So, Here's My Story...

It’s our final episode, and we have a lot to say, including thank you so much for listening! Why is that important for business?  We are sad (and grateful and excited and…) to announce this is our final episode. As we reminisce about some of our favourite memories – including our live event and the Stalking Face Cake – we also want to impart some final lessons from our decision to end the podcast here. And obviously, we want to thank everyone for listening and supporting us since we started this podcast.  It is our testament to having faith and trusting that if something is real to us, it will resonate with the right people. And like works of art, sometimes you have to say: “this canvas is complete”. There is an assumption sometimes that keeping going is inherently better than ending a thing. But stories can’t go on forever.  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 e

Is your business in a rut? Is everyone showing up with “Non-Player Characters” energy? When you have an Organizational Depressive State, it can be hard to get out of it – or can it be as simple as one person, one change? Let’s discuss! Why is that important for business?  When you walk into a business and feel like your life force begins to immediately drain – like everyone is walking around with NPC (Non-Player Character) energy, it can feel like it’s impossible (or at least exhausting) to fix. But if just one person showed up with different energy, would that reset the tone? For someone to change things, they have to first notice they are being a Non-Player Character, and they have to care enough to make that change, which is part of the problem. It can feel like an Organizational Depressive State. Of course, positive energy can be sucked out of someone by an organization stuck in a rut as well. If someone comes in with positive energy, there’s a race to see whether that person’s energy makes positive chang

How do you strike the balance between keeping things that you might not ever need, and getting rid of things that you might regret not having? Why is that important for business?  Having exactly what you need but nothing extra is a Nirvana that few can ever attain.  It might show up in the amount of stuff you have, in your processes, or even in your systems.  Even space can be hoarded – there is something about having more space that is associated with success, and something about downsizing (or right-sizing) space that feels like going backwards.  There is a trap of equating quantity of value and worrying you won’t have when you eventually need it. How do you decide what you keep and what you can get by without, and when does not having it become more of a problem than having it around? Perhaps we need a spring cleaning in business, not just for our stuff, but for the processes and systems we have.  What story do you want to tell? So, that's our story... now, we want to hear yours! Pull up a chair and join t

Do you expect to be heard? Or do you just assume that how things are is how they have to be? Why is that important for business?  Do you have a say or a voice? Do you expect to be heard? If your whole experience in life is being heard, then it is more likely that is your expectation. If you are systematically and systemically overlooked, it doesn’t build the confidence to speak with authority about things.  Where can you start using your voice where you currently think you have no power? How do you start acting as if you have the authority? 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.  Want to support us? Love this podcast? Plea

Like all good lessons about asking for what you need in business, this lesson starts in a massage parlor.  Why is that important for business?  You need to be aware of your needs (in business and in life) and communicate them effectively. Sometimes, when you are staring at a blank page, you just need to figure out what the first sentence should be and start from there.  There is nothing about work and leading that doesn’t involve identifying what is needed and asking for what is needed.  In the book, Adult Children of Emotionally Immature Parents, we learn there are internalizers and externalizers. A lot of conflict in teams comes down to friction between internalizers (non-direct communicators) and externalizers (more direct).  A lot of conflict in teams comes down to the friction between internalizers and externalizers (or direct and indirect people) and how they handle things.  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 o

When you find out you are riding with the descendent of a nationally acclaimed blind wrestler, you know you’re in for some stories. And it turns out, we can turn those stories into some business lessons! Why is that important for business?  There are interesting challenges to being blind when pursuing a sport like wrestling – it can be harder to see what’s coming, but you become very skilled at dealing with what’s in front of you. An honest understanding of your strengths and weaknesses, whether it’s in sport or in business, can mean all the difference in how you perform.  There are also lessons to be learned in regards to hiring – what assumptions are you making about your needs – maybe in terms of education or experience – that aren’t actually necessary to find the best candidate. In either case, whether hiring someone or dealing with your own perceived weaknesses, you need confidence to see the path that isn’t obvious to everyone. When you can see further than other people can, it can be frustrating to be

