So, Here's My Story... - TopPodcast.com

Latest Episodes:

Ep208: Apologies Per Hour Jun 15, 2021

Show notes

This is a rant about a bad experience at the bank, but it also ends up being an important lesson about a metric you’ve probably never heard about: apologies per hour.

Why is that important for business?

An interesting metric for a business to consider is how many apologies your people are issuing per hour. If you have that many apologies to make, then there’s a big problem. It’s demoralizing for your team, and probably indicates you have prioritized something else over customer care.

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Ep207: On(board)gaming Jun 08, 2021

Show notes

Learning a new board game can be frustrating – it’s a lot of information to learn without any real context. And it might also reveal a lot about things in your business, like onboarding staff.

Why is that important for business?

Just as it is with learning how to do a new job, learning a new board game can mean a lot of new information that doesn’t have a lot of contextual meaning. But what if you change how you learn a new board game – a brief summary of the rules and goals of the game, and then an open round or hand where you can talk through strategy and decisions to help everyone understand the game better, before you play “for real”?

Or is there more value in jumping in immediately to play, and learning through the process of failure?

Some of this depends on learning styles, but the universal truth is that people can only take in so much information when they don’t have context of where to put it or why it matters. This is often revealed in the questions they ask: those questions often show how much they understand or misunderstand about the point or context. Ultimately, there are limitations to how much you can do in advance and how much you have to learn by doing.

And even if you have the most logical, well thought out onboarding process, it is not necessarily going to be accepted. Just as people can be resistant to a way of learning a board game they are unfamiliar with, new hires can be resistant to a way of training. And the reason they don’t accept it doesn’t have to be rooted in logic. Leaders must figure out if they are more attached to things being done a certain way or adjusting the learning as needed.

What story do you want to tell?

So, that's our story... now, we want to hear yours!

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OR...

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Connect with @SHMSpodcast on Twitter: https://twitter.com/shmspodcast

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Ep206: Country Clubs & Company Culture Jun 01, 2021

Show notes

When you get a chance to be among random groups of strangers, it can quickly become clear that there are always commonalities that bind us. And we can learn a lot about company culture by observing our common needs and behaviors.

Why is that important for business?

Experiencing the commonality of what everyone is going through can be very reassuring. It’s also what makes up company culture. Culture isn’t organized, catalyzed or sparked by a mission statement or a team building meeting. Culture is what happens in the interstitial moments of shared experiences.

And sometimes, in certain moments, what is required of leaders is not an overarching strategy, but simply about taking charge and finding certainty in that moment.

Figuring out how you are going to navigate the new rules of business post-COVID is going to be like going through a drawer in your house: you have to take it all out and decide if it matters and why it matters, and decide what goes back in. You need to ask yourself if you are actually solving the problems that you have, or if you are creating rules for rules’ sake.

What story do you want to tell?

So, that's our story... now, we want to hear yours!

Pull up a chair and join the conversation in our Facebook Group: bit.ly/shmsgroup

OR...

Shoot us an email: talktous@soheresmystory.com

Connect with @SHMSpodcast on Twitter: https://twitter.com/shmspodcast

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Ep205: Leadership & Responsibility During COVID May 25, 2021

Show notes

Leadership means making decisions for your company and everyone in it. And sometimes, especially when it comes to things like COVID and health, those decisions are extra challenging.

Why is that important for business?

When it comes to coming back to the office, there are more variables than ever to consider – who can work remotely, do you wear masks, is everyone vaccinated are just some of the more complicated problems leaders are dealing with right now.

When you are in charge of a large group of individuals, everything gets exponentially challenging.

You might be used to the thick skin necessary to brook dissension for unpopular decisions, but it’s harder to do this when the ramifications are about other people’s health, not just having a great quarter.

Right now, leaders have a heightened responsibility to check in with the pieces of your perspective and make sure they are built on a solid foundation. We need to be incredibly clear on the metrics we are using.

What story do you want to tell?

So, that's our story... now, we want to hear yours!

