say, I probably spent 10 years of my career being the annoying person of going like, why are you bringing this up to then shifting and who I reported to, to then being called an excellent gap filler. Right. And that was praised, right? It was like, thank you. Thank you for finding those gaps and bringing those to the surface. Cause we need to talk about them and we need to bridge them. So it's interesting that thank you for saying that it's a good thing, but cause I don't think everybody has always been embraced that way. No, actually they're not. I talked to like literally in my last job, I pretty much talked to people every single day who were looking for coaching, but in the quest to do better and for their professional development often had really emotional stories that they were telling me about, like how they weren't appreciated how you know there are the things that they noticed in the workplace were dismissed or denied or unappreciated and they were actually a lot of the time afraid they had to figure out like how do I say this the right way so that I'm not like fired or whatever you know and that just sucks so maybe we can talk about that too. Yeah, I was gonna, I was gonna keep going, because that's exactly how a lot of generalists feel, because the generalist work is kind of invisible. Like, you don't see the work. It's not like this, like, we're not the product developer, you know, we're not the software coder or anything that comes to something tangible. We're more like this um somebody called it man behind the curtain like providing linkages across things and therefore it's not visible work therefore it's often not appreciated and therefore a little bit the conversation is maybe not the tough conversation of how to bring something up but the tough conversation of i am providing value i I am contributing and, you know, there's, there's, it's, it is valuable. Can you not see that? That comes up a lot. I think this, this actual conversation could go in a totally different direction than what I originally thought. I thought we were like, we're going to go down this one path. And now I'm like, I'm like, how do we help generalists understand their value and help them explain their value? Right. Well, welcome to my purpose. Oh my gosh. Okay. Let's start with your story though. You went from, you were an engineer. Once upon a time, you were a child with all the hopes and dreams and then you were an engineer and then you were an HR executive and then you now you're obviously a founder and a coach and you know you're doing all the things bringing light to the world tell me about that journey and what that felt like yeah so I started so started, so started in the workplace, had, had the role as I, you know, was led to, sorry, had to do. And then what brought me is back to that questioning. So those people that are like, why is it done this way? Or why are we, why are we, what's that gap over there? Or I'm not understanding, you know think about the inputs and outputs right like I have a role and all these things are coming to me from inputs from the organization and I'm outputting and maybe I you know where is that going and so kind of those curiosity pieces led me to go but what about here and so we call like coloring outside your job description like I would do that all the time my, boss loved and hated it at the same time because it causes issues, but also love because you're doing kind of more and picking up the pieces. So that's kind of like the, operations, to finance, to systems development, to quality, to organizational development. So it was just always about, if you think about the holistic picture and this whole like a wheel of a spoke, I always wanted to kind of try to color each, each spoke to really understand how all of it works. Right. So that's kind of like the piece that drove me was curiosity. But then how a lot of people go, how did you make the leap from a technical operational to let's say in HR, right? Sometimes that's very vastly different. And it was critical thinking. So I took the course and then I sat and then did the facilitation course. Then I did the teaching course. And then I started teaching the organization critical thinking. And then I realized how much I love seeing people make it doesn't matter if you're in sales or software, health and safety, whatever topic, like the ability to make a better decision or the ability to like, take a really complex situation, kind of break it down and find an action plan, right? Like, I just love seeing those aha moments. And so I knew that was something I wanted to do more of. And that was the pivot. I talked with the CEO and the pivot was, Hey, can you bring this as a kind of organizational competency and really like lift the organization? And I said, challenge accepted. And that's how I kind of went into the HR kind of people space. Yeah. Okay. So it started with sort of competency development, skills development, building, helping people build context and then led you. So it was learning and development kind of like that learning and development HR bubble. And then how far, how deep into the HR world did you end up going? Well, the part so he he the ceo would give me a nugget and what he thought would take two three years i would have like chewed up in six eight months wow he's like oh okay feed next nugget so then i got recruiting and then same same thing and i think that's where even though i had huge accomplishment accomplishments as an engineer or you know operationals person I think he had made the transferable link of how I operate is not just because a technical perspective it's more from that thinking approach perspective and using the experts around me right so I wasn't an expert in these things but pair me up with the expert man I kind of developed the process or built whatever needed to be built so then he just like kept piling it on and then said okay you're you're on the executive team now as the kind of organizational development talent person so and became quite close with him and advisor and then he then before I left was getting into strategy because he's like, oh, okay, the way you think, right? And so what was interesting is that each milestone I hit, there was always a surprise that I could hit it probably for both of ourselves really. But yeah. Did you have any points where it was like you like kind of like growing pains through that at all? Like what was that like? kind of like growing pains through that at all like what was that like yeah I mean we talk about imposter syndrome for sure when I transferred to let's say the HR space I definitely have faced a lot of adversity of like you like but you have no training in this field right like like back to those classic questions like how you, what do you know in this space? And I face a lot of adversity, especially when I start talking with somebody, let's say a manager or whatever. And they'd be like, no, no, well, I've been managing people in this for a very long time. So let me kind of educate you or let me tell you, which I appreciated. But there's also this perspective of you've been doing it naturally for many years, right? Leadership sometimes was just from a natural place. Whereas what generalists often do is the minute they get their hands on a topic and they deep dive, right? Like multiple books, multiple videos, training, like whatever. It's like there's a deep dive into the topic really quickly. So then you get into the best practice and systems and understanding it that you could kind of apply. get into the best practice and systems and understanding it that you could kind of apply. So that was difficult because I didn't have the cred, right, to do the job. And I just needed to show them, show value, prove myself, really serving them and showing that their life is easier working with me and that they kept coming for more. Yeah. Yeah. Once you can demonstrate it for sure, but it's, it's interesting that people don't realize how much, um, that third party outsider perspective, how valuable that can be, you know, uh, especially when you're trying to innovate, cause it's like, you aren't going to come in and do things the way that they've always been done before. Um, you're going to bring best practices in from other areas in order and apply them in this context. And then obviously integrating like the best practices probably that were known into a better system. And so I just think that's really cool. Yeah. And I think it's like marrying up multiple systems. Like I was on the operational side, like I knew what had to the work that you need to do to deliver. So I knew not to come and put in like a very, maybe labor intensive or whatever process. Like I need, I wanted to marry it up with their day-to-day to make it as efficient as possible. And so it's kind of appreciating that, like, we need to do this piece and you're doing this other piece. How do we best do that together? And that appreciation for sure. Oh, I was just thinking like having a generalist must be it must feel like having like a cross-functional team in one person all your multiple personalities I was gonna say the worst part is when you talk to yourself about like what about this way but there's this going on and you literally could do that yeah that's amazing and then at what point did you decide like, and I mean, if it's too personal, then don't don't you don't need to tell us why you decided to start your, your business. But I'd love to hear what that journey was like. What was that moment for you that were like, I'm gonna do this on my own now? Yeah, there's definitely multiple versions of that story. I will say that without sounding arrogant, it was, I felt like I'd outgrown it. Like I felt like I needed to do more. And I knew that the system that worked, which was, you know, needed to work for the business that they are, was limiting me. And after I had delivered some major things, I said, Okay, do I want to go around this block again? And I wasn't feeling it. And so, funny enough, I actually when I started feeling that way, I was researching, like, okay, let's go do this job in a different industry. And I couldn't get a bite. So the job I had been doing in a global tech company, when I tried to go smaller company, midsize, HR, tech, they said, oh, no, sorry, you don't have the degree. You don't have this. You don't have this you don't have that and i was like oh it's my engineering degree isn't useless like this is where i was starting like butting up against this kind of checkbox view of things and and i said white right well i'm gonna go and disrupt myself yeah and prove that i can do this And so that's where led me to this journey. Oh, dude, that resonates with me so much. I am like totally unemployable. Despite the fact that I've done so much of like, nobody's nobody wants this because I don't fit in neatly inside a box. Exactly. And that's that is something that's one of my missions is disrupt that org structure, hiring checkbox. Like we know there's a lot of value, like, oh my God, like who wouldn't want to have Erin Patchell on their team? They'd be crazy. But because again, there's this institutional structure that said, well, where would Erin fit that is not disruptive? She doesn't fit and she might be disruptive of all her knowledge and all like, she'll then let's just not do it and I think that is a big mistake oh you can guarantee that both of us would probably be a little disruptive that's for sure but it's it works extremely well as a consultant actually um to go in gently you know kind of not shake things up too much because you can't really as a consultant or at least you shouldn't um but you know gently nudge you know nudge the nudge nudge and then and then leave you know before things get too hot leave everyone in a good position yeah yeah i'll uh i never looked at it that way but yeah i guess that's what's what I, yeah, definitely trying to do. Tell you a little bit story. When I started on talking about this topic, somebody reached out from the, he didn't say the organization he was from. I'm assuming like the Nortel days. Cause he says, Oh, like back, way back when we do product innovation and you know, my tech, big tech company, we realized that there was like a group of misfits that kind of like, he didn't say the word misfit, but he says they like would innovate faster. Their product would go, he goes like, and then we actually hired a consultant to understand why that group was faster than the others. And that's what he said is like, they were, they had more of this generalist mindset and thinking, and it was 10% of it. He was, but politics would drag them down they were disruptive so they were they were put the corner because again they would challenge status quo and why are we doing it this way and so yeah so there's definitely an aspect of disruptive uh to what we do i can definitely vouch for that you know the last team at career joy um that you know we were developing awesome we just did such awesome work and we were so good at like getting shit done and I think most of the team were for sure generalists and like a little bit you know just definitely outside the box thinkers in different ways and then on the train to help project now it's the same it's like four of us are totally generalists like way way out like totally rebellious um and then the one person who is not is a total specialist is my husband who's our software engineer and literally he'd be happy if he was coding 15 hours a day and that's just fine yep yep we need those definitely need those exactly um but yeah yeah i think great things can. Do you think you'll have your own crazy little team of generalists someday, Julie? Well, it's interesting as I try to embark on this topic. I, to be honest with you, I struggle a little bit of like what it could be like, is this, is this, am I just voicing something, but like, am I creating something out of it? Like what's the output? And I talked to a lot of others. I said, what are we defining as success? Right? Like, we could talk about it, but what's the end goal? Where do we know that we've reached something? And so that's still in work. I have definitely a few ideas, but the creation of more generalists or those embracing that they are a generalist, adopting generalists like there's definitely a theme there whether they all work for me or not to be determined yeah yeah I think... /episode/index/show/2351f999-02cb-4568-ab77-a59f33bb3fd3/id/32108172

Exploring DEI Through a Neurodivergent Lens with guest, Kathleen Johnson 07/17/2024

Exploring DEI Through a Neurodivergent Lens with guest, Kathleen Johnson In this world there are leaders, strategists, implementers, shephards, heroes... And let's not forget, Kathleen Johnson! CEO of Kreativ Culture Strategies where she provides Diversity Equity Inclusion, and Anti-Racism training to organizations across Canada. She is an innovative leader who partners with her clients to deliver heart-centred diversity training and strategy that incorporates creativity to arrive at practical solutions. With a background in Film and TV as a makeup artist and DEI advisor for films and scripts, a background in literature, writing poerty and short stories, and being a senior Consultant of Diversity Equity and Inclusion with the Provincial Health Services Authority in BC, Kathleen Johnson is a powerful force who has the knowledge, the education and the skills to talk to us about DEI and the creative culture in corporate. Tune in, learn something new and don't stay out of trouble! Stay in Touch with Kathleen For more info on Kathleen and her work: Scripts: There's a long documented history of human rights issues. The weirdos in the workplace are usually the most, some of the most open-minded, you know, willing to accept feedback sort of people. There's a lot of ways where employers have realized, oh, this is actually, this is actually a benefit. I can't fix what I don't know. You will be supported. You'll be understood. I think corporate culture has a long way to go in that regard. Welcome to Weirdos in the Workplace, a podcast that celebrates authenticity, transparency, passion, and purpose in our world of work. And I'm really excited to have Kathleen Johnson with me here today. Hello, Kathleen. Hello. Thank you for being on the podcast. This is awesome. I'm really excited about that. Thank you. Thank you so much. being on the podcast. This is awesome. Really excited. Thank you. Thank you so much. So I'll tell you a little bit about Kathleen. Kathleen is the CEO of Creative Culture Strategies, and she provides diversity, equity, inclusion, and anti-racism training to organizations across Canada. Kathleen partners with her clients to deliver heart-centered diversity training and strategy that incorporates creativity to arrive at practical solutions. And for those of you who are watching us on YouTube or, you know, Facebook or LinkedIn or whatever, and we can, you can see our background, you can see it clearly spelled there, but of course we will have it in the show notes as well. Awesome. Welcome to the show, Kathleen. Thank you so much. I'm really happy to be here. And we've had these discussions before so it just feels like we're having a carrying our discussion onto YouTube. Exactly we're finally just pressing record sometimes I wish we could just like press record on our conversations every now and then I'm like oh that would have been perfect on the podcast. Yeah I'm just getting into podcasting as well. And it's like, you get that podcast brain where you're like, I want to, I want to capture this. Yeah. Like that was such a good video clip. Dang. How can I remember this? For folks who haven't met Kathleen before, Kathleen is also a very proud humanist as am I. And we actually met, well, kind of because I sort of like stalked her slash introduced myself after listening to you speak Kathleen after you were doing a workshop with Humanist Canada and I thought you were just brilliant and it was about the topic of diversity equity and inclusion and yeah so are you still involved at all with Humanist Canada? I actually didn't know that's where you first saw me actually so that's cool I'm not currently involved just because of capacity so I follow I amplify but I am not actively involved at the moment. Yeah. So just, yeah. And then like some light stalking afterwards on my part. And now, you know, maybe a little friendship that's bloomed. So that's very nice. Yeah, absolutely. I am still in, I am sort of involved with BC Humanists. I'm taking part in a book compilation that they are writing. And so I don't know when that's going to be coming out it's supposed to be earlier this year and now it's kind of delayed delayed because we're they're looking for the researchers with BC Humanists are looking for a university to publish to publish the work so that's a bit of a shop around but that's exciting yeah that's going to be coming out hopefully this year yeah I will I will hunt it down that seems to be what I do um so you know I know you're you know you're the mom of five kids we've talked before about both of us you know having had having ADHD and kind of feeling like kind of outsiders or rebels. The first question that we've been asking folks coming on the podcast recently is, you know, the title of the podcast is Weirdos in the Workplace. And most folks who listen to us and people who are on the podcast kind of feel like a little bit of a weirdo sometimes. How does that resonate with you? I definitely resonate with that. I do feel as a neurodivergent person, having ADHD and learning disability, but also being coded gifted as a kid, there's all kinds of ways that my brain works that I notice other people's brains do not work. And I think especially within corporate structure, this is my first time being outside of arts fields or other environments. So it's been a learning curve for me to actually work within a corporate structure that is a lot more hierarchical, a lot more bureaucracy and structure, and that is the beast that it is. And so I think it's unfortunate though, because I think that my aspect of how I just kind of, you know, have different ideas just all the time bouncing around in my brain um there's there's patience and appreciation for that in my position and because it's also a new department and a new position this position within phsa it's not to confuse people i also am a senior consultant in the provincial health authority here in bc that um uh my position has not been done before. And so there has been a lot of leeway in terms of what I'm able to bring to the organization, how we're actually able to make something happen. So there's probably more flexibility than normally would be experienced. But I have had to think in a different way. I've had to learn that I have to provide more details to people, that people are not just going to catch my drift of what I'm trying to say. So it's, it's really forced me to be a lot more of a methodical thinker, a tactical thinker, work strategically, and really make sure that all the ways that my brain wants to do things that I'm actually, that I've actually got a plan, which is difficult to do. If anybody that has ADHD, no planning is not necessarily a hallmark strong point. So it's really taught me a lot of new skills. And so I've embraced trying to work within that kind of structure. Wow. Yeah. I always tell people, like, I don't know that I could do it. You know, like I physically don't know if I could work within like a highly bureaucratic governance model. hopefully to the point where folks with ADHD can navigate the world of work a little bit more easily and find the accommodations that they need in order to survive there, let alone thrive, you know? Yeah. What are you seeing in the world of work these days? Are you seeing the positive movement that we all sort of been hoping for? I do. I think the biggest point of frustration comes with me not really knowing how to answer the question when I get it, how can I support you? It's a later in life diagnosis for me. And so for me to actually understand myself enough to communicate what I need has been a struggle. I think also, but, but yeah, in general, I think there's a change in terms of people want to know they want, they're not just taking it like, oh, everybody has, you know, you've heard that everybody has a little ADHD. Oh, I forgot my keys three times last week. And so I must have it too kind of thing. I think people are kind of understanding more neurological differences. And there, there has been that positive shift and like, okay, let, let, let's try to understand how you need support and what that looks like and how we can accommodate. A bit of a caveat though, is that the better you can advocate for yourself is sometimes the harder it is to get your needs met because it's kind of like, okay, well, you work really well in this area. You might have even an exceptional ability in X, Y, Z way. So do you really need this accommodation? And so I find that that can be a little difficult. And I don't think it's quite 100% changed in that regard. But I think it's moving in the right direction. I think it's just people, I think what we need to do is normalize from the interview process, because we know the employee experience starts right from the interview, sometimes even before that you can disclose something like that. I know a lot of people don't. I didn't. I never do. it's normal to disclose if you have a hidden disability and um and feel safe doing that and know that um you you will be supported you'll you'll be understood I think corporate culture has a long way to go in that regard oh I would agree with that I mean the word on the street like the advice on the street you know uh, in the different groups that I'm involved in with disability groups or neurodivergent groups is not to disclose, you know, like that, you know, you better not because yeah, you don't even know if you're being discriminated against, frankly. Right. So, and there's very little, like, like you know very few checks and balances um so it would be really nice if we could like really trust that an employer wasn't going to discriminate or even if they were you know i mean i i think it's great to employ people with disabilities because people with disabilities have amazing problem solving capabilities because they've you know we've been problem solving our whole lives trying to figure out how to you know be like a regular person or whatever you know uh just trying to do stuff that everyone takes for granted a lot of the time so um i think i think you should hire more people with disabilities i don't know. What do you think? Yeah, I, there was something in the UK that I read about that, like a long time ago with companies that were actually prioritizing hiring people with neurodivergent brains. Right. Ability to hyper-focus was one of them that was an attractive quality. ability to hyper focus was one of them that was an attractive quality um just uh being able to offer different solutions quickly um processing quickly i think that's a misunderstanding of a lot of neurodivergencies uh that it takes us maybe a while longer to get things maybe maybe in certain regards um but i find, I don't know if you find this because everybody with a given diagnosis or, you know, condition is different, but I find my brain works quite fast. And so sometimes, you know, just the other day, my, one of my colleagues was like, cause we try to give these kudos where it's's like, give say something nice to your colleague next to you kind of thing. And so he's like, I just don't know how you know what you know. I know what I know. Do you know what I'm saying? Because the way that I learn is like, not in a, let me read this and learn this, you know, it's just like a lot of subliminal stuff. So yeah, I think understanding how that kind of person thinks and works and operates. Yes, there's a long way to go with that. But there's a there's a lot of ways where employers have realized, oh, this is actually a benefit. I think there's, because of all the accommodations we've had to make throughout our lives and workarounds and all these kinds of things, it helps us to see things from a different angle a lot of the time. Like if a group of people are, because they're institutionalized, and I don't, I mean that in the way that they're used to thinking within the corporate process. So it's always like the thought at the end of it is always, how will the board see this? How will such and such director or ed see this and so you're not really using your own um thinking at that point you're kind of thinking how someone else would how someone else would be thinking about it and i think that's where a lot of limitations come in and how people think about things. I don't even have the ability to think like that. So I just put it out there and, you know, I'm always bringing new and fresh ideas to my team because I think I have the stamina to do that because it's, you know, when you're talking to people, I don't know how many different things you do. I know there's a lot, but that's normal to me. If I was actually going to work and just coming home, I've never done that. And I don't know how that even works. I always am doing various different things and that always looks scatterbrained. If you are not used to that kind of way of being. And so I think it's a struggle is it's a struggle to always be, you know, communicating to people like, no, I got this. This is just normal to me. This is just normal to me. And so, yeah, I think it's a bit of a discovery for people to encounter somebody that is neurodivergent and actually have to work with them. So I realize I might frustrate other people. I realize I might talk too fast or I might be moving on too quickly, or I might be doing certain things. So just, you know, I'm open to bringing things to my attention, like, hey, could you please give me a little more clarity on that? I'm not there yet, or what have you. So I think you have to be open to understanding that not everybody's going to get you and just help people along with that because it's not really an expectation of mine that, oh, you know, understand me or else I just got to be patient. I found like the weirdos in the workplace are usually the most, some of the most open-minded, you know, willing to accept feedback sort of people, like really like a strong belief in continuous improvement, because like, we've tried so hard to fit in and probably maybe, and it just didn't work, but we're constantly like striving to do better. It's like, but if I don't know from I'm an early age and it sounds like you were like this too. It was like, I can't fix what I don't know. You know, like I can't fix something about me. Not that there's anything I should be fixing. I eventually learned necessarily, but you do want to make people feel comfortable. I don't want to make anyone feel uncomfortable, you know, with my behavior or my, you know, if I'm too loud or too crazy or too whatever, like I want to make sure that I care about the way people feel around me as well. Right. And that's not because they told some, like, there's some like societal pressure to do that. It's really because I just, I just want people to feel comfortable, you know? And so if that means that like, I can learn to just dial something back a little bit you know I'm gonna do that and I think that's okay and that's that's an individual thing probably right um yeah I think it's actually really indicative of the condition of having um ADHD and what because we're always um that that I think that is actually a thing from childhood where, you know, we've been told we get a lot of feedback on our behaviors. Right. And so we are more concerned, I think, with how does this person think about me? Am I being too much? How are they perceiving me? And yeah, so we are open to feedback because we have learned that we're not the best gauge of our behavior. we have learned that we're not the best gauge of our behavior uh so like to other people to say hey if i'm i'm getting too much um just let me know i'm totally fine with that um because we're used to it we're used to hearing you know hey calm down don't do that don't touch that don't you know as it's such a normal part of how we're how how we work but yeah I think one thing that popped out to me the other day I was talking to my son about my aha moment was um I think I understand the major difference between somebody that's neurotypical and somebody that's neurodivergent. And he's like, what? Because he's autistic and has ADHD as well. And I said, it's, I think logic overrides emotion for somebody that's neurodivergent and emotion overrides logic for somebody that's neurotypical. It's just a theory. overrides logic for somebody that's neurotypical it's just a theory and I'm uh and I'm working on what that I'm working on what that looks like see if I'm right or not how right I might be but on the type of neurodivergence as well because I know people who are like borderline personality usually that's characterized by like very strong emotion like a very strong like inner world and emotional world and that kind of rides everything but definitely for me that strikes true for sure but is bpd a mood disorder or is it a neurodivergence or is it both centered i think it's with i think neuro it's a neurodivergence for sure yeah um I think most like personality disorders are considered neurodivergence as well which is okay okay see I'm learning something yeah I wasn't aware of that I thought it was quite separate so yeah yeah anyways it's it yeah it's interesting like even a psychopath would probably be considered neurodivergent I'm very sure yeah for sure yeah hernia is considered neurodivergent and yeah so but I think I think that's probably very true in certain cases of neurodivergency like for sure ADHD autism I think probably that's that strikes me as accurate anyways yeah very concrete way uh of thinking yeah yeah absolutely hmm very interesting um so before we you know I've been putting this out in the universe me and you and I both talk to a lot of DEI and for myself as well as accessibility advocates consultants you know people who are just working in this space or trying to make impact in this area and it's become really apparent I think to both of us as we were talking before that folks seem to be burning out. You mentioned that some people are like, that you know, are like leaving the industry. This is really concerning for me, I think for all of us, you know, who are in the space trying to make an impact. I'm just curious, like, you know, what are you seeing as overall themes in the DEI space right now? This or other things? Yeah, I'm seeing burnout for sure. I've always seen that. There's stats to support that. The lifespan of someone in this profession is usually three to five years. And I've seen more recently two, two to four. So I definitely get that people are tapped out. They have to often perform miracles with little to no budgets. as the representation of everything to do with that work. And so I find that now there is more of an understanding that DEI is everybody's work to do, that this person is leading it, but it's everybody's work to do or else it doesn't work. And there's expectations there that can be expectations on the practitioner side and expectations on who is employing you or contracting with you to do the work. And so, and not saying that people that burnt out don't do this, but it's very important to set expectations from the very beginning. Like, you know, I'm not a miracle worker. I'm going to need some resources. I'm going to need some budget. And kind of making that very clear. Also, when I've been looking for positions and I've been looking at what they're paying, I think that's disappointing as well for a lot of people. And as we know, the cost of living rising so sharply especially in the last few years it's really hard to keep up with these um with these laundry list job descriptions that want five to ten years experience in dei and how is that possible when this just became a field since 2020? You must have a master's, you must have this, this, this. So I have now seen more of job descriptions that are more asking for a realistic parameter of skills, education, and so forth, because that can be really the crux of what the issues are, is that from the very beginning, it's like, can you... /episode/index/show/2351f999-02cb-4568-ab77-a59f33bb3fd3/id/32057592