We don't talk about endings enough, especially not ending things well, with as much celebration as we began them. And that is exactly what this episode is about. Why is that important for business?  Consider ending your business, or a product line, or even a relationship with a client or a team member – are you putting in the same effort to make a beautiful ending as you did when you started? Instead of ending by tapering off into a fizzling nothingness, celebrate everything that was; end with as much joy as you started with. Just because something is ending, doesn’t mean it was a failure; endings aren’t inherently bad. That is the belief that allows people to hold onto things they shouldn’t. In public speaking, there are two aspects of the talk of particular import: primacy and recency. Primacy is the first thing you say, and it is what will be remembered. But recency, the last thing you said, is equally as memorable. So when considering how you want to be remembered, or how you want your business to be reme

Whether it’s politics, sports or happy hour, sometimes your company culture can make others feel uncomfortable. At what point do you make changes to include people, and at what point is that watering down an important aspect of your culture? Why is that important for business?  In the office, sometimes cultures develop that can be polarizing. How do you handle it when new people come into conflict with the existing culture? How does diversity of thought and perspective reconcile with not wanting to break what works? There is a whole new social ritual happening now in offices, and it requires a new skill set of empathy.  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 410-632-6

Your company culture, a new board game, and all the ways they relate. Why is that important for business?  A new board game allows people to make choices that would benefit everyone. And more people were interested in taking that choice – to advance the game for everyone – instead of just progressing closer to the ultimate goal of winning. People who played the game chose collaboration over playing simply for the objective of winning. Which makes us think about company culture.   What are the other strategies and ways that you can create a company culture, realizing that your department can’t win at the expense of other people at the company? If you aren’t aware of this, you can easily accidentally incentivize the wrong behaviors.  It’s also important that the rules – of the game or the culture – not be arbitrary and make natural sense. This requires a full understanding of the “if-then” – it requires a lot of transparency.  Other resources mentioned Wingspan game: https://stonemaiergames.com/games/wingspan/

Culture – whether in your business or in your family – isn’t just established in big picture planning. It is established in the little decisions that you make all the time about what’s important to you in the moment.  Why is that important for business?  Sometimes in business, we make lists of our values and try to establish a culture around that. But often it is the small moments – where we have to make decisions about what really matters in that moment – that create culture. What you prioritize doesn’t always exist on a big sheet of paper somewhere, but it shows up in the little decisions you make.  If you don’t like your culture, look at those decisions. Look at what values they transmit. It is in those moments that you are accidentally or intentionally creating culture.  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 @SHMS

Feel like you’re languishing right now in these uncertain times? Let’s talk about reframing that experience a bit.  Why is that important for business?  There is a lot of uncertainty in the world and in business right now – lots of things are changing and many people feel unsettled and unmoored, or even like they are languishing.  A recent episode of Hidden Brain, featuring Anthony Burrow, focused on this experience: “A lot of the identity contingencies – the way in which we think of ourselves - are interwoven into the everyday life experiences, and so the school relationships, the work relationships, close family, friends, etc, when those things end or are coming to an end, you might start to wonder: “who am I? What am I going to do today?” Languishing isn’t just a description, a sort of wallowing or a float in a pool. It is an attempt to describe a whole set of affective emotional, behavioural circumstances of simply not feeling engaged in one’s life. There’s a sort of disconnection. And so if you are in t

There are a lot of logistics to consider in coming back to work, but one thing you might not be thinking about is the change to community. Does community still matter, and how will it look different in a post-COVID world? Why is that important for business?  There are ripple effects to this isolation. The next phase of business evolution, post-COVID, will look different in terms of building community, and it’s worth considering what that will look like. We have been talking policy, but we haven’t considered what else might be missing. And it maybe won’t feel as “community-ish” as it once did. It might require us to work harder and look farther or deeper to fulfill that connection need. And there may be things we got used to during isolation that we don’t want to give up in order to gain that community.  We may have been perfectly fine when we thought of quarantine as temporary. But when we realize we don’t know what “normal is going to be, it can be a bit more disconcerting. Things begin to feel more permanen

What if trying new things was like football training camp, and you had an audience – and even media – present while you were trying to figure things out? Wish you had time to practice something new in private instead? Maybe it’s not as simple as one or the other.  Why is that important for business?  To be successful in business, we need to give people the freedom to try and fail and evolve. And it would be nice to be able to do that in private. But there is also the danger that you can get stuck in a “getting ready to be ready” place. So how do you practice in a lower stakes environment that still matters enough so that you can evolve?  You are not going to be able to own your new skill until you experience it. No words that can replace the feeling of doing stuff. But you also need to discern where it’s time to graduate and up your game. As Ira Glass talks about in this video, you know what good is, but when you start, you are aware that you aren’t that. You have to play through that gap. If you don’t recogn

