Skip to main content

Cultivating a Culture of Creativity

Why is Cultivating a Culture of Creativity in the workplace so important to success? Tina Dietz and creativity experts Dr. Minette Riordan and Katherine Torrini explore the benefits of letting your creative juices flow, how to encourage creativity among your employees, and how to overcome obstacles inhibiting your creativity.

Don't miss our Leaders' Discussion Guide for this episode below – perfect for your next team Lunch & Learn!

Cultivating a Culture of Creativity – Episode Highlights

  • Distinguish between creativity and innovation in the workplace and how they’re related (4:38)
  • Identify red flags that arise when creativity is not present in the workplace (7:58)
  • Discover why people hesitate in exploring creativity despite its benefits (9:44)
  • Find out how we can start to shift cultures in the workplace to allow for more creative thinking (13:07)
  • Figure out ways leaders can model the value of creativity in the workplace (15:56)
  • Learn about potential tiny creative acts you can do to get your creative juices flowing (27:26)

Full Transcript

Katherine Torrini

We value being right and knowing. And creativity is about not knowing and about not needing to be right. In fact, when I teach doodling to teams and executives, I actually pass out little stickers that say dare to suck.

Tina Dietz 

There's a drop of inspiration, a dash of creativity, plenty of communication, and there you have it, our executive elixir. This is Drink From The Well. Welcome, lovely leaders, to Drink From The Well. I'm your sorceress of strategy, Tina Dietz. Companies often fail to thrive because they don't keep up with an ever-changing marketplace. Fostering a workplace culture where creativity thrives not only prevents stagnation and encourages innovation, but also unlocks high productivity and workplace satisfaction. Today's episode also includes powerful visuals, so make sure you visit DrinkFromTheWellPodcast.com so you can soak those in along with all the links to resources mentioned today. 

And now to the data! A survey by IBM of more than 1500 chief executive officers showed a consensus. Creativity was ranked as the number one factor for future business success, above management, discipline, integrity, and even vision. One reason for this highest of rankings is that creative leaders are more comfortable with ambiguity. And I think one thing we can all agree on is that we're living in times where being comfortable with ambiguity is a huge advantage. As industries continue to evolve, business goals and priorities are changing with increased speed. 8 in 10 of those surveyed CEOs said they expect their industry to become significantly more complex, but fewer than half of those same 1500 CEOs are confident their organizations are equipped to deal with the transformation. Today on the show we're exploring the benefits and challenges of cultivating a culture of creativity in the workplace, along with sharing some wonderful ways of exploring and unlocking your own creativity on this wild adventure we call leadership.

I am very happy today to be sharing with you two of my wonderful colleagues who swim every day in the waters of creativity. And I've had the pleasure of working closely with both of our guests on different projects. Dr. Minette Riordan is an award-winning entrepreneur and creativity advocate. She is the creator of the Emerge method, a process of helping others map their purpose. Dr. Riordan is the author of three books, including her best seller, The Artful Marketer, with her mantra of “how hard could it be?” Dr. Minette believes when we're all working inside our creative genius, we can solve all the world's problems. I think I agree. 

Katherine Torrini is a creativity expert, visual strategist and innovation catalyst who has brought her visual magic to the likes of NASA, Dell, Coca-Cola, Chevron, AT&T, and Southwest Airlines. She makes the invisible visible during meetings and events through graphic recording, drawing real time mural-sized infographics that mesmerize viewers, activate creative problem solving, and unlock the wisdom of the room. And I can say, personally, I have been subject to that visual magic. So welcome, today, to both of you to Drink From The Well. 

Dr. Minette Riordan

Thanks for having us.

Katherine Torrini

My pleasure, wouldn't have missed it.

Tina Dietz  

Today, we're talking about creativity. And of course, everyone can tell from your introductions why you're here today. The first topic that I wanted to bring to our table today is why is creativity even important in the workplace? I mentioned some things earlier in the episode with some data and with some assertions that creativity is important for several reasons. But I really need to hear from you. Katherine, let's start with you today. Why do you think creativity is even important in the workplace?

Katherine Torrini

Well, what I like to say is that creativity is the core, it’s part of who we are as humans, and it's part of our ability to invent our future. And the heart of innovation is creativity. They're not exactly the same thing and it's important to know the difference. But you can't get to innovation unless you're thinking creatively. And the reason you need a culture of creativity is because there's a few tips and tricks to make creativity actually work and flow that are a bit contrary to how we run our regular normal adult business lives.

Tina Dietz 

And Minette, how would you like to bounce off of what Katherine is saying?

Dr. Minette Riordan

So I love what Katherine said. And I would add to that that creativity is vital right now in our rapidly, radically changing environment of technology. The thing that always sets humans apart is our creativity and our innate ability to problem solve, but also because creativity makes life more fun. And I think inside the workplace what's missing are some of the elements of play and fun that give people permission to fully be themselves and express their creative ideas.

Tina Dietz 

Yeah, let's dig down a little further into the idea of innovation and creativity. Katherine, you said that it's important to know the difference between the two even though they're tied together. Can you tell us more about that?

Katherine Torrini

Absolutely. I was just looking outside this morning at my beautiful oak tree in the backyard, which has recently dumped all its leaves and all its pollen, tons of bags and bags. Only one or two of the acorns that come from all that will become trees. And I would say that innovation is like that acorn. It is the creativity that ends up being useful and implementable, if you will. Creativity is the leaves and the pollen and the acorns. So you can't get to those few really innovative ideas if you don't have a place where you have lots and lots of creativity. So the innovation, I would say, is applied creativity. I'd love to hear Minette’s take on that as well.

Dr. Minette Riordan

No, I completely agree with that definition. And I love the analogy of the oak tree. But please don't mention pollen. I'm in the middle of pine trees that are about to burst into pollen right now. But no, I love that analogy. I think there's a lot of creativity that is imaginative, playful, and fun. It's not all useful. Yet, we have to be in that culture of getting used to just sharing the ideas, whether they're going to go anywhere or not. And then innovation is the piece for me that helps us decide, is it implementable? And can there be an action plan built around it? But we put way too much emphasis on innovation first and not enough on creativity, which I think is a different way of saying maybe what Katherine was saying that we have to just really nurture the culture of ideation first, because the more ideas, the more radical solutions we can create.

Katherine Torrini

Absolutely. And I want to just underline something that you said that the fun and the joy might not be, quote unquote, useful. So it's not useful, necessarily, in a product, but it's very useful –

Dr. Minette Riordan

Right. 

Katherine Torrini

In the culture, in the people, in the person's experience, and I know you know that, I just wanted to underline that for listeners.

Dr. Minette Riordan

Yeah, no. I think it’s super important that you brought that up.

Tina Dietz 

Yeah, there's often this sense of what has to happen in a company is you have to hit the bullseye on the first try. And good ideas just don't work that way. So let's create a little contrast. If you're in a company, and it's clear that it's not a culture of creativity, what are the pitfalls? What are red flags when creativity isn't present?

Dr. Minette Riordan

I love this topic. So I think what happens is people stop valuing their own creativity. They hold on to their ideas, they're afraid to voice them out loud for fear of judgment, or it creates this incredible amount of stress that they have to get the bullseye the first time out of the gate. And I think we talked a little bit in our pre-conversation about this idea of having interdepartmental conversations. And so I think because a lot of times creativity gets buried in the creative department that we're losing out on the creative thinking abilities of people across departments in a particular company. So, for me, the pitfall is we're missing out on the genius of all the people in the company that could be contributing to that ultimate bottom line that the stakeholders and shareholders care about.

Tina Dietz 

The research that we did prior to this episode is pretty conclusive that improving innovation, ideation, creating fun culture, as you said, which results in more productivity, which results in more retention. And we all know that talent retention and talent development in companies is a huge issue right now. We found correlations with confidence and that innovation, of course, which is tied to creativity, is certainly tied to the bottom line and tied to profit. So why would we even hesitate in the workplace to explore creativity? You both touched on a few things where people have those kinds of self limiting beliefs, but in a workplace culture, why do you think that people hesitate in exploring creativity?

Katherine Torrini

We value being right and knowing. And creativity is about not knowing and about not needing to be right. In fact, when I teach doodling to teams and executives, I actually pass out little stickers that say dare to suck. I spend as much time debunking that they can't draw, they can't doodle, as I do teaching them to doodle because that's the biggest roadblock, I would say.

Dr. Minette Riordan

And I would say what's underneath our need to be right is fear. Fear of judgment is one part of it, fear of looking silly or less than in front of our teammates. But I have also heard from a lot of women doing research on women in leadership, fear of having ideas stolen is one that I have heard come up in the research over and over again. And I've had colleagues share examples of that happening, so they hold on really tightly to their ideas.

Katherine Torrini

Absolutely. 

Tina Dietz

I've heard that from many, many leaders over the past both as a coach and in podcasting, in vocal leadership, that there is that issue, and I've certainly experienced it myself, of translation. What you see in your head is so full and rich, and then being able to actually communicate that when you may not have the artistic skill to draw it or be able to do it in some sort of digital format but then it does come back down to writing and visual and communications. And if we don't have to hit it on the first time, if we don't have to be perfect the first time out and we allow space for that creative, iterative process, multiple iterations are required to kind of get down to when we get to that product point or even to a decision making point. It's so important to allow the room for that. 

I was recently listening to the audiobook version of a little book I didn't even know existed that John Cleese from Monty Python wrote, called Creativity: A Short and Cheerful Guide. And he cited some interesting research from the 60s on creativity. There was tons of research done in the 60s and 70s on creativity and then it got shelved for a very long time. But they did some research out of Berkeley on, I believe it was, architects and what constituted a creative architect or non-creative architect. One of the biggest factors in these architects who were considered in their industry highly creative was that they delayed having to make a decision for as long as they could. Not that they were procrastinating, but there had been a determination of, “Okay, we need to make a decision on this particular whatever it was in the project at this time.” And they didn't make a decision before that; they waited the entire time and then made a decision when they had to. So they had the maximum amount of time for that idle thinking, for creative iteration, for the processing time, for new information to present itself. And that generally ended up with a better quality idea at the end of the day or a better quality product. And I just find that really fascinating that we live in this culture where we often have a better product if we allow the time to wait. But there's such a time push for doing that. So do you have any thoughts on how we can start to shift cultures in the workplace to allow for a little bit more creative thinking or that idle thinking time?

Katherine Torrini

A couple of thoughts. One is scheduling spontaneity, if you will, not because you're like, “Okay, now we're here at nine o'clock, and we have to be spontaneous.” Because you're actually creating, putting aside time, you're putting it on your calendar, you're making it a priority. And as important as the other things. And the other thought is this: We often treat creativity in a transactional way, like, “I'm going to be creative, I'm going to sit down, I'm going to do this thing.” And I like to think of it more as a relationship. I joke that if you had a relationship with your sweetie, or with a best friend, and all you ever did was clean the garage, or go out to a fancy dinner, you're always on it, producing, you wouldn't have a very great relationship. So for me, a culture of creativity is a culture where you have a relationship with your creativity that sometimes turns into fabulous innovative ideas, and sometimes turns into a great product idea or a great way to implement service. But it isn't only transactional.

Dr. Minette Riordan

And I think we have to give people permission in the workplace to have creative ideation time, right? To be in that idle thinking, daydreaming, feet up on the desk, go for a 20-minute walk when you're feeling stuck. And so I think there has to be a culture that allows for that time, because people get so guilty. I even hear retired people say, when I'm not doing something, I'm not being productive, and if I'm not productive, I don't have value. And so idle time is often seen as a lack of productivity when it's the opposite. And our best ideas come, actually, from deep rest and deep play, not from work. And so making sure that we're scheduling that time, and then I 100% agree with scheduling spontaneity or scheduling creative work time, because what happens is our brains start processing before we ever sit down. And I think it was, I can't remember, it might have been Hemingway, but there was one writer who said at the end of every one of his writing sessions, he always left a sentence unfinished because he could come back the next time and just to pick up the pen and continue the story from that place. But if we come to a stopping place at the end of the sentence, then it feels done. And instead, that open-ended opportunity for creative thinking continues way outside the page. So I think learning, and I love how you described it, Katherine, as a relationship with our creativity feels right on and understanding that when we're washing dishes and taking showers, this is all creative time.

Tina Dietz  

Well, then, let's take a look at how can leaders – because leaders, we're the ones that are really modeling for our team, we're the ones who can really help embody the value of creativity to our own creativity in the workplace as we're leading – how can we start to ease into that more as leaders? What are some things we can do to model or embody to cultivate creativity in the workplace by our own example?

Dr. Minette Riordan

Taking time off, which leaders tend, including me, have a hard time doing, but actually scheduling an afternoon out of the office for creative time. A company that my husband and I have done a lot of work with over the last few years, Ontraport, I love the CFO says she has to kick the CEO out. She's like, “You get your best ideas when you're away from the office. Wednesday, I'm canceling everything on the books. Go away.” And so I think encouraging a culture of spaciousness instead of the over emphasis on productivity. What I hear from most people in corporate is their jobs are just so dense and there's so much to do, that the thought of taking an afternoon off is just completely daunting, and not necessarily supported by leadership.

Tina Dietz  

Yeah, whoever heard of somebody saying I got the best set of ideas at my desk today?

Dr. Minette Riordan

Not me.

Tina Dietz 

Yeah, it's always in your shower. It's in your car. You're at the park, over coffee, it's in a conversation. That's that kind of back end mental thinking where things are running on a subconscious level or semi-conscious level and then all of a sudden, bam, there it is, or you go to sleep at night, and you've been wrestling with a problem and in the morning, you look at it with fresh eyes and all of a sudden, it's as though your brain has been working on it all night, which it has. And then there it is in front of you, you can continue on. Katherine, what are some other ways that you see that we can model or embody this cultivating our own creativity at the workplace so that our teams can benefit?