Pull up a chair and join the conversation in our Facebook Group: bit.ly/shmsgroup

OR...

Shoot us an email: talktous@soheresmystory.com

Connect with @SHMSpodcast on Twitter: https://twitter.com/shmspodcast

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Ep204: Pastries and Perseverance May 18, 2021

Show notes

What can we learn from a software used to ring up pastries, that ends up helping with cancer treatment? If this episode is any indication, a lot.

Why is that important for business?

In Tokyo, a pastry shop in a train station wanted to make it easier to ring up pastries without packaging. And it led to a big development in cancer treatment (you can read the story here).

So what can we learn from this?

There are lessons about perseverance. About connecting your people, culture, and company to something important. How having a sense a your work “mattering” can help with engagement. And how you can choose to connect to something that matters, even if you aren’t doing something that seems to deeply matter – as the Talmud says, “whoever saves a single life is considered by scripture to have saved the whole world.” You can still connect to a larger mission, even if you aren’t fulfilling your dreams. You just have to look at individual impact and think of ways to make things better just because you were there.

We imagine culture exists only on the macro level, but it is stitched together by the pieces of culture at the micro level.

What story do you want to tell?

So, that's our story... now, we want to hear yours!

Pull up a chair and join the conversation in our Facebook Group: bit.ly/shmsgroup

OR...

Shoot us an email: talktous@soheresmystory.com

Connect with @SHMSpodcast on Twitter: https://twitter.com/shmspodcast

Text the word STORY to 345345 to get access to bonus content and weekly episode delivery.

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Ep203: The Sombrero on the Wall May 11, 2021

Show notes

Have you ever thought you nailed an interview – maybe even had a standing ovation-level interview – but still ended up in second place? Maybe went out and celebrated and got yourself a giant celebratory hat? Let’s talk about that hat, and what it symbolizes.

Why is that important for business?

There is a critical excitement you feel at the beginning of a journey whose end is uncertain. Everyone is susceptible to that energy and even need to feed off of it sometimes. As an entrepreneur, you have to – to some degree - get excited about the chicken counting process. No, you shouldn’t base your psychological wellbeing on those unhatched chickens, but you can’t thrive in business without forecasting incredible futures from this thing you are labouring so hard to create. You have to put yourself out there.

Complacency takes energy out of the system. You have to know your hearts at risk and might get dashed against the rocks - there’s no other way to go about it.

What story do you want to tell?

So, that's our story... now, we want to hear yours!

Pull up a chair and join the conversation in our Facebook Group: bit.ly/shmsgroup

OR...

Shoot us an email: talktous@soheresmystory.com

Connect with @SHMSpodcast on Twitter: https://twitter.com/shmspodcast

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Ep202: Never-Ending Not Change May 04, 2021

Show notes

You can learn a lot about how to handle change (and seemingly never-ending not change) by taking two 20-hour train rides. Or you can just listen to Jodi’s story instead.

Why is that important for business?

Things feel like they are on the cusp of some sort of return to “normalcy”, in business and in life (as we talked about in episode 199, The Next New Normal). And we all have to sort through the stack of things that have changed because of COVID and consider what we are excited to bring back (and can); what we are excited to bring back (and can’t), and the buckets of things that we are now realizing we don’t want to bring back.

As we consider this next shift, it can help to give yourself a longer runway – having something to look forward to but keeping it far enough in the distance that you have time to prepare. And maintain compassion for yourself and others and avoid judging who is farther along on the track of normality.

What story do you want to tell?

So, that's our story... now, we want to hear yours!

Pull up a chair and join the conversation in our Facebook Group: bit.ly/shmsgroup

OR...

Shoot us an email: talktous@soheresmystory.com

Connect with @SHMSpodcast on Twitter: https://twitter.com/shmspodcast

Text the word STORY to 345345 to get access to bonus content and weekly episode delivery.

Text 410-632-6894 to start a conversation with us.