Burning Out or Breaking Through? The DEI Dilemma Ft. Nancy Cairns 07/10/2024

Burning Out or Breaking Through? The DEI Dilemma Ft. Nancy Cairns Growing up with dyslexia and in a multicultural household, Nancy has navigated the challenges of being the 'other', and not fitting into societal norms. Now as an Ottawa-based DEI and employee wellness consultant who empowers marginalized and inferior voices, Nancy Cairns aims to create safe and healthy environments where everyone feels valued in corporate. If you've been the 'black sheep' of the herd, then you'll want to listen to this episode as Nancy Cairns addresses the DEI dilemma in corporate ! Stay in Touch with Nancy: Find out more on Nancy and her work: Script: Never considered myself racist, of course, but our systems are racist. This is not a one size fits all process. Neurotypicals versus neurodivergence, right? Because really, DEI, ultimately what we're doing is we're asking people to be self-aware. I'm seeing a lot of folks either like burning out or becoming jaded. Do the best that you can until you know better. Then when you know better, do better. Welcome to Weirdos in the Workplace, the podcast that celebrates authenticity, transparency, passion, and purpose in our world of work. And I am here with the fabulous Nancy Cairns. Welcome to the show. Hi, thank you so much. It's so good to be here. Absolutely. Glad you're here. So for those of you who don't know Nancy yet, glad you're here. So for those of you who don't know Nancy yet, Nancy is an Ottawa-based DEI and employee wellness consultant, a passionate advocate, innovative thinker, and champion for positive change, seeking to empower and amplify marginalized voices. Welcome to the show, Nancy. Thank you so much. Awesome. So this is Weirdos in the Workplace, right? And it wouldn't be a Weirdos in the Workplace episode if we didn't talk just a little bit about what makes you a little bit different or unique, or why were you drawn to this podcast? Well, I have always felt like a misfit among misfits. You know, growing up, I was diagnosed with dyslexia, which I didn't know until I was well into my 30s, that that actually meant that I was neurodivergent. And that was such a validating experience for me to find out, oh, I'm neurodivergent. I'm not neurotypical. That's why my brain actually does work differently than other people. So I've always felt like I never quite fit in because I viewed things a little bit differently. I also grew up in like a small town, which is a lovely town, love my small town. But I grew up, my mother is Mexican. So that was very, even though I'm, I'm like, I'm clearly white. I grew up kind of being othered a little bit because of growing up with a different culture, being exposed to a different culture. So I've always, I've always felt like I didn't quite fit in. And then, you know, when you, when you feel that sense of, of not fitting in, you kind of like, what's, what's going on with me? What, what am I doing? So you get into all the, like, I did the Myers-Briggs test and turns out I'm an INFJ, which is like only 2% of the population or something like that is an INFJ. So like all of these validating things that tell me that I am just, I, I, I walk to a different beat than, than a lot of the world. And I've learned that that's actually a beautiful gift and to embrace it. But, uh, you know, it took a long time to get here. Yeah. Well, you definitely are in the right place. You know, we are definitely trying to reclaim the word weirdo because I think that the folks who listen to this podcast for sure. And a lot of the folks who are guests on the podcast definitely feel or have felt othered, felt like outsiders, have kind of a chip on our shoulder a little bit, like a little bit rebellious because of that. So welcome. And you're definitely, you definitely belong here with us. Thank you. Thank you so much. Absolutely. But yeah, I know, I know exactly how you feel about like, you know, feeling like you're an outsider and not really knowing how to fit in. So for real, like it's, it's not an easy way to grow up and it definitely leaves a lasting impression on you. And it's probably why, one of the reasons why we're both kind of doing the work that we do. It's so true. I think because so many of us, we, we want to desperately fit in. So we end up masking and we're not our authentic selves as a result because our authentic selves, we feel like that's going to get rejected. Yeah. So this whole idea of inclusivity is, is very important to me for, for that very reason, because I felt so othered for so long and yeah. yeah well and like you said before people with disabilities people who are neurodivergent have amazing gifts to share with the world that the world would know nothing about you know if we weren't included so and that really sucks yeah it does yeah it does yeah so um I mean that's really part of the the big part of the business case for DI I think is you know it's not just because it's the right thing to do we always hear that it's not just the right thing to do it's also the right thing to do in terms of like the business case. It's the smart thing to do, right? What do you think about that when you hear that? Oh, I absolutely agree. It's because you're able to tap into workforces like everyone has their skill sets, right? So by having this inclusive, instead of trying to fit everyone into the same box, by having a more inclusive perspective, it allows people the space to bring their best foot forward. And as a result of that, you see more innovation, you see more productivity, you see more engagement. Like if you just think about in your own life, when you're in a situation where you feel a sense of belonging, where you feel really valued, how do you react in those situations? Do you feel like you really want to bring your best? You really want to contribute in a positive way because you feel valued. You feel a part of something, right? Versus when you're in a situation where you feel like you have to speak a certain way, you can only act a certain way. You're, there's a lot of fear, you know, about, oh, I don't want to, I don't want to say this. I don't want to do that. And so you don't have that space to bring all of the beautiful gifts that you have inside of you as a result. So, so it's this untapped resource that really needs to, I believe it's going to be the future. It's going to bring all organizations into the future if they really start to tap into the humanity of all of us and understanding our humanity and letting us use our gifts together. I think like some people, I sometimes sometimes think like you know we we always lately at least we've been dividing it like neurotypicals versus neurodivergence right I don't know that it I don't know that I prescribe to that you know that binary model really I do feel like some of us are better able to cope with like our modern reality than other people. But this can only benefit everyone, you know, if we take this kind of approach. I think. Yeah, absolutely. And not just talking about like neurotypicals and, and, you know, like just all of the, like the different know like just all of the like the different intersectionalities all of the different lived experiences the different cultures you know we live in a world now where you can hop on a plane and you can you can see so much of the world um you can live in different countries it's just it's so it's so beautiful and yet we're still trying to force people to act a certain way instead of saying oh what what what kind of lived experience what kind of wonderful um insights can you bring from your perspective from your lens instead we're like it's this very hierarch, this is the way that we have to do things and just toe the line. Right. And then people, people don't like they get just, I think it's just natural. You, you don't want to engage in that, you know, you're just like, okay, I'm just here to get a paycheck. Yeah. I'm just going to do my job, like what's on paper and that's it. You know, there's no curiosity. There's no, you know, freedom to explore. So what's the point? Yeah. Curiosity. That's a, that's a brilliant way of putting it. Having curiosity about, okay, this is something and this is great. How can we make it even better? What can we do to you know that's how the innovation happens is those people coming with the ideas how can we make things even better and let's all work together let's collaborate let's bring different ideas to the table because if everyone's sitting around a table with the same idea you're just gonna get yeah you know the same product service over and over again so i i talked to a lot of folks who are like dei practitioners di consultants or have lived experience um intersectional experience as part of a marginalized group and who are you know working in their various ways to try to make this sort of culture well trans cultural transformation in organizations um and something that I've noticed that we talked about before Nancy was that I I'm seeing a lot of folks either like burning out or becoming jaded or like feeling like they're pushing a boulder up the hill and like not sure how long they can like stick it out for, you know. I just wonder, you know, I know this isn't like a utopian dream, you know, that we're talking about here. I talk about it a lot as well in the previous season. I've talked about it quite a bit, kind of this idea of like building learning cultures, building diverse, you know, coaching cultures or learning cultures. building diverse, you know, coaching cultures or learning cultures. So I do think it can happen. And I've seen it happen. It's just so very rare. And oftentimes, it's like a micro culture in an organization, not kind of the overall culture in an organization. So it just feels like we're putting so much energy and time and money into these DEI strategies. And it feels like it's like we're throwing, you know, what's like, I don't know what the metaphor, I'm really bad with metaphors. Anyways, some metaphor about like, you know, just like throwing money in a black hole, basically, you know. Why do I feel that way? If you can put some words into it? Well, I think, I think there's a, there's multiple factors to this. Um, I think it's an understanding, like a true understanding of, um, the benefits of DEI. I, I think that sometimes leadership, they're very focused on the operations, the day-to-day operations. There might be like some time scarcity. So it's like, we don't have time for this. Because really what we're talking about is like a culture change. And, you know, that might include like changing some systems, changing the way things are done. And that takes time and that takes energy, that takes resources. And when there's this feeling of time scarcity, when there's this feeling of, okay, but I'm trying to keep, keep things afloat, keep the operations afloat. Um, DEI gets pushed to the back burner or it's not done in that like daily habit, embodying it as part of your day-to-day life. Um, and, and that really, in my opinion, that needs to come, that really speaks to like leadership. Leadership really needs to understand and model like the DEI practices, the, the strategies, they have to really just live, live them. And then that way, when they see, when the employees see their leaders, leadership are truly engaged and truly dedicated to diversity, equity, and inclusion, that's when they'll start to feel safe to, okay, okay, I can make some time for this. This is important. This will lead to positive things for me, if I actually embrace what we're talking about, instead of, well, you just need to do this training, this mandatory training by the end of the year. It's like, no, no, no. Like our leadership are actually talking, walking and talking these practices every day as part of their, the way that they run their shops. So employees feel empowered to embrace it as well. Totally. Yeah. Do you think it's worthwhile spending a lot of money on DEI initiatives if the senior leadership in the organization isn't like fully bought on, bought in? Honestly? Yeah. No, I don't. No, I think that, that the time and, and the time and money should be going towards coaching, should be going towards training, should be going towards having leadership change their, the way that they think to more of a like servant leadership style, where they're looking at themselves as I am the cultivator of my employees. And then once they're in that mind frame, once they get that, then the next step I think is DEI. But until leadership really understands the importance of their people, it's like throwing money in a black hole yeah in a black hole whatever yeah exactly yeah okay yeah no I that tracks for sure that tracks and I think that is one of the reasons probably why a lot of DEI practitioners are just so frustrated and feeling like they've been banging their heads against the wall and, you know, starting to, I'm starting to see burnout. I'm starting to, like I said, see people become jaded with diversity, equity, inclusion, just I'm hearing from DEI practitioners. I'm so tired of talking about DEI. Like I'm so tired of it. And that's a bit, it's, it's extremely sad because this is what they're passionate about. Right. And they believe in it and we know it's legitimate, but it's, it's so hard out there right now. It is tough because really DEI, ultimately what we're doing is we're asking people to be self-aware. We're asking people to reflect on themselves. Like some of the, some of the first training that we talk about is like unconscious bias, right? Like understanding unconscious bias and, and, and that can be difficult, you know, especially when you're at capacity yourself to take a, to take a moment, to take a step back, to be self-reflective and to also show empathy for somebody else and their situation when maybe you don't have that lived experience. Like that's asking a lot. So that's why I think people can feel like they're pushing a boulder up a hill is because what we're asking people to do on an individual basis is to to to actually self-reflect to become self-aware oh maybe some unconscious bias is happening here and to also give themselves the grace to go through that learning process or that unlearning process right and that can be that can bring up some feelings of guilt, some feelings of shame. Like I know I experienced that when I went through my own unpacking of internalized misogyny, you know, I went through my own unpacking of, you know, unconscious bias and, and the racism that just, I, I never considered myself racist, of course, but our systems are racist. Right. So I'm starting to recognize that and to take ownership of like how I can be anti-racist and taking the next step, like that takes work, that takes energy. And, and I think that's why it's like, it's tough. So again, like going back to what I was saying, it's important that leadership and we have to remember to leadership, they're humans, they're also human, they're dealing with their own stuff, right? So like, as the consultants, we're the ones that we have to create the space, the safe space for them to work through it and get them there so that they can create the safe spaces for their employees and really bring that culture change around, you know? Yeah. How do you know when a leader, sorry, continue. No, no, no, go ahead. I was going to say, how do you know when a leader is like ready to start this work? Or do you know when a leader is ready to start this work? Or do you know? I think just through conversation. I think it's possible to make a human connection, because really that's what it is. We're all human and seeing each other's humanity and teaching leaders to see their employees as humans too and see their humanity. leaders to see their employees as humans too and see their humanity. So by giving them that experience, we can hopefully help bring them along to that as well. I use the example quite often about when it comes to accessibility, for example. I, of course, love love see the importance of accessibility but I didn't get it I didn't understand it okay till I was a mother on maternity leave with a stroller and a new baby trying to get through the world trying to see like oh oh there's only stairs here where's the ramp you know that's when I truly even though I had the empathy and the compassion for like, yes, we need this. We need, we need accessible infrastructure. I didn't understand it until I lived it. Right. So once, so tapping into that, to people's lived experiences, and that's something that's very independent. So that's why the burnout happens because it's just such a, this is not a one size fits all process. This is something you have to meet people where they're at. Right. And, and then go from there. Yeah. I mean, it doesn't help that it's like, in order to become a DEI practitioner, that role itself comes with an enormous amount of self-awareness and requirement for context, you know, so you're constantly seeking new perspective, assimilating new perspectives, right. Trying to learn as much as you can about as many different, you know, people's experience, lived experiences as possible, so that you can try to advocate on their behalf as well and integrate that knowledge back into the system. And so just that in itself seems like an enormous amount of work. And then to do that, and then have your efforts not being really appreciated well, you know, and not, you know, feeling like you're really making the impact that you know you could make. That has to be difficult. Yeah, absolutely. Well, I mean, what you're doing in a lot of these cases when you're coming into these environments is these are not inclusive environments. They don't have these, right? So you are having the same experience as their employees are having basically, right? So you're having to overcome that. But the thing is that they've hired you on to do that. And maybe that's just a gentle reminder of you hired me to do this. So with me, like, let's work together. We both want to obtain the same goal here. Yeah. But that's the really hard part because you're dealing with these environments that aren't necessarily uh very safe psychologically safe inclusive diverse equitable work environment you know that's what they brought you in was to support with that creating that doing that work so it's almost like um it and that's why it's so tough I think it's almost it's nice when you're in a work environment where it's already that it's already like that, right. It's psychologically safe work environment, um, where the boss is like a servant leader. It's, it's amazing. You can, you feel like you can really thrive, but when you're, when you're a consultant, you're not in that environment necessarily or they're just like at the very beginnings of that and they still need their hand held a little bit to get them further along the road or you're probably unpacking all kinds of trust issues all kinds of you know probably um trauma in the workplace as well you know there's there's a lot to unpack when you start to work with these organizations. I'm not a DEI practitioner, but I can see it from other angles that I went in, you know, other areas where I work with companies. Yeah. It's, it's the wild West for sure. Yeah. Yeah. How do people keep themselves? How do you people like yourself, like, how do you keep yourself healthy through the process? How do you like for the longterm, like you want to be a DEI practitioner, you want to, um, you know, you want to be doing this for a long time, hopefully. How do you keep yourself healthy and motivated? Well, one thing is to learn not to take things personally, to kind of put up a boundary. Even if like you envision a golden bubble around yourself, which I know sounds so woo-woo, but it works. Like just envision yourself in this bubble where nothing can actually touch you. And just know, again,... /episode/index/show/2351f999-02cb-4568-ab77-a59f33bb3fd3/id/32016272

Let's Talk About Corporate Grief Ft. Eleonore Eaves 07/03/2024

Let's Talk About Corporate Grief Ft. Eleonore Eaves In this episode of Weirdos in the Workplace, host Erin Patchell welcomes back executive coach Eleanore Eaves to discuss her groundbreaking concept of "corporate grief." Eleanore introduces this new term, explaining how it encompasses the emotional impact of workplace events like layoffs, mergers, and even personal tragedies on employee performance and organizational success. Key topics include: The $8.9 trillion cost of employee disengagement How toxic positivity fails as a strategy in the workplace The importance of acknowledging grief and difficult emotions at work Similarities between corporate grief and generational trauma Practical approaches for leaders to address and manage corporate grief Eleanore also shares details about her upcoming executive retreat in Scotland, featuring experts in mental resiliency, mindfulness, and change management. Join us for an insightful conversation on bringing humanity back to the workplace and transforming how we handle difficult emotions in professional settings. Learn why addressing corporate grief is crucial concept for employee retention, engagement, and organizational success. #CorporateGrief #WorkplaceCulture #EmployeeEngagement #LeadershipDevelopment #OrganizationalChange Stay in Touch: Website: Script: We don't want to talk about grief. We don't want to talk about death. We don't want to talk about all these different aspects of life that is part of life. Toxic positivity is not a strategy. And as you can imagine, that A shocked a lot of people. Stories last forever, right? The echoes of the bad experiences get passed down to the next group of employees. Welcome to Weirdos in the Workplace, the podcast that celebrates authenticity, transparency, passion, and purpose in our world of work. And I'm here with my friend, Eleanor Eves. Welcome back, Eleanor. Thank you so much for having me back. I'm super excited to have you back. And I'm really excited about this topic that we're going to be talking about. But before I get there, those of you who did not come or you haven't listened to Eleanor's previous podcasts on Weirdos in the Workplace with me, go back to season one and definitely listen to them because she's awesome. Eleanor is the founder of Eve's Coaching and couldn't in case you couldn't tell if you're listening to this on Spotify or Apple Music or a podcast platform, you won't be able to actually see us. But it does say Eave's coaching right in the top right hand corner of her of her screen there. And that is the that is her business, Eave's coaching and Eleanor is an amazing executive coach and soon to be author. executive coach and soon to be author. Thank you very much. Yes, absolutely. So Eleanore, please introduce this topic because it is it is a quite it's a serious topic. It's a very human topic. And I'm really excited to talk about this with you. Yes, thank you. So it's it's a coin. It's a term I am coining as... Hold on, let me refresh that. Okay, I figured that's where she could cut it off, right? So yes, thank you very much. So corporate grief is a term I am coining to describe a range of actions of individuals who are processing emotions and events in a number of different ways. But all of these events and their actions as a result have real dollars and cents implications, both for their own career trajectory, but also too for the organizations within which they operate. So this is beyond looking at mental wellness or workplace culture and environments and all of that from an emotional or from a psychological point of view, that how does this actually impact performance? How does this actually impact very measured, tangible things such as dollars and cents. Okay. So corporate grief, this is a new term that you've developed or that you've coined. Okay. And this isn't, this isn't, this is not currently like a buzzword anywhere. No, I really haven't seen it around a lot. This is why I kind of came up with it. It's basically taking what we understand from the scientific aspects of the neurobiology and psychology of grief and trauma, but placing it within the context of corporations and how they operate, right? So I'm sure for the majority of your listeners, the most easily to understand approach is after a merger or after a corporate acquisition, when there are mass layoffs, or if there are mass layoffs for other reasons. What we tend to see is those who are left within their jobs or who are able to maintain their positions have some level of survivor's guilt, right? Now, the survivor's guilt, as you can imagine, has runoff effects. In a very interconnected world as we are, it's not just a very isolated feeling like it maybe was in 30, 40 years ago, but it's a world where people are consistently engaging with fellow colleagues, right? Whether it be on social media, via text messages, WhatsApp, whatever the case may be. So they're never really separated from it. And so these feelings compound and in a world as well, where, you know, news is easily acceptable or accessible in any different environment. Okay, hold on. And as well, you know, in a world where it's very easy to, to continuously be in contact with, with anyone, these feelings compound and it does impact their performance, especially at a time where they could either have an opportunity to grow within an organization or where the organization really, really needs them to be doing additional work because now it's critical times, right? There are less people, there's more work to do, there are far more pressures. So we're looking at it from multiple different angles okay so just I'm unpacking all of the things that you've said and there's so much here okay so let me just let me stream of consciousness smart for a minute at you yeah if you don't mind love it love it so what I'm picking up I'm I'm thinking when as you're talking I'm thinking about generational trauma right yes and we know, I'm thinking about generational trauma, right? And we know we have a language for generational trauma when it comes to us as individuals, we're, we're beginning to have a language. Those of us who've thought about this have maybe gone to therapy, have done some personal development. Those of us, you know, we have a generation of trauma and we generally have a relatively consistent framework for that. We don't talk about this in the context of corporations. So I think this is interesting. You know, when they say, okay, let me process this as I'm talking. Cause you know, I'm an out loud thinker. Cause I don't, I can't think of it. Love it. So corporations, we always say that people aren't like human employees. What other kind of employees are there? AI employees? People are less, they're jumping from job to job all the time. They're less committed to one job, it feels like, right? But if you think about that, if you flip it from the employer perspective, over the last 60 years, since the 1960s, employers have also become less committed to their employees. Yes. Right? Absolutely. And so when I'm thinking about generational trauma and corporations, it almost feels like, you know, when you talk about generational trauma and people you're talking about, there's, you know, 20 to 40 years between each generation. Yeah. You know, if you look at, um, the way, you know, human being, human biology, um, changes over, you know, decades and millennia and centuries and millennia, like how slowly that our biology changes, how slowly we adopt like in an evolutionary way. When you think about like, you know, a cockroach or a small mammal, how they adopt in an evolutionary way, it's much faster because they have much faster reproduction, right? Yes. And so they can, their biology changes more quickly. They're more able to adapt to their environment because like their genetics change. You know, this is why we can breed show dogs or whatever, because, you know, well, we can be very intentional about breeding them and producing very specific characteristics because, you know because their biology, their lives are shorter essentially, right? And they grow adults so much faster than humans. So the way I'm putting this all together, it feels like we almost have like a generational, like a trauma evolution within the workplace, within a corporation that has been see this is me processing out loud it's not I'm not doing very well at it but you know it's almost like it's been condensed right in a way it's the the grief process the the trauma has been condensed you know because of this rapid turnover like the the build-up of this trauma among people in such a short period of time does that resonate at all with you like I'm you know what I'm I don't know if you're picking up what I'm putting down here I I think I am. And correct me if I'm not understanding what you're putting down properly. But no, you're absolutely right. And, you know, there's, when we talk about organizational legacies and cultures as well, we also have to understand that there are organizational storytelling and things that get passed down it's not just the good it's not just you know how do we operate and that sort of stuff but it is not the good right exactly um but these institutionalized um sources of grief also compound. And this is where you start getting, you know, the disengagement and disenfranchised sources of grief, right? So there are terms that we could take from, uh, from other studies such as thanatology. Um, so for instance, like disenfranchised grief would be when a person um does not feel as though their experiences are being acknowledged within their within their environment right so think of you know for those of us who own pets when we lose a pet who we could consider to be like a child a lot of people won't understand that. And so we're left to our own devices, right? We don't have grieving days for that, right? Or other instances within organizations. So you get this form of, as you rightfully said, generational trauma, but that generational trauma could also be uh the organizational culture depending on what that looks like do people feel that they have a right to treat others a certain way because they survived that yeah right and i intentionally use the term survived it doesn't mean that it was okay i mean to survive that um well like you say those stories last forever right the echoes of the the bad experiences get passed down to the next group of employees right yeah exactly and i mean you know when we when we try to put a number behind it i mean there was a great Lola Gallup report. I don't know if you had a chance to see it. It was just released at about 3 a.m. this morning here on the eastern coast. And, you know, they measured the cost of disengagement between employees as $8.9 trillion in American dollars. This is an American statistic. This is the United States. They yeah, global, but that's $8.9 trillion. Right. I mean, that's good chunk of change due to just low engagement of staff. Right. And I mean, I laugh because it's these things that a lot of times we tend to overlook. We tend to think that we're too busy to care about such things, that we have other pressing concerns. Right, performance. And so the, but you know, the, it's laughable when you actually think about what does this mean for employee retention? What does this mean for the war for talent, for succession pipelines, for, you know, actual sustainability of an organization? so can you tell me like a story can you can we put this in a narrative format of something that you've experienced or that you've a client's experience maybe without naming names yeah you know um well I'll give more of one experience that was a little bit more personal to me. But I think it definitely resonated or would resonate with your viewers here. I remember one of my earlier jobs, you know, in my mid-20s, I was working for an office and the manager had unfortunately committed suicide. Oh, dear. And as you can imagine that that a shocked a lot of people um it was it was so soon for a lot of people and uh you know but in hindsight everyone kind of thought they saw the signs right um and? And it's exactly that, though. What do we do with that? What do we do with the signs? How do we process our grief? How do we process our trauma? And just because we weren't, you know, his spouse and children doesn't mean that we also too didn't feel something. Right. Right. Yeah. And I'll never forget it when when you know the hr person at the time actually could not go into his office to collect his his things um so she asked me to do it and sure you know i i was able to to assist her in that but that again just shows that you know there are so many different aspects of one's job of one's life there are organizational stressors there are personal stressors we are all coming into the workplace with a past with a history that nobody knows about nobody needs to know about to be perfectly honest right that's your right to decide whether or not you want to share that or not um but it's looking at how can we manage the things we can manage what are our roles as leaders as individuals how do we show up and support one another what does this look like how do we maintain engagement? So the organization was actually very forward for its time and, you know, ensured that there were counselors on site, you know, supporting anybody and provide free counseling for anyone who wanted to speak immediately. to speak immediately. But I also was fascinated by this line of work and by this corporate grief idea, because that also too, right there showed me how we, we have this almost toxic positivity around life in so many ways, right? We don't want to talk about grief. We don't want to talk about death. We don't want to talk about all these different aspects of life that is part of life yeah so if we live in a very sterilized way and approach such critical issues in a very sterilized way we get what we have right now so what would it look like if we actually not necessarily embrace it, but, you know, approach it with the normality in which it does exist? Yeah. Just pause for a minute to acknowledge that, acknowledge it and allow people to feel what they need to feel before then moving on, you know, to, you know, the next project or the next task or the next thing. We definitely don't take enough pauses. And I think a lot of that is, you know, us humans, we're really good at like distracting ourselves, you know, from stuff, right. From stuff we don't want to think about something that's hard, something that, you know that you know difficult conversations difficult feelings um sort of like airbrushing everything in order to just yeah move on and i'm just as guilty of that as everybody else you know um yeah of course i mean we we all are right there are times when we're more capable of handling that sort of thing and there are times when we're more capable of handling that sort of thing. And there are times when we're not, right? So whether we call it energy conservation or audits or, you know, you're right. There, you know, we all have our good days, our bad days, all of that. That's fine. But it's also to acknowledging that part of life is that bad, unfortunately. So if we acknowledge that it does exist and it will always exist, what does it look like if we actually try to approach it in a very strategic way? What does it look like if we say, okay, we know that this is a baseline within which we are willing to accept, you know, some level of, of grief. This is what we're going to do to ensure it doesn't get to critical levels. And even when, you know, it does happen, this is what we're going to do to ensure some level of, not just a safety measure, but, you know, ensuring that people are actually equipped and able to bounce back. For sure. Because that's really the critical part, right? Yeah. And toxic positivity is not a strategy. No. Had I done that, got the t-shirt, didn't work. Didn't work. No, it doesn't. Because, you know, emotions are going to bubble up no matter what right and the more you try to keep shoving them down and not acknowledging them the worse it gets exactly right and it also leads to the the disengagement that a lot of people feel yeah people can tell when you know if an organization says things like oh we're a family those are now very much red flags well I mean then there's everyone has a different definition of what a family like you know what is your experience in a family you know may not be someone else's experience so um and often isn't you know we talked about generational trauma so exactly yeah um okay so do you have like a framework developed yet or is that in the works on like what is like what is a what what belongs is under this umbrella of corporate grief. Is that starting to formulate itself? Absolutely. And I won't go too, too, too much into it, because I would love for people to read the book when it comes out. Yeah, hopefully soon. But essentially, it is approaching it from multiple different lenses, right? So first, we we understand that there's the personal side of things and the organizational side of things, right? The personal side, we list it in a way to encourage individuals to acknowledge that that exists, right? So when you're engaging with other humans, and you're stressed out about your life, remembering that they are also stressed out about their own, whether it be their marriage their kids their finances whatever the case may be um you know we we all have a million and one things going through our minds so that's just a right check box i acknowledge that the part that we focus that on is the organizational stuff right so it's that as we mentioned earlier you know the culture the people the leadership um you know what does what does that look like and now there is no one-size-fits-all approach either right because every organization is different and everyone has their idea of what good is, right? Some of us have a very dark sense of humor. We're not going to be for everyone, right? Nope. But it's very much acknowledging that what might be okay for some won't be for others, and that's fine. But it's understanding what it means for your organization for yourself as a leader right what is the best standard for you your gold standard sorry i should say so then with that settled then we start looking at okay well what are your baseline measurements, right? Like, let's start putting some numbers into this. Are people, are your staff absolutely knackered of doing another survey because they don't see a value in it? Okay, then we have to start with trust-building exercises, right? If they actually do trust that the surveys will be responsibly managed and utilized, then great. Let's start doing some surveys. Let's start actually assessing what this means as a baseline target. And then where do you want to go? Right. There are countless studies out there now and of just showing that if you engage staff and actually ask them directly what it is you want to see surprise surprise it could transform an organization right i think one of the best case examples was uh i believe it's pronounced and now the uh behemoth american uh medical insurance organization who at the early 2000s was losing a million dollars a day a little bit of money was losing a million dollars a day. A little bit of money. So, I mean, that was an industry where they really should not have. And they did exactly that, right? The CEO at the time actually sat down and interviewed, surveyed the staff, got their feedback on all of that. And they saw that the staff were actually really engaged. They actually wanted to do their jobs well. What caused the disengagement were other things that made the staff feel like they weren't being listened to, that they weren't being valued, all those different things. So even something as simple as saying, you know, staff disengagement,... /episode/index/show/2351f999-02cb-4568-ab77-a59f33bb3fd3/id/31894407