Katherine Torrini

I completely agree with what Minette said about taking time off. It's not taking time off, you're actually on. I have something that I call a creative off site, or, it's a studio week is what I call it. I realized later when I was reading a book about productivity, actually, that it's a sprint, it's a creative sprint. So I actually was a little scared the first time or a little nervous the first time I said I'm out of the office in the studio this week working on internal. I'm working on this project. So I marked off and kind of publicized, I guess, because I put in my out of office, that I was focusing. I wasn't off having a vacation, which is also very important. I was focusing on a creative project, and I gave myself a whole week to build up to it, get ideas, and then four and five, you're in the, like, “Okay, we're doing the thing, I'm creating the actual final pieces.” And that's a fantastic way. I want to also talk about something that I call Friday My Day, which I know not everyone can do. But if you manage your own schedule, I've actually realized that if I didn't have a day for me as a creative and as a content producer to do whatever I wanted to happen – oftentimes it's classic, I'll take Friday off, and then I'll go for a hike and I'll just be writing blog posts on my phone, I'll be dictating, I get super creatively activated. And so I just started making it official and calling it Friday My Day. Either I'm creative and create content or I rest so that Saturday or Sunday or Monday I'm creative. I hate having to choose between creating content, like maybe I'm writing a course or a blog post or whatever it is, and hanging out with my family and taking care of my own self. You actually need to take your personal self care for who you are as a creative, and you need creative time. And that's how I've kind of built it into the week.

Tina Dietz  

Yeah, Katherine, I've heard you say before, “Creativity shouldn't just be for dessert. It's part of a balanced diet.” I love that.

Katherine Torrini

Did I say that? That’s an awesome quote.

Tina Dietz

You said that.

Dr. Minette Riordan

That is an awesome quote.

Tina Dietz 

Minette, you have some really good tips on being with our teams and some ways to bring our creativity as leaders, things we can do to model with our team, specifically, not just out of the office. Tell us some of those.

Dr. Minette Riordan

Yeah, so, as I was listening to you and Katherine, one of the things that came up in my mind was sharing your hobbies. I think we often also don't necessarily talk about what we do outside of the work, but maybe take everybody to a paint and sip once in a while to get out. And because no one necessarily does a great job there, then everybody gets to be in that beginner's mind together. But in sort of the management of being with teams, the most important thing is to create a culture of safety and openness around honoring the ideas. And one of my favorite approaches to that is to play the what-if game, and in fact, when anyone shares an idea, if you just put those two words, what if we, or what if you, or what if I in front of it, that takes all the should energy or must energy out of it, which triggers all of our inner rebel anyway. So playing the what-if game with everybody, and there's no feedback given on the ideas, there's only input of ideas, whether you bring in someone like Katherine to capture all that, which is genius, or whether people are writing on sticky notes or whiteboards and sticking them on the wall. I also always recommend, as much as possible, making that process visual. So I love the idea of bringing in someone like Katherine to help that because not everyone is an articulate thinker, from thought to word. And in fact, our very first language was through imagery. We started to recognize visual signs, our mother's faces, and through smell, and as Katherine said, then through drawing before we ever got to writing. So words aren't our first language, images are. So the more visual we can make these processes, the sillier it becomes. So think Pictionary for teams. And again, it's taking that pressure out of it needing to be a rigorous scientific process to get the best possible idea. So play. It all comes back to that idea of just deep play.

Tina Dietz  

Game Night. It’s kind of like it's not just for families, we should have it in our teams as well to free that up and be able to enjoy each other in the workplace, not just work together. One of the things I've always valued even though I've always run a remote team from all over the place is we will, as many of us have a background in voice acting, being an audio-based company, and a lot of times in team meetings we'll end up having an entire or part of a team meeting doing different character voices. And it's absolutely ridiculous. And it happens fairly organically, or we’ll end up in a pun war talking about something in a team meeting. I'm always grateful to my team for being willing to play and kind of jump into that space. And the interesting thing is, almost inevitably, when that happens, at the end of the conversation, someone will pop up with something, it's like, “Hey, I just realized something,” or, “Hey, I just thought of this.” And that little bit of play will stir something creatively in the team that moves the needle on something, what would have been completely unrelated. And in the research we did, we saw this reflected over and over again, that this space needs to happen. So we're all born creative. We're all born with imagination. And as we get older, that can get shut down a little bit. So when you are working with people, with teams, with leaders, how do you help people reconnect to their creativity? Katherine, let's start with you.

Katherine Torrini

Well, one of the key things to do is to first name the fear. You have to actually be in what we call right relationship with your inner critic, because we all have them. And that's the elephant in the room, if you will, or the saber toothed tiger in the room, if you will. I'd like to say that our inner critics are there to keep us safe and they're bored because we don't really have physical safety issues now, generally speaking, as adults in the working world. Sometimes I'll have folks do, to reduce the pressure and increase that feeling of psychological safety, we’ll actually do a saber toothed tiger check. We'll ask them to have fun with it and look around the room. Are there any saber toothed tigers? No, are you sure? Okay, if there are, by all means run, but if there aren't, then we can relax into this moment and play a little bit. So naming and demystifying the inner critic and showing that everyone has one and that it's going to come up during creative processes and it's part of the process, and you can just move past it pretty quickly, rather than stay stuck there, that's, I think, one of the key things. That's one of the things that when we talk about cultures of creativity, everyone's like, “Okay, great.” And then these things come up. And so we have to be prepared to deal with them.

Dr. Minette Riordan

Yeah, I love that. So I would take it even one step further and ask them to personify their inner critic, and have them draw a picture of what their inner critic looks like. And I remember leaving a workshop and this one woman, her inner critic was this little Sapoa Frog. And she's Hispanic. And I can't remember the frog's name, but it had a Hispanic sounding name. And it was just freaking hilarious, right? But when we can personify, again, it's that visual representation, we can have a conversation with it, we can create a different dialogue, we can take it and turn it upside down on the desk, or send it out for a cup of tea or a glass of wine. So I think personification would be the next thing. But I also love to get them to see all the ways they are already being creative that they hadn't thought of. So to make a list of the things that they enjoy doing: cooking, gardening, dancing, all the ways they’re already in that sort of atmosphere of creative problem solving and imaginative thinking outside of the workspace.

Tina Dietz 

One of the exercises that you do with your clients and also online, Katherine, I've seen you do, is this lovely idea of tiny creative acts, just little tiny things that you can do in short periods of time to help us get those creative juices flowing. So I would love to, right now, have a little playtime with the two of you and just do a little live brainstorm of potential tiny creative acts. And then we'll make sure all these little ideas are there for our listeners in the show notes on our website. And also, we'll have some visuals of some of both of your work so we can get a feel. I mentioned in the top of the episode, we have some powerful visuals in our episode today. So it's going to be extra important that listeners go back to the website so they can get these tiny creative acts, get inspired, and also get inspired by some of the visuals that are going to be there from the two of you. So are you ready to do a little bit of brainstorming together?

Katherine Torrini

Oh, yeah.

Tina Dietz

Okay, so brainstorming rules apply, which are basically, the wilder, the better. If you repeat somebody's answer more than once or you piggyback on it, that's wonderful. Iteration is great. There are no wrong answers. And we're just going to take a very quick 90 seconds to do this, so that it is a little bit more compressed for time so we have that energy in there. All right, ready and go.

Katherine Torrini

Double doodle. 

Tina Dietz

You can explain it.

Katherine Torrini

There's the doodle game where you just do a scribble and then you turn it into a bird by adding a beak and feet.

Dr. Minette Riordan

So soul scribbles where you just draw on a page and then you imagine what you can see in that. So now it takes 30 seconds and it's super fun.

Katherine Torrini

Take a line for a walk, where you imagine that the page that you're looking at is like a Google map of a neighborhood. And you take the line for a walk around the neighborhood as if it were a dog.

Dr. Minette Riordan

I love that one. Mindful color play, like draw a picture of colors having a party on a page, or your socks going to a party, like just anything where you're putting color on the page.

Tina Dietz

I know. One of my favorites is to grab some of my kids stuffed animals and give them my internal voices, external voices with their stuffed animals and have them talk to each other or even do it with other people just to create a little story.

Dr. Minette Riordan

Oh, I want to do that one. 

Katherine Torrini

I love it. And to piggyback on that, I have people make paper bag puppets of their inner critic, and then have them talk in that funny voice that they have, whatever it is, and then you can crumple it up and throw it across the room or stick it in a drawer.

Tina Dietz

Kick it.

Katherine Torrini

Throw it in the trunk.

Dr. Minette Riordan

Yep, I love that. Index card art, like really practicing creative constraints and limiting the size. So little scribbles and doodles on index cards. But I saw some things on Katherine's website that I really loved that I also do, and it's to take the practice outside. So one of my favorite creative practices, it's a creative act, is making mandalas in nature. So just especially on the beach, gathering seaweed, rocks, sticks, anything like that, and creating a mandala out in nature is really fun for me.

Katherine Torrini

What I love – I'm going to build on that. The beauty of a mandala is that when you make one decision, you just repeat it all the way around. So it ends up looking really cool, but you don't have to know where you're going. And one little decision makes all the decisions for you. So another creative act is whenever I find fallen flower petals or leaves, or I’ve even done this with dirt, you just play with it and turn it into something. I often will do hearts or something else or a smile, and then you photograph it and leave it wherever it is. Like the idea that it's ephemeral and it'll be washed away, or maybe someone will come and eat it. Maybe some animal will come and eat it if you put berries in a particular line to really get away from the idea of product and just be in that joyful, playful, childlike relationship with your creativity.

Dr. Minette Riordan

Yeah, building on that, sidewalk chalk is your best friend. Grab your kids’ sidewalk chalk and go out and leave love notes on your front sidewalk for your neighbors. Draw hearts or silly pictures. So sidewalk chalk outside is super fun.

Tina Dietz 

Quick ones also are dance breaks. Just a little bit of music and dancing around or maybe even allowing yourself to feel like you're embodying an animal or a character or a rockstar of some kind. Take two minutes and just allow yourself to pretend, maybe like you did when you were a little kid, that you were either a superhero or a rock star or something like that and dance to the music.

Dr. Minette Riordan

One of the most fun things I saw during the pandemic was when a neighbor put a big chalkboard out in front of his house and every day he had a new dad joke on the chalkboard. I would walk out of my way around my neighborhood to see dad jokes. So what if in the workplace there was some place where people just got to tell silly jokes where we walk by and it's written on a whiteboard somewhere. So dad jokes are awesome.

Tina Dietz

Just like his own church sign. That's amazing. 

Dr. Minette Riordan

It totally was. It was brilliant.

Tina Dietz

I love that. I love that. I love that so much. All right, great. So I think this is only scratching the surface of what's possible with tiny creative acts. We will put all of these together in a list. And if you are following us on social media, we're also going to be posting about these tiny creative acts and inviting you to add on your own tiny creative acts, things to do. Creativity thrives in community, and it thrives in communication. And I think it's so interesting that both of you touched on some other themes from some of our other episodes. Psychological safety was one, that was one of our first two episodes, psychological safety and on sharing your hobbies and bringing your whole self to work and how hobbies actually can transform and influence leadership. So it's always so interesting to me how, as we're exploring these different aspects of leadership and workplace culture and communication, how everything connects the dots together. And I appreciate both of you being here today. Let's finish up with just some creativity resources that you might recommend. We’ll certainly recommend both of your websites and social media links, which we’ll, of course, be including, but what about books, workshops or conferences that you might recommend? Minette?

Dr. Minette Riordan

Well, that's a big one. I'm super excited to be speaking this year for the first time at the CPSI, the Creative Problem Solving Institute Conference, which, to be steeped for a week, not even excited about my presentation, but about being around all these people in the creative problem solving industry. So CPSI is a great one for people to consider. Florida also has a big creativity conference annually that's a very, sort of, almost an unconference open format model. I haven't been to that one, but I've heard it's super imaginative and playful. So those are two conferences off the top of my head. And my list of books is way too long to even get started, probably like Katherine's.

Katherine Torrini

Where I would point folks is, this is the work for the leader or for individuals and the leader, although she does have The Artist’s Way at Work. The Artist’s Way was foundational to my recovering and discovering my creative self as an adult, and I've always identified as an artist, so it's great. It's powerful work. I've done it many times, I've taught it, and I highly recommend it. And in fact, my creativity courses are inspired by some of the structures that she has in her course.

Tina Dietz

And that's Julia Cameron right?

Katherine Torrini

Julia Cameron, yeah.

Tina Dietz

Julia Cameron, right. Well, we will include some of these, as well as some additional links to other books, associations, conferences and articles on our website at DrinkFromTheWellPodcast.com. Thank you so much for being here today, Dr. Minette and Katherine for this conversation on creativity. And thank you for being out in the world with your full heart and for being these expert, vulnerable leaders who create such lovely spaces for people to step into to create more creativity and results in the workplace as well as in their own lives. Thanks for gathering around the well with us today. And I invite you back for another drink of our executive elixir as we bring the worlds of leadership, innovation, creativity and communication together. Follow us on your favorite podcast app and journey over to DrinkFromTheWellPodcast.com for transcripts, show notes, and links for all the wisdom in today's episode. We're always here to refresh and to entertain you anytime you need a drink from the well. Drink From The Well is an original production of Twin Flames Studios and hosted by me, Tina Dietz. This episode of Drink From the Well was produced by Stephen George, Rye Taylor, and our beloved tripod, which includes Nadia Cox, Alayna Carley, and Darek Blackburn.

About our Guest Experts – Cultivating a Culture of Creativity

Dr. Minette Riordan is a risk-taker and curiosity seeker who loves jumping feet first into business building and art making. Her mantra is, “how hard can it be?” A modern day Renaissance woman, Minette is an artist, writer, award-winning entrepreneur and advocate for creativity as essential to the well-being of all people and our planet.
She has built several successful businesses and published 3 books including her best seller The Artful Marketer. Minette is the creator of the Emerge Method™, a simple and effective transformational process for helping others to activate their creativity and map their purpose. She believes that when we are all working in our highest and best creative genius, we can solve all the world’s problems.