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Ep201: The Importance of Culture Apr 27, 2021

Show notes

Ever struggle between what’s best for your client, and what’s best for the culture of your organization? Both are critical to your long-term success, so let’s talk about how to navigate those decisions.

Why is that important for business?

In your business, you have to take the long view. Culture works on trust, and if you allow bad behaviour among your team, you can be indicating that clients are more important than culture.

As a leader, this is the balance you have to navigate. You are balancing a three-legged stool - competency of service, fiscal responsibility, and culture – and all are equally important. You can’t short-change any of the legs or the stool won’t stand up for long.

Part of this is controlling emotional responses. If you want to be a leader, you have to learn to manage your emotional reactions to other people.

And, at the same time, you can’t exist in a pressure cooker without a release valve. You need to be able to communicate, either directly or to a third-party, about inevitable conflict.

What story do you want to tell?

So, that's our story... now, we want to hear yours!

Pull up a chair and join the conversation in our Facebook Group: bit.ly/shmsgroup

OR...

Shoot us an email: talktous@soheresmystory.com

Connect with @SHMSpodcast on Twitter: https://twitter.com/shmspodcast

Text the word STORY to 345345 to get access to bonus content and weekly episode delivery.

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Ep200: Business Lessons from Scammers Apr 20, 2021

Show notes

Have you ever thought about a scammer, “you are very bad at your job?” What if, instead, it’s an issue of leadership at Scam Headquarters? What if scammers could use business coaches too?

Why is that important for business?

A scam is essentially a business, and because of this, flawed leadership and personnel issues can plague them just as they can your business. Some even have customer service lines to help you process your extortion payments or send fruit baskets for participating. So, if a company running a scam can learn about business, what can we learn about business from a company running a scam?

Giving your employees directives can be helpful in getting them to do exactly what you want. But if they don’t understand the larger picture – if they don’t have general guidelines to create an internal GPS of what their job is – they won’t know how to react to situations or come up with solutions on their own.

In our 2nd episode, we talked about the importance of making things easy. And while confused minds say no, creating confusion can also benefit a scam. But one thing must never be confused – you cannot be confusing about the path you want people to walk. There must be one clear door out.

While we don’t want to give advice on how to scam better, there is something about business we can all learn from companies that scam.

What story do you want to tell?

So, that's our story... now, we want to hear yours!

Pull up a chair and join the conversation in our Facebook Group: bit.ly/shmsgroup

OR...

Shoot us an email: talktous@soheresmystory.com

Connect with @SHMSpodcast on Twitter: https://twitter.com/shmspodcast

Text the word STORY to 345345 to get access to bonus content and weekly episode delivery.

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Ep199: The Next New Normal Apr 13, 2021

Show notes

What are you excited to return to, post-pandemic, and what parts do you plan to bring into your “new normal”? Sometimes, a meme can spark some really interesting conversations.

Why is that important for business?

We didn’t get a lot of choice when this pandemic hit – we had to adapt, and we had to adapt fast. And now, as it finally feels like we might get some semblance of “normal” back, there are a lot of things we are excited about doing again. But there are also things we have experienced from the pandemic that we want to hold onto. And we need to start thinking about those things now.

We are going to be experiencing a next new “normal” and we need to consciously consider how navigate it and negotiate for what we want. If we don’t ask these questions and get clarity now, we’re all going to accidentally go back to a reality that we might not actually want.

We need to acknowledge the legitimacy of all the ways people have been making it work and look for intersection points in our business where it also works for us (instead of making people build their way of doing things around your business’ structure.)

But this isn’t a one-shot deal on conversation. We all have the capacity to help design this next normal and help surface the things that were easily glossed over before.

What story do you want to tell?

So, that's our story... now, we want to hear yours!

Pull up a chair and join the conversation in our Facebook Group: bit.ly/shmsgroup

OR...

Shoot us an email: talktous@soheresmystory.com

Connect with @SHMSpodcast on Twitter: https://twitter.com/shmspodcast

Text the word STORY to 345345 to get access to bonus content and weekly episode delivery.

Want to support us?

Love this podcast?

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