Strategies for Building a Coaching Culture Ft. Garen Jemian 06/26/2024

Strategies for Building a Coaching Culture Ft. Garen Jemian Intro: The coach may not play the game, but the coach inspires and motivates the players to play the best game possible! Join our discussion with leadership coach and entrepeneur Garen Jemian on how to implement a successful coaching culture in your workplace to inspire your employees. Stay in touch: Website: Script: To put on the coach's mindset is to let the other person have the dopamine hit. You need to have more influence so you can share this with the world. It takes a lot of time and energy and prioritization to do something that's a long game rather than a short game. Coaching is where one person focuses their time and energy and presence on helping another one achieve their outcomes. Welcome to Weirdos in the Workplace, the podcast that celebrates authenticity, transparency, passion, and purpose. And I'm so happy right now to be joined by my very good friend, Garen Jemian, who I feel like I haven't seen your face for months because you've been MIA. You've been working. What's that about? Garen, continue. What were you going to say? Nothing. continue what were you gonna say nothing nothing um garen is a phenomenal leadership coach highly experienced working with all different sectors public and private sector he's a favorite in the public sector in the government of canada you know where he's doing some pretty amazing work uh that i wish you know we could we could talk about but apparently we're not allowed to talk about some things. So it's top secret. And what else do I need to say about you? You're the author of Happy People Work Harder. You are the founder of Inspireship, which is a coaching and consulting firm in Montreal. And you're just an awesome person. Hi, Garen. I'm going to hire you for my intros forever. Okay, good. From now on. Consider it done. That's so amazing. And yet, you're the one wearing a shirt that actually is so inspiring that impacts society and people. We're trained to help. um i know we're going to talk about something today and i i kind of wish we were talking about your project instead but i'll pass that over to you well you're just going to have to start a podcast then so that i can come on your podcast and talk about it we have one it's called inspire talk it's an open podcast where we actually have um participants interacting with the dialogue. So it's kind of we'll definitely have you on board in the next couple of months. Oh, I am totally there. You know, I'm there with bells on. I will literally bring bells and a cowboy hat. So we are talking today about building a coaching culture. And I know in the last conversation that we had in the last season, because this is the second time now that you've been on the podcast, I know we touched on it just a little bit. But this is something that's so important to both of us. So I think it's awesome that we're going to give it a lot of attention. I'd love to just start by like, what is your definition of a coaching culture and tell me about one or two of the challenges or the opportunities that you see here that you've worked within in terms of the businesses you've worked for can i start by telling you how i discovered the concept and and we just go there because as you were talking i'm like how did i get into this mess so i used to i used to uh own and operate a nightclub in downtown montreal and that's as far as i'll go in talking about that but um some peers in the industry and i would have this uh this competition of who could be the best boss ever and so we're a bunch of nightclub owners and we get together and we shoot the breeze and we're like, you know, who's more liked? Who's more effective and all that stuff. And we're just trying to be the best boss ever. And these are some pretty renowned business owners in Montreal. And so I went on this quest and I tried everything. And mostly I was trying to be the most liked, the nicest person, the most generous, the most flexible, the most understanding. the most generous, the most flexible, the most understanding. And the problem is we weren't getting out. My turnover was still high. My turnover was so high when I would just meet people. I wouldn't even want to get to know them because they'd be gone in less than a month. I'm like, what am I doing wrong? And of course, inherently the industry has high turnover, but it just wasn't good enough for me. So eventually, I went to university, studied coaching, came out, and I kind of saw something there that I didn't figure out as a leader. And so I kind of felt like I was always coaching, but I didn't know what I was doing or why. So I went to study the methodology and understanding what it actually meant so that's kind of what got me started and so i ended up selling my shares i i start getting into coaching and i start working with some organizations and every leader starts asking me the same question which is how do i motivate people yeah i was like how do you motivate people so then i go on this next quest of how you motivate people and and the book came out so very soon after I realized that we need to be teaching coaching competencies and coaching mindset to every leader in every organization in our country ASAP yes and I'd like to make a distinction there's a coaching mindset and there's coaching competencies. You don't need to be a coach to have a coach's mindset. Correct. Yes. Right. The being of the coach is completely different from, you know, getting two, three thousand hours and becoming a masterful coach. You can just have the coach's mindset. Yeah. And so that's tough enough, though. It's huge. That's pretty tough. It's a coach's mindset. There you go. Done. pretty tough. It's the coach's mindset. There you go. Done. It is. It is. And so I believe that if you can equip all your leaders with some of those competencies of getting out of the way, believing in the best of everyone within your team, understanding how people interact, how people behave, how the psychological impacts of humans in the workplace, understanding how you can set better objectives that intrinsically motivate employees to get them growing in a direction of desirability and truly understanding how to maximize your team's potential. Imagine what an impact that does. And we tend to think that it's for the employees. It's not. I'm here to tell you my job is to help my clients and my clients are the leaders. When we teach this stuff, it's to help life better for the leaders. Imagine if you had to work less hard, you can empower people. They became more autonomous, more creative, more accountable. You'd have to put in probably a bit less work. You could delegate better. What else? Hang on. You can trust people more. Yeah. Imagine you could be less reactive and more strategic more often. Yeah. It sounds like a lot of promises, but I've been working in this space for almost 10 years now. And I can tell you, it's not. It's not magic, but it's also not like woo woo. It's not, you know, this is like real, real shit. It is, but it takes a lot of time and energy and prioritization to do something that's a long game rather than a short game. Yeah. And it's counterintuitive in a lot of ways. Yeah. Yeah. It's really hard to do that. Oh yeah. And you have to let go of game. Yeah. And it's counterintuitive in a lot of ways. Yeah. Yeah. It's really hard to do that. Oh yeah. And you have to let go of control. Well, I like that. I like being a little out of control. Yeah. Not, not when you have like really stringy, stingy KPIs and you gotta deliver results and you have to find the balance between delivering results and being hands off. Yeah, for sure. Yep. You have to find the balance between delivering results and being hands-off. Yeah, for sure. Yeah. But there's also like the middle path, which is the coaching. You know, it's not like it's those two. Those are the two spectrums, right? There's a third way, and that is the coaching culture. Yeah. Yeah. So how would you define the coaching culture then? Let's go there. Other than obviously the skills of the coach, how does that reflect amongst the team? I'm going to, I'm going to Kung Fu this one and ask you, how do we define the word culture? Oh yeah. How do I define the word culture? Well, I mean, it's, it's the sum of all of the artifacts, behaviors, you know, desires, motivations, skills, intentions, you know, of a group of people. And we're going to get into this later, though, and it doesn't have to be the whole organization. That. Yeah. I know I'm supposed to be doing a lot of the talking but i haven't with culture i have more questions than answers and the one thing i say is like whenever i hear people talking about how we change culture and it's like it's just like it's so methodical i call bs totally i call bs and i get paid for this stuff and i show up and the first thing i say is it it's it's so hyper complex at best we're trying to solve for this yeah and then hopefully if and the first thing i say is it it's it's so hyper complex at best we're trying to solve for this yeah and then hopefully if you solve for a lot of things you look at something as a whole consistency consistently and say i like this right yeah and i should have mentioned also like systems processes governance like that's all wrapped into it as well yeah of course and each one takes what an aeon to solve for so um so how do we define culture how we work and how we behave and interact with each other okay yeah if you want to keep it simple sure uh yeah i mean no no i mean definitely i i feel that it's something more than that though too right it's like the energy of a place um it's what it feels like how do you measure the energy um I mean you can only mention measure it through the feelings of the people that are on the team yeah and the problem is that people have lives so depending on what's going on in their lives you can have the best culture and if someone's just not feeling it because something really wrong happened at home that morning, that'll impact culture. So it's like it's the employees and their families and the environment and the country and the world all impacting this in this infinite matrix. Yeah. And so how do we define the coaching culture then? What is unique about something that we would call a coaching culture i would start by defining what coaching is okay and i and you know me erin i'm like i like things so simple so simple so if i were to like hyper simplify this and bring it down to the common denominator i'd say coaching is where one person focuses their time and energy and presence on helping another one achieve their outcomes okay yeah i like to simplify that way right um and so a coaching culture and i think achieving that person's outcomes needs to be like emphasized. So it's not like your agenda. It's their agenda. Ideally. Yeah. Ideally. Organizations do set objectives and expectations. So sometimes the leaders have to set the objectives, but at least we give the leeway to the employee to select how. Exactly. If they can't choose the what, at least let them choose the how and give them the time and space to figure out what's best for them um so coaching for me is that coaching is also um it's about believing in other people's potentials it's about stepping out of the way it's about relinquishing your ego as a leader. It's about putting the spotlight on someone else. It's about trust. Yeah, all that stuff. So a coaching culture for me would be, what if all the leaders within an organization kind of ran with that MO? Yeah. We always talk about like putting the hat on right we have the coach hat as a manager you may have a coach hat you have a leader hat you have a boss hat sometimes right how does the coaching culture kind of integrate these different personas that you might have as a manager or a leader, do you think? Or can it? I would start with, yeah. So I'm just going to dig into some of my material in my brain. So we'll do two things. One, we'll start with, we'll do three things. One, start defining what leadership is and building some self-awareness. Then we'll dig into the hats. So then you've got the manager the leader the mentor yeah the coach and most people think that if you'll ask you you leaders out there you're listening to this and i want you to think on a scale of one to ten how much of a coach are you and you're going to give yourself a score but what i've learned is most leaders who think that they've got a coaching stall or actually have a mentoring style yes and there's a distinction there mentoring versus coaching i don't know if we should dig into this now but once you've got that aside then you can dig into something else like leadership styles yeah and if if you if you subscribe to goldman six coaching is one of the leadership styles which whatever um so you've got what you've got the visionary the pace setter you've got the affiliative democratic um you've got the this is from daniel gulman interesting you've got the coaching so it's innovative in there command and control okay so the boss interesting yeah so something happens is by creating the distinctions of, you know, what style of leadership comes out with you by default and then which hats you're putting on and when and why. Now the leaders are starting to understand what coaching is and isn't and what everything else is. And they start seeing the distribution or at least the, you know, how often they choose what style and why. Right. often they choose what style and why. Right. And then we'll go into realizing that a lot of people in stressful situations will tend to gravitate towards the command and control style. And then I'll ask them, why do you think that is? And it turns out that command and control is so effective that when it's time and you pull out, you know, your biceps and say, do as I tell you because I said so, and you really pull out your authority, it's very effective, especially during times of crisis. And then as the leader, you're like, that worked. And it was really easy. And so it's easy to fall into the trap of going into command and control because of how effective it was the first time and the second time. It's just eventually that edge blunts and you start losing your people. And so we need to get them to realize that command and control is good during certain times of crisis when time crunch is happening. But you got to kind of spread it out. You can use it perhaps maybe 5, 10% of the time, but then the rest of the time you might want to lay off, lay off the trigger a little bit. Well, and it strikes me that if your people are constantly coming to you for guidance and they can't make their own decisions and they don't know, you know, how to influence upward, right? Like how to help you make decisions. And you have to, you feel like you have to use that command and control. You might just be living in survival mode a little too much as a company. If it's the situation, that's just a downward spiral to burnout. I mean, go down that path. So if your employees keep coming to you for, with their questions, why are they, why is this happening? Why do you have to be the number one decision maker in the company? Have you set it up like that? Maybe that, and, and, and someone gave it away to me. Uh, recently we were talking about, um, just coaching in my own personal coaching development. We were trying to figure out the posture of the coach. What's our role, you know, and why a coach shouldn't give the answer, but always struggles not to write. Like you want to give the answer to something. And it turns out that he or she who finds the answer first gets the dopamine hit. Oh, interesting. You feel good about yourself because you solve the problem. Oh, interesting. You feel good about yourself because you solved the problem. And to put on the coach's mindset is to let the other person have the dopamine hit. Yeah. You don't need to be the hero. I actually, when I did my coaching program, I think that was the most transformative thing for me. And I know we, you and I have talked about this once or twice before. But it was knowing that I didn't have to be that person anymore. I didn't have to shoulder that load because for me it was, it's exhausting, right? It's exhausting having to make the decisions. It's exhausting having to be the one who, you know, has to know the answers to everything. Like, yes, maybe there is a dopamine hit, but it's countered by that the energy expenditure how much energy it takes so um for me the most transformative thing was knowing that i didn't have to have all the answers all i had to do is ask the right questions and and it was the word have to yeah as a coach and but if if you're a manager do you feel like you have to or there's a part of you that feels validated when you when you can and so you want to because if you don't have the answer man let me check it out and leaders define their value yeah by their by their expertise so you'll get promoted to team lead why because you're the best at what you do and the team gets promoted to manager why usually because of their competence their their hard skills not because of their leadership competencies not because of their soft skills but because of their hard skills so they're graded by how good they are at their job and now all of a sudden you're at management level or director level and honestly, sometimes at VP level and sometimes at C-suite level where they're still measuring their worth by their competence. Yeah. And it's not. Goldsmith's book, What Got You Here Won't Get You There. Very similar. You got to level up. You got to let go of the fact that you have to be great at something, especially in tech, when you always have to be up to speed with the newest tech that's coming out. And oftentimes I'll get leaders being promoted to the director level and beyond in tech. And they're told to let go of the continuous learning and focus more on leadership and management. And they're saying, well, once I stop learning, I become irrelevant. Right. So your identity, actually, your whole identity has to change. Right. So if I'm, yeah, if I'm like, you know, my entire career to date, I have been validated, I've been promoted, and I've been, you know, I've been, I've been given accolades for being a technical expert. Now, you're telling me that I'm going to be measured by a whole different set of criteria. Like, that's crazy to me. That's such a crazy shift. Can you tell me about one of the companies that you work with, obviously don't mention any names necessarily, but that you've supported through this transition? Yeah. And that's what I love and hate about what it is that we do. I'm like the most private public figure as in the work I do is, um, I get to work with so many people, but I can't really announce any of the things that I do. So there's not, there's very little documentation. Uh, so listeners and watchers out there, you're just going to have to trust me, but don't whatever. so having said that, I know all the details. Yeah. So, so, so repeat that question with regards to one of my clients. We're talking about the coaching culture. Yeah. How did you help them navigate or, you know, maybe they're navigating because this is not like a one-time deal, right? This is the process between, you know, that technical mindset to that leader mindset that we're talking about and creating the coaching culture through the process. Tell me a story. Once upon a time. Yeah. So I'll preface it with this. Sometimes we build a coaching culture intentionally, transparently, and very tactically. And sometimes I do it inconspicuously. As in, on this side of the spectrum, you've got full buy-in from the CEO all the way down. And the entire organization is going to get a crash course. Like we're talking like super crash course, like nine hours, maybe 12 of like coaching, training and, and, and... /episode/index/show/2351f999-02cb-4568-ab77-a59f33bb3fd3/id/31811497

Why You Must Inspire your Employees Ft. Kelly MacCallum 06/19/2024

Why You Must Inspire your Employees Ft. Kelly MacCallum With over 20 years of experience in talent management and organizational effectiveness, Founder of Stay and author of a book with the same title, Kelly MacCallum brings passion, energy, and a depth of expertise in enhancing leaders, cultures, and teams. With her practices grounded in science and data, Kelly drops gems on creating a workplace culture that employees will never want to leave! Stay in Touch: Purchase Kelly's book today, and transform the workplace culture tomorrow: Script: How you make people feel is everything. Culture isn't the CEO. The culture isn't HR. The culture isn't one leader. The culture is the collective personality of the organization. And you have a part to play in that. When organizations figure out how to take that and tap into that into the workplace, you know, you have the potential to be doing some really powerful things. We're responsible for culture. It's like, no, everyone's responsible for culture. Nice try though. Welcome to Weirdos in the Workplace, the podcast that celebrates authenticity, transparency, passion, and purpose. And I'm super happy to have Kelly McCallum on the show. Kelly, say hello. With over 20 years of experience in talent management and organizational effectiveness, founder of Stay, and the author of the book with the same name, Kelly McCallum Brings Passion, Energy, and a Depth of Experience in Enhancing Leaders, Cultures, and Teams. And we have some really juicy content, I think, that we're going to talk about today. So Kelly, before we get started, I just want to tell everyone that I am a huge fan of yours, and I have been for about six months. I feel like a lot of the content, the stories, you're such a good storyteller and the stuff that you share just speaks right to my soul because I know it's so complicated, the world of work, but you have such like an honesty in the way that you speak. Well, thank you so much, Erin. Thank you for having me today. I am like super passionate about this topic and I'm a passionate human in general. So, you know, I think that authenticity that you see, like, I think it's just me. It's just the way I am. So, you know, I'm glad it comes through in my writing because it's, you know, it's who I am. So really, really pleased to be here to chat with you today. Fantastic. So for those of you who, for the people who don't know Kelly, tell me who is Kelly? Kelly is a enthusiast that wants to make work lives better. I think, you know, all of us, you know, put in all these hours to work for these organizations or ourselves. And, you know, I think, you know, we spend so much time doing it, but so many organizations really fail at making it anywhere near as satisfying as it can be. I don't think it's a hard thing. I think it's just an intention thing. And, you know, over time, companies just get complacent, and they do the same things the same ways, and they just don't stop to think that there's a better way. So I kind of exist on this platform to help people see that there's a better way and just kind of challenge some maybe traditional thinking when it comes to workplace culture. Totally. And some of the stories that you share, I think really do a good job highlighting that. One of the ones I think that I saw recently was you mentioned that some of the best jobs that you have or that you had or the best job that you ever had was the worst possible interview experience. It was totally a leap of faith. I loved that. I was like, yes, this is basically the same. I have the same experience for sure. Well, it's so funny because you hear all these universal truths and advice on LinkedIn. If you ever have a bad recruiting process, absolutely don't take that job. I mean, that's terrible advice because maybe the recruiter's having a bad day. Maybe somebody in the background's hurting their process. It could have nothing to do with the hiring manager, has nothing to do with the role. So I mean, yeah, they could be red flags, but like, I think there's just more to it. And I think a lot of it's very nuanced. And so I like to use the stories, you know, to validate my own perceptions and to question my own perceptions and to question the perceptions of others as well. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. And especially when you're working, if you like that, like creative work, you like working with founders, you like to have autonomy in your work. And a lot of people on this podcast who listen to this podcast are those people, you know, they're the weirdos in the workplace. Right. I don't actually think they're so weird, though. I think it's actually pretty common. I'm sure we'll get into this in a sec. For sure. Yeah. I mean, it's like, we feel like maybe we feel like weirdos or growing up, you know, we felt like outsiders at some point. And then we come into the workplace, and we sometimes don't always fit. Sometimes we fit better in a creative environment, you know, and that always, I don't think that always goes as smoothly. It's a little bit more chaotic sometimes. Yeah. Chaos is okay. I always say embrace attention. Yeah, for sure. Embrace attention. I love that. Okay. So when I was stalking you on LinkedIn, I pulled out three questions that you said that you basically had tons of experience in. And what you said specifically was, I know what inspires employees. I know what drives them crazy and I know what it takes to keep them. And so that's what we're going to talk about today is what inspires employees, what drives them crazy and what does it take to keep them. Obviously knowing the diversity of human experiences, not everyone we can paint with the same brush, but if we are generalizing a little bit, trying to stay balanced and using our experience as a guide, what inspires employees? I think humans are remarkably consistent. It's in our biology. So there are certain things that tends to drive our behavior. And there's something very powerful called intrinsic motivation. And you hear about intrinsic motivation versus extrinsic motivation. And all that really means is that people are motivated to do something just because of the result or because it feels good, not because you're going to get a tap on the back or a paycheck for it. So when that like when that desire, like is driving our behavior, like tapping into that's like just so important. So, you know, again, there's sort of a science behind it. And, you know, I'm far from the first person to ever talk about this, right? I think originally, Abraham Maslow talked about it in 1943. And he had a book on motivation and personality. And he talks about this hierarchy of needs. And I'll get to that in a second. But then later in the mid 2000s, a guy named Dan Pink wrote a book called Drive. And that book, like it's probably the most impactful book that I've ever read, like my favorite business book by far, because it speaks to the power of intrinsic motivation. Now, he doesn't go in and tie it together with workplace behaviors. But all of my theory and all of my insights all come from linking intrinsic motivation to the workplace and the work of Maslow. So if you think about Maslow's pyramid, most of them have, most people have studied this in school. If you haven't, I'll do like my quick, my quick diagram on this. At the very, like the whole thing about that is what drives humans. There's like a, there's like an order of things. So, you know, before you can get into, you know, self-actualization and all these inspirational things at the very base of his pyramid, he talks about physiological needs. So if you think about that in the workplace, like if you're not making enough money to feed your family, it doesn't really matter what else is going on in the organization. All you're going to think about is I don't make enough money to feed my family, right? So it's foundational. We need to know we're going to have the basic provisions of life. Second on that pyramid is safety. And so in work, that could, if you're a manufacturing plant, that could be safety on the floor. But in most workplaces these days, I would define that as psychological safety. And so in order for you to feel like you can do anything at work and be intrinsically motivated, you need to have a safe environment. That means your manager can't be a bully. That means you need to feel safe to say what's on your mind. You need to feel like your peers aren't making fun of you. So those things are very, very important. So once you have those two sort of foundational pieces out of the way, they don't matter anymore, right? That takes the idea of money off the table. So money is not necessarily a motivator, but money is very important. So you can't, you know, you got to keep that in mind. But then when you get into the other pieces of Maslow's pyramid, it's belonging, it's achievement. And this is where it starts to align with Dan Pink stuff. And Dan Pink would say that the three intrinsic motivators are autonomy, mastery, and purpose. And I would throw in their sense of belonging, because I think that's very important, especially in the era that we're in today, because that really speaks to inclusion, diversity, and equity. So when I talk about autonomy, it's about being able to choose where, when, and how you work. So that whole flexibility thing. So the more that we're entrusted and empowered, more that drives us to want to work. And I think that's why you see so many people getting hyped about remote work these days, right? It's like the whole argument about remote work. The reason remote work is so compelling is because you're providing your employees with autonomy. And when you do that, you tap into that intrinsic motivation. And so if there's like, there's a million good reasons for remote work, but that to me is the main one. So if you can give your people that kind of flexibility, it's really worth your while to do so, because we know that engaged and inspired employees drive business results. So even if you're a miserable person, you don't care about your people, like you should care about your people because they drive your business results. So even if you're a miserable person, you don't care about your people, like you should care about your people because they drive your business results. So profitability goes up, productivity goes up, revenues go up, customer satisfaction goes up. So all these things are like super important. So leveraging these intrinsic motivators is pretty much everything. So, and we have mastery and mastery is all about learning and growing, right? Having that sense of accomplishment. So, you know, it's like people say, well, why do people play video games for hours? Right? It's like they don't get paid for it. Right? What is it about it? It's mastery. Like it's addictive, right? So if you can bring that sense into the workplace, that's super powerful, right? And then there's purpose. And, you know, this whole Simon purpose. And you know, this whole Simon Sinek, you know, you know, people don't buy what you do, they buy why you do it, right? So a sense of purpose. And you see this a lot in areas like healthcare, you know, somebody you ask anybody who in their right mind wants to work in healthcare right now? Well, they're driven by a sense of purpose. And that's why they do it. Right. So when you bring those three things together, and when organizations figure out how to take that and tap into that into the work you know you have the potential to be doing some really powerful things oh you sure do um i mean it sounds simple but i know like when you get in there and you're in the trenches it's not so simple right well no because we don't prioritize it people get all caught up on they just get caught up on the same old, same old. It's like, oh, we've got to do leadership development training and we've got to do this and we've got to do that. And, you know, they don't stop and think about like what's inspiring. I mean, a good example of that is, God, the most archaic thing to exist that's, you know, it existed back in the early 90s and probably further back, probably the 50s, is the annual performance review. Nothing, there is nothing in the HR world that is more archaic and ineffective, but still so pervasively used. And they do it because they don't stop to think about another way of doing it. Yeah, it's an afterthought. It's like, oh, we just have to take care of it once a year. And if that, like... Yeah, this is just how we do things, right? For some reason, for that one thing, nobody has stopped to think, why should we not do this? This is really ineffective. Or some companies have, but it's, you know, the big challenge with that is coupling performance with compensation. And by doing that, you make things very rigid, when, you know, rigidity is not really what inspires people. No, I would say maybe we could bump the 100 question employee engagement survey into the same category, you know, for large companies, like, well, I feel like there's better ways we can do things, you know, that are actually going to achieve some results here. What would you recommend for a company that's looking to transition away from the annual performance review? I mean, continuous performance management is, is like, that's where you're going to see better performance, right? So you do something management is like, that's where you're going to see better performance, right? So you do something in the moment that's great, I tell you it's great, you're going to do it again. If you do something that's not so great, I still need to tell you, and sometimes leaders find that hard. But if you make like feedback part of your culture, and you start doing this on the regular, and like, the other thing about that is leaders asking employees for the feedback. So, you know, maybe you bring me in to chat about how you thought I could have done better in a certain way. And you give me that feedback and then I might give you some feedback and say, well, you know, had you supported me in a different way, you know, that we might have done a much better job together. And so there's like a mutual accountability. It's a conversation. It's not this once a year call to the principal's office where you're given a grade. Right. So and then you learn in the moment what you need to do to adapt. And then you don't have to deal with things like recency bias, right? Like how many leaders at the end of the year, they're like, okay, we've got to do your annual review for your 20 people. And so they're freaking out because they've got deadlines. They've got to write goals for these 20 people. In two weeks after you write these goals, you've forgotten the goals that you've written, right? Because that's the type of, that's just the type of process it is. HR hates it because they have to herd the cats. Nobody loves it. But what works really well is this, you know, regular feedback cycle. And it's just something we need to practice, right? Yeah. I always like to, there's a lot of, I feel like there's a lot of responsibilities that HR believes they're accountable for, that it's really the, the manager's accountability. Yeah. Yeah. And leaders love to put it on HR. You're responsible for culture. It's like, no, everyone's responsible for culture. Nice try though. Totally. Yeah. So what are you seeing is like the trends in terms of employee retention? Like you wrote a book called stay, you know, which is about what, and I think you are like that is the most important thing for companies we need to keep people I just I don't think leaders understand how much it costs a company when people leave it's crazy what it costs right and I mean and I've got this I've got this fantastic like pdf that I downloaded from LinkedIn. It's something that LinkedIn put together with Gallup and it's the cost of disengagement and it's the cost of losing talent. And it's, it's exorbitant. Like it's so much money. And if people were far more proactive in, you know, understanding what their people want and don't want, they could like save so much money. Like it takes itty bitty investment, but it saves them. It would save them so much money and so much intellectual knowledge walking out of their company, right? Like it's just, it's- The history, the whole history of the company, it's the culture of the company that's leaving every time someone leaves. Yeah, yeah. And I mean, I've done over 1500 exit and stay interviews in my lifetime. So I've got the voices of all these people rattling around in my head, right? I've also conducted like 1000s of employee surveys. So I literally, you know, I go to sleep at night, and I hear these voices saying, why do they do this? And it's always the same thing. So when people leave people, I was like, oh, people leave for money, or they leave for a promotion. That's not why they leave. They leave because they don't feel valued. And that's different. It sounds the same, but it's not the same. Because when you don't feel valued, it can be about not having your ideas heard. It can be that you're micromanaged. It may be that you found out that the more junior guy who was just hired, who has less experience and isn't as good at you at your job is making more money than you. Like that's not about compensation, right? That's about how you've made someone feel. It's like being passed up for a promotion. It's when your leader takes credit for your work. It's being disrespected from your colleagues. How you make people feel is everything, right? So that's what it comes down to, right? When people leave, it's, I mean, sometimes they leave for more money. Sometimes it's just that. It's it's usually sales people so I think like sales people I think they're like the exception to Maslow's pyramid there's just some people that are just super wired to care about money right and that's why we like them as sales people you know that's why they make great sales that's why they make that's why not everybody does it right but yeah they're a different breed but they're you know but they're they're they're they're very driven by money and because of that they they achieve great things but that's actually backwards to what uh the research dan pink um talked about because they did work with london school of economics and mit and they actually proved that trying to incent people with money actually decreases their performance. Money is not a motivator. It's actually a demotivator. And it all has to do with performance stress, like not being your most creative, best self. So highly recommend that book. Like I can't recommend it enough to anybody because it does talk about those studies and what people learned about using money as a motivator because it's not what you think. Might be time for a reread. It's been many years since I read that. Yeah, yeah. And it stuck with me. It's funny how certain books just do that, right? That one. Yeah, that one's right there. So yeah, what can you do to keep them? Well, that's where my book comes in somewhat. So I'll give myself a shameless plug. But it's not what you think. Like the book, I actually wrote the book. I had no intention of writing a book. So there was a client of mine who was on a budget. And so I was trying to figure out how to work with them. And I thought, oh, I'll do all these how-to guides. I'll create all these how-to guides that I can use with future customers. And then I'll just, you know, sign them on for some coaching. We can work through the resources. So I did a bunch of them. I did one on stay interviews and I did one on micromanagement and leadership and whatnot. But then I got to how to create a culture. And I thought, oh, this is going to be one of the longer ones. It'll probably be at least 10 pages. And then I kept writing and then I kept writing and then I kept writing. And the next thing you know, I had this 150 page... /episode/index/show/2351f999-02cb-4568-ab77-a59f33bb3fd3/id/31768557