Katherine Torrini is a creativity expert, visual strategist and innovation catalyst who has brought her visual magic to the likes of NASA, Dell, Coca-Cola, KPMG, Southwest Airlines and The Institute for the Future.

A life-long artist and visual journaler, Katherine has found the perfect professional niche where her superpower of “thinking outside her brain” is highly prized and sought after: Graphic Recording and Visual Facilitation. She travels the world drawing real-time, mural-sized, infographics at conferences, talks and corporate events, where these spontaneous visuals mesmerize viewers, activate creative problem solving and unlock the wisdom of the room.

Katherine’s ability to make the invisible visible captures themes, illuminates connections and reveals patterns, while getting stakeholders “on the same page”—literally! This leads to increased engagement, deeper conversations, more innovative solutions, accelerated decision making and authentic buy-in. Always keen to share her markers, Katherine’s visual thinking trainings empower teams to use their whole brains to think, communicate and collaborate better.

Episode Featured Resources

The Artful Marketer by Dr. Minette Riordan

Creativity: A Short and Cheerful Guide by John Cleese

The Artist’s Way by Julia Cameron

Free Course: Paint Your Way to Self-Confidence

Free Coloring Page

What is Graphic Recording?

Graphic recording is essentially visual note-taking. It involves the capturing and translation of spoken word into powerful, memorable drawings. Here are some stunning samples courtesy of Katherine Torrini:

Graphic recording titled "Meditation on the Job: Mental Health for Remote Workers"
Graphic recording titled "Education is Freedom"
Graphic recording celebrating ten years of ServiceNow
Graphic recording titled "Hope and Healing for Central Texans"

Tiny Creative Acts

Tiny Creative Acts are simple things that you can do in short periods of time to help get your creative juices flowing and futher help in cultivating a culture of creativity in your organization. Below are some examples. See the Leaders’ Discussion Guide for more examples and information.

Leaders’ Discussion Guide – Cultivating a Culture of Creativity:

How to prepare to lead this discussion session with your team:
  • Review the summary of the survey by IBM Tina discusses at the beginning of the episode by using the transcript above. Give yourself the space to answer these questions honestly:
    1. Whether you are confident in your organization’s ability to deal with ambiguity and transformation. 
    2. What are the roadblocks your company is facing?
    3. Are you embodying and modeling the value of creativity in the workplace? Do you schedule creative time for yourself as a leader? Or is there an over-emphasis on productivity?
Questions to discuss WITH your team about Cultivating a Culture of Creativity in the workplace:
  1. Have them listen to the episode first to create common ground and context for the conversation.
  2. What ways are we currently fostering creativity in the workplace, or are we at all? Is there time in the day for people to have creative ideation time? 
  3. Does everyone feel psychologically safe enough to share their creative ideas?
  4. Sometimes, we just need a little push. As a team, try one (or multiple) of these tiny creative acts mentioned in the show to get your creative juices flowing before diving into the decision-making and brainstorming for the day.
    1. Double Doodle: Doodle game where you just do a scribble and then you turn it into a bird by adding a beak and feet.
    2. Take a line for a walk: Imagine that the page that you're looking at is like a Google map of a neighborhood, and you take the line for a walk around the neighborhood as if it were a dog.
    3. Mindful color play: Draw a picture of colors having a party on a page, or your socks going to a party. Anything where you're putting color on the page.
    4. Give inanimate objects voices: Grab some stuffed animals and give them voices and have them talk to each other, or even do it with other people just to create a little story. Be as silly as you want.
    5. Index card art: Little scribbles and doodles on index cards to limit the size and practice creative restraints.
    6. Make mandalas: Gather seaweed, rocks, sticks, anything like that, and create a mandala out in nature.
    7. Sidewalk chalk: Grab your kids’ sidewalk chalk and go out and leave love notes on your front sidewalk for your neighbors. Draw hearts or silly pictures.
    8. Dance breaks: Just need a little bit of music and dancing around. Maybe even allowing yourself to feel like you're embodying an animal or a character or a rockstar of some kind. Take two minutes and just allow yourself to pretend, maybe like you did when you were a little kid, that you were either a superhero or a rock star and dance to the music.
    9. Company chalk/white board for people to write/draw on at any time: Some place where people just get to tell silly jokes where coworkers walk by and it's written on a whiteboard somewhere.
  5. ADVANCED: Take Dr. Minette Riordan’s advice (20:54) and prepare your team to play the What-If Game as it relates to your business.

Inspired to turn your Voice into influence and become a Thought Leader worth listening to?

Let's Talk

Leading Thriving Teams in 2023

What prominent issues are hindering leaders from leading thriving, successful teams? What can we do as leaders to get past these obstacles? Guests from various episodes of season one of Drink From The Well tackle these questions in this candid conversation to celebrate the launch of the show.

Leading Thriving Teams – Episode Highlights

  • What is the number one issue that we're facing in 2023 regarding creating healthy workplace cultures? (3:22)

  • How do we go forward in creating an environment to heal, counteract, or change employees' constant workplace burnout in some way? Is that possible? (6:55)

  • How can we manage the expectations of the folks that we are in business with so that we can start creating healthy boundaries in teams, but also in the expectations that we have in working with clients and customers as well? (15:15)

  • How does having a unique business model translate into how a team runs or how the management style runs? How is being a “disruptor” helpful in creating thriving teams and organizations? (22:48)

  • How can a manager, a boss, or an organization make their organization or their environment more welcoming? (25:51)

Full Transcript

Tina Dietz 

Hey, everybody. Welcome to our Drink From The Well Launch Celebration and our conversation roundtable about creating thriving teams in 2023. This is a conversation for leaders, for aspiring leaders, for those who are leading from the bottom up, and everybody in between. I am Tina Dietz, I'm the CEO of Twin Flames Studios and your host for this conversation for today. I'm thrilled to be talking with all of you on this particular topic. It brings me nothing but great joy and interest to have so many leaders around the world talking with us about Leading Thriving Teams. We have been producing a series, after doing a great deal of research, on the most impactful topics in the workplace today, the things that are affecting teams, the things that are affecting leaders, the things that are affecting us all, particularly in this highly changing post-pandemic world. We have created a monthly series of topics in the podcasting world, because that's where my company lives and thrives, to help leaders have a place of refreshment and wisdom that they can go to and become refreshed and walk away with more knowledge and even better than they were before. Stress among workers globally is at an all-time high, and employee engagement is only 21%. Those people who consider themselves thriving are really even a third of people in the world. Only a third of people in the world consider themselves thriving. When you consider that more than a third of our lives are spent at work, almost half of our lives are spent at work, this is a major issue. That is a lot of what we're going to be talking about today. In the US and Canada alone, 71% of workers are looking to be in the market for a new job. So let's bring on our panel of guests and experts so that we can get this conversation really started. I am absolutely thrilled to be in this esteemed group of folks. We have experts from a number of our different episodes, Candy Barone and Lisa Wimberger from our episode that just dropped on the paradox for leaders of psychological safety, Katherine Torrini who joined us for our Dare to Suck episode that's coming up in a couple of months on creativity, Alicia Dattner from Live, Laugh, Lead, which is all about how humor can cause transformation in the workplace, Dr. Valerie Rene Sheppard from The Heartly Center who joined us for our episode on leading in multi-generational workplaces, and Josh Cliffords, the CEO of Free Water, who you'll be able to hear more from not only today, but in our upcoming episode in June on Leading in Uncharted Waters, which is all about whether capitalism, activism, and conservation can all work together in harmony. So happy to have you all here today. What we're going to do, just by having everybody introduce themselves a little bit more, we are going to have you each take one minute, introduce yourself, and answer this really important question very, very briefly. Let's keep it all to one minute each. And that is, from your perspective and expertise, what is the number one issue that we're facing in 2023 regarding creating healthy workplace cultures?

Lisa Wimberger 

For me, I think the biggest challenge in 2023 is perceptual safety and feeling seen and heard. That's what I'm feeling.

Dr. Valerie Sheppard

I work with entrepreneurs and executives and emerging adults, one of my favorite groups, and what I'm hearing from all of them is that the transition into predominantly working virtually is something that nobody's really teaching them how to do. They're learning it off the cuff. There have been a lot of examples of ways that their leadership hasn't really changed to deal with the changing environment in which they are applying their leadership. So that, to me, is the biggest.

Candy Barone

One of the things that I would say has been the biggest challenge is the fact that there are a lot of companies and a lot of leaders right now that think 2023 is supposed to look like 2019. What I mean by that is there is this frenetic energy of trying to go back to what was and thinking that everything that's happened in the last couple years has not shifted everything on an entirely new level. So, for me, the biggest challenge is the fact that we're not going back. We need to move forward and most leaders do not understand how to do that.

Katherine Torrini

I would say that one of the biggest challenges I see is, or I would call an opportunity, I suppose, for people to truly know how they individually operate, like how they deal with challenges, how they like to receive information, how they deal with conflict, and all of these things, to really, really know them, and then to be able to communicate with their team members, what helps, what doesn't, and to normalize that you're going to show up sometimes and need support. You're going to show up and need things. You're not always going to have the best day, if you will, and you still show up and you still do your job. You're sort of like a little instruction manual that your team members have about you and you have about them, like to just really make that normal.

Alicia Dattner

I would say the biggest challenge in my mind is that we're taking ourselves too seriously. There's that deep, deep need to be seen and felt. And rather than asking the world to do that, we see and feel ourselves and let ourselves come out and be seen. That would take a lot of pressure off of, “You guys do it differently.” And wow, what if I just be me, differently?

Josh Cliffords

I think the issue on the culture side of things, and I'll speak with a few companies I know, is that no one in the company cares in the first place. Somebody hires someone to run it, be the CEO, the CEO doesn't care, they just went on Indeed and tried to find the easiest job with the least responsibility, and then everybody else gets a job at that company, whether you're a graphic designer, software engineer, salesperson, they all went for the job with the easiest pay with the least responsibility. And then all of a sudden, you have nobody at the company who's passionate about anything. You can't push any meaningful work, and then, eventually, they just blow through whoever financed its money, and then everybody moves on to the next job they don't care about.

Tina Dietz 

So let's start, Josh, with the framework that you're talking about here and the people coming into the workplace already feeling burnt out, already feeling jaded, already predisposed to just putting in their time, punching a clock, and punching back out again. I'd love to have any of you chime in on the topic of how do we go back to or go forward to, to Candy's point, creating an environment to heal that, to counteract that, or to change that in some way? One, is that possible? And two, how do we do that?

Candy Barone 

First of all, I absolutely agree with what Josh just said. I think there are a lot of people that are way past being engaged. And from the leadership level, I think one of the things to start this conversation is that most of us leaders, as well as just individuals, need to realize that most people actually aren't okay right now. I think that we keep blowing past this topic of mental health, I think we keep blowing past the topic of burnout like it's a badge of honor. And there is notably not a person in the Western Hemisphere that has some kind of work that isn't experiencing some level of burnout. So I think we need to actually open up the conversation around that and how that is changing its form. What we used to know is not burnout. People are functioning from a level of constant burnout, and their nervous system is in constant distress. And we just keep blowing past that like it's not happening.

Lisa Wimberger

To Candy's point, I think that's exactly it. An organization is a function of all of the people in it, right? So all the people in it, if you just imagine, let's macro out and pretend it's a nervous system. The organization is a nervous system, it's an entity and all of the beings in it are organs or cells, if you will, of that nervous system. With even one small dysregulation, you are going to have systemic dysregulation at some point if you don't address it because dysregulation and a move toward chaos are the natural order of things. So you actually have to put in the work to keep the regulation. Stepping into the self-help world for a minute, I think there's this ridiculous assumption that grace and regulation are easy. Just read this book, and it's easy. It's not easy. It's the hardest work you'll do and it's daily work and it's every single day and there are things to do to regulate that are required for you to just show up and actually do them every day. So it's work to regulate and it's not in our budgets. It's not a line item on the budget list to make sure all of your employees are regulated. No, it's like, make sure they're productive, make sure that they check this box, they did their compliance training or what have you. But ultimately, a regulated individual creates and co-regulates a group, which then regulates and co-regulates an organization, which then regulates and co-regulates a community. And I feel like it needs to go back to the individual.  To just say something to Alicia, I feel like comedy is one of the most joyful ways to regulate. It should be a mainstay of everybody's self-regulation protocol. I feel like it's the highest form of alchemy. I'm a self-help person, I'm a meditation person, but really, what trumps all of that for me is comedy. So I really appreciate you being here and participating in this conversation because I think that is the secret mojo right there.

Dr. Valerie Sheppard 

Yeah, I wanted to chime in a little bit on what I'm hearing from both Candy and Lisa, what I consider humanizing organizational effectiveness. What happened with organizational effectiveness is the things that deal with EAP programs, employee assistance programs, they're out there like mental health is. You can tap into it when you need it but there's such a stigma associated with tapping in that even when people are absolutely positive they need it, and most people don't even recognize that they do, but even when they're absolutely positive that they need it, it's a shun kind of thing, like, I would never do that here. because somehow, whatever HR does, or EAP does, it's going to get blasted out there. And so this whole idea of turning things on their head and making the EAP program how we deliver organizational effectiveness, as what I call a forever practice, it's a daily endeavor to make you the best you can be, so that what you're contributing to the organization is at a higher vibration. So I do self-mastery work, which is mastering you in your life so that you can exquisitely manage whatever your life brings your way. And that's all about self-awareness, self-acceptance, and self-love. So in the space of noticing, “Wow, I'm really in my coping behaviors for four years. That doesn't make sense. I'm doing things just to cope, which means I'm actually in lack, limitation, struggle, and strive and not enjoy, peace, grace, and thrive.” And so organizations at the top need the people running the organizations, but I talked about the entity as an organism, need to role model the behavior of self-care, role model the behavior of, “I don't got this,” of vulnerability, and that in order to achieve the stretch goals and the bottom line numbers and the financials, the people have to be in a high vibration place where their best easily comes out and the organization can thrive.