Ever have to muster the energy to do something you don’t want to do, but really should do? How do you change your energy? And how do you know when it’s a losing battle? Why is that important for business?  What do you do when things just are not working? How far do you push a lack of energy? Sometimes, when you have to make it work, changing your environment can totally shift your energy – it’s like layering other colours into the fabric.  You can also change the rules to match the energy - shuffle the deck for how you are going to accomplish the thing you can’t put off. Just start by asking, “what can I change about this?”  And sometimes, simply getting started helps, 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 c

REPLAY OF EPISODE 75: Audience Q&As can quickly devolve. Someone wants to share a story instead of a question; someone else wants to demonstrate their own expertise and “teach from the seats”. No one seems to know how to ask a succinct and relevant question and you can feel the frustration from the group. As the leader – whether it be in front of a large audience or just at your staff meetings – you must consider the impact of these contributions on the room, and your goals.  This episode is about being clear on your objective and helping everyone make the best contributions possible. It’s also a little bit about Jodi’s terrible poker face.   Why is that important for business?  There are people who are always going to answer, regardless of the question, with the answer they want to give. It can feel like they are not taking responsibility for the care and feeding of the group, nor considering the impact to the group.  As the leader, it is important to frame the rules of contribution before asking people

Have you ever found yourself saying “I’m going to regret this”, but doing it anyway? Let’s talk self-sabotage and the frustrating world of pregrets.  Why is that important for business?  Often, we think too much about the consequences of making a bad decision, and not nearly enough about the consequences of making no decision. The decisions made through indecision/lack of a decision have consequences that we often ignore – sometimes they set a precedent, or simply waste a lot of time and energy.  And then there’s the part of it that isn’t about the decision at all, but how you communicate the decision.  So why do we do this? Are we just broken, or is it a glitch in the human operating system? Some of it might be because we can fatigue the pre-frontal cortex, which assesses consequences and manages a lot of decision making. And then we find our Monday selves really hating our Friday selves.  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 convers

Opportunities, luck, and leaving room in your business life for what you actually enjoy – just a few of the things we need to talk about in this episode.  Why is that important for business?  “I skate to where the puck is going, not where it has been.” Wayne Gretzky Luck is not a cloud of magic that you walk into. Luck is opportunities realizing they are standing in the same room together. If you want to do something different than what you are doing, you have to let other people know that you are interested in a thing. Otherwise, that’s how ruts get created – you only dig into the stuff you have already been doing. The value of how much you enjoy something is wildly overlooked. “You are here to do what you can’t not do.” Lissa Boles.  Think of it like putting your taxicab light on. 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 wi

Can you build confidence directly, or do you have to come at it obliquely, through just being yourself? Let’s discuss. Why is that important for business?  People often think of confidence in terms of external validation, but if that’s the case, it can easily be cannibalized because you get worried how people will react. But what if the most confident thing you can do is just be you? This can look like put on a “CEO posture”, where you are filtering the perception of confidence through what you think people want to see vs being yourself and using your strengths. If you have to run confidence through a filter of the feedback you get, maybe it isn’t actually confidence.  When you look at it this way, you eliminate the fear of being good enough, because what you are going for is simply the truest expression of yourself. It isn’t about putting on blinders and doing what you want, but about not letting feedback or external opinions stop you from taking action.  Some things are obliquely arrived at – you can’t purs

Where does your responsibility to keep your employees end, and their responsibility to speak up start? Let’s sort that out in the next 20 minutes or so! Why is that important for business?  Trying to help an employee who seems unenthused find their spark for work can be important to help retain your staff. But maybe it’s not your job to fix something without even knowing if work is the problem.  Reading other people’s energy is a skillset, but at some point, you have to trust the person to communicate their own needs. If your spidey sense is going off, ask them. But you have to be able to trust what they do (or don’t) tell you. You have to let them handle their own business. Make it clear that you are available for the conversation, and then trust them to do with that what they want.  In the Blessing White Engagement Model, we see this often overlooked piece – role of the employee in their own engagement.  Like with parenting, it’s your job to expose them to things to see what lights a spark, but it is not yo

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.  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.  Want to support us? Love this podcast? Please tell your friends, post about us, or take a moment to