Purpose + Profit: Social Entrepreneur Shares Startup Secrets 06/12/2024

Purpose + Profit: Social Entrepreneur Shares Startup Secrets Learn more about our new project: Connect with Erin on LinkedIn: Script: An entrepreneur is someone who jumps off a cliff and builds a plane on the way down. Hooey. Yeah, he is absolutely bang on. You cannot do it by yourself. You need a whole team around you. If you're in Ontario, I would highly recommend, you know, reaching out to your local community futures development corporations or CFDCs, because they have quite a bit of support that might be able to help you. Today on Weirdos in the Workplace, I want to talk a little bit about becoming an entrepreneur. And I really don't mean becoming a business owner and I don't mean becoming a solopreneur or a independent consultant. I do mean becoming an entrepreneur and growing a business. business. Growing a business, I have learned, is very, very different when it comes to entrepreneurship versus growing a business incrementally and slowly over time. Entrepreneurship is, at least from my experience so far, much more intentional, much more strategic, and much more growth oriented. I think until last October, I wouldn't have even really called myself an entrepreneur. I would have called myself a business owner. And then before that, of course, I was an employee in my previous role. And before that, I would have been self-employed. I would have called it being self-employed, which again, is not the same thing as being an entrepreneur. I think entrepreneurial people take significantly more risks. So that's something that I'm still kind of getting used to. And then my husband who is much more risk averse than I am is starting to get used to this idea that, you know, this is going to be a significant time, money and energy investment for both of us, since he's one of the co-founders for the train to hell project. But let me tell you the story a little bit. So back in October, 2023, so we're looking at what was like eight months ago now, about eight months ago, because we're now into June, early June 2024. My, my team member, Sarah, who is a friend of mine since grade five, my first friend, if you've listened to some of the podcasts before, I've mentioned her a few times, my first real friend, Sarah, who is now my team member, who is now my co-founder. She has a partner named Tim who is, he's in a wheelchair. He's now quadriplegic. He had MS, was diagnosed with MS, muscular sclerosis, when he was about 33, 32, 33 years old. And so Tim's case progressed quite quickly. Within about four years, he's in a wheelchair and now he is currently paraplegic. So I've been hearing stories about how Tim and Sarah, you know, try to get around the world and how challenging that is. I've been hearing these stories for quite a long time because they've been together for, I believe, around seven years now, something like that. And it's, you know, it's a struggle for me to hear it because I want good things for them and I'm their friend. It's obviously a huge struggle for them. And one of the major issues was that, you know, even though she's good at doing the research and asking around, a lot of employees at retail locations, if they want to go out for, you know, lunch, or if they just want to go to the store, unless it's a large store, like a big box store, the employees usually don't know. They don't, they're not informed. They don't have the education. They don't have the training to understand, you know, what is, if their location is actually accessible, you know, how they can accommodate different types of people. So it's a really big challenge for them. And it's a challenge that is, you know, common across many, many, many disability categories. Basically anyone who has a challenge moving around the world in any way. And now we know that, you know, the last in 2022, the statistics came out from Stats Canada, indicating that 27% of the population of Canada, 15 years of age and older, has at least one disability that makes it difficult for them to move around the world or to interact with the world, the physical world. And so this was kind of in the back of our minds. And Sarah was part of the, or is part of the Accessibility Committee in the town of Carlton Place. This is where we live. And she, you know, learned that there was a business owner in town who had had kind of like a negative feedback from someone with a disability when they came to the location of their cafe. And the person with a disability learned that it really wasn't as accessible as it had been promoted to be. So this is a really big issue because, you know, we want people to be able to, we care about people, you know, we care about customer service. Retailers know that customer service is everything, especially nowadays, because if you're not going to do it well, guess what? Someone else will. And so having spectacular customer service, knowledgeable team members who can serve all of your customers with dignity, respect, and transparency is really, really important. But the very big issue is, you know, there's so much information to learn here. So what we're doing with the Train to Help project is we're shining a really big light on this and we're creating really interesting online learning for people who are required by law to learn about disabilities and how to serve people with disabilities in the workplace, because we do have something in Ontario called the AODA, the Accessibility for Ontarians with Disabilities Act. And they've got a customer service standard, and that customer service standard requires employees to be trained on the AODA. And there's very specific requirements there. So I know this sounds all very probably technical, but suffice to say, we want people with disabilities to be able to move around the world with more trust, to trust that they can explore the world, that it's safe to explore the world and that they'll be accommodated. And they know where they're going to be accommodated. So that's the whole goal of the project. Well, and why me, I guess I could say that, you know, me and my husband bring together a very unique blend of skills, you know, him being a software developer, which is a very key component, component, and myself having come from the learning and development space. So we know we have the two of us along with Sarah, who is kind of our subject matter expert. We have a pretty good team. And then we've brought on four additional people to bolster up different areas where we need support. So we've got an amazing team behind us. But that didn't happen by accident. We started talking about it in October. And then, you know, by the time January rolled around, we realized, you know, I don't think this is just pretend anymore. I think we're really going to do this. So we had committed to it really in January, which is less than six months ago. And then by the time February rolled around, we had already applied to be part of Ignition, which is a program by Invest Ottawa within the Invest Ottawa ecosystem, a venture ecosystem. It's the first program that you can start with when you have a business concept. And so we started with Invest Ottawa, our program started in April. And ever since then, it's been an absolute whirlwind of, you know, creating our demo, getting our demo and applying to Collision Conference, which is on July 17th, you know, and then beginning on the MVP, the pilot, minimum viable product for our pilot, which is running August 14th is the launch date for that. And so we set some very aggressive timelines. And we did that very intentionally. A, you know, because if you're going to do it, you might as well do it and rip off the bandaid. And I would say that's true for anyone. So really this message that I'm sharing today is about like how to get something accomplished, you know, how to actually do it. If you have an idea, how do you get it across the line? How do you bring it to fruition? Well, these deadlines aren't manufactured. I'm not making them up. So as the leader, as the CEO, and you know, I hate titles, so I don't call myself that, but as the person who's driving the performance of the company, the performance of the company, it's up to me to create deadlines and create some pressure so that we can, you know, pressure. And we've got to be careful because we want some stress because without stress, there's no result. But not so much stress that we burn people out. So we need to be very careful, like how much we're pushing on that gas. people out. So we need to be very careful, like how much we're pushing on that gas. But we do need enough pressure to actually get things done. And I think it would surprise you how quickly people can get things done when they're motivated to do something and when they have a passion for it and when they have the right skills, when the skills aren't holding them up. Now, if you have to learn a whole bunch of things, it takes a long time to learn, right? So that could be a roadblock for you. But if you can find the right people to come alongside you and help, and they have the right skills, and they also have the right passion and the right mindset for it, then you can create some real magic. And that's kind of what we're noticing now. some real magic. And that's kind of what we're noticing now when we brought on Jackie, a great project manager, when we brought in Alex, who's a phenomenal instructional designer, when we brought on Noemi, who has a passion for semiotics and user experience and customer experience and graphic design and marketing. She's like a Swiss army knife. Um, when we, when we brought on Debbie, who is another person with a disability, um, who's an amazing finance administrator, administrator, and we've worked together before, and she's going to be helping with making sure we stay on budget for the project. Um, and then when you, when you put all the things together and you, you know, you, you see what your skill sets are and what you're lacking and what you need, and hopefully you have some money. So it's really hard to do anything unless you can find the money for it. So create a plan. Go talk to your family and friends and people who you know in your network. Convince them that your plan is viable and maybe they will actually loan you some money towards it. And that's how you get started. If you don't have your own capital put to put in, you need to convince people that this is true. And the process of convincing other people is also going to convince you and make you more aware of what, you know, the project has, the potential that it has, the real potential, and also its flaws and also its gaps. And so you're building this over time. There is definitely one thing that I know for sure, though, you cannot do it by yourself. You need a whole team around you. I've definitely talked about this kind of concept before as well. But even if you're, if you think you're alone, then you're probably not ready to be an entrepreneur. And you're probably not ready even to start a business necessarily. You can certainly be an independent consultant or a solopreneur and kind of manage to do things by yourself. But if you're trying to grow a business, absolutely no way in hell. You need a whole team around you, whether that team is part-time, contract, casual, full-time, mentors, advisors, full-time mentors, advisors, specialists, like you need to develop your whole ecosystem of support. So if you're in Ontario, I would highly recommend, you know, reaching out to your local community futures development corporations or CFDCs, because they have quite a bit of support that might be able to help you. Any kind of economic development agencies, your local chambers of commerce. If you've got a business like Invest Ottawa, it's some kind of accelerator program or incubator program, definitely reach out to those, especially if you're in thinking about a high tech company. But you need to bring people, you need to bring your story to people and you need to bring people along with your story because it's going to evolve. It's going to change like, like pretty much constantly. You know, our, our story has changed so much. Like I thought it's so much harder to do it for yourself too. Even, you know, I'm, I'm a business coach and I help other business owners kind of hone their value propositions and take their product to market sort of where I fit in. But even myself, it's so much harder to do it for yourself than it is to help somebody else do it. So when I was first starting Positivist Group, I did engage a business coach and I'm not, you know, ashamed to say that whatsoever. I think every coach needs a coach, uh, maybe multiple coaches even. So, uh, there's certainly no shame in getting help. Um, and it's okay to help for people to see what the process looks like. Uh, That's just part of having a growth mindset. So if you think that you have to have everything perfect before you can share with anything with someone, I would suggest that's a very toxic sort of mindset to have if you're in the place of wanting to start and grow a business. You're going to have to get very comfortable with people seeing behind the curtain and seeing the process if you want to be successful. I haven't heard of anyone who's been able to be successful without that kind of support. So I know that those of you are out there, I know because I talk to you all the time. And you know that this is exactly the thing that I preach. So this shouldn't be a surprise to anyone who's talked to me before. But our experience with Invest Ottawa was really good. It has been good and it's still good. We're not, well, apparently it's like Hotel California. Once you get in, you can never leave. California. Once you get in, you can never leave. And I'm starting to see how that could be true. But we've had so far, I think it's been eight weeks that we've been within the program, within the Ignition program. It's been a very good experience. We've made a few friends. We've certainly sought the advice of many of the mentors that they have available there. And then the beautiful news is that it doesn't end. So once we've kind of aged out of the ignition program, we can begin to take advantage of their other programs, the flex program specifically. So I'm going to actually recite on June 20th. If you're available, you should join us. If you're from the Ottawa area, please join, um, register. I'll make sure there's a registration link in the, uh, in the event, in the event, in the script, the podcast script, I'll make sure there is a link to register for the Ignition pitch competition. So I will be going up there and I will be speaking stream of consciousness for three minutes and not a second more, apparently. And then there will be an opportunity for both the crowd to vote. So there's a crowd winner. And then they've got a panel of judges as well who votes for the best pitch. So come and, you know, hopefully you can help us win because Sarah, my my partner in crime here, Sarah wants to win both of both of them. So certainly I think we've got the crowd in the bag and it's pretty much up to me. So I'm going to share my pitch with you and you tell me what you think. And if you think that there's anything that I can do to do better, I would love to hear your feedback. So here we go. Disability is part of the human experience. By age 60, nearly half of us will have a disability that threatens to diminish our freedom in the real world. My name is Erin Patchell and the Train to Help team imagines a real world shopping experience where everyone feels welcome. We have a multifaceted solution. The first part is a membership platform that equips brick and mortar retailers with the up-to-date knowledge featuring the best AODA compliance e-learning on the market. The second part is a website for our members to attract customers with disabilities and their caregivers to their establishments and provide transparency of information. Let me tell you a story about Tim. With multiple degrees, world travel, and even a stint as a model in Japan, Tim's life was vibrant. Diagnosed with MS at 32 years old, he was in a wheelchair within four years. Now as a quadriplegic, his world would be very small without Sarah, his partner, and my business partner, who fights daily to keep his world bigger. But this isn't just for Tim. Currently 27% of Canadians age 15 years and older have a disability, and they spend about $55 billion annually across 141,000 retail establishments in Canada. In the past eight weeks, we've surveyed retailers and customers with disabilities, uncovering a significant gap in understanding. 100% of small retailers had not implemented AODA training. 100% of employees who were trained admitted to not actually learning anything. 90% of customers with disabilities believed businesses did not understand their needs. 61% did not feel valued as customers. And these retailers actually really care about their customers, but they struggle with how much there is to learn. Sole proprietors especially fall through the cracks of accessibility laws, even though if they're discovered, the fines for noncompliance are extremely expensive. The good news is we're trained to help. Our seven-member team, including three co-founders, brings expertise from engineering to sales leadership. We have the belief, the skills, and the experience to transform the train to help project from a project into a movement. We're preparing for our pilot party in August and we have 15 confirmed businesses and over a hundred employees participating. They will proudly leave with trained to help certificates, t-shirts, storefront signage, and a dedicated member page in our searchable website, allowing people with disabilities and their caregivers to explore a bigger world with more confidence. We have five more spots for pilot businesses. So if you know an independent retailer who'd be great champion for this project, we'd love to connect, or they can join our waiting list for our November, 2024 launch. Together, we're empowering customer service teams, enhancing retail brands, and making every customer's experience memorable in the right way. Join us in creating a world where inclusion is a retail cornerstone, not an afterthought. So what did you think? Honestly, I'm pretty happy with it. But again, if you are confused, it's a kind of a big concept to try to jam into three minutes. It is a somewhat complex solution. So I'm curious to see if it actually spoke to you the way that I hope that it speaks to the judges. So I guess we'll say that we're just at the beginning here. You know, we're, we're putting our pilot out in August, August 14th. We have quite a few local businesses who are signed up for the pilot and that's very exciting. They're bringing their employees and everyone by the end of the night is going to be all trained up. They're going to be hopefully compliant with AODA and, and more, hopefully using those skills every day to bring a little bit of joy into somebody's life. But it's just the beginning. We have a long road ahead of us, like years, you know? So I'm going to talk a little bit about just like maintaining my own energy through the next little while, because obviously I'm putting out a podcast. We're developing a software company. Positivist group is also running, you know, smoothly and, and humming along. Um, and then I also do quite a bit of volunteer work. For example, I'm on the board of directors with the ICF, the international coach federation, Ottawa chapter. Um, and so, you know, I do grant writing as well for nonprofits for free. for free. You know, it's, it's, it's, it's definitely going to be a challenge to manage my own energy. And I think that's true for all entrepreneurs, right? So really, I've got to say, what I've really just been focusing on is the basics, sleep, exercise, walking every single day for at least an hour, hour and a half. A lot of... /episode/index/show/2351f999-02cb-4568-ab77-a59f33bb3fd3/id/31682492

Wealth Strategies Across Generations Ft. Lauren Sheil 06/05/2024

Wealth Strategies Across Generations Ft. Lauren Sheil Ever wondered what the key to securing the future of family farms for generations to come could be? If so, join our conversation with Lauren Sheil, a financial planner and trusted advisor. With his background growing up on a small farm and his focus on eliminating debt, building wealth, and leaving a legacy, this is a discusison you do not want to miss out. Stray tuned to be one step closer to building wealth, and financially planning well for the future. Website: Stay in Touch: Script: The shares are worthless if I'm not there. The world has become a lot more complex. Every year, you leave $100,000 inside a company, the government's going to come along and say, oh, look, there's $100,000 there. I want 15% of it just for nothing. And so we take that money and we just move it over here where the government can't get at it. Nobody wants to die, Lauren. We're all going gonna live forever. There's there's that and that's just delusional, everybody dies. Well but we're all delusional. The story of the day and this is a true story based on a previous client and you know obviously paraphrasing a few, a few little things, but Lauren, I look forward to hearing all of your thoughts about this, this story, this business case. All right. As the owner of a generational family farm, I've always been proud of our old school values and family first culture. My grandparents started the farm and it's been passed down to my father and now to me and I hope to my son in the future. We faced many challenges over the years but our commitment to keeping the farm and the family has never wavered. However, as I look to the future, I'm concerned we're not preparing like we need to be. I'd like to retire in the next five years and the world has gotten so much more complicated. When we bought the farm from my dad almost 30 years ago, it was a much simpler time. I know I don't know what I don't know and I've been resistant to change and putting together the necessary checks and balances, such as insurance, legal documents and policies. We've always operated on trust and mutual understanding but I also know the world's changing and we need to adapt and the last thing i want is for us to have to sell the farm so enter lauren shale thank you for coming on the podcast lauren uh lauren's a financial planner and trusted advisor I'm just listening to you talk i'm like am I supposed to say now? You say something whenever you want to say something. So enter Lauren Sheil, a financial planner and trusted advisor. Lauren has a relational approach that we think would really support clients with this particular challenge. With his background, with your background, Lauren, growing up on a small farm and your focus on eliminating debt, building wealth and leaving legacy. I think you're you might be the perfect person to help us navigate with these challenges. So before we get started, welcome to the show. Thanks for having me. Fabulous. Tell me what makes you a great person to help with this kind of challenge? There's a lot going on. And, um, uh, as you mentioned, I, uh, I grew up on a small, it was more of a hobby farm. It wasn't really an actual operating business farm. I, my father was actually a corporate executive and, uh, and he, uh, he moved to this, we bought this farm he grew up on a generational family farm in the 1940s and 50s and uh and by the late 70s he was starting to feel the itch a little and uh so he bought a small uh small farm outside of town and basically played gentleman farmer on the weekends while he was being the corporate executive in the city during the week. I adore that. I totally adore that. Yeah, it was fun. It was an interesting dichotomy of his of the way we we ended up living because uh because you know um well I won't get into all the detail about that but we we kind of grew up the uh the the location itself was just kind of outside the outskirts of town um not too far from a fairly large city um and uh and so the uh the relationship and the dynamics of the town itself and the people that we interacted with was was very diverse there was a number of um family farm in the area it was a big dairy farming area um as well as um the townies as you want to call them um and so so uh so that was kind of the environment that i grew up in and um and uh i got into uh this business after having spent 20 years almost um as a marketing executive in the canadian music industry okay working with creative individuals musicians um and so on and I learned a lot um about small business essentially and and might and even what i refer to as micro business which is um one and two people operations that are that are uh almost cottage industry-ish um in a way but uh but that can grow to be extremely large operations uh from a financial standpoint um but still operate with kind of on a shoestring of just a few people and and farmers tend to do that um that it's one family basically running this operation but it could be a multi-billion dollar operation and you don't and you don't necessarily see that or notice that until you do a little bit of digging so right so that's kind of how I come at this um that uh that that it's well it's a very simple structure um mom dad couple of kids all work on the farm maybe maybe one or two neighbors who are employed employed part-time or full-time or whatever um but uh but they're running a multi-million dollar operation a shoestring of uh of personnel uh and that's and that's what you see in a lot of the uh a lot of the farms especially the especially the dairy operations they can be hugely hugely profitable uh enterprises with five people interesting okay so you know it's so hard right? Because I feel like sometimes the farmers are this like last bastion of the handshake agreement. Yes. You know, in a lot of ways, or the small town entrepreneurs, you know, and I'm from a small town. So I work with a lot of them. I work with a few people in similar scenarios as this as well in a different, totally different capacity than you do. similar scenarios as this as well in a different totally different capacity than you do um and it's like it i feel like that's almost like what we're missing in the rest of the world but at the same time we need to like help them um have some of the tools to make sure that because they're not wrong the world has become a lot more uh complex i was just going to say you you mentioned that in the story yeah in the discussion or the story there that you launched this with that the world has changed the world has changed significantly and um in preparation for this uh I did a little bit of research yesterday just uh kind of boned up on some statistics and uh one of the statistics that jumped out at me was that less than 8% of family farms have a written succession plan. And that's, I mean, it doesn't have to be complicated. be as simple as son a purchases asset b from father i guess he would be a but yeah i know you're there and it doesn't it doesn't have to be it doesn't have to be um a 60 page legal document it just needs to be something that's written down that everybody involved understands yeah um and uh and so that uh when the time comes there's no confusion and there's no there's there's no indigestion at uh at family thanksgiving dinner totally yeah where does insurance come into play here this is really your bread and butter, right? Is the insurance industry? Yeah. Let's back it up a little bit first. Sure. Let's back it up. When we start talking about succession planning in a family business, there's two, well, a number of factors that need to be brought to the table and and then first one is that a family farm is treated differently by CRA than any other business so the one one of the things one of the first things that you need to understand when you start talking about succession planning in a business like this is how the CRA is going to treat the sale. And without getting super technical, everybody understands or everybody has heard the term capital gains. So, under Canadian law, under CRA rules, the capital gains tax is charged, the definition of capital gains is essentially the value that an asset has increased, the amount that an asset has increased in value from the time you bought it so the so there's there's two numbers that come into play there's there's the purchase price which is referred to technically as the adjusted cost base um and the sale price which um is is the and then the difference now oftentimes what people will say is well what if i bought the business from grandpa for a dollar the cra doesn't accept that as the sale price the cra says the sale price is actually fair market value right so if so if the if the product if the assets are gifted to you the cra doesn't care no the the the assets were actually this and whether you paid that money or not that's what we're going to calculate taxes on so so that's the first thing that people need to understand is that uh when transferring assets between family members between or or a close friend or whoever if you don't sell it to them for fair market value you're still going to pay the taxes yeah at fair market value um the other thing to the other thing to recognize is and the conversation comes up all the time is that um under the, there is what's called the capital gains tax inclusion rate. And for a Canadian controlled corporation, the first million dollars in change of share value is exempt from capital gains. is exempt from capital gains so um this comes into play a lot with with small businesses where where i will be having be having this conversation and uh the business is worth you know it's a small business maybe it's worth half a million or one or two million dollars and they're like well we don't need to do any tax planning because we're not going to pay any tax on it anyway because of tax exclusion. Which technically is true, but only under certain specific circumstances. The way the law is written, it says that the first million dollars in change, it's actually $1,016,000, whatever. And it changes every year, it goes up every year. The way the law is written, it basically says that this first million dollars of share value is exempt. So that means, number one, it has to be a corporation but you don't have shares in sole proprietorships right so if it's not and so if you're not incorporated there's no tax there's no capital gains inclusion rate there's no there or rather there's no capital gains exclusion everything is considered a capital gain um so if you're a mom and pop shop that didn't incorporate, if you're a partnership that didn't incorporate, this whole idea of the first million dollars is exempt from capital gains is false because it has to be incorporated. The other thing that people overlook or don't realize is that a lot of these small companies and again i work with very small companies a lot of these small companies their greatest asset is actually the people who work there for sure so if i'm selling my business and i'm essentially the business yeah then the shares are worthless right i'm not there so then what ends up happening is you're not selling your company for shares you're selling the assets of the company and then winding down the corporation right yeah and the asset sale if i'm selling a truck or inventory or a contract, service contract, whatever, that can't be brought into the capital gains inclusion rate either. It's not share. Of course. Yeah. So these are the little stipulations inside the CRA rules that people who are especially small business operators really need to understand. Yeah. And I mean, I'm not an accountant, so I can't give you actually accounting advice. This is just a situation that I've seen over the years. Now, translate that back to farm businesses. Now, translate that back to farm businesses. The CRA has basically said that farm businesses, because of their nature, it being a family operation a lot of the time, don't have to be incorporated. But because most of the asset in a farm property is actually in the land. This is now the land transfer that's happened that can be done between family members without having a corporation a lot easier if you are in a corporation but you don't have to and then the other thing that the discussion that ends up happening is, okay, then we go back to that same scenario of, okay, I don't really need to do a lot of tax planning because I'm only going to sell a business to my son for a million or a million and a half dollars. Then you have the discussion of, if that's what you're doing junior might not have the credit oh yeah go to the bank and and uh fund the taxes that are coming to you because because it's as i said earlier a lot of these farm operations you look at them you drive by them on the highway and you're like yeah that's a million dollar operation that's a million dollar operation no no that's a 10 million dollar operation and you don't even realize it yeah it doesn't take long you got 100 acres of land you got um you're you're putting out um i grew up in uh as i said earlier i grew up in dairy corn country so you got 100 acres of land you're cranking out you know a couple of hundred thousand bushels of corn a year um you got 200 head of cattle uh and those and those dairy cows are producing a are attached to a production contract with the marketing board. And, you know, you've got a $10 million operation. For sure. Yeah. And, and Junior isn't going to have the credit. No. To buy that. And that's what, that's where we kind of intersect, right? Because my job is to help senior let go and figure out how to get junior to start leading and, and to know what they need so that in five years, you can't do this in a year or even two years. A lot of the time, sometimes it takes junior five years to get ready to have the cap to not just the capital but the the credit to be able to take this on right and to have the skills to take this on so oftentimes what ends up happening in my experience at any rate and maybe you can you can speak to this too but um oftentimes what ends up happening is is uh we'll take the example of of my friend david who i who I went to high school with this guy, a dairy operation, southern Ontario, where I grew up, who went to university and did the agribusiness courses and everything else. And dad creates a partnership with Junior. And dad slowly steps away. And Junior slowly buys the shares. It takes like 25 years to do that. It can take a while. Because there was no way he was going to be able to come up with a loan for the million or three dollars that the CRA was going to demand to make that transfer. So now they do it over time. Yeah. So that's kind of one of the first things that I would say in a situation like we discussed earlier is, yes, okay, you want five years, but really how much time do you need? want five years but really how much time do you need because if if senior is 60 and he wants to retire at 65 that's one thing but if he's gonna kick around and dabble yeah buy and you know drive a tractor once someone else there for the sake of driving a tractor, then maybe we've got 25 years. Sure. Yeah. Every single scenario is different. Yeah. Another situation I knew of where they did something similar to this and senior, again, a second generation senior. So this was like a three generation family farm, senior again a second generation senior so this was like a three generation family farm but uh but senior was 85 years old and still going out and cutting hay and doing whatever else just because he wanted to be there so this brings me to the the i mean maybe we're everything all roads lead to insurance but i mean you hope you always hope you're going to have another 25 years when you're six years old but what if you don't right so then yeah you're you're right all roads tend to lead to insurance in one way or another um there's there's a couple of things when we get into succession planning too that uh that we have to understand about the family dynamic and um and we get into what i call a state equalization because if there's two or three juniors and only one of them wants to take over the business we've got to figure out a way to treat the other two fairly right and so that's when we get into family trust structures and funding certain things with life insurance and also where we talk about how do we make thanksgiving dinner go smoothly yeah without having some of the uh the children feel like they've been shafted. Sure. Because, again, we've got a $10 million operation here. And one son took over the business. Yes. And the other, and so now he's managing and controlling this massive asset. These other two kids are left to kind of go out and make life on their own without the benefit of this functioning business. So I recommend in situations like that what I call an insured asset transfer process, which is where we take a life insurance policy that is funded by the proceeds of the business. And that life insurance policy now is designed to do three things. It's designed to offset some of the taxes that would come to you if a senior died suddenly and complete that transfer quickly. We would have the life insurance policy there to do that, but it's also there to provide the other beneficiaries with enough money that they feel like they've been treated fairly. In a case like that, we've got to, again, I keep coming back to the value of the operation, but we've got a $10 million operation. We've got one son that's running the operation. I know we've got a again i keep coming back to the the to the value of the operation but we've got a 10 million dollar operation we've got one son that's running the operation i know we've got two other kids that are sitting there going i need or i should receive three four million dollars from my drone and so we we can set that up as an estate utilization approach through a family trust or through just through a well-funded and well-designed life insurance policy right yeah and this is why partnering with people like you lauren is so important yeah i think um yeah you've got a lot of uh insight under your belt there and you've been through a lot of these scenarios. So, you know, there's an emotional, a palpable, emotional resistance to this kind of structure. In a lot of cases, the folks that I've worked with, it's been, you know, it's a process of kind of getting to that, that, to that point where they're comfortable having a conversation with you or, you know, or someone like you, right. And that's part of my job is to get them there. someone like you, right? And that's part of my job is to get them there. But what would you say to someone who's in that scenario, who's a little bit resistant? Well, we want to figure out what they're resistant to. And there are some misconceptions in the world about what life insurance is for and um and there are some there are some issues people don't quite understand about the um the tax treatment of things and so the number one thing that people need to understand when they start talking we start talking about life insurance the number one thing I think people need to understand is that it is essentially a tax-free asset. The proceeds of life insurance pay out tax-free. And again, depending on how you structure it, that is a very valuable piece of information for a lot of people. So not just in farm corporations, but again, if we go back to the other corporate structures that I mentioned earlier, if you're sitting on a company that has a couple of hundred thousand dollars or so retained earnings, just sitting inside the company, everybody knows that to get that out you got to pay dividend tax of course but if the um but if instead you use the money inside the company to pay life insurance premium you're moving the you're you're transferring the asset from a taxable... /episode/index/show/2351f999-02cb-4568-ab77-a59f33bb3fd3/id/31514237