Tina Dietz

And speaking of bosses, so to speak, one of the things in the research that is very standout is that most of the issues around burnout, around workplace dissatisfaction, around disengagement in the workplace, around productivity come around this notion of management, of bosses not being able to respond to their teams in a way that has them feel safe, that has them feel welcomed, that has them feel valued. This is what has been coming out in the research in droves and droves and droves. And coming back to our episode on the Leadership Paradox of Psychological Safety, leaders are being asked to create things for their teams that they, A) may not have ultimate control or say over, or B) may not feel for themselves. So coming back to a 30,000-foot view of what companies can do from a high level, I want to speak to this myself. So as a company, we're out interacting with other agencies and other companies on a daily basis because we're a thought leadership company and we're producing podcasts and we're producing audiobooks. Something we run into regularly are these cultures of rush, these cultures of, “It has been so ingrained in us that the customer is always right that we are tolerating the demands of customers and clients that are not reasonable,” and in some cases, I would say, are almost in the realm of abusive in terms of what the expectations are. So I would like to have a conversation about how we can manage the expectations of the folks that we are in business with so that we can start creating healthy boundaries, first of all, in teams, but also in the expectations that we have in working with clients and customers as well. Anyone have some thoughts on that?

Katherine Torrini

I wrote this to a colleague just yesterday: “Boundaries are beautiful.” I feel I've really come to realize that allowing something that's not actually okay with me and then resenting it is not a gift. That resentment is a red flag that that's not okay and that whatever the friction that would come up about discussing that or standing with the boundary was, it's not worth this rock, if you will, in the middle of the relationship. And it's really not fair to the other person if I'm allowing it, then it's on me to say, “You know what? This isn't working for me.” I also work with clients on creating graphics and various wonderful visuals for their various projects, and I've learned to just set it very clearly at the beginning, like, “This is how we work and this is why, and if you need to do differently, like, you want it faster, we can usually accommodate you and just check in with us about what the fee will be.” So my initial fear was that they were going to feel picked on or that I'm slapping their wrist. But really, when I start and I say, “This is what makes the process work best, keeps us on time, keeps us on budget,” then they actually feel really well held by that. They actually feel better cared for, because I've owned what works and what doesn't and set those beautiful boundaries. Not always easy, but I found it's just really worth it in the end.

Lisa Wimberger

I think that was a perfect segue because I agree, it's boundaries. I feel like having a nice clean conversation with your end user around, “These are the deliverables, this is what to expect,” and not be afraid to stay in our lane and stop trying to be everything to everyone. I mean, I deal with entrepreneurs who are Renaissance men and women and these people have a list of things that are so diverse that they are experts in. And it's mind-boggling to try to keep up with that and that's what's out in social media. “I'm an entrepreneur, I'm a business person. I'm a pro athlete, and I invented this supplement, and oh, yeah, by the way, I bought a cruise line. Now, I'm going into event planning.” And I'm not kidding, I interact with people who, if you lived in the Renaissance, would have been in the top .001%. You would have been Copernicus or DaVinci or Michelangelo. Now, it's everybody on Instagram. And now organizations are rushing to do that as well. “I need to provide you every kind of service possible,” and this sets us up. We're a bunch of entrepreneurs here. You know this drill. You know that when you set up your business, you're trying to do everything until you have the painful experience of, “Oh, no, I can't do that,” and, “I did it wrong and worse, and now I gave myself a lot more work.” So then you, eventually, through trial and error, learn to stay in your lane, be that thing, be it to the depth of the highest efficacy and vibration you can, and stop trying to dilute and go broad. I feel like, for me, I'm saying this as a reminder to myself as much as a statement about the industries that we're all talking about, boundaries, admission of ineptitude, and not being afraid of that, admission of genius and not being afraid of that, and then just go stay where you are gifted and bring those gifts. Everyone's too much of everything all the time. We're all also ambassadors of sports gear and fashion and jewelry on top of all the other things. I don't even understand how there's enough time in the day for all of this.

Candy Barone

Yeah, actually there are two things I'd like to say. One is the idea that we need to move out of a culture of busy. I think we've been talking a lot about that. I call busy “buried under shoulding yourself.” And so it's the layers and layers of the shoulding that keep getting piled up on top. What's interesting is, Tina, you talked about this, KPIs. Yes, most organizations are driven by metrics. The problem is they're measuring the wrong thing. They are measuring how much shit gets done versus the actual outcome of what they are focused on and the impact they're creating. So first and foremost, is to change the metric around what is the impact or what is the outcome, not how much and what did we achieve? Because the other thing that I want to address is, both Katherine and Lisa talked about this, and even Dr. Valerie talked about this, the individual approach, that if we're going to have a top-down, leaders are going to model how to manage themselves, first and foremost, they need to understand their own wiring. What I mean by that is a couple of things. I do a lot of work in human design. But whether it's that or not, we need to move beyond a DISC or Myers-Briggs assessment and think that is a gauge on how we are going to assess how people are wired. Someone like me, when I hear Lisa saying, “I'm a manifesting generator who has a very defined route,” I actually need to have multiple projects, multiple things, and I run very fast. Someone else who is wired differently should not and cannot work in that capacity. When we can understand that the majority of the population wasn't even designed to be getting stuff done, it was more around fulfillment, satisfaction, and a redefinition of success, we change the game about how we all own our own individual leadership. I talk about leadership as a choice but leadership ultimately starts with you leading yourself first. It starts with understanding that busy is the ultimate four-letter word. It is not equivalent to productive, it is not equivalent to fulfillment, it is a four-letter word. And we need to take inventory and stock of, “Do I even know my own wiring? Do I even know how my energy moves?” Because if I don't, I can't lead anybody else.

Tina Dietz

Yeah. So now that we've had a conversation about leaders and about the individuals on teams, Josh, I was wondering if you would be game to chime in because the way that you have developed Free Water has been what colloquially would be called a disrupter in the industry. Your business model is very different, you've encouraged folks to take your similar business model and run with it because you're committed to changing the world, you're committed to clean water, and saving lives. So how are you finding that translates into how your team runs, how your management style runs, or if there's even anything in the bones of how the business model works that you're finding is helpful in creating teams and organizations that live more in this world of thriving that we're talking about.

Josh Cliffords

In the earlier years, I was not successful because I wasn't able to communicate the vision as well as I can today. You need to be able to clearly communicate what you're working on, and by doing so, if you're lucky, you'll find people that want to work on it with you. The difficult thing, and again, every company is different, is it's the nature of what you're trying to do. Since we're the first in the world to do this, and we're also building really advanced technologies, it's a little bit different in that I'm personally working seven days a week from 8 am until 1 or 2 am and I've been doing that for five years to cover this much ground so quickly. I'm trying to find that really small percentage of people who are willing to do the same. It's really difficult because as you mentioned, people weren't designed to do stuff like that. But if you're really trying to do something that's never been done, that's the top 1% in difficulty, you kind of need the top 1% in people. As a startup, we have 15 people in the company so far, everybody for equity. Nobody's getting a salary so it's even that much more difficult because then it's a situational thing. They might have the skills and personality you need but not the financial bandwidth. I think that it just starts with communication and creating an environment where you don't onboard anybody unless you really believe that they're relentless because I find that a lot of people whether they're a software engineer, salesperson, or whatever, maybe they're willing to tear down and rebuild three times, but not many people I meet are willing to tear down and rebuild as many times as it takes to do it right. And so I think that that's really difficult. I often just find myself doing it myself, or finding the people that can. With that said, because it's taken me six years to do what I foolishly thought I could accomplish in two, a lot of people have come and gone like the seasons because they join your startup, the contract says four years of vesting, and they read it, but they don't really understand what four years is. And so, you've seen some people come, go, waste time, add value, some people stay, it's really hard to find people that will really do anything, I mean, ethically, anything that it takes to just get the job done. I think it gets harder and harder and harder.

Tina Dietz

To bring it back home to this notion of first principles and creating spaces that are welcoming, I'd like for everyone to go around and just give a piece of advice about how can a manager, a boss, or an organization make their organization or their environment just maybe 3 to 5% more welcoming. Alicia, I'd love to hear your ideas on how we could do that through storytelling, comedy, and the wheelhouse of your world.

Alicia Dattner

Well, I think the most universal aspect of that is laughter. Laughter happens in the body, and it's relational. Without even making a joke, you can laugh and get the effects of laughter. Physiologically, it reduces your stress and anxiety, it releases endorphins, and it's so good for you. And I think the most welcoming thing you can do is have a laugh with another person. So starting the day, or starting a meeting with a moment, 30 seconds, three minutes of no-joke laughter yoga, just laughing for no reason. That is a space everybody can get on board with except for like, “Oh my god, this is so dumb, I feel like a fool.” Well, you can all laugh at that. You can welcome the ridiculousness of what you're doing and get all the benefits of connection and regulation, co-regulation and self-regulation, and having a give-and-take that is apolitical and deeply related. You laugh from your belly, you laugh from your knees, and from the soles of your feet. And it not just includes all people but includes all parts of the person. So our hearts are involved, our hearts get activated, our brains get stimulated, and all the parts come in and are welcomed, not just all the people but all of who we are.

Tina Dietz

So on that note, I want to thank all of our panelists today for not just being here today and having this wonderful discussion, but also for being fantastic guests on our show Drink From The Well. I encourage this audience to go out and listen to the episodes, share them with your teams, have these roundtable discussions on your own, have a lunch and learn around the topic of psychological safety, and next month, what it means to be in a capitalist society and also want to save the planet? How can we Lead in Uncharted Waters? Then, our future episodes on creativity and laughter and leading in a multigenerational workplace, pull all of this towards you, and have it fulfill something that is not just something you're listening to on a walk, but something that you're bringing into your work as well, so that we can all rise up together to reduce burnout, to reduce stress, to have more regulation, and to learn to thrive in these deeply uncertain and wild times that we are living in today. But nonetheless, we are a very creative species. I trust and I have faith that we are figuring it out, even though it is extraordinarily messy. So thank you, everyone, for joining us here today on LinkedIn. And if you're listening to the replay, please feel free to leave comments. We will come back to this and connect with each other, connect with our experts on LinkedIn and on other platforms. You can find all of us here on LinkedIn and as well as on many, many other places on the Internet since we live in this interconnected world. So thank you all for joining us here today, and we'll see you next time.

Our Guest Experts

Lisa Wimberger, CEO & Founder of the Neurosculpting Institute

Katherine Torrini, Graphic Recorder & Creative Life Coach

Josh Cliffords, CEO & Founder of Free Water

Alicia Dattner, Standup Comedian

Candy Barone, CEO & Founder of You Empowered Strong

Dr. Valerie Sheppard, CEO & Founder of The Profit Rocket Academy™

Episode Featured Resources

Episode 1: The Leadership Paradox of Psychological Safety

Episode 2: Leading in Uncharted Waters

Inspired to turn your Voice into influence and become a Thought Leader worth listening to?

Let's Talk

Leading in Uncharted Waters

Can conservation, activism, and capitalism coexist? Legendary Aquanaut Ian Koblick and Josh Cliffords, Founder of industry disruptor Free Water discussing their takes on vital questions for our future, such as how leaders today are pushing boundaries, innovating, and making inroads to change our future on this planet, and how we can make a difference in the world when our future is so uncertain.

Don't miss our Leaders' Discussion Guide for this episode below – perfect for your next team Lunch & Learn!

Leading in Uncharted Waters – Episode Highlights

  • Discover how conservation, activism, and capitalism can coexist (8:47)
  • Learn how leaders today push boundaries, innovate, and make inroads to change our future on this planet (15:43)
  • See what type of leadership style leads to success (19:24)
  • Find out how to make a difference in the world when our future is uncertain (21:26)

Full Transcript

Tina Dietz

Ah, the ocean, so calming, so relaxing. It's a wonderful reminder that the turning tides of life can calm into beautiful, soft waves — until we remember the pollution and the overfishing and the coral reefs that are dying off faster than we can speak, and according to scientists, climate change will become irreversible by 2030. Holy crap! That's in seven years and — Okay, hang on now. Deep breath with me. Freaking out isn't going to help. Right? Right. But what will help are leaders who are willing to push the boundaries of conservation and humanitarianism, create innovation and action, and lead in uncharted waters. 

Today on Drink From the Well, we're exploring some vitally important questions for our future on this planet as humans. There's a drop of inspiration, a dash of creativity, plenty of communication, and there you have it, our executive elixir. This is Drink From the Well. How can we make a difference in the world when our future is so uncertain? Can conservation, activism, and capitalism coexist? How are leaders today pushing boundaries, innovating, and making inroads to change our future on this planet? As we begin, let's go back to our ocean. Thanks, ocean. It's no secret that massive changes have happened in the ocean in the last 50 years. But don't just take my word for it.

Ian Koblick 

Seas are dying, and not enough people are out there trying to take care of it or preventing it. And as I've said, now, for almost 40 years, if the seas go, they're our last resource for food, water, energy, and medicine.

Tina Dietz 

That was Ian Koblick. You might not have heard of Ian. But anyone who has spent time in the world of ocean conservation sure has. He has been an instrumental leader in ocean exploration and conservation for over 50 years, a lifetime of creating and managing educational facilities and leading conservation efforts in order to advance public knowledge and understanding of the ocean environment and its importance.

Ian Koblick 

…Anniversary of the underwater lab facility, which is the underwater hotel.

Tina Dietz

And yes, you heard that right. He has an underwater hotel. More on that later.