Does Disability Training Really Matter Ft. Max Brault 05/24/2024

Does Disability Training Really Matter Ft. Max Brault Intro: Max Brault has a vision: To build community by showing the world that Canadians with disabilities contribute to society―and to successful business ventures. Join us for a riveting conversation on accessibility and inclusivity in the world of business! Stay in Touch with Max: Script: The cost of changing something is all about understanding how you're going to spend the money. Leading people into thinking a place is accessible when it's not, I think is the most, probably the most important thing that I'm hearing from people with disabilities. One third of the Canadian population has some form of disability. No one wants to go somewhere where they're uncomfortable or they're feeling disrespected. You know, and of course the reaction is, well, we'll write off your pizza. And I'm like, no, I'm not looking for a handout. What I want you to do is stop putting the garbage can there. For anyone listening this is a true story uh that was provided to me by one of my colleagues sarah and her partner who is paraplegic and so um this is her story. I visited a cafe with my partner who's in a motorized wheelchair. Their marketing said they were wheelchair friendly, but we didn't find that to be the case. The doorway was uncomfortably narrow. Objects like chairs and a garbage can made it hard to maneuver. The bathroom was uncomfortably small for his wheelchair, and there were no low tables or a reachable check-out counter. When I told the manager they gave me a free coffee card, which was a nice gesture, but free coffee doesn't solve the problem, I decided to talk to the general manager who said they'd bring forward my ideas for change, but we never heard back from them. I honestly think they just don't know how to help. And this experience showed me that most places still have a long way to go to be truly accessible. And this is Erin, like, you know, breaking the third wall here. But this is a story that has, I think this has happened on a recurring basis for her and also for a few other people that we know as well. And I'm sure Max, you as well. And every time she has an experience like this, she says it makes it harder to take the risk the next time. It's not just about getting in the door. It's about being able to feel comfortable somewhere. So enter Max. Welcome to the show, Max. Max Brault. Hi, Erin. How are you holding up? Hello. I'm doing good, sir. Max Brault has a vision to build a community, build community by showing the world that Canadians with disabilities contribute to society and successful business ventures. Unafraid to challenge conventions to make positive change for the disability community, Max aims to identify accessibility issues for corporations, governments, international community, non-governmental agencies, and more to provide strategic solutions to address them. So that is a big goal, sir. It is. And it's by people like yourselves helping me achieve that goal to let everybody know that I exist and what I do in this great world of ours. Yes. And we, we appreciate you for it. Um, did you want to tell some people will be listening to this and others will be obviously watching on YouTube, um, or shorts or whatever. Uh, but did you want to tell the folks, uh, watching slash listening, why you care about this subject? Well, you you're seeing is is that i'm an elderly gentleman with uh gray beard gray hair wearing a nice shirt rocketed out with a bow tie um what you're not seeing is this visual as i'm sitting in an electric wheelchair uh i'm an individual who's had a spinal muscular atrophy since i've been born. And so over the years, I've been, I've experienced all kinds of lives. I've had a physical life where I was able to walk and run and play rugby, to the point now where I am confined to an electric wheelchair. So I've kind of lived the two lines, but always having this parasitic SMA behind my back. And as well as I've been in and out of the business world, I've worked for the federal government for close to 20 years, and I've run my own businesses. And, you know, this is a common story. It's a story I hear all the time. And I've experienced some of these issues myself. And to be honest with you, I've come to put a hard wall when they happen. And I kind of note the place where it's happened and I make sure I never go back there. It's my wife who wants to take the flag and start fighting and making the changes. But I realized that sadly, like your friend, for every one of those that don't really take accessibility seriously, there is one that does. And at the end of the day, our money is harder, right? And we want to spend money to the organizations and places that want us to come in and have a good time and be seen there. And so I'd rather spend my money there. And so that's why when a place comes up like that, I have a tendency to ignore them and then move on to the ones that do want my patronage. and then move on to the ones that do want my patronage. And look, I could spend hours talking to you about what to do and not to do in this situation. But I think that, you know, internet is becoming a more and more viable tool. There are, you know, Google Sites. There's what myNZiv is doing with AccessNow. there's a whole bunch of different information that's starting to become more at our fingertips about what places are becoming accessible and what places are not. And I, and I think that again, taking a little bit of time and going to these sites and taking a look, which ones work for you might be a really good, you know, good starting point to avoid having that because I know a lot like your friend yeah um when I go out with my wife when I go out with my friends I don't want the evening to start off with with with a moment of man this place is not accessible and they treat me like crap I want to go out and have a good time I want to have a smile on my face I want to be be laughing and joking with the people I'm with. Yeah, absolutely. It's never going to be frictionless, but it's as frictionless as possible when you're going out. And what's the latest statistic from StatsCan? I think it was 27% of the Canadian population has at least one disability. And I'm sure that's underrepresented. Not everyone, of course, is in at least one disability. And I'm sure that's, you know, underrepresented. Not everyone, of course, is in a motorized wheelchair, but at least one disability, which is it's that's more than 25% of the population and climbing, you know, given we have an aging population, right? Well, oddly enough, the one group that has the highest percentage of disabilities is individuals that experience some kind of pain, which floors me every time I see that statistic. Right. But because it's defined as pain, we have to make some assumptions that's, you know, everywhere in the body kind of pain. Right. So you can have a back pain, you can have a shoulder pain, you can have, but it's still kind of an obstacle to your physical environment, right? So going out is already a challenge, because you're experiencing pain, you don't want to go somewhere where, again, you know, you want to go somewhere where, yeah, you might be having pain, but you want to mitigate it by having a good time with your friends and your family. The ROI has to be there. Yeah, for sure. And I am someone that has a pain disability and a few other disabilities as well. But in terms of pain management, like I have to know if I'm leaving my house, it better be for a good reason. I better have a good experience and feel comfortable there, you know? So, and I don't, I think that probably most people know um so and i don't i think that probably most people feel that way they don't no one wants to go somewhere where they're uncomfortable or they're feeling disrespected you know yeah so yeah it's it's a big it's a big thing and and you know again it it goes back to you, where you spend your hard-earned dollars, where do you spend, you know, the whole, you've heard of the spoon theory, right? And I don't know if your audience has heard of the spoon theory. But again, if you only got so much effort or not effort, energy to go out, you really want to make sure it's something that you're not going to experience another issue on top of it right and so the spoon theory is a really great explanation of that and and uh and i get that um but what what what places need to do is is that the statistic you said you know 27 it's a massive population i mean from my point of view i don't like saying 27 because i'm kind of always used to rounding it up so i just started saying you know one third of the canadian population has some form of disability and in today's world where making money um is becoming a challenge or you got so many competitors competing for that same dollar isn't it in your best interest to make your place fully accessible where you can't now there are occasions that you can't and i get that i understand that but then don't be like the situation where you advertise you are and you show up and it doesn't work out 100 transparency and like accurate information not gaslighting people into um maybe gaslighting is the wrong word but misleading people into thinking a place is accessible when it's not I think is the most probably the most important thing that i'm hearing from people with disabilities um but when you know you are going to invest in something, at least do the research to know when you're looking at making an investment, make sure that you're including that divert the disability accessibility lens. If you're going to spend the money anyways, there's something that I heard the other day was something like, there's something that I heard the other day it was something like you know in order to include accessibility as a feature I guess within a renovation it's something like costs five to ten percent more than it would for the regular renovation I don't know if you've heard a statistic like that Max you know I I've been hearing, one thing I need to take a step back and I need to tell you, right? Yeah. I come from a real estate family. My father basically ran a real estate management company. He basically owned and bought hundreds of condos in, in and around Montreal and Ottawa. Um, and so I grew up with, with this reno idea because whenever my father would buy a new place or whenever somebody would leave, he would have a team that would come in, fix it up, clean it up, make it ready. Right. Um, the reality is, and I'm going to call this a bad word, but you can say it's bullshit. And what I mean is, is that the cost of changing something is all about understanding how you're going to spend the money. And what I mean is, I'm going to give you a great example of what happened to my friend of mine. My friend of mine owned a bar and he was really excited one day I was going to come in and and check out his bar because he's like I just fixed it up it's fully accessible come in and check it out and so I showed up and log behind I had to go to the bathroom so I went to the bathroom and I came wheeling out and I'm like hey you know uh James not working out for me so I'm gonna go in the back in the back alleyway and what ended up happening is is he bought a door that can go into the stall what he didn't check is that it hit the toilet right so i couldn't even wheel in like a walking person could walk in close it but i still couldn't wheel in because the door hitting the toilet didn't give me enough space to get around to close the door. Is that a wrong thing? Yes, because he thought the guy who installed it installed it for the door to open outwards, not inwards. Is that really an accessibility cost or is that just not double checking? Yeah. So. Quality control issue, I guess. Yeah. I honestly believe renovation costs, right. For a lot of things, if you do it right, it's going to be the same thing. I'll give you another personal experience. I had to redo my, my, I bought an old house so I can make everything accessible. Every time in a room, the number one question I had my, with my wife is what we won't touch this room for 20 years. So what are we going to install? What do we need to do? Well, the first question is insulation, you know, making sure everything's up to break up the code, the windows, everything was up to code. And then what are we going to put in there? You know, are we going to put in new plumbing? Are we going to put in new electrical work? Are we going to put in whatever, lighting? But it was all about accessibility as well. And I did not feel out of my pocketbook that my accessibility was more or less than what the normal bill would have been. If that makes any sense. I don't think it is. I mean, my mother is a kitchen designer, kitchen and bath designer, and she's done numerous accessible kitchens and baths and they cost no more. It's literally about the design. The design doesn't cost more. the design the design doesn't cost more you know um there may be a few bells and whistles you want to add or something like that but um it's not significant right it's not and and you know like if you want to put an elevator in a house yeah okay that's a cost but then the question you need to ask yourself is that really a necessity? Yeah. Right? And it might be. You know, it might be a necessity. But in 90% of the cases where I heard an elevator being installed, it was a nice to have. It was not a necessity. Yeah. Right? So I call BS on it. Right? Yeah. right yeah and and where it starts to become expensive is if you're if you're um a restaurant or or a barbershop or something in a very old location that might need you know a ramp for stairs or might need um the bathroom wine because it's in an old structure. But at the end of the day, you're not widening that bathroom for me, you're widening that bathroom for your overall clients, because your clients are gonna appreciate a loiter bathroom, if you get where I'm coming from. Yeah, revisit the story. Yeah. So because a lot of the things I felt like you know of course we've talked about um you know some things that are easy to kind of fix some things that are like obviously more of an investment but what I'm hearing in the story is like the doorway is uncomfortably narrow okay fine that's a renovation you know objects like chairs and garbage cans well to me that's like that's education and just awareness you know um my my biggest beef about garbage cans is they always put the damn garbage can by the push button right they do if i gotta i gotta press the button i gotta reach over a garbage can now i i don't know about some of you folks right most garbage cans are not a problem but some of them are disgusting they're overfilled there are not something i want to reach over and press another button but i gotta move the garbage can because I can't reach over that. Right. Yeah. And, and it's never easy to move a garbage can because they're heavy. Like some of the industrial ones are heavy. They're weighted at the bottom so they don't tip and they don't move easily. Right. And the last thing I want to do is move a garbage can that all the garbage falls on me. And, you know, I kind of like looking good. I don't like looking, you know i kind of like looking good i don't like looking you know like full of garbage uh either way folks but it's still i don't want garbage all over me so that's probably one of my biggest beefs it's why is it always there right um the other thing that they mention is you know trying to provide feedback and and of the, maybe not resistance, but the friction around that. I mean, you've got to be able to take feedback as a retailer and implement it and have a process for that. And again, this is where money makes the change. The places I go to frequently, I go to a local restaurant here, Big Rig here where I live, near where I live. And they did that the first few times, the garbage can was right by the push button. And I would show up there with my family and have a pizza there. I love the pizza there. I know I'm not advertising for them, but they've seen me come a few times, right? Like it's kind of hard to miss a guy in a wheelchair who shows up, right? And by the third time, I was like, I went back and I talked to the management, and of course the reaction is, well, we'll write off your pizza. And I'm like, no, I'm not looking for a handout. What I want you to do is stop putting the garbage can there right yeah exactly right like like just take a little bit of time find another location for the garbage can inform your staff to put it in this place because it doesn't work for a person like me right next time I went in there, lo and behold, the garbage can was located somewhere else. That's a beautiful thing. That's yeah. Right. Simple. But it's because they recognize that I was an ongoing, ongoing customer and I show up there on a regular, consistent basis. That's the problem. The problem is, is that those other places don't understand that if you don't suitable for us we're not we're not going to show up all the time right yeah right yeah and so you know I go back to something that my wife and i always talk about and i think a lot of people talk about is the customer service is is becoming a challenge and it's becoming a challenge just not only for people with disabilities but for everything right now right yeah i hate generalizing that but but it is right yeah so i you had a big part in um the accessible canada act i know this about you um tell me me what was your role in that. Tell everyone what your role was. Well, part of my role, my role was more is to socialize the document. So I worked on a handful of items, particularly to it, but I spent a lot of time running from department to department, asking them what their take is going to be in it. So we identified departments that were going to have some element that would fall onto their lap to be responsible for. So an example would be ESDC, Employment, Social Development Canada has a really big labor element. So we wanted to make sure that anything we talk about employment was going to be suitable to what their messaging was at to be suitable to what their messaging was at the same time or what their future messaging was so then we would go back and make sure that whatever we wrote it would it would be sound to that degree the other thing is I spent a lot of time um really working with the community to make sure that what our concerns were going to be embedded in it which is one of the coolest things I get to tell you is that um this is the only piece of legislation ever designed built for canadians by canadians but also by can with disabilities. The act itself is solely based, well, not solely, I would say 80% based on literally a room full of 200 various people with disabilities talking about how to do certain things. And that's where the seven pillars came up. I don't think there's a piece of legislation that could say that. Okay. For the folks out there you know how is ace how do you feel like aoda the act of the different acts how do you feel like they contribute to supporting just the real lives of people with disabilities as you're walking through the world wanting to engage in you know regular the kinds of activities that everyone wants to engage in we the thing is we got to keep in mind that there are there are two ways to do things right there is um we tell society uh what needs to be in place and then we tell all the players in that society how to appear to that particular directive. Right. Or we could live as a free living society. And then we just do our things and just hope everybody lives comfortably and exists comfortably. Sad thing is that doesn't exist. No. Right. So we need laws we need laws to tell people how to ensure a minimum standard of adherence to ensure that you're not being disrespectful for people right and the way i see it... /episode/index/show/2351f999-02cb-4568-ab77-a59f33bb3fd3/id/31356892

Mastering and Embracing Neurodivergence in your Team Ft. Sydney Elaine Butler 05/22/2024

Mastering and Embracing Neurodivergence in your Team Ft. Sydney Elaine Butler Intro: Meet Sydney Elaine Butler, a powerhouse in HR, DEIA, and neurodiversity. Get ready to uncover invaluable insights as Sydney drops some gems on how to craft an environment where every team member's strengths shine bright to maximize full potential in your team! Website: Stay in Touch with Sydney: Script: Communication is obviously the most important thing, you know, listening to people, actually like understanding what the real problems are, trying to get to the root of the problem. Everyone's mind is different at the end of the day. You know, we all have different experiences and ways we're brought up and all these different things that shape who we are. And that's part of neurodiversity. People learn often the most when they're outside their comfort zone. diversity. People learn often the most when they're outside their comfort zone. I think sitting down with them, you know, kind of having that second to actually talk to them, you know, I think a lot of times I feel like I'm at the end of my rope. During the pandemic, like everyone, our team transitioned to remote work, and it was a revelation for many of us. We have a very neurodiverse team, and I really try to celebrate this despite some of the challenges. During the pandemic, many of us realized we have a strong preference for virtual work, and many of us built new lifestyles around the fact that we don't have to go into the office. On the other hand, for a few of the team, it made them realize that they needed and wanted the structured routine of the office and the camaraderie there. As we transitioned back into the hybrid model, these differences and desires became more vocal. Conflicts arose as we tried to establish new team norms. Those who preferred remote work felt isolated from decision-making processes, while those in the office felt burdened with more immediate responsibilities. Our attempts to find a middle ground only led to more friction impacting our productivity and team cohesion. Okay. I realize we need a more nuanced approach to accommodate our diverse needs. Any ideas? Enter Sydney Elaine Butler, whose expertise in HR, DEI, and neurodiversity seems like the perfect fit to help solve this conundrum. Welcome to the show, Sydney. Thank you so much for having me, Erin. So I guess the question of the day for this person here, we don't know whether they're male or female, we don't know anything about them, but they're looking to know how to create an inclusive environment that respects and optimizes the strengths of each team member, regardless of their preferred work setting. And it seems like they want to build like an inclusive and neuro affirming organization. So that's interesting. Okay. So before we get started and dive right into this, I'd love to have you just share a little bit about who you are, what you do, why you do it, and what your big goal is. Yeah, so again, I'm Sydney Elaine Butler, the founder of Accessible Creates. And so I actually graduated in 2020, which was only four years ago. But when I studied human resources at school and I was like HR needs to be more inclusive and accessible for people with disabilities and I was also working in a recreational environment having kids teens and adults with disabilities and seeing how my co-workers treated me and also my best friend that have disabilities and versus how they treated our participants and even how our supervisors treated us. And I was like, something really needs to be done. And so I realized I could do more as an external consultant, HR in diversity, including accessibility, focusing on neurodiversity, and really drive this momentum forward. And I think during 2020 and 2021, things were changing in this space. And so I launched Accessible Grace in 2021. And since then, you know, I've, speaking at events, speaking at companies, providing consulting for companies to really understand that sometimes they bring me as an HR consultant. And when I do that, I bring the neurodiversity lens, accessibility lens, disability lens, and then vice versa. When they bring me for that, I also have the HR lens. And so really understanding that it's all interconnected. for that I have also have the HR lens and so really understanding that it's all interconnected and if you really want to make the workplace better that it starts with just trying to do something and so my big goal is actually to have a big training firm and and right now I've found it accessible creates to be that training firm now I'm like maybe accessible creates to be the consulting firm and then also start a training firm to provide best practices for organizations because i feel like so many organizations are just trying to be compliant and that's that's the bare minimum and so how can you actually move beyond that and hiring subject matter experts in different areas because i'm not a subject matter expert in everything but they that can help us work forward. Absolutely. Okay. So what is your philosophy around neurodiversity? Yeah, I think a lot of times people think it's a deficit or they think that, they think it's just autism and ADHD but it's so much bigger than that. And so my kind of philosophy is give people resources they need to be successful based on what they say they need and literally listening to people and being able to understand that people might communicate differently everyone's mind's different at the end of the day you know we all have different experiences and ways we're brought up and all these different things that shape who we are and that's part of neurodiversity and so just really understanding that we all have different brains and that, you know, we all have similar brain types and similar ways of communicating, but at the end of the day, we're all different. And that's beautiful. Absolutely. So what did you think about this challenge that we have in front of us? It's so interesting because, you know, she's trying to, she's like, we're trying to have a very neuro- inclusive team we have a very new inclusive team um i think that based on what you said it seems like she was they were trying to do a one-size-fits-all approach you know and really understanding that you know you have to really look at each individual case and see okay where does this person best thrive does it make sense to have them back in the office? You know, or have them work remotely? You know, how can we best provide these resources? How can we also, it seems to be that disconnect between, okay, people that are working on site versus working remotely. How can we better make that cohesion? And I think, you know, having, you know for example I did I do trainings for companies and sometimes now especially the last six months previous before that I was like all virtual everyone was attending virtually these my trainings I was doing through the company but now it's like okay they have a big boardroom and people that want to come on site and come to the training in person can all be in that boardroom. People that still are working from home can access that training from home. And so just, you know, seeing, meeting people where they're at. So what, if you were like working with this company, they brought you in as a consultant, what were the, what are the questions that you would want to ask to really understand the root cause or how would you go about it yeah i would say is there a demographic if like who prefers working remotely versus who works working on site or hybrid and really getting down to the nitty-gritty of why you know is it communication styles what is the communication like on site versus in the remote setting you know do you have any cohesion between making sure that the remote workers know what's happening on site and vice versa and so just these are some of the initial questions I would ask some of the teams that I've been going into it seems like the virtual people are very happy working virtually you know the people who want virtual they're like we're going to work virtually and they they're more like I don't care where people work if they're virtual or on site but I want to be virtual whereas the people who are they want the community aspect like the face-to-face community aspect they're more likely to be like well it's not fun unless everyone's here you know um it's not so much like that philosophy, like, you know, everyone can do what they want. I'll be in the office because that's what I like. It's more like, you know, I want to be in the office and I want all my friends there with me, you know, I want you guys there with me. Right. And so I feel like it's the in-person camp, I guess, that are more likely to want that like holistic policy around when we're going to be in the office and when we're not going to be on the office or whatever. What do you think about that? Yeah, I think, you know, because they want the greatest sense of community and like you said, they want their friends and colleagues there. And it is completely different atmospheres but i think kind of making the case that it's an individual accommodation sometimes for having the remote work some people try better and really you know providing that space it's like you can check in you know you can be on site but so you know have virtual meetings with the remote employees and again i think then this just needs to be more done to provide that human connection for all you know and and really understand that bridging that gap because you know and understanding that you're not there to communicate at the same time like you don't want the sense of community but it's also like some people thrive better and work better at home and that creating that sense of community is important but then the day you're here to do a job and but also providing different options and you know it's like have a social you know have a you know is it a remote social that's what comfortable with? Or it's like, hey, invite people to a social once a week or once a month to connect. It's like, hey, virtual employees, come on in. We want to celebrate you. And maybe we can make it more of a celebration, a reward to incentivize bringing those employees in. And reminding each other that it's all working towards a common goal. Yeah. And you know being like reminding each other that it's all all working towards a common goal yeah yeah and it strikes me that um when you said that they're they're looking for like one solution it's i think the line was our attempts to find a middle ground only lead to more friction impacting our productivity it's like maybe there is no middle ground yeah i think sometimes people always want that middle ground it's like but can you actually get that middle ground i think middle ground is like the ideal that everyone wants but it's like sometimes it doesn't exist and then sometimes you it it looks different than you thought it would yeah how can how can that look like like yeah I think you know picture again I think kind of again meeting people where they're at and so you know like hey and explain to people the situation and really understanding that it's okay this person needs it to thrive and do well in the work we understand that you want the most sense of community you have you know other people here that are already here that will also like you want to work when i have that sense of community but it's not feasible for everyone and really understanding that you can you you're never gonna please everyone you know i think a lot of times you as a business owner as ceo you want to please everyone and you know you want to obviously have the best things from your employees and get the most the most satisfactory they can do the most and be the most productive but it's not always feasible and being kind of okay with the uncomfortability do you think that this might be a loaded question so forgive me um do you think it's possible to accommodate everyone within an organization or is is there something like, maybe it's not a good culture fit? You know, like, where is your stance on that? Yeah, I think you can try your best to accommodate everyone. And so really by listening to your employees, I think I'm really trying to, you know, do the one approach for everyone, you know, not trying to do the one size fits all, but actually looking at individual's needs and say, okay, well, how can we best get you to that part but you know your individual needs being met and you're satisfied completely in every aspect of your job function but you know I feel like as humans we're never fully satisfied anyways and so but just you know knowing having employees know that you will are willing to accommodate them at any time and, you know, see, meet them where they're at and say, okay, what can we do to actually improve this? Having check-ins with them, you know, seeing how they feel and really having those conversations and having those difficult talks. I'm curious, like, as you, as you're talking about, like, meeting everyone where they're at, it strikes me like something I learned a long time ago when I was managing people, meeting everyone where they're at, it strikes me like something I learned a long time ago when I was managing people, I'm still managing people. But when I first started managing people, it was that, you know, people learn often the most when they're outside their comfort zone. And so sometimes meeting everyone where they're at, it, it could be perceived as like helping them be as comfortable as possible. You know what I mean so what's your um take on like you know how much discomfort is a reasonable amount of discomfort so that they're being pushed outside their comfort zone through learning something while also feeling complete like feeling like a whole person within their company yeah I think as long as you know you make sure that they feel safe and that they feel good about their work you know that's being the mother app but then also being like it's not feasible to do everything and you know it's like a stolen organization and kind of you know kind of frame it like that it's like what you said you know sometimes you have to grow you grow outside of your comfort zone. And so, you know, nothing to ask you to do anything dangerous, not to ask you to do anything unsafe, but just, you know, kind of pushing the envelope a little bit. So for people who, you know, don't want to come into the office because they like it virtual, do you think it would be reasonable to to suggest like, know different activities you know to go in the office even though that might be kind of outside their comfort zone or what how could we um push people who want to work virtually not push them but encourage them to be in person every once in a while yeah i think kind of like having different activities you've had team building activities that you can't that you can do them virtually but it would be better in person it's like and really highlights like this is going to be for connection and you know help i mean this is why you want to do the um activity and do the event because i think a lot of times companies just try to do events and activities and and the employees eyes it's like well why are we doing this you know it kind of seems meaningless to me but it's like hey we're trying to build team morale between our remote and on-site employees you know we want to thank you for all your hard work in both spaces you know and that kind of incentivizes you know having people come in person and i think also somehow like i think it's kind of to say because i think like not making it mandatory actually you know, having people come in person. And I think also, somehow it's kind of to say, because I think like not making it mandatory actually would kind of, then people are like, oh, if we make it mandatory, then people have to come and they're going to be more willing. I feel like actually the opposite is true. You know, it's like, if you don't be as mandatory, people, they feel like forced and they feel like they have no autonomy. But when they chose to do it and it's voluntary then they're like oh no i want to do it and but you explain the reasons of why and the team building or the creating this atmosphere then people think huh they'd be more actually more motivated to do it yeah for sure i completely agree with you i think people are forced they're much less likely and then when they show up they're not showing up with that like you know that mindset that you want them yeah they're just trying to like i was forced to be here i'm at the laboratory instead of like oh they generally want to be here and they because of why they're here yeah exactly like they know that people they enjoy are going to be there they know that there's going to be something interesting happening like um yeah maybe there's options um you know maybe they go there and they don't have to do exactly the same thing as everyone maybe there's like you know different varieties of things that yeah i think like yeah i think having like different activities for like different types of people again you know like it's like oh you're more social like have like a more like have like a dance party or like you know like have a right take a playing class you know oh you're more social like have like a more like have like a dance party or like you know like have a take a playing class you know like you're still with other people but you're working on another activity you can like share show with each other and just you know I think catering to those different types of people yeah for sure um how can we enhance how would you recommend to a team like this who is probably distributed and you know hybrid remote flexible whatever you want to call it um how would you recommend that they structure their communication so that everyone's on the same page or as possible yeah i think you know leveraging things like slack i love slack yeah i think Slack's such a huge platform. And other things like Slack. I think there's other ones that have similar. I can't remember the name of right now. The Flex Room that comes to mind. But really having that sense of community. And you can play posts when there is events, you know. And post the different things happening within the organization. And that, you know, people that are working on site can communicate with each other via slack and also people working remotely you know everyone can be communicated there either in the direct channel or they can message each other directly and so i think that's a huge way to foster that communication and i think even leveraging video calls such as this you know understanding that you could be on site we could still have virtual meetings with people that are working from home or working remotely and so understanding that there's all these different tools and we have so much technology and platforms these days and so just really leveraging that yeah for sure um what else is important to making sure that your team like what are the what are the systems and tools that you would recommend? Yeah, I think like the system is like kind of doing like, if you're the manager or if you're the CEO, just kind of touching base with your employees and like seeing how people are feeling about the current circumstances of their work and they're working virtually or they're working on site, seeing how people feel of seeing, does it make sense to do a weekly, bi-weekly, or monthly meeting with everyone that's no matter if they're remote or hybrid, and really having more cohesion. I think a lot of times right now, it's like even though everyone knows it's the same organization, it seems like there's two different organizations when it's on site and hybrid or remote. And so having more of those cohesion and using those tools that we used when everyone was remote you know and really so just because you're back on... /episode/index/show/2351f999-02cb-4568-ab77-a59f33bb3fd3/id/31347567

Inside Strategies To Save A Dying Brand Ft. Lisa Strangway 05/15/2024

Inside Strategies To Save A Dying Brand Ft. Lisa Strangway Intro: Ready to crack the code to business success? Join us as Lisa Strangway, the powerhouse behind The Marketing Station, reveals the keys to unlocking your business's full potential. From deciphering consumer behavior to crafting captivating brand stories, get ready to revolutionize your approach to thrive and succeed. Don't miss out on this opportunity to take your business to new heights with expert guidance from a seasoned marketing pro! Website: Stay in Touch with Lisa: Script: What kind of products are they selling? How are they telling their story? You know, when we're so busy doing the business, working in the business, sometimes it's easy to forget the big picture. And then, you know, sort of one thing leads to another. And eventually you're not really left with the same business that you started with or the same vitality that you started with. And once you do that work, everything else falls out of that. I'm the general manager of a local retail chain known for our trendy clothing and accessories. For years, we've enjoyed success and a loyal customer base, but lately we're facing a crisis. Sales are dwindling, foot traffic is down, and it feels like we're losing our once loyal customers. It's clear that recent shifts in consumer behavior and market trends are taking a toll on our business. Our brand identity feels stuck in the past and our social media presence is stagnant and dated. We're struggling to understand our customer base, which has become increasingly vague. Despite a desire to change and a budget set aside for marketing support, we're not sure where to start. So how can we adopt our marketing strategies to resonate with today's consumers? How can we revitalize our social media to engage our audience effectively? And what steps can we take to regain the trust and loyalty of our customers? Enter Lisa Strangway, owner of the Marketing Station. Lisa is known for innovative yet practical marketing strategies and disciplined social media implementation. How can Lisa help? Welcome, welcome, Lisa. Hi, Erin. How are you? I'm so good. I'm so happy to have you on the show. I am thrilled to finally be on this show. I love it. I'm a big fan. So now I get to be part of it. I love that you listen to the show. So folks, Lisa and I, and Lisa is the founder of the marketing station now in its 10th year. Congratulations. Thank you. She is an amazing friend of mine. We've known each other literally for a decade now. I can't, it blows my mind. I can't even believe that. Wild. And she's definitely highly, highly experienced and seasoned as a social media expert in content marketing and strategic planning for businesses. So I think that you're just the perfect person to help with this issue. Well, it sounds like a very familiar story. I have, I have dealt with situations like this in the past. With path clients, or, you know, just colleagues that I've talked to in this field in the retail field specifically. So yes, I can definitely help here. Yeah. It does seem like this is something that I this is definitely something that I have personally seen as well, not with just clients, but even just friends who are owners of retail stores, having to just, you know, things, I find things, you know, when we're so busy doing the business, working in the business, sometimes it's easy to forget the big picture. And then, you know, sort of one thing leads to another. And eventually you're not really left with the same business that you started with or the same vitality that you started with. Yeah. And also don't forget that the speed at which things change these days is astronomical compared to even 10, 20 years ago. so you could set yourself up in a business um two years ago and it's already changed in terms of um digital capabilities so it's really important that you stay on top of uh trends and uh data right yeah um okay so for the folks out there uh who are new to the show, we're in season two of Weirdos in the Workplace. And this year, this season, we are focusing on supporting with practical problem solving with businesses. So every time we're doing an interview with a professional problem solver, just like Lisa, folks are coming on and we are going to be kind of doing some real brainstorming together. So today we're actually going to be looking at this problem through a model called the six thinking hats by Edward de Bono. And the six thinking hats, there are six hats, as you can imagine. And the first hat is the white hat, information and data. imagine. And the first hat is the white hat, information and data. There's the red hat, which deals with emotions and intuition. There's the black hat, which deals with caution and risk. The yellow hat, which is optimism and benefits. The green hat, which is creativity and alternatives. And then the blue hat, which is process and control. So we're going to basically look at this scenario through all of these different lenses. Okay, let's get started. So starting with the white hat, Lisa, white hat deals with information and data. So, you know, in terms of the insights that this retailer could gain from the world or that they should be gathering? What is your advice on that? Yeah, so this is probably my favorite category. There's a couple things they should be looking at. First of all, look at your sales activity and take a look at the sales figures there and figure out which products and what type of inventory is actually selling. Look at your, and then for the products that are selling, figure out who is actually buying that product. So I know that they have a loyal fan base, but is that, or not fan base, loyal fan base, but is that not fan base, a customer base, but is that loyal customer base actually still purchasing items? Who knows? You have to do the digging and find out. And collecting information from, customer base is super important. You can do that through surveys, um, or through, um, you know, just talking to them in the store. Um, social listening is a really big tool. So take a look at what people are saying online and, and start to figure out what they're looking for right so maybe that's cool like are there any specific platforms that are used for social listening or is it more just like like sensing um you know through through like. So just reading comments, you know, which will give you a good sense of what people are looking for, for sure. You go to any Facebook group for a town or whatever, or a city, and you can even ask a question in there and see what people are saying. But, but there are apps and things available to you with the specific use of social listening. Interesting. Okay, cool. I interrupted you. You were going to say something else, I think. Well, I lost that train of thought. Okay, the train of thought has left the building. Yeah, seriously. In terms of competitor analysis, is that relevant these days you know because i know there's sort of two different thought ways of thinking around it i know folks who are very customer focused and they don't care crap about their competitors and people who are you know obviously customers are important but they also want to see what their competitors are doing and you know make sure that they're balancing everything. So what, what, what's your opinion on that? I always a hundred percent recommend doing a competitive review. Okay. I would, I would look at your top five competitors and see what they're doing. What kind of products are they selling? How are they telling their story? Are they, what kind of technology do they have? So are they offering, you know, online purchases, free delivery, you know, all of these things are going to help you get a good picture of where you stand within that competition. Okay. Yeah. All right. Let's move on to the red hat, emotions and intuition. How, as a consultant, marketing consultant, do you advise your clients on that, that storytelling aspect that you just shared a minute ago? Like how, how do we tell a story that evokes emotions? And yeah, let's stop there. Let's ask that question first. Right. Well, first you have to really understand who your customer is and who your potential customer is, right? So that's why the research part of this is so important. What are the values? What are they looking for? What do they, you know, what do they aspire to be? What's their lifestyle like? And all of that. And then the best way to engage with them emotionally is to craft the story. engage with them emotionally is to craft the story so craft not one story several stories that you can publish on your website and on social media that will with the goal of appealing to that side of them right so appeal to their emotional side so if your target market is, you know, a busy mom of two kids, full, and she works full time, and she values quality time with her kids, with her family, you know, you craft a story around that somehow that relates obviously back to your product but how how can your product or service appeal to that part of that target markets world right so that's an example but right yeah so in the case of like this general manager who's managing a local retail chain really you don't know what stories you're going to necessarily tell about your business until you understand your customers. Is that what I'm hearing? Absolutely. A hundred percent. Yeah. Okay. Okay. So it sounds like customer really understanding the customer at a deep level is the most important starting point perhaps. It is the most important starting point. And once you do that work, everything else falls out of that. Hey, so I am curious. How much can we trust our gut instincts as entrepreneurs? Yeah, I'm a big believer in gut instinct. Okay. Yes. Now, having said that, it's really important that that's not the only thing you rely on. So it's gut instinct plus data or research or any kind of quantitative, you know, results or data. uh you have to have you have to have a balance of two now and i would say if you're just focusing on data then you're missing that part of you you know your gut which you know if you're the owner or the general manager of a business to me that says that you have some type of passion for that business so if you don't have an instinctual gut feeling about it, then maybe you're not in the right business. It's interesting you say that actually, it just struck me like, you know, what if your product or service, you know, isn't quite perfectly aligned with your passion anymore? You know, like, how does it ever see see that in your clients does that come up for you um like yes but it's it's not it's not something that is like easily detectable because especially with an owner I think an owner and a manager are two very different roles so I'm just going to speak about ownership. If you're the owner of a business and you're not quite passionate about it, it's going to show in your results and it's going to show in the amount of time and work that you put into securing the future of your business. Okay. Which means doing the homework now and and doing you know investing in your business if you're not passionate about your business anymore you're not going to be taking those steps so yeah I have seen that um and um it always makes me sad yeah it always makes me sad because maybe at one point this person was passionate and something happened along the way you know they got disillusioned or maybe uh they just decided this isn't something they wanted to do but i've seen other times uh situations also like sometimes health related you know oh yeah health and stress you know there's lots of I think reasons why people can become disengaged um yeah yeah definitely uh yeah and sometimes I've seen it where they're just at a place where they're kind of ready for retirement and you know they just haven't really done the planning and they're just sort of checked out a little bit so that's I've seen that too. So that's, those are big feelings around that. Yes. So the black hat is caution and risk. And you did touch on risk, I think in the first question as well, but what risks, I mean, the obvious risk of, you know, if you don't have revenue, you don't have a business um other than the obvious risks you know what what do you see for their business if they don't make a change immediately well if they don't make a change immediately well i would kind of uh use different wording for that if they if they don't start doing the work um to figure out what changes need to be made then they're going to cancel themselves out if they can't evolve they're going to lose their audience and by audience I mean customers yeah so the risk is you know not knowing not knowing who your target market is and maybe going too broad. You know, if they use strategies and tactics that is meant to appeal to a very broad fan base or target market, they're going to miss out because they're not, they're not going to be providing, um, a product that is actually needed by a specific target market. Okay. Um, have you noticed that business, our, our, our business is niching more than they used to. Is this a trend? Yes. Okay. Yeah. It's something I've noticed for sure because uh you know with i think with technology today it's a lot easier to uh drill down into your um into your target market and really figure out uh through research methods and stuff figuring out exactly what their needs are and sometimes you find out that maybe you can narrow down your product offering to really hit that mark for them. And so you're decreasing maybe what you're offering, but you're increasing your sales and maybe the frequency in which people are buying. So that's why niches sometimes work. Yeah. Is there any time where you would not recommend a niche? I think it just depends on the product being offered. Yeah. Yeah. It's, it's hard to answer that question without knowing specifically. Well, if we use this example, I would recommend that maybe they niche down. But again, I'd have to know more about the target market. Right. Yeah. Okay. right yeah okay um i'm curious about if we could go into that just a little bit um so when you're creating like a customer persona along with a client what are the steps that you go through for that like what is what's the really important things to identify um well i always ask the client to send me whatever data they have. So it's, and a lot of times I don't get it. But it's, you know, give me a general sense of who is coming into your brick and mortar store, right? I look for, you know, general observational data probably is what I'm going to get. So the age, the sex, the purchasing patterns, frequency in which they come in, any kind of anecdotal data they can give me. You know, do they know their customers? Do they talk to them do would they recognize them if they were walking down the street you know are they coming in with strollers are they coming in you know a certain time of day I need all of that whatever the owner can give me will give me a bit of a broad picture and then I drill down and what I do is I look at that industry and I look at what the typical customer would be right so there I mean that research is available out there on the internet and I so I look at that and then I compare it to you know what I have from the owner and I see what the gaps are, if any. And so that helps me round out what the, what the persona would look like. So it's a lot of research. It's a lot of talking to the owner and looking at survey results. If I'm lucky, they have survey results, but you know, startups don't have survey results. If I'm lucky, they have survey results. Right. But, you know, startups don't have survey results. So, yeah, it's a little bit of both. And I come close. It's not an exact science. No. But I do come close. Yes. I mean, as someone who owns a business and is, you know, I've been part of a few startups, my own and other people's, you know, sometimes it's like, it feels like a little bit of a risk, you know, deciding to like focus on one or, you know, a cluster of particular customer personas, like a target market. It does feel like a risk. And I think that sometimes that that's a trap that I think people fall into is not wanting to pick a person, pick someone who you believe is going to buy your product. Well, again, we're going back to that whole thing about too broad of an audience. You know, it's like, you know, how do you craft your messaging? How do you how do you how do you craft your messaging? How do you develop your creative? I mean, everything stems from your customer personas. So if your customer persona is everybody in the whole wide world, how are you going to get your messaging across you know to the whole world you know if every single person is a potential customer right we're not gonna hit any marks right you know you just think of it as that you know put it down the funnel and then at that at the bottom of the funnel you have like the cream of the cream uh you know the people that are most likely going to buy from you and figure out what is going to get them to buy yeah that's what a customer persona is supposed to do right okay so going back to black hat and caution and risk um i'm curious because i think this is like a very natural, you know, human behavior to want to minimize risk. And we know that, you know, in most cases, diversification minimizes risk, except I think when we're talking about a target market. So but it feels like a risk. So what do you do as a marketing professional to help it feel like less of a risk with your clients? You mean developing that target or that exact? Yeah. Well, I have to explain to them that, um, oh, well, I mean, this is what I always say to clients. I say, you know, you have to start somewhere. So let's, you know, so far, yeah, you haven't tried any strategies. So why don't we try this strategy and this strategy and see how it goes. And then we'll revisit it in three months. Honestly, like marketing is, you know, it is part science, but it is part gut instinct, like you said. And it's a lot of, you know, data crunching and stuff. But at the end of the day, it's not an exact science. Okay, so and anybody who says it is not been in marketing for very long. So what I say is, let's just try it. What I say is let's just try it. I can tell you as a professional and based on my years of experience that you're going to get better results if you focus on a particular market and you craft your messaging to that specific market. But if you don't believe me, let's try it for three months, see how it goes. And then we'll look at the results and we can pivot if it doesn't work. So that's how I, I, I'll, I always get a yes when I, when I kind of position it that way. And, you know, all I want is success for the client. Right. So at the end of the day, I'm not going to recommend something that I don't think is going to work. So I put the power back in their hands and I say, you know, it's your decision, but let's, let's try it and we can always change it. Yeah, definitely. And you'll learn something from it. Right. And I'm sure there's always something to learn from, from a test. So, yeah. Okay. Yellow hat is optimism and benefits. So what is the good news here? Well, the good news is that this store has had a loyal customer base and they have had a lot of success in the past. The other positive thing is that they are looking to make some changes, to pivot, because they know that they need to do something. And they do have a budget, which is huge. They have set aside a budget. So right there, that tells me that they're serious. And that's the positive thing about this is they have the right mindset to pivot and change and grow. Oh yeah. Mindset is literally everything. And you know, people who poo poo that, like they haven't, they just haven't gotten there yet. You know, like. Mindset is... /episode/index/show/2351f999-02cb-4568-ab77-a59f33bb3fd3/id/31049763

Embracing Authenticity For Success In A Digital World Ft. Peter Georgariou 05/08/2024

Embracing Authenticity For Success In A Digital World Ft. Peter Georgariou Intro: What does it take to redefine your business and reach your full potential? In this episode, we sit down with Peter Georgariou, the CEO and Founder of karmadharma, a full-service marketing agency dedicated to helping organizations achieve their goals. With a background spanning national sales, marketing, and operations at top media companies, Peter has a wealth of experience guiding SMEs and non-profits through strategic planning and brand-building. But his true passion lies in being of service to others - whether that's supporting his wife and two daughters, or amplifying the impact of the organizations he works with. Join us as Peter shares his unique perspective on how businesses can evolve their value proposition, leverage their strengths, and make a lasting difference in a fast changing and digital society! Website: Stay In Touch: Script: I am very aware and my sense of urgency is very high on how short our walk on this planet is. That's what culture is going to be changing every time something changes within the organization. People are going to read this. My friends are going to read this. Maybe they don't see me in that lens, but I think that's where the magic happens, Erin, like getting them into like being out there as themselves and letting go of the good and bad opinions of others. Let yourself jump off a cliff once in a while and see what happens. Here's all the benefits for you. Here's how this is going to change your world. My favorite thing is to sell it, to change somebody's mind from like resistance to like, oh yeah, okay, I get it. I'm going to do it. Bring it on. --- I'm Jordan, CEO of a five-year-old consulting firm. Our journey has been rewarding, but we're now facing challenges in a rapidly evolving market. The demand for digital transformation and specialized services is growing, pushing us to adopt and stay relevant. Securing long-term contracts has become tougher in an economy filled with uncertainty, impacting our revenue and growth plans. Competition is intense, with both new and established firms fighting for the same clients. I realize I need help to navigate these turbulent waters, redefine our value proposition and get us from where we are today to our big future goal of becoming the go-to consultancy for digital transformation, guiding businesses through the complexities of technology adoption to enhance their competitiveness and innovation in the digital era. And so I'm me, Erin. I'm very happy to have Peter with me today, the CEO and co-founder of Karma Dharma, a B Corporation. And Peter, I'd love for you to just tell us a little bit about you and what you do and why you do it. Get started there. I want to change the world, Erin, while I'm here. Life is short. So yeah, CEO of Karma Dharma, we're a strategy and creative agency here in Ottawa. And we're slowly moving into a little bit of what you guys do into that people and culture as we realize people need a little escorting along their journey to help them along. So anything from strategic planning to full service, creative agency from creating brands to websites to you name it, and we take them to market. So that's us over there. And why I do it, I want to help individuals and organizations have the courage to be themselves in this life, kick some ass, you know, like it's, it's, I am very aware and my sense of urgency is very high on how short our walk on this planet is. And I'm assuming walking asleep at the wheel is not a great life. And designing a life of meaning is not easy. So we'd like to help them in that journey. So this is a fictional client of ours, we're going to pretend that we're working with this client. But, you know, what would you say, you know, when you read this story? How did you feel? I feel like when I hear the word compete to start, Erin, I get nervous. I think that's especially working with a lot of small businesses. And in the B Corp world, there's a lot of small businesses, solopreneurs, as we've chatted about. And they're starting often from that scarcity mindset. So I think the mindset from the beginning is something I like to work through with our clients. I think there's plenty of business for everyone. There's always been competition in every industry. Sure, it can vary a little bit, but digital transformation right now, I'd say is a hot topic like sustainability consulting. I figure there's a lot of people trying to do that. So I think there's a lot of demand and he needs to figure out how he rises to the top of the supply chain. Okay. So what would make you a good person for Jordan to work with on this topic? What's special about you? Gotta call my mom for that one, Erin. I think we ask good questions. I think we really want to work with our clients to a shift that mindset, like I talked about, and help Jordan find his why, because there's one thing there's doing digital transformation, but why this is his jam, why this is his life's work, or why it's part of his life's work. And what's his zone of genius and all that like where is he really the guy for this or his organization is the place to go and figuring out you know it's not any ingredient in their recipe because there's a lot of overlap in the industry and there's a lot of commonality and digital transformation but i would say there's an ingredient set that i'm convinced that Jordan and his team have, um, that we can help Tice out, you know, and tease out, I should say, um, and then help him develop messaging to go to market with that. Like how to, how does he convey that people have difficulty distilling themselves, the essence of themselves and why people should care. Um, so we joke that we're professional distillers over here, minus the gin. But yeah, I think we are a good fit to help him figure out how he is different in the market. Because there's either you're the cheapest option or you have to differentiate. There's only a couple of ways to win. And so he's got to figure that out. And not just against the people his size i find a lot of the people we talk to compare to themselves so there's nobody doing it exactly like us but there's a lot of substitutes for them there's a lot of different ways to do it or they have this philosophy oh the big guys are eating my eating my cake um and so i think it's just navigating that conversation to figure out where they are mentally at the organization and then helping them elevate above that into their own spot. Okay. Um, so you said that, uh, well, one thing I love that you said was the zone of genius and Patrick Beck, that David, I don't know if you know that gentleman, he wrote a book called your next five moves and it's awesome. So I highly recommend that to anyone listening. But he called it the zone of fascination. And I just love this idea of like the zone of genius and zone of fashion fascination. Tell me how do you tease that out of a person? Um, I think in all your secrets. Yeah, no no are you kidding no they're not that secret um I think it's creating early on a zone of trust here and with these people like literally having a conversation around you know why are you doing what you're doing beyond the table stakes I need to feed my kids and all of the just stuff, how we show up just to pay our bills and to bring them to a spot of meaningful contribution. You know, I believe we're all here to be of service to our communities and to allow people to dream a little bit about that and to go beyond the functional aspects of work and why this lights a fire in under Jordan's bum or, you know, like why is this his place? So I think it starting from creating a zone of trust where there's no wrong answers and not a safe space, cause there's no pure safe space, but creating a brave space where this person can, you know, speak to what their challenges are, their fears are, why they aren't showing up as their best selves or something I fought with a long time imposter syndrome. Why, oh my God, it can't be me. Why do I have the answer? Why would they believe in me? Like a lot of us are fighting this in certain different ways. So just leveling the table or the playing field that he's human, we're human. You don't have it all figured out. Neither do we, neither do your competitors. So why don't we just really hone in on your spot and your sweet spot? And in a, you know, I was born in the U S I've been up here for 40 years, been a long time, but I find in Canada, we are very conservative business wise. And we are very fearful of quote-unquote bragging, whereas, you know, you told me at the beginning of this call, there's nothing wrong with selling. So I think that getting out and saying, hey, why are you awesome? Why should they pick you? And it's okay to tell people you're awesome. You don't have to be a jerk about it, but I think you can go out and tell the market you have something that you believe no one else has. And oftentimes, if other people are doing that, perhaps it's your why that's going to differentiate you. You're doing this to rebuild your community, to save the planet, whatever that might be, right? To help people, small businesses get out of and compete with the big boys, whatever that might be for him and his business. of compete with the big boys, whatever that might be for him and his business. I think it's diving deep and getting out of talking about the senators and the weather. It's just harder than you think for some people, because even in the way you positioned your case study, it's a very transactional, I'm in a competitive land state. How do I stand out? And then, okay. So these are very versus, okay, how do you make this your life's work? You're going to spend 40 years at eight hours a day. That's a lot of frigging time. Why don't we just make this something that at the end of your days, you look back and say, Hey, I made a difference while I was here and reposition what you're doing through that lens. Yeah, definitely. It strikes me that the kind of what I would have called sort of the BHAG of the case, the guiding businesses through the complexity, the becoming the go-to consultancy for digital transformation, guiding businesses through the complexities, blah, blah, blah. As you were talking, kind of struck me that there is no why, you know, there's nothing that has to do with a why in that statement whatsoever. Not that this is a real case, but this is again, something that I've seen over and over and over. Yeah. Well, I, yeah, I think that back to the transactional nature of, of businesses or, or jobs, right. You know, people are in this because I need to provide and it's not available to everyone. I even think at times it's of the privileged few who get to think about something beyond just putting food on the table and being up a couple rungs on Maslow's pyramid. I think it's a privilege. But I also think it's a mindset, you know, whether you find that through the work or outside of work, you know, becoming that best version of yourself in service of the world is low key or the goal of every human in whatever form that takes for them. really helps them stand out. And it helps them stand out even in their language and how they communicate that once they found that resonance in their inner self, not to get too woo woo. But, you know, once they've done that, all of a sudden, it even infuses meaning for them into what they're doing and the impact they could be making. And hey, all of a sudden, I'm going to walk you through a digital transformation that's going to, if you get this right, cut your costs, allow you to compete with bigger players, allow you to provide for your family or those trips or whatever that means. Digital transformation could change the lives or will change the lives of entrepreneurs and businesses and their employees and all these things. There's a massive ripple effect of Jordan getting this right. So now we're talking, we're not just talking about switching, you know, to your project management system. We're talking about helping people live a great life, you know? So I think there's something underpinning any product or service that can, if you are passionate about it and it's not just transactional, I think there's an opportunity there to have people dream bigger a little bit. Totally. And like you say, like, I think, you know, your why doesn't have to be changing the world over that many hour why. No. It could be, you know, I had this idea in my head. This is me talking. I literally had this idea in my head since I was a child that I wanted to be an employer. And that was because I wanted to be able to give people somewhere to work, you know, somewhere I wanted to help them have a life, right? Right. So that could just be the goal. It could just be, you know, I want to give my employees the most people possible, a great life and somewhere stable to work, you know, because there's a lot of unstable work in the world. There's nothing wrong with the why being, you know, just your internal community. That is your why. I don't know. A hundred percent. I think changing the world is intimidating. I mean, I put it out there, but I think everybody's could just be, I need to provide for my elderly parents. I could like, it could be that gamut is huge, but it is usually beyond the business itself, right? It is, you're generating this money and this income to use it as currency or as energy to go fulfill what you want out of this life, right? So I'm with you on that a hundred percent. So if Jordan's your client, you know, and he's coming in, he's saying we need to stand apart. Yep. You obviously, you mentioned you start with why the self-awareness, the understanding of, you know, who, who, who they are and what kind of impact they want to make, whether it's the community or the world, where do you go from there? Then we start working on, you know, this is the branding side of the house for us is really how they want the world to perceive them. Right. So there's, there's the branding side of the house for us is really how they want the world to perceive them, right? So there's the what they do that a lot of people get lost in. And it's very, you know, just, hey, I do A, B, and C. And this is, you know, usually you go to a lot of websites, they say, I do A, B, and C, it's gonna be great versus, hey, here's what's in it for you, Mr. and Mrs. Business. Here's all the benefits for you. Here's how this is going to change your world. Here's all of that. But we also work on what we call brand tone and personality. So personality-wise, how do you want to be showing up? For us, you come to our site, people might be like, oh, I love these guys, the people who tell us that. And then the other people who never show up because they thought we're dope smoking yoga teaching god knows what and so they just leave so i think there's having that courage to stand up for yourself and not just what you say but how you say it and being okay like yo this is me this is us this is the way we roll this is how it's the beginning of that engagement with people and if they feel energetically like, these are my people, or Oh, my God, these guys are scaring the crap out of me. It's pretty good. They know it up front, because you'll start to find your people a lot sooner. Because so many websites or comms pieces are just so tofu, they don't smell like anything, they don't taste like anything. They're bland as hell. I'm not saying Ottawa's worse, but I don't know. I see a lot of that. And I would say, you know what? There's something about standing out is hard for people. Being different is really hard. Like I decided not to call Karma Dharma, Peter G's media media company right i said ah this is this is what I believe in and if they don't like it they can kiss it um but the ones that do love it and i would say to jordan like as we move towards it how do you want to be perceived or there's a great question out of a conference a month ago and i can't remember the lady who said it, but she says her question was, who are you uninterrupted? Like if you would just go tell the world everything about you, your org, and you didn't have to worry about how you thought they were going to receive that information and you could just speak like that, A, it takes courage, but B, we like to work with them on that first draft. And I will tell you, we've done a lot of this where like, they're quite nervous to put that out in public. You know, the website piece or whatever, it's like, okay, people are going to read this. My friends are going to read this. Maybe they don't see me in that lens. But I think that's where the magic happens, Erin. Getting them into being out there as themselves and letting go of the good and bad opinions of others. You know, and there's that, you know, that book, The Five Regrets of the Dying. I can't remember the name of that lady. She worked with palliative care and I would definitely. And so anyway, she goes through the top five regrets. And the number one is, I wish I had had the courage to live a life in line with my values and who I was and not to have compromised. So I find when I come full circle to doing like brand work or the teams doing the brand work for these companies is so many of them are fearful to be truly themselves in this world. And ultimately, it's so sad. You're like, wait a minute, you're paying us to help you go tell them. And then you're still like, what if they think I'm silly or stupid or not good enough, or Johnny and Mary over there are saying it different than me. And they seem to be kicking ass. And I'm like, well, you're not Johnny and Mary. And I think you standing up as yourself is the ultimate gift to yourself. That's not easy work, Erin. I don't think for a lot of people, right? To just like show up because you are going to have the haters and you got to, we really want to print these t-shirts. We need some courage ourselves. I want to have these t-shirts that says F the haters. You got to let go of these people who are just not your people. Yeah, absolutely. I will say something though, that you said right at the beginning there, I want to, I want to touch on this because you said something like, you know, they might come to the website, they might see karma Dharma, they might freak out and run away, but that's okay. Cause we're not their people or whatever. Yeah. I want to say like, if, if anyone's listening and they go to karma Dharma's website and they're like, Whoa, if if anyone's listening and they go to karma dharma's website and they're like whoa freaky like they're not I would I would hold on to that feeling for a minute because that might be exactly what you need you know you might need to be a little bit scared if you're getting a little comfortable um I know I feel like the best moments that I've had, the best learning, the best mentors, the best teachers are the ones who challenged me. You know what I mean? The ones who were like, I was like, I don't know, man, like, I feel terrified to go there. It sounds like a lot of work, you know, maybe it's not like do it anyways, because to me, that's where all the growth happens, right? But then everything else you talked about through that entire, you know, that last couple of minutes was all about fear. A lot of it was about fear, right? So- Amen, yeah, for sure. So facing your fears, if you can support people in facing their fears, I think that that's the most valuable thing that you can do for other people. What a gift. And it just happens to be, we do branding and marketing, but I would argue that back to my intro saying, helping people have the courage to be themselves in this lifetime. And I'm still client number one for me. I went to a conference six weeks ago and this lady gave a workshop on imposter syndrome and took my breath away, Erin. I was, I can't believe I'm still battling this at three months from 50, you know,... /episode/index/show/2351f999-02cb-4568-ab77-a59f33bb3fd3/id/31025698