Ian Koblick 

The second thing is that we're celebrating our 52nd anniversary of our nonprofit foundation, Marine Resources, which runs marine education programs for over 5000 kids a year, pandemic years not included. And then, I'm deeply involved on the board of directors and run some of the programs with a new foundation called OCEEF, OCEEF.org. OCEEF has just acquired Ray Dalio, the billionaire's research vessel, which was previously called the Alucia. Now, it's called the Odyssey, and that is off going around the world doing research and education programs and marine archaeology.

Tina Dietz 

How exactly do you get a billionaire to donate a multimillion-dollar state-of-the-art research vessel to your organization? For Ian, his success comes down to networking and creating relationships that push innovation forward.

Ian Koblick

Think of me as an orchestra conductor. I don't play an instrument. I have always been a behind-the-scenes person. I've been the President of Marine Resources now, and the Founding Director, for 52 years. My networking, my contacts, I mean, I was a special assistant to the governor of the Virgin Islands, I spent a lot of time in Washington consulting and was a consulting editor of the NOAA Diving Manual, all those things have brought personalities that are now friends. We were working with Ray Dalio's foundation to acquire their ship and that kind of stalled and stalled and stalled. In the meantime, we met a person who wanted to use a ship like that to take his family around the world so they could be educated. Well, that evolved and evolved.

Tina Dietz

Despite all of Ian's involvement, he's still only one man. It's not enough to prevent the whole world's oceans from continuing to decline. But the light at the end of the tunnel is seeing the fruits of his leadership.

Ian Koblick

We have had more than 180,000 students and teachers attend our programs here. So when they came in, they were only this big, they now come back with their kids that are that big. And they say, “This is where it all started, this is how I became a science teacher. This is how I became an engineer. This is how I became a marine geologist.” It all started by dipping your head in the water and explaining to them and showing them the excitement of the ocean. And you cannot believe how many of our students have turned into major leaders in the United States in environmental programs and in education. But that's a small number.

Tina Dietz

Conservation focuses heavily on education and revitalization. Think zoos and aquariums. But while education is vitally important, it doesn't reach as many people as, say, a viral video.

Clip from Viral Video

Hello, friends and welcome to another video. This week, we're going to be journeying to a completely underwater hotel and staying there overnight. That's right. Tonight, we're going to be sleeping with the fishes. Now, it's been a while since we've…

Ian Koblick

You will see exactly, the philosophy is not how deep can we go? Or, how many samples of water quality can we take? It's how can we develop interesting, real science programs and education programs that will attract millions and millions of individuals? So we're looking at millions, not thousands, millions, and millions.

Tina Dietz

When we come back, we'll discuss how Ian is now reaching millions and millions of people using, what else? That underwater hotel.  Welcome back. Let's dive right in. Pun completely intended. Like your average hotel, Jules' Undersea Lodge has Wi-Fi, a TV, a shower, and a bedroom. Unlike a normal hotel, visitors must enter by scuba diving five feet below the surface. You can even request the services of a mer-chef who will scuba dive into the hotel and cook you a meal. The hotel started out as a research lab, but since it was converted into a hotel, Jules' Undersea Lodge has hosted a deluge of curious clientele. The novelty of the underwater hotel brought us into conversation with Ian in the first place. We were not the first to be intrigued. YouTube influencer, Ryan Trahan, came and stayed at Jules' Underwater Lodge and shared his experience in a video that went viral to the tune of 24 million views.

Clip from Viral Video 

In fact, this hotel is the only underwater hotel in America. It used to be this ocean research lab in the '80s, and then they said, “Screw it. Let's make this the first-ever underwater hotel in the world.” And voila, Jules' Undersea Lodge was born. This might be the coolest thing I've ever seen, and I'm going to spend the freaking night in it. Right now. Here's my Get Ready With Me.

Tina Dietz

Whether you love it or hate it, we're living in an influencer culture. Jules' Undersea Lodge is leveraging our curiosity and using it to bring more people into the world of ocean conservation.

Ian Koblick

I didn't know what influencers were until about two months ago. However, we started with the hotel, bringing influencers, and we just did one with a following of 9 million. They weren't divers so they were introduced, they did a resort course, and it's all documented. How do you get involved in the ocean? Come and see us in The Keys. And I'm going to really work on that direction of utilizing the influencers that already have huge followings to promote the programs that we're trying to get across.

Tina Dietz

Here's a really big question. Can capitalism and conservation coexist peacefully? Josh Cliffords is proving that it works. He's the founder of Free Water, the world's first free beverage company. It might sound too good to be true, but Josh proves it's possible to have a profitable business, give your product away for free, and fund conservation efforts simultaneously. It all has to do with finding positives in the negative.

Josh Cliffords

So I started a nonprofit organization in Eastern Europe called Save the Refugees, and we found that roughly 20% of them or more had left their country because they didn't have access to water, food, or medicine. And after hearing the same story over and over again, we were compelled to do some research and figure out how many people this could affect. But we couldn't get a straight answer so we made a guesstimation that roughly 40 million people die every year around the world because of this, but meanwhile, here in the United States, we're some of the biggest wasters in the world. We throw away $60 billion of food in the trash every year. 33% of all food in the supermarket goes from the supermarket shelf and into the trash because it's too expensive. So I was thinking, “Hey, how can we kind of kill two birds with one stone? How can we cut the waste? And how could we save lives?” And so the goal was to create a system that made saving a life as simple as eating a free slice of pizza.

Tina Dietz 

And now we're here. You might be wondering why Josh created a company to combat world hunger when the obvious step was to create a charity. Why go in this particular direction, instead?

Josh Cliffords

I have founded two nonprofits in the past. One was in California to help obese children, which was a huge failure. And the second one was this nonprofit with the refugees. And from my limited experience with both of those organizations, the issue with the nonprofit is when you run out of money, you're out of operation. So I was also looking at it from a different perspective. I thought, “Well, hey, there's been a lot of nonprofits that have been around for roughly 100 years. Why hasn't the Red Cross, quote, unquote, saved the world? How come companies like Uber were able to scale across the world in a decade or less?” Because of that, I figured it had to be a for-profit solution. But if done right, it could be more philanthropic than most nonprofits. 

It didn't happen overnight. There was a series of events that happened. But mainly the inspiration came from knowing that it had to be Better Than Free, and Better Than Free is actually the parent company of our organization. I looked at it two ways. Number one, they say in capitalism, everything is a zero-sum game. So there's one winner, one loser. I didn't want to deal with that. So I decided I was going to create a new system that had a new set of attributes. When I started realizing, maybe we could go negative, because, in software, there's actually some negatively priced software such as Ecosia, which is Germany's search engine. It's not a competitor with Google, but it's free, and it donates like 70% of its revenue or profit to charity. So I looked at that, like, wow, that's negative 170% off. But what I realized is in capitalism, or just when things cost money, if two companies are competing, what are they competing at? I didn't think it was very positive. But if you go negative, the only way to make this better than zero is to pay you directly or donate to charity. There's no other way to make a physical product negative. So I thought, okay, if people or companies start competing in this negative zone, now they're competing to help the consumer, strengthen the local economy, help the environment, and donate to charity. That's the kind of competition we wanted to involve ourselves in. And I also knew that Coke, Pepsi, Nestle, Uber, Nike, any company, if you just went free, you're making it easier to copy. But if you go negative, they're not built to compete in that realm, and so it just works well.

Tina Dietz 

When I first heard about Josh and Free Water, I had a hard time wrapping my head around the idea of a negatively priced product. How is it possible to end up with a free bottle of water in my hand? I had to find out how it worked.

Josh Cliffords

Free Water is our first product and the water is free because the packaging is the ad space. We do aluminum bottles and paper cartons. It works because the price of advertising has outpaced consumables such as groceries. So the same business model works for a lot of different products: water, soda, beer, cannabis where legal, fruits, vegetables, toiletries, household cleaning items like Windex, all that sort of stuff. So let's say you were an Uber driver in this city that we're in, Austin, and that's all you did, and you wrapped your vehicle in ads and charged exactly what the taxi company would charge, that's $2,000 a month minimum. For most, that's enough to pay for your car payment, your insurance, your fuel, and maybe some of your time, it depends. Believe it or not, the junk mail in your mailbox at your house still has the highest ROI in the USA ad industry. But most importantly, our ad mediums make you happy. Other advertisers harass you and inconvenience you, they attack you. And people come to us and they get the water, they're happy that we're saving them money, they're happy that we're not using plastic bottles, and they're happy that we donate to charity to save lives. On a single box, you have a QR code that takes you to a film festival, you have one of the best rappers in Austin who's up and coming, all of his music on Spotify, a rocker in Austin, and his Instagram and all of his music on Spotify, then you have a TikTok influencer all of his videos, and then we have a full-length Warner Brothers TV show here. And since the TV show was TV-MA, we had to put TV-MA above the QR code. If you scanned all those QR codes and engaged all those videos, it might be 24 hours' worth of entertainment on a single piece of consumer packaging. Our products have a blank canvas so you could do anything. 

And so here are two nonprofit organizations from Kentucky, I believe. For both of them, they spend a lot of money on flyers, they spend a lot of money on bottled water, so it just made sense to combine them. Also, they said if they hand someone in the streets a bottle of water, food, also a flyer, they're just gonna throw those flyers in the trash, and now, you're literally putting that message right in their hand. And so I do think, to date, this was the most creative advertisement because they went beyond the means of traditional marketing. Every single Free Water donates a minimum of 10 cents to charity. It literally says 10 cents on the packaging. And so right now, at the 10 cents per beverage, every 150 we give out saves a life in Kenya.

Tina Dietz

If you're listening to the audio-only version of this podcast, we have images and video of everything Josh is showing when you go to DrinkFromTheWellPodcast.com. We want you to see these really powerful visuals and make sure that you also go to the Free Water TikTok page to become part of this movement. In fact, Josh encourages anyone with a business or leadership interest to take from his experience. Find out how and what you can learn after this quick break. Now, clearly, if you're going to start a business, you want to protect and gate keep your intellectual property at all costs, right?

Josh Cliffords

No, everything we do is open source. We didn't want people to patent any of these things, and so we went the opposite route. Social media was a very big help. A lot of founders or inventors get scared. They're like, “Oh, my God, someone's going to steal my idea so I just can't tell it to anybody.” And it never happens. We want the world's biggest companies to copy. We're actually in the process of writing a manual soon. So any company, large or small, can copy us or make anything that they feel like making for free, and they don't have to make all the same mistakes that I made along the journey, because what are they going to do? Are they going to beat us at saving the world? I think that social media was really important because I put the vision out there. I didn't hold back. So people on social media expressed their concerns and expressed why they thought it wasn't possible.

Clip from TikTok Video

What's wrong with it? 

Nothing, it's natural spring water.

Josh Cliffords

I answered their questions.

Clip from TikTok Video

Which spring?

Other companies sell the same exact water for $2 to $3 a bottle.

Which spring does it come from?

This one came from a spring in Georgia.

Josh Cliffords

We've amassed half a million social media followers in the last year. So a lot of our team came from that, a lot of our investors came from that, and now we have a decentralized team of half a million people that help us get stuff done. It's a frenzy because people believe in our why. And so we actually just calculated these numbers recently, but in the first 12 months of TikTok alone, we got 70 million views from 60 million different people, and they watched our content for 35 years. It only takes us half an hour a day to post our videos but people consumed it 35 years worth the first year. And around the world, people know what we're doing. 

People are also reaching out to copy, and we tell them, “That's great, just please don't copy and paste our photos and words off of our website. But if you want to take the business model, go run with it.” Most companies use their real estate to brand themselves. But as we're proving, it's much more important to use your real estate to brand others. I'll use Coke as another example. We've already calculated, like on those big rig trucks, if they just left the front of the truck Coca-Cola, but that whole box truck part of it, if that was advertising, they would increase their revenue by a billion dollars a year. But they're not doing it. When you're a legacy company like that, I guess the question to ask themselves or yourself is, do you need it to say Coca-Cola 100% everywhere on the cans to know what a can of Coke tastes like? Or to know what a McDonald's cheeseburger tastes like? Of course not. We all know what they taste like. And so when you reach a certain size, I believe you should kind of switch gears and use your real estate to make more money.

Tina Dietz 

Now that you've gotten the OK to copy Josh's business model, let's take a look into his leadership style.

Josh Cliffords

I mean, some people say they're going to do stuff and other people try to do it or do it. We just do stuff. I think there are two types of leaders in the world. There's the one that's going to tell everyone what to do, like, “Do this or else,” or there are the other ones who empower people to make their own decisions. I try to fall into that latter category because if I'm involved in every company situation, we're not going to move very quickly. So I just try to give everybody either resources and tools they need to make a quality decision. 

For me, it's mainly guilt, to be honest, and why guilt? Because when I realized that we can make all of these things negatively priced, free plus charity equals profit, my wife and I were actually pretty much retired, living on the beach in Montenegro. Our rent was $300 a month, so we didn't have to work very hard to retire there, and I didn't want to mess that up. We were really comfortable. And I was also scared. At the time, I couldn't type or use a computer. And I'm really bad at reading because now I know I have dyslexia. I was diagnosed this year. So how was I going to be a tech founder or CEO if I couldn't even type? I was like, “No way. This isn't possible. I'm not going to work on this.” 100 days later, I felt so guilty. I started teaching myself how to use a computer, I started working on the project 70 to 100 hours a week, and little by little, here we are. And that's pretty much, I'd say, the only secret I have to success. If you care about something so much that you just can't stop thinking about it, of course, you're going to make it happen. We're going to save 100,000 lives a day. I don't want that on my conscience that I knew that I could do it and quit. It's basically the ultimate tool to make it happen, I guess.