The Link Between Employee Wellness and Business Success w Lydia Di Francesco 05/01/2024

The Link Between Employee Wellness and Business Success w Lydia Di Francesco Intro: Feeling stressed, distracted, or disconnected at work? Are you a business leader looking to boost productivity, engagement, and retention? Or an employee struggling with burnout and work-life balance? You're not alone. Today, we're diving into the powerful connection between employee wellness and business success with Lydia Di Francesco, the Founder of Fit & Healthy 365, and Creator of the 15 Minute Workout Club! Lydia is a Certified Personal Trainer and a business coach who helps companies and organizations succeed by prioritizing the health and wellbeing of their workforce! Get ready to learn practical techniques that can be used anywhere, anytime, to help your people and your business thrive, by strengthen your mindset, managing stress, and cultivating work-life harmony. Website Url: Stay Connected with Lydia: Script: Life is short and we aren't meant to just suffer. They're not willing to put their money on something. They're not willing to like, you know, strategically bet on something. They want to try to do everything. And I think this is a fear response. Also allows people a proactive approach to their health. Feels like you're banging your head against the wall and there's nothing you can do about it. You feel like there's nothing you can do about it. And it's actually in your best interest to even just take a break. Even if you want to work a lot of hours, take some breaks. This case is from Alex, who's the HR director at an employee experience software company. And Alex says, we've been riding the wave of rapid growth and success in the tech industry, but an increasing number of our employees are reporting feelings of burnout. Absenteeism is on the rise. Productivity is taking a hit. And there's a general sense of exhaustion in what used to be a vibrant and energetic workplace. To add to our worries, our pipeline seems to be stagnating and leaves are drying up. I know I'm not the only one who feels an overwhelming sense of impending doom, says Alex. As a company that prides itself on valuing employee experience, that makes sense as an employee experience technology company, it's incredibly frustrating to find ourselves unable to practice what we preach. The well-being of our employees and the overall health of the organization are at stake. All right, so enter Lydia, a consultant specializing in workplace wellness and employee engagement. Welcome to the show, Lydia. Hi, Erin. I'm so happy to be here with you. Excellent. Okay, so for the listeners, please tell them just a little bit about yourself and, you know, why you love this work. Yeah. So I've been in the wellness space for 12 years and counting. And I started out mostly on the fitness side. And then over the years have acquired a bunch of different certifications and knowledge and experience and have been working out for the past five years with on the more corporate side, working with organizations, helping them support their staff with their well-being. And I love this work because for me, just with how I've lived my life, like we can maybe get into this later if it's relevant, but I have had a burnout before. So I know what it's like. It was surprising to me when I was going through it. And of course, as a wellness professional, I was like, this is kind of ironic, maybe. But I learned a lot. It taught me a lot. And I also learned a lot about how to live my life and how to create a lifestyle that supports my own well-being and make sure that I'm not, you know, heading into a burnout. Again, I've learned a lot about work-life harmony and how to bring that about for myself. And I also just really believe that life is short and we aren't meant to just suffer through it for the most part. Like, obviously, we're going to have challenging times, of course. But, you know, for lack of better phrase, like life shouldn't suck always. And work is such a big part of that. You know, so for me, it's important for people to like, feel like, you know, that's a good part of their life, or at least not dreading it. You know, that whole like, oh, it's the Monday, what do they call it? The Monday worries, it's not the Monday worries, but whatever they call it about worrying about Monday. And then like, you know, people are like, oh my god, it's I'm so excited. It's Friday. You know, like, I want people to be okay with every day of the week, and just to be more healthy. You know, I see a lot of people who are not overly healthy and, you know, are kind of putting in the time now hoping to maybe one day just like retire and but who knows where their health is going to be at in that case, and probably not in a good place. So some big motivations for me, you know, I've got some big missions in terms of changing workplace culture. And I think it's a really great time right now, just coming off of the pandemic, you know, where there's a lot of opportunity to rethink how we do things. And so yeah, it's a really exciting time to be in the space. the space. Yeah, it sure is exciting. And like, I mean, the, from this story, um, when Alex says there's an overwhelming sense of impending doom, you know, man, like that, that is something that I think a lot of my clients for sure have been feeling this sense of impending doom. Uh, and it's impacting their, the way that they can like you know perform impacting their health impacting so many different areas um one of I mean I don't even know where where would you start if you're if you're Alex where where do you start so it's this might be a bit of a weird answer uh Hopefully not. But I would like weird answers here, by the way. I know, right? We're weirdos. Is that what we're called? Weirdo now? Am I a weirdo now that I'm part of this podcast? I mean, are absolutely certified weirdo for sure. Amazing. I mean, I think I was before, but now it's official. Hooray, I can get my little like, yeah, we'll get you a t shirt for sure. Yeah we'll get you a t-shirt for sure um you know I think I was thinking about this um and I honestly would start with a conversation with the leadership team and a real conversation with the leadership team um in the sense of getting their buy-in and real buy-in not fake buy-in and real buy-in, not fake buy-in, and their support. Because I've seen time and time again with clients that I've worked with, where if the leader is really not on board with changes, especially kind of cultural changes or things that can impact the culture, it's not going to trickle down to the employees or not in a way that's as effective. You know, a lot of times I see leaders where they have this sort of like, do as I say, not as I do kind of vibe and it doesn't work, you know? So if I'm Alex, I want to make sure that if I'm going to put in a lot of effort to try and make some changes or like hire me and I put in the effort, um, that the leadership team is really, truly understanding that there might need to be some, or really do definitely do need to be some changes made to how things are done. Um, and are they willing to participate actively and be supportive and do the things that need to do that need to be done and then really kind of go from there yeah that would be my starting off okay I as you were talking it struck me that you know obviously they need to be leading by example and I think that's something that we both have probably seen as, you know, it's a lot easier to say you're going to do something than to actually do it. Right. So, I mean, you know, there's tools in the toolbox. One of them is building a strong enough business case. What would you suggest to Alex in terms of like, where are we gathering information in order to solve this problem? So we can build the business case that's so airtight that people can't ignore it. Right. Yeah. I mean, I think a bit of what you were saying was in the story piece of the absenteeism, the loss of productivity. You know, I think for me, so the next sort of researchy phase would be survey things like basically informal and formal talking to the staff. Right, so it could be surveys. So for example, like I have a sample wellness survey that I provide to my clients that they could use. And that's more on the kind of more wellness side of things, sort of pulse check of where people are at. I think looking at the quantitative data that exists. So in terms of like the absenteeism, in terms of sick days, in terms of any kind of leave that's been taken, even in terms of, I know there's sometimes ways to track, like how many meetings do people have, right? And like, are they spending, how many hours a week are people spending in meetings? Whether or not we're judging that as productive time or not, that's kind of a different piece, but just as a pure number. So there's a lot of data that I would look at in order to sort of get a sense of where things are at. And then the qualitative side, which would be part of like the survey, really with how people are feeling, where, where they're at. You know, I think doing some group discussions sometimes can be helpful, one-on-ones, that sort thing I think those are those are really good places to start and then really looking at what does it mean like what is the data saying and what is the impact right of the data in terms of are people heading down a track where they're going to be taking a stress leave or quitting or you you know, even though even the productivity pieces is so important, especially, you know, for this company that's growing, you know, they do sounds like they definitely need to be figuring out what's going on with their lead generation and their sales pipeline. And, you know, we need people to be at their best, right? In order to be able to even just think strategically and creatively, right? Like if people are mentally zapped or even physically or emotionally zapped out, right? They're not going to be on their A game. And even, you know, in terms of problem solving and coming up with good solutions. So I think it's really kind of looking at like the big picture of what's happening in the company in terms of of employees their health their well-being their engagement all that kind of stuff um I definitely see the irony that Alex is talking about right that they're an employee engagement company and they're having employee engagement company, and they're having or employee experience company, and they're having issues with that. Yeah. But, you know, I think if, if they are that kind of a company, and they believe what their values are, then, you know, they should be able to turn things around. Yeah, yeah, you definitely hope for sure. Yeah. Yeah, do you, is it possible to like benchmark some of these data pieces against other, other companies like in the same space or in different spaces? Like, have you ever heard of that before? And how common would you say this kind of scenario is based on your experience? Yeah. I mean, yes, there are some benchmarks. So the survey, for example, that I have, it's not, I didn't make it up. I got it from a very reputable source, have benchmarking data that you can compare your results to, which I think is great. So there's, there's quite a bit of stuff out there in terms of being able to, to gauge where people are at. stuff out there in terms of being able to to gauge where people are at um and 100% this is a very common problem I would say um this issue of burnout and overwork is certainly on a lot of people's radar I'm getting a lot of people approaching me a lot of clients talking to me about it wanting to figure out how to solve this issue um you know there's a lot of clients talking to me about it, wanting to figure out how to solve this issue. You know, there's a lot of the phrase, a number of people have used with me is that they have to do more with less. Yeah. I know that's been a very common theme, at least so far in 2024, which is a challenge, right? Because a lot of times times there aren't necessarily a lot of massive things that can change um but at the same time I think that there are components and it's also I think that a lot of times organizations don't spend enough time thinking strategically and thinking about what are the pieces that are the most important for their business right in terms of what people are spending their time on and I think that's where um which I know doesn't sound like a wellness related thing but it absolutely is. Right. Um, and like urgency and priorities. And I think I, I see it a lot, especially with the government clients that I work with where everything is portrayed as urgent and priority and you just get more urgent and priority items piled on a Right. A lot of times, if not. No. Right. And so I think, I mean, maybe a little less in private sector, perhaps. But I think where that's where sometimes there needs to be a bit of a reality check of like, you know, is this really? Or like, is this how we should be using our time? Like, for example, you know, with Alex and the case, I think a little bit into working with their company, I would want to like have a discussion with their sales team or business development team and basically be like, what are people spending? What has worked in the past? What is working now? What are people spending their time on? I know for me, that's something I've had to learn as a business owner, right? Of like, I've actually learned, I'm not the best at it yet. It's always a work in progress, but like how to be focusing on the things that make the most impact for myself, for my business, from a financial standpoint. Right. And so for me, that's where I think though, a lot of times people can get caught up in like, let's call it the busy work. Yeah. Necessarily massively effective. Yeah. I mean, I see that as well. I, when you were talking about, um, kind of like diversification, like everything's important. I, I see that almost as like a response to fear. You know, I see that in a lot of leaders where they're not willing to put their money on something. They're not willing to like, you know, strategically bet on something. They want to try to do everything. And I think this is a fear response. It's like, we're afraid that what we're going to put our money on isn't going to work out. So we're just going to spread ourselves then and hope that something's going to work. But guess what? Hoping and praying is not a strategy. right it's not shocking yeah crazy yeah no I think that could could in a lot of instances that couldn't very very well that um yeah I mean I think it's I think it's also and I know one of the things that we wanted to talk about was the idea of communication and, you know, I've seen it and, and I have less of this problem, but in a lot of workplaces, there's just now an endless number of ways to be communicating with colleagues, right. Whether it's, I mean, barely the phone, but sometimes people should be using the phone, you know, email, Slack or Teams, chats, Slack or Teams or Zoom virtual meetings, um, other forms of instant messaging, text messaging. Uh, I don't even, carrier pigeons, like, I don't even know. There's so many different ways and so many different channels. Um, and a couple of friends of mine even that I've talked to are like I literally can spend an hour of my day bopping back and forth between all the different channels and you're literally not getting done no um you know a lot of times stuff like that is just again it sounds so simple of a problem but people don't take the time to think about it how they just feel that overwhelm of like there's so many ways of getting a hold of somebody plus not to mention the people who have their notifications on for all of the things oh yeah you know and it's just there's like pop-ups and dings and dongs and it's like, it's too much for the brain, you know, in people, it's just, it's just too much. So, you know, even having conversations around what do our communications look like? How can we streamline the ways that we communicate with each other and, you know, try and reduce some of the volume or the noise, or at least make it more efficient or effective, right? So I think these are some things to consider as well. I can agree with you more. You know, those team norms are so important. I don't know, you know, in this case, we'd have no idea what the team norms are as a company. I think we can probably assume that, you know know if there's an overwhelming sense of impending doom there's probably some a sense of urgency right which we know can lead to some really you know toxic behaviors yeah uh and you know a lot of the time things just get derailed so it's really about like who's going to be the anchor in the storm who's going to say like no this isn't the way we do things here remember we yeah remember our team norms exactly well and I think too like a lot of times people push through um and and especially thinking about this company and how they're probably overworking a lot. You know, they've got a lot going on. At a certain point, and it's different for everybody, you're just not as effective. No, it's actually in your best interest to even just take a break. Even if you want to work a lot of hours take some breaks because you're going to be way more productive when you step away I've had times where and I again I'm speaking like high from experience um right where there's been moments where I'm literally in front of my computer and I'm just like bopping from this checking that checking my email checking whatever I'm really not productive it's kind of tired and I need a nap but I'm like no no I'll just I just gotta keep going and I've learned that it's actually better for me when I'm getting this for whatever reason I may be sick I I might've had less of a sleep, whatever the case is. If I'm tired, it may be for some people, they don't need a nap. They just want to do some sort of other break. But for me, I can take a nap and then I get up and I'm just so much more refreshed and I'm so much faster and my brain is firing on all cylinders. And I'm so much faster and my brain is firing on all cylinders. And I think too often people don't realize that that's happening. Yeah. And it's, again, though, that's where the leading by example comes into play. And if you have a leadership team that is that sort of like, just go power through, just drink the coffee to stay alert and stay awake. That's again, going to trickle down to, to the staff and see those kinds of behaviors. They're going to see emails at all hours of the day and feel like that's normal and also feel like that's what's expected you know yeah it's tricky for sure but uh yeah I think and I always tell people I'm like prove me wrong like if you don't believe me take those breaks and tell me that you weren't you know more energized after for sure do you think it's appropriate to ask your team members if they're sleeping okay like just like out of like genuine um curiosity or concerned like is that like how how do you dance around that I mean I think it would have it would be less weird if you just didn't do it like randomly um yeah. You look a little tired today. Yeah. What are you trying to say? We love to hear that. No, exactly. In the sense of someone said it to me the other day, but I was tired. And I'm like, I also don't have makeup on today. So, you know, but no, I mean, I think it's a great question. And I think it, to me, it's a great question. And I think it, to me, the answer would be yes. And a leader should be having just wellbeing conversations in general, right. Of how are you doing actually? And even, and I say this in my building stress resilience course often, but in a way that's appropriate finding out a little bit more about people's personal lives so that you can have a general sense like even just things to ask about but also just for you to know right that maybe that's why they're off or maybe... /episode/index/show/2351f999-02cb-4568-ab77-a59f33bb3fd3/id/30874253

Solving the Problem of a Toxic High Performer w Tina Collins 04/24/2024

Solving the Problem of a Toxic High Performer w Tina Collins In today's episode, Tina Collins, is going to share her proven strategies for dealing with these workplace nightmares - the problematic high-performers who are potentially destroying morale and threatening the success of the entire organization. Tina has spent over 15 years consulting with companies of all sizes, helping them to navigate the delicate balance of keeping their star performers while also protecting their company culture and team morale. She's seen it all - the charming, charismatic sales superstars who undermine and belittle their colleagues, the brilliant engineers who rule through fear and intimidation, the indispensable executives who treat everyone around them with disdain… Tina addresses and confronts businesses and individuals’s blind spots to help them achieve their ultimate potential, so if you're a leader grappling with a difficult superstar on your team, you won't want to miss this! Tina will walk us through real-life case studies, offer tangible solutions, and give us a glimpse into the psychology of these challenging employees. Website Url: LinkedIn Profile: Script: And this is really one of the biggest reasons why quiet quitting happens. Good employees observe employees with bad behavior getting away with it. And that's what happens when you go into the scenario with empathy instead of judgment, right? Right. Right. And curiosity. Yeah. Because I'm willing to bet that if max performance and bad behavior is constantly overlooked, I'm willing to bet that they've already lost, if not physically, at least mentally, some of their employees. I'm the executive director of a nonprofit organization that's dedicated to making a difference in our community. Our mission is clear and our team is passionate, but we've hit a roadblock that's threatening to derail our progress. It's a situation I never anticipated, and it's keeping me up at night. The heart of our problem lies with our vice president, who is also our highest performer. This person has been instrumental in securing the majority of our funding. Their charisma, networking skills, and ability to close deals have been nothing short of miraculous for our NGO. However, there's a dark side. Lately, the VP has been exhibiting toxic behaviors that are causing rifts within our team. Their abrasive attitude, lack of empathy, and tendency to take credit for others' work have created an environment of fear and resentment. This toxicity is spreading, and I can see the impact it's having on our team's morale and productivity. The dilemma I'm facing is complex. On one hand, this individual is critical to our funding and by extension, our ability to operate and serve our community. On the other hand, their behavior is eroding the very foundation of our organization's culture and values. To add to this, our board absolutely loves them. Yeah, that's complicated. I'm at a crossroads trying to balance the financial stability they bring with the negative impact they have on our team situations, forcing me to question how much we're willing to compromise our principles for the sake of financial security. Enter Tina Collins. Welcome, Tina. Thank you so much. Tina is an award-winning seasoned leadership consultant, executive coach, and very proud to call you a friend as well. Tina explores blind spots that limit her clients' potential so they can accelerate personal and professional growth. I am so happy to have you on the show with me. I'm so glad that you've asked me and I'm so glad that you've given me this topic. This is a juicy, juicy one. Oh my gosh, it sure is. I was like feeling overwhelmed. Just as I was reading it, I was like sensing those emotions because we've, I mean, any of us who've been in leadership roles, if we've observed people, we've been in an organization, I think a lot of us have seen this as an issue. And you said that you have some personal experience with this as well. Yeah. I mean, this could have been read from my own personal notes. I have lived this recently with a client. So yeah, I'm really excited to get into this. Fantastic. Tina, I'd love for you to just tell everyone a little bit about yourself. What do you love about your work? And what's the impact that you want to make? What great questions. I spent about 26 years as a management consultant before the pandemic, traveling the world. And the pandemic gave me a chance to sit at home and not be away. And that pause led me to coaching. And in the one-year program that I took, I realized that coaching was always my favorite part of consulting that I had actually been coaching the whole time. I just thought it was consulting. And once I was able to split the difference and really appreciate how each serve my clients, I was able to really lean into coaching completely. So now, so now it's more like, you know, 85% of my time is coaching and 15 is consulting versus the other way around, which was all just like a mighty mess of like, just doing everything for sure. And what it is that I love most about coaching the impact. I would say that it's actually just no longer something that I do. It's just who I am. I, at this point, just feel like I'm the vehicle for whatever transformation my clients need. Beautiful. Thanks. Yeah. I feel like it's a true blessing. Honestly, it's not something I take for granted that people trust me to work through whatever's blocking there. You know, it's usually what's between the ears. It's, it's a true privilege. Yeah. And you're incredibly good at it. I feel like every single conversation I have with you, it's like, it's into a coaching conversation. It's not, you're not lying when you say that you are a coach, like literally that is who you are. You know, it's everything that you do, I think is you take that coach approach. And I think that's amazing. Thank you. Thank you. And it's funny because I used to, I found that term really prickly before I used to think like, Ooh, yeah didn't I didn't it's not a weekend because but I don't know if you remember but you could just do like a weekend coaching program and be called a coach and that just uh really rubbed me the wrong way and so it took me a while to adopt the coach name. But now I'm all in, I'm all in. And I don't feel in any way like I ever need to explain to people what it is that I do. All my clients come through from referral, which I'm so grateful for. It's, it's a really magical place. Yeah, the coach, becoming a coach is a transformational journey for sure. I'm still on that journey big time, but, um, I feel like you're, you know, you're kind of a master, uh, mentor, um, a friend. I think that, um, you're just an amazing person. So let's dig into this and see what kind of solutions we can drum up for. Thank you. Well, we don't have a name here, but let's call them. I don't know. Let's give them a name. What's a good name for, for this executive director? Brenda. Brenda. Brenda, the executive director. Perfect. Okay. I like to have a name when I'm working with a person. Yeah, me too. Me too. Yes, absolutely. Contextualize too. Yes, absolutely. Contextualize it. Yeah, absolutely. And who's puppy? What's your puppy's name? We have Piper Murphy here. They are my chief security officers. If they do cause a ruckus, I will let them know. But they're almost always here with me. We love them. They're great. Okay, so we are going through, I guess we were thinking about going through this through Edward de Bono's six thinking hats, which you're probably familiar with. So just using the hats as the six lenses. So white hat, information and data, red hat, emotions and intuition, black hat, caution and risk, yellow hat, optimism and benefits, green hat, creativity and alternatives hat optimism and benefits, green hat creativity and alternatives, and blue hat process and control. So just looking at what, you know, when we're doing kind of a root cause analysis, or just looking to, you know, generate ideas on solutions, you know, thinking about the different lenses that we're looking through, and let's get started. Hey, what are your first impressions before we dig right in? The first thing I read, or I thought of after reading the summary was an organization is only as strong as the worst behavior it's willing to accept. Yeah. And I have worked with organizations who have, so the individual in question who is like, you know, a super high performer, critical to the success of the organization, yet troubling behavior is often a secret cow. You know, these are individuals whose bad behavior is often overlooked in an organization because of what they bring to the organization. And while the benefits are tangible, you know, in this case, he brings in revenue, I mean, which is really important, especially if it's a fundraising, you know in this case he brings in revenue i mean which is really important especially if it's a fundraising you know i mean they can't do anything without money the long-term effects it has on the organization as a whole are immeasurable yeah have you seen a situation where um someone can you know we can address the behavior head- know, we can address the behavior head on and we can change the behavior of, of a person in this scenario. Absolutely. A lot of times, you know, like this is where I love working in the blind spots because a lot of times people's bad behavior, they don't even know that it's bad behavior. They just think it's part of their personality. And until someone brings it to their attention, it's not obvious to them. want to be part of a social group. They don't want to be ostracized. They don't want to hurt people. You know, so unless this person, what's his, what's, I'm calling it in my hand, but what's this person's name? I'm making some assumptions. Yeah. Maybe we should find a general gender neutral name just so that it's, let's see, gender neutral. We'll call them mac okay okay I know females and males named mac yeah excellent excellent so um in mac situation unless mac has a personality disorder which they might have we don't know um i mean that's a completely different thing, but, but a lot of times it's just bringing that to light, you know, that like your performance is, is impacting the organization in this way. Is this how you want to be perceived? Is this how you want to show up? Yeah. Because honestly, sometimes it's just a tiny, tiny little shift that makes all the difference. Mm-hmm. It's just a tiny, tiny little shift that makes all the difference. And what I'm not seeing from this, and it's, you know, it's obviously impossible to know everything from this case. We think we have to make some assumptions here. I'm not seeing that Brenda has actually directly addressed this with Mac. Well, if this is something, if he's been behaving badly and been a top performer, I'm assuming that it's gone on for a while. And if the board loves him, that means that they have a relationship with him. It means like that he's been part of the team for a while. Yeah. And so, you know, some of the responsibility is on the director, on Brenda's shoulders to say, you know, this is something you should have addressed the first time you saw it. I am noticing that they say lately the VP has been exhibiting toxic behaviors. So we don't know what the timeframe is really. But I presume that maybe this hasn't always been the case. So in terms of like information and data, what would you, if you're going in and you're trying to support this team as a consultant or as a coach, what would you suggest to Brenda? Let's pretend you're Brenda's coach. How would you, you know, how would you suggest that they gather a business case? Or is that even necessary? Well, I would want to know exactly what Brenda's intentions are. Is it to improve her team or is it to develop strategies so she can manage better? Because if he's a big personality, he may also be triggering some things in her. So if her goal is to create a better team, then I would recommend coming into the team and having a couple of sessions where we scenario map different values, different visions of the organization and allow everyone in the organization to have a voice. This might shed light on some of the prickly factors having a negative impact on everyone's performance. It also allows an organization to determine what is is a value you know because i mean every organization says we value trust we value openness we value all these things but when i say to them so what's the cost of not living up to the values and they there is no consequence then it's not a value so if mac if one of their values is um respect and mac is breaching that respect on a regular basis then we need to reevaluate whether respect is in fact a value because if it's, if it's tolerated only by Mac, that's a major problem, but erodes the entire workforce. For sure. Now, do you, as a consultant, when you're wearing your consultant hat, do you recommend building these kinds of values into performance development, performance management, 360, leadership, assessments, those kinds of things? When it comes to a team, I mean, individuals have their values, which change over time and context. But when I work with a team, I take sort of like an accordion approach, where if we're, if we're working together, there's going to be some one-on-one coaching, and there's going to be some team coaching. And the team coaching looks more like, well, at first we, we like develop scenarios, develop values. Like we create a vision of like, what's the best case scenario that we want here and what does it look like in the worst case scenario because sometimes they are living the worst case scenario so just identifying that you know oh geez this is where we're living um but this is what we'd like to and then and then hooking all of the work that we do on three, but I never do more than three values, because I want everyone to be able to remember them off the top of their head. And so often communication is always one of their values, their format or one-on-one coaching then I can say well you know where does this fall within you in the context of the organization you know because some people are great communicators and some are terrible and some don't even know where they fall and so if communication is a top value of an organization let's dig in so yeah we I always have something to like hook all of us, which is sort of like the anchor, if you will. Otherwise, everyone's like, you know, squirrels at a rave. I love that. I'm going to use that one, squirrels at a rave. So good. that i'm gonna use that one squirrels at a rave so good um do you do you suggest though like benchmarking this in any way so that you have the data or is it more you know you prefer an anecdotal conversational um way of you know gathering information on their present state or their emotional environment in the workplace? Well, we, we definitely talk a lot about stories. Like that's like, you know, I want people to be expressive and understand it in their context because everyone thinks differently. And so the more we talk about it, the more they can relate to a different version of the same story. But I think it's absolutely critical for organizations to measure the performance of whatever objective we're doing. So in this particular case, we would want to know, how are we going to measure Mac's performance? And it's not just having an impact on Mac and the ED, it's the entire team. Because I'm willing to bet that if Mac's performance and bad behavior is constantly overlooked, I'm willing to bet that they've already lost, if not physically, at least mentally, if not physically, at least mentally, some of their employees. So it's not like the, so the performance isn't just on Mac, it's the entire organization. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, this is really one of the biggest reasons why quiet quitting happens. Good employees observe bad employees or employees with bad behavior getting away with it. Right. And then they think to themselves, then what's, why should I bother doing great work? So you've been in this industry, you know, in different types of roles, you know, in wearing different hats, different types of government, non-governmental, private sector, you know, different kinds of organizations, big organizations, small organizations, Canada, globally. I'm curious whether you're seeing this scenario, is this like a tale as old as time? Or are you seeing this in terms of like, you know, we know that our culture is evolving. We're going through a bit of a cultural revolution right now. Is that an element? Are you seeing this more or is this, you know, this is just, this is just business. I'm going to say both. I'm going to say that it is a tale as old as time. I have seen this for the 28 years now that I've been doing this type of work, but I definitely think that there's a much more aware and aggressive desire to correct this behavior because like anything else, you know, we have psychologists who are now studying this stuff and they can like provide us with real metrics and value to the the outcomes the impact of this type of behavior you know like like like why quitting like i mean and or like um you know employee turnover rates you know we know that that's a very costly chunk of organization's budget. And so how do we attract, retain, and maintain some amazing teams? We have to invest in them. And investing them also means coaching people like Mac through these prickly conversations to adjust their behaviors. Yeah. At what point does an executive or a manager's behavior become so like a lost cause? Like at what point would you suggest, you know, it, you know, it's worth finding solutions, like internal solutions so that we can transition them out. It's a really great question. I think every organization needs to figure out what that measure is. Like what, what, what's'm a very optimistic. I like the idea of like an amazing inclusive organization. I love psychological safety and empowerment. I love cognitive diversity. I love all of those things. And I would, I would love to like empower organizations to onboard all of those things. But I do know that there are different industries, you know, like what would work in the Canadian forces. And they've been my client for a very long time is very different from let's say my client who does online learning. You know, the environment in which they work is completely different. And so where one can be very, not slow moving, but like more thoughtful in their decision-making may not be possible in another industry. And so every industry, every organization, I think needs to evaluate that those specific needs based on the impact that they're making. You know, if the impact is we're saving lives and this is time sensitive, how you get there is going to be very, very different from, let's say, perhaps a retail operation. Yeah. from, let's say, perhaps a retail operation. Yeah. And it strikes me that, you know, obviously we know that not everyone is a great fit for every job. So it's kind of, I think it probably has to be some kind of compromise, you know, between, you know, people within a relationship, within an organization to say, I'm willing to change my behaviors so that I can, you know, fit in this organization better, or, you know, maybe it's, I can't, and this isn't the right fit for me. What would you think? What do you think about that? You know, a lot of that has to do with feedback, you know, and I'm willing to bet that Brenda, if this behavior has been going on for a while, I would ask Brenda, what's keeping her from giving Mac some really hard feedback? Yeah. You know, most people don't like giving negative feedback, but I really, I mean, I... /episode/index/show/2351f999-02cb-4568-ab77-a59f33bb3fd3/id/30874173