Tina Dietz

While Ian's light at the end of the tunnel involves educating future generations, Josh has found a different motive. He's harnessed his anxiety to push the world towards positivity. It's a solid reminder that motivation doesn't always need to be warm, happy, and fuzzy. It's only human to be concerned for our future, and our planet needs more help. But as leaders like Josh and Ian show us, giving up hope and quitting is not the way. It's possible to do well and do good in this world. If we've got the vision to make a difference, willingness to throw out old ways of doing things, creativity to push innovation, vulnerability to create relationships and make connections, resilience to get you through the hard times, and faith in yourself that you're the one, that you will find a way, that's today's leadership elixir for leading in uncharted waters. 

I'm Tina Dietz, your enchantress of enterprise. And thank you for joining us today. We want to hear about what you're creating and how you're leading in ways that are making a difference in the world, no matter how large or small. Come and join the conversation at DrinkFromTheWellPodcast.com. Follow us on your favorite podcast platform and share this episode with a colleague. We'll be back with another episode, and we're always here to refresh and entertain you anytime you need a Drink From the Well. 

Drink From the Well is an original production of Twin Flames Studios and our magical team, including Alayna Carley, Darek Blackburn, Nadia Cox, Stephen George, and me, Tina Dietz.

About our Guest Experts

Ian Koblick has pioneered ocean exploration since the 1960's, and for the past five decades has developed built and operated ocean and environmental education facilities in the Caribbean and Florida As an alternate aquanaut in Tektite I and manager and aquanaut in Tektite II, he was one of the nation's first aquanauts. In 1972 he designed and operated “La Chalupa”, the most advanced undersea lab in the world. He and a partner converted it to Jules’ Undersea Lodge, the world’s only undersea hotel, which has been in operation since 1986 at the Marine Resources Development Foundation environmental education facility in Key Largo Florida. The Foundation houses and educates more than 4,000 students a year for the past 35 years (www.MRDF.org). Ian created the foundation and has served as president for 50 years. 

Josh Cliffords is the founder & CEO of Free Water, a company that gives out free bottled water covered in advertisements that pay for its cost. His entrepreneurial spirit started at a young age when he ran a successful lemonade stand. Cliffords started a gym in Los Angeles in 2007 and sold the business, enlisted in the army where he got hurt during training right before his 30th birthday, and he met Nigerian refugees in Rome by happenstance, and was so moved by their stories that he founded a nonprofit called Save the Refugees. After these ventures, he started Free Water, which he operates now to distribute water for free all while also saving up to 35 million lives every year.

Episode Featured Resources

Marine Resources Development Foundation

OCEEF

Jules' Undersea Lodge Website

Free Water Website

I Spent 24 Hours In An Underwater Hotel YouTube Video

Overnight in the World’s Oldest Underwater Hotel Youtube Video

Free Water TikTok Video

Leaders’ Discussion Guide – Leading in Uncharted Waters:

Today’s Leadership Elixir – Which of these resonate with you and your team? Should any additional ones be added?
  • Vision to make a difference
  • Willingness to throw out old ways of doing things
  • Creativity to push innovation
  • Vulnerability to create relationships and make connections
  • Resilience to get you through the hard times
  • Faith in yourself that you're the one, that you will find a way
How to prepare to lead this discussion session with your team:
  • Take Josh’s advice (19:30) and notice where your feelings motivate you as a leader. Take some time to journal about this and notice whether you’re judging yourself.
  • Read this article and use the techniques to clear yourself of “Emotional Velcro” before heading into discussion with your team.
Questions to discuss WITH your team about Leading in Uncharted Waters in the workplace:
  1. Have them listen to the episode first to create common ground and context for the conversation.
  2. What ways are we currently fostering innovation in the workplace, or are we at all? Is there a willingness to throw out the old and create space for new ideas?
  3. Let's think about the times where we felt like we were making a difference as individuals and as a company. What stands out?
  4. ADVANCED: Where could we be using our business model, products/services, or platform to do more good in the world?

Inspired to turn your Voice into influence and become a Thought Leader worth listening to?

Let's Talk

The Leadership Paradox of Psychological Safety

You’ve probably heard the term “Psychological Safety” thrown around. But what does this mean for leaders, who are responsible for themselves and others? Is this a revolutionary belief, or simply a passing trend? With help from psychological safety experts Lisa Wimberger and Candy Barone, Tina explores how leaders can regulate their mental and physical wellbeing.

Don't miss our Leaders' Discussion Guide for this episode below – perfect for your next team Lunch & Learn!

Psychological Safety – Episode Highlights

  • Learn the scientific definition of psychological safety (4:40)
  • See the “warning signs” of a psychologically unsafe environment in yourself (15:58)
  • Discover the parts of your brain that determine your fight, flight, freeze response (16:55)
  • Learn tips and tricks from experts on how to regulate yourself back to a state of calm, and lead your team to success! (26:45)
  • Most common challenges in creating psychological safety in the workplace, and some “Sacred Cows” that need to be eliminated. (20:11)

Full Transcript

Tina Dietz  

Hello everyone and welcome. I'm Tina Dietz, and this is Drink From The Well. Today's topic: the paradox of leadership and psychological safety. For the first time in decades, we're seeing the pendulum swing in the world of business and industry from a focus on developing hard skills, like technical training, to soft skills, which I've always hated that term – let's call them something more accurate. People skills, human skills, what we actually need to communicate and thrive together. But one of the big reasons in this shift is the demand by workers and the absolute pile of mounting research and data related to something called psychological safety.

Voice Over (Audio Montage)

“The importance of psychological safety” 

“It’s amazing how much attention is now being spent on psychological safety” 

“Google built its culture on this idea of psychological safety” 

“I call these special workplaces ones that have psychological safety” 

“Building psychological safety on a team” 

Tina Dietz 

One of the basic tenets of psychology is mired in Eric Erickson's work from the mid-1900s, where he theorized that all humans go through a series of eight psychosocial stages. In the first stage a child goes through, and that's about birth to 18 months old or so, is determining whether the world that they live in is one that they can trust, and if they can indeed feel safe in that world. Another basic premise common to psychology is Maslow's hierarchy of needs. And you may have seen Maslow's famous pyramid in a psych 101 class. This construct shows safety as a basic human need only secondary to food, air, water and shelter. So, today, we're exploring what happens when leaders are being asked to provide psychological safety for their teams, when they might not even feel psychologically safe themselves. We'll also be looking at the impacts of what happens when people don't feel safe in the workplace, and, of course, what we can do about it to move forward, to innovate and to help each other out. Today, we are joined by two fantastic experts. Lisa Wimberger is the founder of the Neurosculpting Institute and the co-founder of the NeuroPraxis app. She has a credible background educationally in neuroscience, visual perception, neurobiology and education, and is the author of seven books on neuroplasticity and stress management. She owns multiple companies, has over 60 international franchises and teaches in audiences ranging from corporate leaders to the FBI and the Secret Service. Candy Barone is also joining us today, and she is the CEO and founder of You Empowered Strong, a leadership development expert, a trainer and executive coach, and she is also a bestselling author and an international speaker. Candy’s also a Vistage executive chair and CEO peer advisory group facilitator and a member of the Forbes Coaching Council. She has received incredible numbers of awards in leadership. Candy has also been showcased on CNN, the US News and World Report, South by Southwest, Fast Company and many, many other publications. So, I am honored to have both of you on the show today. Lisa, thank you for joining us.

Lisa Wimberger  

It's great to be here. 

Tina Dietz  

And Candy, thank you as well.

Candy Barone   

It's my honor. Thank you for having me.

Tina Dietz 

Yeah, so, we really wanted to cover 360 everything having to do with psychological safety from giving leaders a basis to work from, because this keeps coming up in the news. It's coming up all over business. There's studies being run by Google and Gallup, Workhuman. The research really is mounting like crazy. But I think we really need to first, take a look at what is our working definition of psychological safety for our conversation today. And Lisa, I really love the one that you use. And I was wondering if you would share that with us.

Lisa Wimberger 

Yeah. For me, the way I like to look at it is psychological safety being our ability to regulate, in the moment, based on appropriate environmental, contextual requirements outside of our old reactive patterns, and really orienting towards listening, understanding and responding. It doesn't mean I always feel safe. It means I know how to guide myself back to some level of homeostasis so I can function in present time appropriately.

Tina Dietz  

So this idea that we can have the capacity to move ourselves towards regulation, no matter what's going on around us.

Lisa Wimberger   

Absolutely. We're not supposed to be stuck in regulation. We're supposed to always be able to orient towards it. That's what a mammalian nervous system is best at.

Tina Dietz

And we do have to keep in mind that we are mammals, and we are dealing with this mammalian nervous system. We do lose that in our day-to-day work. You probably see a lot of that, right?

Lisa Wimberger  

Yeah, we forget we're mammals. And so for all of you listening, I want to just sort of couch everything I'm going to say. When you feel yourself respond in this dialogue we're having with the, “Oh my God, that's me, and I'm broken.” And, “Oh, no, I've been doing it all wrong,” I don't want you to think that that's a bad thing. I want you to think, “Yay! I just saw my growth opportunity,” to be able to identify that. As mammals, we're all imperfect creatures whose best capacity is to grow from our awareness of dysregulation. So if you're one of those, “Oh, no, I'm screwed up because this is me,” you're ahead of the game.

Tina Dietz     

Yeah, 100% cheer for self-awareness for sure, right? Now, Candy, you’re really known in your – in the leadership circles for someone who shows people how to have uncomfortable conversations. So, what do you think is kind of the first rule for us entering into a conversation like this that might have leaders feel a little bit uncomfortable with approaching even the idea of, “How the hell am I going to create psychological safety for my team when I don't feel comfortable myself?”

Candy Barone  

Yeah, and I love what Lisa said, both in terms of the definition around what psychological safety is and talking about what happens when we feel that dysregulation, because one of the things that I talk to leaders about is the fact that in order to have the, what I call, the courageous connected conversations, we need the ability to create safe containers where people can be free to feel seen, heard, valued, loved and respected without fear of repercussion or judgment. And that is easy to say and very difficult when leaders have not been given the opportunity to get the- and I'm going to use the-  human skills required to have the level of emotional intelligence and capacity to hold that space, especially when they haven't been able to create it for themselves. And so, there is an aspect of a couple things that I think is really important. One is the ability to listen for understanding and vulnerability. Vulnerability still is such a dirty word in many business environments and seen as a weakness rather than, truly, the most critical aspect of an organization. 

Tina Dietz   

That's absolutely perfect. And I heard you both talk about one of my favorite topics, which is engaging the superpower of curiosity. And because curiosity does live in a different part of the brain than other emotions, a lot of folks don't realize that it's a great way to interrupt your patterning of going down a stress rabbit hole or a situation where you might be feeling incredibly vulnerable. I wear a lot of emotions on my sleeve. It's part of what makes me me. And in leading my team, sometimes in having those difficult conversations, I have to create all of this space for me to have those large feelings inside of me both simultaneously without vomiting all over my team, but also give myself the own space and grace that I could very easily get angry with myself about being emotional, which makes me more emotional, which makes me angrier. But leaving room for all of that space allows us to move through these challenges so much more quickly. So, we just jumped right into the thick of what it's like to experience all of these feelings and all of these emotions. And on that note, I just want to back up for just a moment, create a little context. I'm so excited about this particular topic, but I wanted to share a little bit about some of the things about the two of you, why I asked you to be here today and what makes you such incredible experts around this topic. Lisa, something that I know about you that really intrigues me was that when you were 15, apparently you were struck by lightning. 

Lisa Wimberger

Yes. 

Tina Dietz

And that had a real impact on you going down this path and studying the mammalian nervous system and the psychology around it.

Lisa Wimberger

Yeah, it screwed me up big time. I'll tell you, there's nothing glorious about being hit by lightning. I was hit in the base of the spine on my birthday and developed a seizure disorder, which was undiagnosed for many years, but it was getting progressively worse. So, I thought I was fainting. I was actually having grand mal seizures, I was flatlining, I was being resuscitated, I was ending up in the ER. And this got worse and worse. And I finally got a handle on it 15 years ago, and I was a single mom at the time. And I was like, “Nope, can't do this, can't leave my kid as an orphan.” So, I was studying neuroscience because I needed help and Western medicine couldn't give it to me. I wasn't epileptic, there were no meds. They said, “You just have to deal with this.” That was my very self-serving reason for studying neuroscience. Found the keys to the system to regulate, and that set me on the path of, “How can I teach other people how to regulate?” Because the core of my seizure disorder was psychological threat. It was a stress response. 

Tina Dietz 

Yes. 

Lisa Wimberger  

Right. So, the fact that I didn't have psychological safety with all of my education background and my 30 plus years of meditation – yes, I've been meditating regularly since I was 12 – did not provide me psychological safety. I had to work for that. I had to identify, learn, apply, integrate, digest, metabolize and continue. And that was provided to me by neuro-scientifically understanding what a mammalian system needs.

Tina Dietz

What's so beautiful here is that, I know that, Candy, your path towards working with leaders and regulating yourself also started fairly early in life with a desire to create more psychological safety for yourself. And can you speak to that?

Candy Barone  

Yeah, I would say that early on, there was a lot of fight, flight, freeze response due to just the abuse that I was surrounded with when it came to my dad, and a lot more psychological and emotional abuse, which then transcended into 20 years of a corporate career, which at the age of 35, put me in the hospital. And what happened was, I was in a space of where, I call the over syndrome, which is I was over-functioning, over-performing to the point where I was so over exhausted, over frustrated, over burned out, over beyond, my entire identity was attached to my over as a form of way to create safety for myself that it literally created a mass, a pain in my chest that doubled me over. So, I remember going to see – because I didn’t even have time to go see my doctor, even though I was having debilitating pain and space where I wasn't able to catch my breath. So, as I was sitting in the waiting room when I probably should have gone to the ER, I remember having a conversation in my brain that went something like,  “Candy, when was the last time you slept?” And this other piece of my brain went, “I'm not talking about when you passed out at your computer, when you had six martinis to take the edge off. When was the last time you had a real quality night's sleep?” I couldn't recall one in the last three weeks. And the moment I acknowledged that for myself, the wheels came off. Because then a barrage of questions, “Oh my God, my doctor is going to ask why I think I'm having a heart attack. Is it because of the binge eating or the alcohol, or this? Oh my God, I think I went shopping last week. And what did I buy at Ann Taylor? There's still a bag sitting in my hall.” And like my brain just took over, and absolutely, I was almost in the fetal position by the time the doctor came out to call me into his office. After a battery of CTs, MRIs, tests, colonoscopy, endoscopy, you name it, it finally came back that I had created – and I say that very deliberately – I created and manifested a mass in my chest that tripped a sliding hiatal hernia I didn't even know I had. And I manifested it because I had spent 20 years, well, actually, at that point, about 35, doing what I call the shallow, above the neck breathing, which was the holding my breath because of the stress that was constantly activated around me or the hyperventilating, which eventually caused all of that energy to trap in my body.

Tina Dietz  

And this is such a great example of – one of my questions has been, “How do you know you're not in a space of psychological safety?” That is a clear example. And there's all gradations of this. And my own journey with becoming a therapist, and then working with people in their businesses, working with teenagers, also came out of the sense of, I was never safe as a child, I was always at risk, one way or another, no matter where I turned, didn't have this like safe base that I could count on. And so, I had to create that for myself as an adult later on. So, this is a really common story. So, then we're all going into workplaces, carrying a lot of this with us. And no matter how much work we do, we're still dealing with being around other humans dealing with this mammalian nervous system. And this is something that out of Lisa's work, I'm familiar with, the idea of we go into a state of midbrain dominance when we're not in a space of psychological safety. So Lisa, could you tell us about midbrain dominance?

Lisa Wimberger  

Yeah, and Candy, what an amazing, hit the wall moment for you where it all got clear. And I just want to say, who better to teach people about creating psychological safety than those of us who had to find it and work for it and can give the ins and outs of how to do that. I want the people who've been in the trenches. You may not know you don't feel safe. But here's some things you can know. You can know if you have constipation or diarrhea. You can know if you're gaining weight inappropriately, or excessively, rapidly losing weight. You can know if you're breathing by inquiring. You can know if you're profusely sweating at all the wrong times. You can know if you have terrible circulation. You can know if you have inability to concentrate. You can know if you have dry throat, dry eyes, dry orifices. You can know these things. These are key indicators of dysregulation, that dysregulation may come from top-down, your perception of psychological safety. They may come from bottom-up environmental, experiential things you're feeling that then get translated as a psychological threat. Either way, you can know you're dysregulated far sooner than hitting the wall like I did and like Candy did, right? So, that's the first thing. But what happens in a situation like mine or Candy’s is that you are in fight, flee, freeze in order to function or in order to avoid the pain, right? That's a mammalian spectrum of responses. And we all have that. And every one of us here listening has had those experiences. But any of those will put you either in your midbrain dominantly as your neural functioning, or even more primitive, into your brainstem. And in that arousal and adrenaline and cortisol, you actually have anesthetized your body in a way so you can produce. So that's midbrain. Then you get to critical mass, and you go into shutdown. And that's the holding the breath part. And that means midbrain no longer can take it, it is now your brainstem running the show. And that's going to cause the holding the breath, the freeze, the immobility and the complete and utter shutdown. Some of us don't progress in that fashion. Some of us skip fight, flee, go right to freeze. I was freeze. So, now midbrain and brainstem are very efficiently taught and very amazing students, that they learn that they govern the show because it protects you. And the part of your brain that's supposed to be creating psychological safety for yourself, and then for others, the part of the brain that makes us all great leaders on paper, right, the ability to get our teams functioning, the ability to create safety, the ability to be innovative and compassionate and empathic and thinking and listening, and all of that requires prefrontal cortex resilience and activity, which is inhibited neurologically when we are in midbrain and brainstem dominance, a part of the brain we have starved, a part of the brain we have weakened.

Tina Dietz     

And so, when we're in this part of our brain, in the center of the brain and the brain stem, that's where we start to see these reports from, say, the Gallup study, that over 60% of employees are reporting that they're experiencing some form of burnout. And that means not just stress, but where they're actually starting to shut down and can’t access things. So, we're all still creating and doing and managing in spite of all this, which really says a lot about how resilient human beings really, really are. It is quite incredible what is possible, even in the face of all of this stress. I know for myself, one of my key indicators that I've slipped into the center of my brain instead of my prefrontal cortex is those accelerated thought processes. I get hyper vigilant or I start running scenarios. And I'm like, “Well, what if I did this? Or what if I did that? Or what if I do that?” and it just starts to feel way too fast. So, that is a key indicator that I've seen in clients and myself for years. I think we see that a lot in teams and companies. So, turning our attention to helping leaders identify what's happening in their culture that might be blocking psychological safety, Candy, you talk sometimes about something called sacred cows as one of the three most common challenges in company cultures that block psychological safety. What do you mean by sacred cows?

Candy Barone    

Yeah, I mean two things. And I need to preface this because it connects to what you and Lisa just said around resiliency. And this goes into sacred cows. We think about resiliency, oftentimes, in corporations and organizations as being the ability to bounce back. And one of the ways I try to simplify this for people is I talk about resiliency being this space in between reaction and response. And I say that because, when we look at the sacred cows, and we talk about some of that resiliency and how it plays in, oftentimes, I see sacred cows showing up in one of two spaces. One is that person that is a trigger for that psychological unsafety, because they are someone who has been a legacy team member, they have been there 30 some years, and people say, “That's just Bob,” and because Bob doesn't have the same expectations to show up and regulate, that there are excuses made over and over again around why Bob gets to create these unsafe spaces and that everybody should suck it up and just move on. So, there's one side of the sacred cow that says, “Just bounce back, just get over it. Just trust that’s Bob.” And we put that resiliency on people instead of the ownership where it belongs. The other side of the sacred cow is for those leaders that are deeply empathetic, sometimes sympathetic, and they are two different things, but they love their people. And so, they oftentimes will see potential in people that either don't see it in themselves or have capacity to be the person they want. I see Lisa pointing to herself. And so, we create a sacred cow because we try to save somebody who's not our responsibility or our job to save. And what happens is that in and of itself creates more of that unsafe psychological space. And they don't even realize the energy they're putting into that. So those two sacred cows are dangerous in an organization in my perspective. 

Tina Dietz   

That's definitely dangerous. Do you run into situations where leaders even question that psychological safety is even, quote unquote, a thing?

Candy Barone

Yeah. That is one of the biggest push backs, where leaders are like, “Oh, that woo woo crap is a bunch of nonsense and that's just a bunch of BS, the new flavor.” And so then it is asking them very direct questions because, I know even yesterday, I posted something that says, “Do you even know if you're creating a toxic work environment?” Most leaders don't know. But here's the other side of that. The leaders that do get it, that can feel what's been happening, especially in light of the last couple years, one of the things, and it breaks my heart to hear them say this, I get leaders on the phone that will say, “Candy, do you want to know what my biggest fear is right now, and the thing that keeps me up at night, is that whenever we come through whatever this is, that I'm going to realize I did more damage than good to the people I care most about, my team and my family, because I didn't know, I didn't know.” And then they actually start to, and this is where we say leaders don't feel safe, where they literally, and I get very emotional saying this, because they will break down. I get men who are sixty years old, who will fetal position, completely shut down and finally release a weight they have been carrying on their heart because they are taking responsibility for something that's not theirs, because they don't know how to impact psychological safety and they feel the impact of what's happening because they don't.

Lisa Wimberger 

And Candy, for me, that is the power of vulnerability. So first, is the acknowledgement. Then, they move into the shame and guilt of having been an imperfect human, as though they shouldn't ever have been, which is ridiculous. And then, that's where the growth and learning happens. That is the pause that you said, that, I love that, the resiliency is the pause between the reaction and then the response, which moves towards solution and innovation. Neurologically, that is the space of learning. And learning only ever can happen from error recognition. If you're in a state of, “I'm doing it right,” there is no capacity for the brain to evaluate a gap and adapt and move on to something adaptable and learned. There are leaders who dismiss psychological safety as “woo woo.” That is as ridiculous as saying, “Yes, I concur. We are all mammals, but I'm the one mammal that does not function like all other mammals.” That makes no neurobiological sense to me. 

Tina Dietz  

No, it definitely does not. 

Candy Barone 

And yet, they say it. 

Tina Dietz 

Yeah, it comes up, and there is the human response of being afraid of being wrong, right? So, as much as we can create compassion for each other and leave a space for an opening and understanding where is somebody in midbrain dominance? If we can listen to each other a little bit more like, “You know what? They're in a fear response right now, let's let that subside or let's move into something that allows that fear to move through,” because once that fear response is on, it doesn't just shut off. So, let's talk about getting some regulation available for leaders to bolster them so that they can be more present for their teams, and I would love to do another episode with the two of you specifically around what leaders can do for their teams, but, let's look at leaders specifically, and starting to, from the biological side and the behavioral side, Lisa, first, I'd love to hear from you. You say that leaders need to understand the non-negotiable dynamics of the mammalian nervous system and value it. So what, very precisely, are some non-negotiable dynamics they need to know? And what do they need to be doing to regulate their nervous system?

Lisa Wimberger  

Yeah. So I'm going to step out of behavior completely and go to you’re a mammal. Here's what needs to happen if you want to access your prefrontal cortex, your leadership skills. You have to have a regulated nervous system, and the fastest way into that, there are two fast tracks in, somatically. One is to condition your vagus nerve daily. And I'm going to give you those practices. They take thirty seconds, and they're free. The second thing is to release the muscle contractions that we all have when we're stressed to micro and macro degrees. And those perpetual contractions send perpetual signals to the brain that say “You're not safe, you're not safe, you're not safe.” And that's white noise. So, those are the two fast tracks in. So, number one, how do you dissipate the contractions in your body, so you stop sending signals back up to the brain? You have to do neurogenic tremoring, which is the phrase “shake it off.” So a 10 to 30 second super vigorous, full body shake. Not a controlled shake. The kind where you feel that, “Uhh,” that chill run up your spine, and you induce that. And you do that with a lot of energy for 10 to 30 seconds. You're going to use up the energy in the muscles. They're going to start to soften through their own neurogenic tremoring. They're going to twitch, and then they're going to send feedback signals back up to the brain that say we're softening. Cats in the wild, when they're not hunting and in threat mode, they are soft and laying down and yawning. So, our nervous systems need the same thing, soft muscles. The other piece of that is the vagal toning, your vagus nerve. That's the thing Candy was saying was holding her breath, was creating that pressure in the heart. The vagus nerve innervates all the organs and it is a brain stem governor of our stress response. And so if you get that thing resilient, well, then you have the orchestra leader leading the band, right, with a beautiful song. So, how you do that is you create vibrations in the lower face and neck. And that is lip exercises like the blowing raspberry effect. That silly thing? Not so silly. Your lower facial muscles innervate the vagus nerve, you send vibration to that vagus nerve, and you are creating mild benign resilience stimulation. You can massage your inner left ear because the auricular path of the vagus nerve will innervate very quickly. So, the inner lower part of the left ear can create a lot of vagal toning, and then humming, singing or even more powerful, gargling. The more you condition your vagus nerve, the more you build literal long-term resilience in your stress response. These are the exercises I do every day, 30 seconds apiece. 

Tina Dietz   

Perfect. Just to make sure everybody knows, we will be having, not only bullet-pointed timestamped show notes of all of this, resources backed to everything that Lisa and Candy are talking about today and the transcript. So if you find yourself just you know pulling over in your car or sitting down because you're like, “Wow, that's fascinating and a lot of words, and I really want to understand this,” please know we've got all of that for you at DrinkFromTheWellPodcast.com. Candy, you also have some tips for leaders on the behavioral and educational side of things that you really want them to know to get started in how they're feeling vulnerable, creating their own psychological safety for themselves.     

Candy Barone  

Yeah, and I love what Lisa just said, because it adds into one of the pieces. I talk to people about the three ways they can create more balance. And oftentimes, that's that regulation. And it's how you start your day, how you end your day, and how you manage the middle. And what I mean by that is there is the more intention you have about creating space for yourself at the start of the day, whether it through movement, through activating your body, mind, and spirit, through being able to connect back to who you are, why that matters and just a sense of self, will put you in a position to be able to navigate and notice some of these unregulated areas faster, so that you can create those moments that Lisa’s talking about, which I will call the managing the middle. And then there's the ending the day. Are you giving yourself a clear way to clear the deck, so to speak, to unplug, to disconnect from all of the things that also add stress, the blue lights, the technology, the things that if you're already amped up in your nervous system, is very sensitive. Those things are just adding extra juice that giving yourself real clear ways to shut that down, to be able to journal, reflect on what you learn through the day, and setting your environment for sacred sleep. And the managing the middle is what Lisa's talking about. I talk to people about creating what I call CMTs: Conscious Mindful Transitions. And we have, probably, four major areas where we have transitions in our life: from sleep to activate. So from rest to actually moving our body, and there is a transition space, perfect time to do what Lisa just said. There is a transition space between leaving our home or space and moving into our workspace. So there's personal to work. There is solo work to teamwork. And then there's that space of closing out the day and shutting things down. And so when we look at, we have transition spaces that, if we can start to discipline ourselves and create habits, that we then use them as prompted triggers to practice more mindfulness, to practice the harmonic tools that Lisa's talking about, to practice our breathing. And we've capped off our day with those bookends, it's amazing. These are the skills that I had to learn. I can regulate and move in and out of stress much easier and quickly, because stress always happens, because I have the tools that are my daily practice no matter what.