Why Your Inclusive Policies Fail—And How to Fix Them with LiveWorkPlay 04/17/2024

Why Your Inclusive Policies Fail—And How to Fix Them with LiveWorkPlay In today's episode, we're joined by Jen Broad and Laura Lobay, who work on the employment team for the charitable organization LiveWorkPlay. Founded in 1995, LiveWorkPlay's mission is to foster an environment where individuals with disabilities and autism can live, work and play as valued citizens. As employment inclusion specialists, Jen and Laura have extensive experience helping employers and managers create more accessible, equitable and supportive work communities. They'll share their insights on the key elements of building an inclusive organizational culture, providing reasonable accommodations, and empowering employees through disability awareness training and allyship.Tune in to learn practical tips and best practices that organizations can adopt to make their workplaces truly inclusive, where everyone can thrive. Whether you're a business leader, HR professional or simply interested in promoting greater inclusion, this episode is sure to provide valuable takeaways.Join us as we explore the transformative power of workplace inclusion with the experts from LiveWorkPlay - Jen Broad and Laura Lobay. Website URL: LinkedIn Profiles: [Script] How to really take those thoughts, those intentions, and make them more actionable and really see results within their organization. Can you explain to me what's going on? What's your process? Why is this happening? And then maybe there's something going on within the process for that person that then you can adjust and then help make things better. And, you know, nine times out of 10, you're not going to get an individual who maybe feels comfortable saying that in that situation. And if you do have a candidate that feels comfortable, you as a manager, are you able to then implement that accommodation? Welcome to the show, Jennifer. Sorry, I'll try that again. Welcome to the show, Jennifer and Laura. Hi, thanks for having me. Inclusive Tech, a fictional company with a real problem, is forward-thinking and prides itself on its core value of inclusion. The company has made concerted efforts to create a diverse workforce with a particular focus on hiring team members with disabilities. However, despite their best intentions, Inclusive Tech has encountered challenges in ensuring that all employees, especially those with disabilities, can thrive in the workplace, Joshua, the HR director, noticed an increasing number of concerns being raised by employees with disabilities regarding accessibility and accommodation. They've expressed that while the company's policies are inclusive on paper, the practical implementation often falls short. Some employees feel their specific needs are not fully understood or met, leading to a sense of isolation and hindered performance. Joshua is determined to address these issues, and he's decided to engage the team who's helped him recruit these team members with disabilities. Laura Lobey and Jen Broad work on the employment team for a charitable organization, Live Work Play. Live Work Play was established in 1995. Their mission is to help the community welcome and include individuals with intellectual disabilities and autistic persons to live, work, and play as valued citizens. Laura and Jen are part of the team of inclusion specialists who work with employers in the private sector, everything from small family businesses to major corporations. They help bring job seekers and employers together and support owners and managers to build their own capacity for workplace inclusion. Welcome to the show. Thanks for having us. So great to be here. Okay, well, I'd love to just take a very quick minute before we dive into our case study. Now, I would like to ask you guys why you love your jobs. Oh, do you have enough time for that on the podcast? Inclusivity is something that I've always been really passionate about. And I love customer service as well. And so for me, in my role, I get to incorporate those two things on an everyday basis. I also love sort of like problem solving and and helping people sort of feel seen and valued. And so for me, this is just, I find it really fun and engaging and really impactful at the end of the day. Awesome. Laura, how about you? Yeah, sort of very similar to Jen. I just really, I love working with managers. I love working in the community and really helping to build that capacity within the community. As someone who has struggled with employment in the past and having, you know, finding that successful path, I love now being able to work with employers and really help them to build that capacity and build a more inclusive environment and just help everyone to be more successful. That's amazing. And like such valuable work too. So I'm curious, what, what are your first impressions of this case study that we presented? So I think it's pretty typical with a lot of organizations really recognizing that there are some changes or, you know, they've done a really good job thoughts, those intentions, and make them more actionable and really see results within their organization. And so this is not something that you haven't seen before, probably. No, this is definitely a pretty, pretty realistic kind of thing that we would be working with in our everyday, our everyday work for sure. Awesome. And so if this was one of your clients, you know, how would you respond to help them start to identify the root cause of these issues? Yeah, I think step number one is always for businesses and organizations to realize, okay, something needs to happen here, we need to, we need to approach this a bit differently. And I think there's a lot of good intention here. And a lot of companies really focus on trying to find ways to make things more fair in their organization. And for a lot of organizations, and for a long time, fair meant equal. And that's really not the case. So we really need to shift from looking at things from an, you know, from an equal perspective into a more equitable approach and perspective. And for our listeners, some people may be trying to visualize what that means. So I'll just try and paint a picture in your mind of when I'm when I'm referring equal and equitable, what that actually means. So we use this example a lot in our workplace where let's say you have four different individuals and they've got varying needs, varying abilities. Let's say maybe one is a toddler and one is, you know, varying heights and weights and sizes. And then you have someone who's got some mobility barriers, and you give them all the exact same bicycle, and you say get from point A to point B. And everyone is going to have a lot of challenges with that, because the bike is not suited for the needs. It's an equal platform for everybody. So that's what we mean when we're talking about equal opportunity. But then when we're talking about equitable opportunities or equitable approaches to things, we're taking a look at the individual and what skill sets they have, and then what supports or practices we need to put in place to help them get from point A to point B. So then you hand these individuals bicycles that have been tailor-made to allow them to give you that output or performance. And so when businesses are looking at their practices, their policies, they really need to start to shift to look at things in an equitable lens. And you know what that may look like from a business perspective is, you know, this is a tech company. And so maybe everything is online. But you may realize that while it's a tech company, there may need to be some accommodations put in place for that. So seeing where we can maybe start to put in some, you know, different application processes or hiring processes. The interview category is one that I really love to sort of blow up for people and really have them view it with a different lens. Because we're used to a very traditional interview where, you know, you and I are sitting at a table and there's papers and managers who are hiring are typically frantically writing down answers. And, but maybe that person who's really good in the tech world has really struggles with that, you know, interpersonal communication or even being able to formulate their thoughts on the spot. So, you know, maybe, maybe you can offer different approaches to the interview system. Maybe it's, you know, you're providing the candidate. I can provide you with questions ahead of time. You can choose your platform of interview. It can be, you know, a walk and talk, but, you know, having some, some different approaches for people. And, you know, the only sort of cautionary tale with that is, you need to make sure that you are providing those opportunities for accommodations before you get to the interview. Because so many times, again, and this is that, you know, it's on paper, but is it in practice when a manager sits down and the first question is, do you require an accommodation for this interview? And, you know, nine times out of 10, you're not going to get an individual who maybe feels comfortable saying that in that situation. And if you do have a candidate that feels comfortable, you as a manager, are you able to then implement that accommodation? And that really shows a lot about the organization and goes along to building the trust. So I think the biggest way to get to the root of the problems is really starting to shift from equal to equitable when you're looking at your practices. Okay. Is that something that employers you work with typically come to you with an understanding of? Or is that something you often have to educate them on? I think it's something that we often have to sort of go through a bit of an exercise as well, because again, there's just been this real narrative that equal is fair. And so it's really trying to get through that and have people see how a more tailored person-centered approach is really going to help with their practices. That makes a lot of sense. So I'm curious about how would you know if there's a challenge? You know, once you've placed someone in a role, how do you deliver, how do you build a continuous improvement process or support your client in building that like feedback mechanism? So you know if things are working or if things need to be adopted. So I think really just, you know, taking that person-centered approach and really working with the person. One thing I often recommend to managers is having regular check-ins with your employees that aren't about necessarily giving feedback, you know, to the person. Let them give feedback to you, you know, have a dialogue, like just a real dialogue about what's going on in work, what's working for you, how are things going? What's not working? What can we improve on? How can we change or streamline our processes to have this fit better for you and just have like an ongoing conversation with the person? I think that's really a helpful way to sort of approach things and to identify challenges sort of before they happen, even, you know, like if you're having these ongoing conversations and you're just sort of regularly checking in and, you know, how are things going as things come up, you're building trust with the employee. And then the employee is going to be able to be like, hey, you know, maybe this isn't working, but can we do this a little bit differently? And bringing them into the conversation like that so they have a lot of agency and how to do things in their job as well, I think is super important. Okay, cool. For a company like Inclusive Tech, would you recommend something like an accessibility audit? And if yes like what are the best practices around that? Yeah I think anytime businesses can do a deep dive into that is always going to be beneficial and the important thing to remember is it needs to be a collaborative approach so we have we often reference the saying with not for. So making sure that you are including the employees along the journey with you. Because, you know, within your organization, you may have someone that has already disclosed that there's accommodations that are needed. And you know about that one. And so you're going to be able to really easily pinpoint, you know, where the deficits are there that you'll need to make accommodations for. But you're also going to have individuals where maybe they have episodic disabilities that come up, you know, once a week, once every couple of months that you don't know about. And you're absolutely going to have people who have disabilities who have not disclosed that in the workplace. So inviting a broad range of your employees to participate this and sit around the table because accessibility really looks different for everybody. So having that broad perspective is going to be super important. And then you can start to do a deep dive, you know, into, you know, the very physical surroundings of your work, but then you look at to do a deep dive, you know, into, you know, the very physical surroundings of your work. But then you look at your other platforms, like your website, you know, how accessible is it, your hiring practices, your training practices, your onboarding and orientation. We see a lot of very similar platforms in that. And in that process, you know, it's kind of a one-stop shop, but is that working for everybody? So really looking into that. Another area that organizations don't always think about in this sort of thing is, you know, what do outside of workplace gatherings look like? So are you going out for dinner? Are you doing a team building somewhere? So taking a look at that to making sure that, you know, where you're going as a company are still accessible. So taking a look at that and making sure. And I think approaching with curiosity and excitement around this because it should be a really exciting thing for businesses to sit down and say, I want to create a more inclusive environment. But there can be this, you know, negative connotation of a burden, or I have to do this, where, you know, one, businesses should just want to do it, because it is the right thing to do. But if we're trying to encourage businesses, there's also a strong business case for it, so customers seek out employers where there's representation present, where they really sort of walk the walk. And employees will stay around for longer in organizations and that reduces training costs and turnovers. So there's a huge amount of benefits to sort of doing a deep dive like this with your organization. But how you approach it is really going to tell your employees your stake in it. So if you approach it with curiosity, excitement, include them in on the journey, then that's when you really start to have inclusivity be woven into the fabric of your culture and your organization, as opposed to, you know, I'm ticking a box, I'm doing an accessibility audit, because it's what I'm supposed to be doing. But when you start to really integrate that, and how you approach it is when you start to really see the long lasting changes within your organization. I'm just thinking, like, as you were talking, it came to mind that like, you know, there's lots of folks who are either leaders or owners of small businesses who are listening to this podcast. And, you know, I, when I think accessibility audit, and some of the things that you mentioned, I'm thinking like, to Ching, you know, like, this is going to be expensive. How, you know, how can we make this as financially accessible as possible for people to start the process and continue the process? Yeah, I absolutely see how that could be a bit daunting. As a sort of statistic, an accommodation within the workplace, ballpark around $500. And that's sort of across the board. But you know, taking time to talk to your individuals and doesn't cost anything. And a lot of these changes could just be attitudinal changes to the workplace. They could be shifting work schedules. They could be changing a light bulb to make it a little more sort of like dimmer and not as bright or impacts, you know, headaches. So a lot of these things can be super small changes that are really going to make a big impact. And again, it's, you know, you're not going to be able to make all these changes overnight. So recognizing that, recognizing that mistakes are going to happen along the way, and that's part of the journey and part of the learning process. But I think if your employees see that there's a commitment to these changes, they can help facilitate these as well. So there may be ones that cost more. Absolutely. That is part of the equation. But a lot of these things can be sort of attitudinal approaches to accommodations in the workplace. Awesome. So I guess for the folks out there, you do not have to hire a consultant. You can just ask questions. Are there any specific questions that you could recommend, you know, like as a starting point? I think having people sort of, you know, what would your ideal workplace look like? What would your ideal training platform look like? If you could change, you know, one thing about your office or your setup, what would it be? They don't have to be super groundbreaking questions. And I think Laura touched on this a lot of, a lot of it is the trust building with your employee, encouraging them because it's not up to you necessarily to come up with all of these ideas. And that's the other thing, if you have employee engagement, come up with all of these ideas. And that's the other thing, if you have employee engagement, we always try and make sure that the individuals that they work with are their own best advocate of the accommodations that they need. And so utilizing their skill set along the process can really help. But those really just kind of prodding questions about what would make your workplace overall better. Even like, has there ever been a situation that, you know, has really been uncomfortable for you or has really been a struggle or a challenge in your workplace? All those conversations can really lead to some great discussions around accessibility. Right. So I feel like a lot of employers, performance management is always a tough topic for employers. Everyone hates it already, you know, let alone when you're, you're, you know, as the business owner, you do need a level of performance from your team and you want to be sensitive, right? Especially to people who have certain types of disabilities. What are your recommendations around that? So I think really taking a collaborative approach with your employees, if you're doing these regular check-ins, like we mentioned earlier, building that trust and really having an ongoing conversation, then when things come up or you need to address issues with performance management, then it makes it a little bit easier, because you've built that relationship. And you've sort of built that trust with the person. I think, yeah, just keeping it as an ongoing conversation, asking questions with people and approaching things with curiosity as well, like Jen said earlier, you know, what you were seeing this happen, can you explain to me what's going on? What's your process? Why is this happening? And then maybe there's something going on within the process for that person that then you can adjust and then help make things better. But everyone has sort of, you know, different ways to get places, you know, we have different routes, but we all have different output capacities as well. So you just sort of looking at that, really approaching things with curiosity and with an open mindset and building that trust with your employee, I think is really important. But also at the end of the day, everyone is accountable for what their goals are as well. So holding that accountability is also really important. But I think it's the thing is, is how do you get there and how can you adjust how you get there and then still holding... /episode/index/show/2351f999-02cb-4568-ab77-a59f33bb3fd3/id/30781938

Gen Z Wake-Up Call: The Fight for Flexibility and Growth 04/10/2024

Well, hello again. Welcome to Season 02. 04/03/2024

Well, hello again. Welcome to Season 02. If you're a business owner and a business leader, and you're listening to this right now, I want to know what you want to hear. Welcome to Weirdos in the Workplace, the podcast that celebrates authenticity, transparency, passion, and purpose in our world of work. I'm your host, Erin Patchell, and welcome to Season 2. For those of us who are continuing this journey from season one, thank you. If you're brand new here, welcome. My name is Erin Patchell. I am the founder of a company called Positivist Group, which is a management consultancy based in the Ottawa Valley in Canada. I'm also, obviously, the host of Where It Is In The Workplace, and I'm the co-founder of a technology startup called The Trained to Help Project, trainedtohelp.com. But Weirdos in the workplace. This is where we are today. And there's a good reason why our values are authenticity, transparency, passion, and purpose. So for the folks who are just joining us now, it's important to me because I was always a bit of an outcast. I was a rebel. I was a little bit of an outsider growing up. It took me a long time to figure out how to love myself and hone my strengths and my abilities into something that was valuable for the world and to unlearn how to be a loner and build community around me and people around me to help me and help others, help me help others to succeed in life. That's what I'm doing now. It is a journey. I am not done. I feel like I'm actually just at the beginning of this, but I love that you're joining with me on this journey. I'm a professional problem solver. That's what I call myself. One of the reasons I call myself that is because I feel like I never know what I'm doing. That also pertains to this podcast. Season 2, we do have a bit of a plan, believe it or not. We have 45 episodes. There will be 45 episodes similar to Season 1. I am actually only going to be doing five solo podcasts this year because what we want to do is invite more people on the podcast to share the amazing work that they do. Every single person that we're inviting on the podcast this year has something, a special solution, a unique way of thinking and a unique solution to a real problem in the world. Just a sneak peek, we're talking to Lydia DiFrancesco, who's a corporate wellness specialist and expert speaker. We're talking about a real relevant problem in corporate wellness, which is burnout. Talking to Lisa Strangway about how small businesses can revitalize their online brand. What happens when your brand is a little bit stale? You haven't been evolving with the times. And boy, oh, boy, are the times changing so fast. We're talking to Jen Broad and Laura Lobe from a company called Live Work Play. It's a nonprofit charitable organization in Ottawa, and they work with people with disabilities to support them to get jobs. And then they work with the employers to help the employers learn how to build a better workplace for everyone, not just people with disabilities. We're talking to Lauren Sheil about succession planning. What happens when you want to transfer your business or you're thinking about, maybe it's your father, maybe it's your grandfather, maybe it's you that is aging and wants to retire. My goodness, you have a generational business, perhaps a family business, and you want to pass that on to the next generation. What are some of the things that you need to think about there? We're talking to Tina Collins, who's an amazing executive coach, and she is supporting us in understanding what to do when your star employee has become a little bit toxic. What can you do? Do you terminate them? Do you fire them? What can you do to help them understand what the challenges are and help them evolve out of that? Then we're talking to Peter Georgariou, who is an amazing entrepreneur in Ottawa in the marketing and change space. He's talking about redefining value, your value proposition. How do you get to where you are right now, today as a company, to where you want to be in the future? Peter has a really interesting spin on it because he really works with impactful businesses, businesses who have really big social, environmental, or governance goals. We have Sydney Elaine Butler, who is an amazing neurodiversity advocate, building neuroinclusive spaces. We're talking about the challenges on a hybrid, working from home, working from the office. How do you go about building an inclusive environment that respects the way everyone needs to work? We have so many amazing guests coming on the podcast this year, and still some to plan. We've done several recordings. We've recorded over 10 episodes at this point of the season. We haven't even started the season yet, so that's exciting. We have many, many to go. We're going to be sharing lots of interesting content over the next nine months that we're together. The podcast is going to drop same as always, every Wednesday morning, every week. You'll be able to get that on YouTube, on Spotify, Apple Music, iHeart, podcast, wherever you get your podcast. The season is really This season is really all about learning how to learn faster and solving problems quickly. There's a lot of problems in the world right now. I think we all feel it. I know I feel it. There seems to be an overwhelming, almost like an impending sense of doom is what a lot of people, how a lot of people are describing it. If you're feeling an overwhelming, impending sense of doom, know that you're not alone. You are far from alone. I'm certainly one of those people as well. I'm very good at keeping everything in perspective and focusing on the positivist, but also thinking about, I think about things very scientifically. I like to think about research and statistics, and it helps me ground myself. But there's this something in the background going on, even though that is all true about me, maybe about you, too. Even though we're trying to keep everything in perspective, there's still something that we're sensing. There's something we're sensing, and we're all sensing this. There's a lot of patterns that are challenging right now, that are challenging us in the world at different levels. At the global international level, there's a lot of patterns. There's lots of patterns at the national level or the In North America. There's political shifts happening. There's economic shifts happening. It's a very interesting time. A lot of people are leaving their jobs. Something is stick to stick. I heard the The other day, something like, it was like 85% of employees are looking to... They're looking. They're just looking for jobs. People are constantly looking for new opportunities right now. It's a little tight. Money is a little tight for people. I think there's some people that are in trouble, for sure. There's always some people that are in trouble. But I think even people that are used to being all okay are feeling a little bit of a crunch. It's not about reacting, it's really about responding. So thinking about how to make smarter decisions. And that is literally why we are doing what we're doing this season and bringing 40 people with very diverse backgrounds onto the podcast so that we can provide you with interesting solutions or different ways to think about specific problems. Within the learning and development in space, we call this vertical development. So we're looking to build context. We're not helping you build skills, we're helping you build context. So connecting the dots and seeing the patterns and Building what we call a mind map, a map of the information that you have in your head that you can use to make decisions, to pull in quickly in order to make faster decisions. So there's a lot of common problems that businesses are having right now and that people are having right now. It doesn't even matter what age you are. Although I think that a lot of folks who listen to this podcast do tend to be on the younger side Often, millennials and Gen Zs, Gen Zs and millennials who either own businesses or want to own a business someday. It's a real or maybe very soon in the future is a goal, and often neurodivergent in way. You identify with being a rebel, being a little bit of a weirdo. So, weirdos and rebel-rousers, unite. We're going to help you through the podcast, through the mentorship that we'll get from these amazing folks who are coming on the podcast, we're going to give you our wisdom, and hopefully maybe give me their wisdom, too, because I'm always looking for wisdom. Maybe they can lend me some of their confidence, I hope. Confidence that we're going to get through this, and we will. Most days I feel very confident that things are going to improve, but even sometimes I need to borrow a little bit of that confidence from somebody else. So let's lean on each other. If you're a business owner and a business leader, and you're listening to this right now, I want to know what you want to hear. There's still lots of time to give me feedback check so that I can know exactly what problems you need solved. So send me an email at erin@positivist. Ca, or hit me up on any of those social media platforms, LinkedIn, Facebook, Instagram, although I'm really bad at checking Instagram, so maybe not there. I will definitely respond, and we'll have a good chat, hopefully. But I want to hear what the problems are. What are you struggling right now? What are you sensing? What are you feeling? What have you identified? Let's talk about that. For anyone who wants to become part of the podcast, if you are a professional problem solver and you consider yourself a subject at our expert in some way, I'd love to hear from you and see if there's some synergy. So hit me up. Linkedin is probably the best. Linkedin.com/in/erin-patchell, E-R-I-N-P-A-T-C-H-E-L-L. Whenever I'm I'm feeling a little bit unsettled, a little bit ungrounded, a little worried, a little bit sensing that there's something off about the universe. The book that I usually go to is The Tao Te Ching, which is… this is the Steven Mitchell version, but I'm going to read verse 45 for you. True perfection seems imperfect, yet it is perfectly itself. True fullness seems empty, yet it is fully present. True straightness seems crooked. True wisdom seems foolish. True art seems artless. The master allows things to happen. She shapes events as they come. She steps out of the way and lets the now speak for itself. I'm so curious to see what this year holds, and I'd love for you to follow along with us, and I want to follow along with you, so reach out. In the meantime, don't forget to stay weird, stay and don't stay out of trouble. Visit us at positivist.ca and trainedtohelp.com. /episode/index/show/2351f999-02cb-4568-ab77-a59f33bb3fd3/id/30660263

Weirdos In the Workplace

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