Tina Dietz    

This is a masterclass in a half hour podcast session is really what this is. A couple more points I wanted to touch on, because we're really dealing, again, with the physical body, the emotional body, the psychological body, the environment. Lisa, and Candy, I know that you have had your own experiences, as have I, with, if you're not sleeping, pretty much anything else we say and do here is going to be 10 times harder to regulate. We can't regulate the hormones and metabolism, the digestion. Also, hydration and nutrition. Now, we run the risk, of course, we talk about all these things of, “Holy crap, I've got to do all of this. I've got to do it all at once. I've got to figure it out, or everything is going to go wrong.” And from my own experience as a therapist and my own journey, I can say that it's so important for us to understand as leaders to have more compassion for ourselves than anybody else. We have to start with that example for ourselves. So, maybe you're not sleeping well but you can do the tremoring and you can drink some more water. And you can take two minutes in between meetings to just take five deep breaths and to yawn a couple of times as I would do as a stress relief with some of my vocal leadership clients, right? Two minutes is all you need to start this process, to start regulating yourself from a biological perspective, and then from a behavioral, emotional perspective, having some room so that when you're feeling vulnerable, you can make it okay to be that way. And then fortunately, something else I've learned from Lisa, is that because human beings have this wonderful little thing called limbic resonance, we actually impact the people around us when we start to make changes. I see you nodding. I'm like, “Oh, I know there's so many more stories in this.” So we're going to have to continue this conversation, for sure. But for today, Lisa and Candy, I'd love for you to maybe share a parting tip, some words of wisdom for our leaders listening to just get them kind of started on the next phase of their journey. Candy, let's start with you.

Candy Barone   

I would say, I guess my takeaway from this conversation is that resiliency, real resiliency is born in the space between reaction and response, and the choices you make one by one, to your point, Lisa, that 1%, that starts to make a compounded effect that can change your life.

Tina Dietz  

Lisa?

Lisa Wimberger 

I would say that between what we three just talked about is the equivalent of having set up gas stations all along the highway. And you as a leader, wanting to drive your team to the successful end goal, have been running out of gas. You're not going to get to your end goal by driving faster with no gas. You're going to get to the end goal by pulling off the highway and filling up. And so Candy's techniques, what Tina was identifying and the things that I gave you, these are your gas stations. And if you don't take that time to regulate, to fill your tank, you're not going to get, not only you aren't going to get there, you're going to inhibit your team getting there. You will be in your own way and theirs, and you have all the skills and tools now to not do that.

Tina Dietz  

And there it is. I thank you both so much for joining me around the well today to refresh and rejuvenate the leaders listening and to have such a refreshing and rejuvenating conversation among us as colleagues today. I'm definitely feeling the limbic resonance happening in the conversation. So, thank you both so much.

Lisa Wimberger  

Thank you. What a pleasure.

Candy Barone   

Absolutely. Thank you.

Tina Dietz

Thanks for gathering around the well with us today, and I invite you back for another drink of our executive elixir as we bring the worlds of leadership innovation, creativity and communication together. Follow us on your favorite podcast app and journey over to DrinkFromTheWellPodcast.com for transcripts, show notes and links for all the wisdom in today's episode. We're always here to refresh and to entertain you anytime you need a drink from the well. 

Drink From The Well is an original production of Twin Flames Studios.

About our Guest Experts in Psychological Safety

Lisa Wimberger is the founder of the Neurosculpting® Institute and co-founder of the NeuroPraxis App.  She holds a Masters Degree in Education, a Foundations Certification in NeuroLeadership, and Certificates in Medical Neuroscience, Visual Perception, and the Brain, and Neurobiology. She is the author of seven books on neuroplasticity and stress management, including NEW BELIEFS, NEW BRAIN: Free Yourself from Stress and Fear, and NEUROSCULPTING: A Whole-Brain Approach to Heal Trauma, Rewrite Limiting Beliefs, and Find Wholeness.

She runs multiple companies, and has over 60 international franchises. Lisa still runs a private meditation coaching practice teaching clients who suffer from emotional blocks, stress disorders, and self-imposed limitations. She is a keynote speaker and a faculty member of Kripalu Yoga and Meditation Center, the Law Enforcement Survival Institute, Omega Institute, and 1440 Multiversity.

Candy Barone, CEO & Founder of You Empowered Strong, is a leadership development expert, trainer and executive coach, as well as an international speaker and Amazon best-selling author.

With nearly 20 years in corporate, combined with a bachelor’s degree in mechanical engineering, certification as a Six Sigma Black Belt, and MBA, she is a master at building exceptional, high-performing teams, maximizing and leveraging ROI, growing emerging leaders, creating metrics for greater accountability, and catapulting individuals to achieve explosive growth. 

Episode Featured Resources for Psychological Safety

Neurosculpting Institute Website

NeuroPraxis App

NEW BELIEFS, NEW BRAIN by Lisa Wimberger

NEUROSCULPTING by Lisa Wimberger 

You Empowered Strong Website

You Empowered Strong by Candy Barone

LEADERS' DISCUSSION GUIDE – PSYCHOLOGICAL SAFETY

How to prepare to lead this discussion session with your team:
  1. Observe your ‘internal landscape' and notice where your nervous system is regulated and where you may have some dysregulation.
  2. Use the techniques in the episode (skip to minute 26) to help bring yourself into the present moment and find a deeper state of regulation/psychological safety in yourself.
  3. You may also use these simple, quick stress reducing techniques.
  4. Remember that in your conversation with your team, sharing your own experiences can help encourage others.
Questions to discuss WITH your team about psychological safety in the workplace:
  1. Have them listen to the episode first to create common ground and context for the conversation.
  2. On a scale of 1-10, on average how stressed or ‘dysregulated' does your nervous system feel during the workday?
  3. What do you find works well to help reduce your stress?
  4. Let's think about the times where we felt the most cohesive as a team – when were those times and what stands out about those times?
  5. ADVANCED: Do you think we have any ‘sacred cows' in our workplace?

Inspired to turn your Voice into influence and become a Thought Leader worth listening to?

Let's Talk

How Thought Leadership Archetypes Bring Magic to Your Message

We are all born with two voices: the one we speak with and the one that speaks to us inside. Our inner voice provides navigation through life, while our outer voice is the tool we use to guide, teach, influence, and help others. When our inner voice is aligned with our outer voice, true, authentic thought leadership comes forth.

While we can certainly argue the notion that we have many voices inside of us, (I’m the first person to admit that I have inner ‘board meetings’ sometimes with myself) the central premise here is that our communication becomes clear once we become more congruent and aligned with ourselves. We become more grounded and centered, and when we speak or write, that alignment comes through in all forms of our communication – vocal, physical, energetic, and in the words we choose.

You might have heard of Carl Jung’s 12 Archetypes, and how brands utilize them in marketing. According to Jung, the human psyche is predisposed to these archetypes and they are patterned into us inherently. Versions of these archetypes are found in storytelling across world cultures and through millenia.

We are always evolving our identity as thought leaders. By identifying our current primary and influencing archetypes, we give ourselves a space to check in with our inner and outer voices and ask ourselves: 

  • Is my voice and message consistent?
  • Do my words and thoughts reflect what is authentic for me at this time?
  • Does my message feel forced or awkward, or fluid and easy?
  • Am I enjoying and excited about my own thought leadership, and the messages I’m putting out into the world?

Utilizing archetypes as a guide enriches our content development by giving a natural and psychologically congruent place to develop and express one’s communication style. In essence, when you communicate using your thought leadership archetypes as a guide, you are perceived as credible, trustworthy, and authentic.

Read on with a curious mind and discover the magic of thought leadership archetypes.

The Seekers: Innocent, Explorer, Sage

While there are 12 archetypes, each fall into a quadrant of similarity. The Seekers are a quadrant defined by a need for knowledge, freedom, and safety.

The Innocent is well known for their optimism. They have the ability to comfort others through their “glass half full” mentality. Innocents can simplify complex topics easily, recognize opportunities others may not see, and bring forth an inspirational perspective that carries a team through tough times. While they may be perceived as naive or in denial, the Innocent’s deep faith and trust in life keep them going. 

The Explorer is the Indiana Jones of the workplace. Always looking to embark on the next adventure, the Explorer centers their thought leadership around the potential of unexplored avenues of inquiry, divergent thinking, and asking great questions that can lead to innovation. Explorers value autonomy and freedom over all else, which may lead them to feel trapped and easily bored.

The Sage is your quintessential thought leader. Sages are perceived as experts in a wide range of topics due to their love for learning, and therefore make excellent mentors, educators, and coaches. While they may not be the most charismatic, their ability to think critically and analyze data allows Sages to enjoy a high level of credibility amongst their colleagues and followers.

The Disruptors: Hero, Rebel, Magician

The Disruptors are those who leave a mark. They are courageous, provocative, and dynamic people who value liberation, power, and mastery.

The Hero inspires others with their stories of overcoming the odds and rising to challenges. They thrive in a competitive environment with a clear set of goals, and take pride in their dedication to their cause. However, this need to succeed may cause Heroes to disregard their personal wellbeing, as their strength comes not from themselves but who they are in the world. 

The Rebel has the courage to challenge the status quo. A positive advocate for change, Rebels are admired for their ability to speak out against inefficient systems and comfortably live in the uncomfortable. Their high tolerance for risk allows them to throw out the old in favor of the new, even if their recklessness comes at a high price.

The Magician is a charismatic miracle-worker. They use their charm and creative intuition to bring the seemingly impossible into fruition, because Magicians love to make dreams come true. Their spot-on hunches and ability to influence their adversaries may cause others to doubt the credibility of Magicians. In the face of disbelief, Magicians return to themselves and spiritual guidance to carry on. 

The Builders: Creator, Ruler, Caregiver

The Builders provide structure in an increasingly noisy world. They are creative, compassionate, and confident.

The Creator is powered by imagination. Their ability to see the final product in the raw material is what allows them to foster innovation and self-expression. Creators take an artful and individual approach to creative thinking and problem solving that motivates others to stretch themselves and see the creative solution. Like most artists and entrepreneurs, Creators have a flair for the dramatics and are prone to perfectionism in everything they do.

The Ruler is a natural-born leader who knows how to use power. They prefer to lead from within, utilizing their social organization prowess and networking skills to improve the world. They may be seen as domineering and tyrannical, but Rulers know when they should intervene with structure, rules, and decisions.

The Caregivers’ superpower is their empathy. Caregivers notice when others need help and support. They naturally foster peaceful and harmonious environments where all feel welcome and safe. While they tend to have poor boundaries, the Caregivers use their keen social intelligence to be the “glue” holding everything together.

The Connectors: Everyperson, Lover, Jester

The last quadrant of archetypes is the Connector. These are people who excel at connecting meaningfully with others in a fair, passionate, and funny way.

The Everyperson is a leader that’s hard to spot. They prefer to fit in with the crowd and be relatable, yet still inspire, advocate, and foster others like any other archetype does. This unique take on leadership comes from their steadfast belief in the equality of every person. They are loyal to humanity to a fault, and their realist approach to life may be mistaken as pessimism. 

The Lover seeks real connection in their life. With their charismatic, engaging, and beautiful personalities, Lovers excel at creating lasting relationships that are meaningful and abundant. They know how to incorporate the romantic, the cherished, and the intimate into their personal branding from wearing their heart on their sleeves their whole lives.

And finally, The Jester is proof that life is but a stage. Jesters know how to effectively use humor and performance to promote change. They encourage others to laugh rather than cry and foster high morale amongst their team, effortlessly creating an environment where people want to work. Jesters put the fun back into boring presentations, meetings or brainstorming sessions, as long as they stay away from mean-spirited or self-indulgent jokes.

We are each a blend of archetypes to varying degrees. Sometimes connecting to a different archetype than our primary is just what you need to spice up your thought leadership. Which archetype, or blend of archetypes, do you resonate with the most? 

At Twin Flames Studios, we’re developing a more powerful assessment (releasing later this year) to support you, your voice, and messaging of your thought leadership archetypes.

If you don’t want to wait to discover more about using your Thought Leadership Archetypes, meet with us to discuss how we can deepen your presence and grow your business and message with your voice. 

Inspired to turn your Voice into influence and become a Thought Leader worth listening to?

Let's Talk

How Do You Create Quality Content That Stands Out from the Crap?

Here’s some facts that might shock you. 500 million tweets are sent out daily, and the weight of that sheer amount of content can be felt. On top of that, 11% of these tweets come from bots, whose sole purpose is to generate content.

In a world of AI-generated content and increasingly cluttered digital noise, it’s more important than ever to have our authenticity and humanity be heard. But aren’t you as exhausted as I am with the notion that you must be EVERYWHERE in order to stay relevant and ‘top of mind?’

So, we can use technology to help us, right? Our tech tools are wonderful, but they can also go completely off the rails. Here’s a few entertaining but cringe-worthy examples of #MARKETINGFAILS. 

KFC had to apologize after sending a promotional message to customers in Germany urging them to commemorate Kristallnacht with cheesy chicken. Kristallnacht was a Nazi-era attack resulting in the death of 90+ Jewish people, marking the beginning of the Holocaust. Yikes. This PR meltdown started because KFC programmed a bot to send automated push notifications based on calendar events, including national observance days. 

In another notable campaign, Coca-Cola encouraged people to reply to negative tweets with #MakeItHappy, so a bot could transform the negative words of the tweet into a cute image. As things on the internet so often do, Coke’s innocent attempt at positivity went south as quotes from Hitler’s Mein Kampf were tagged with #MakeItHappy. The bot made positive images, one of them being a cat playing the drums, out of Hitler’s words. When technology tools go unregulated, we see these types of consequences occurring.

Inflation nowadays…

And yet, we must ABC! (Always Be Creating…right?)

The Thought Leaders, like you, that we work with every day have brilliant bodies of work through your audiobooks and podcasts that we produce with you.

BUT, what I hear most often from our clients is the experience of ‘content fatigue.’ This is the state of listening to their own message over and over again in their minds, on paper, in their emails, and in their courses and classes. Content fatigue is something that thought leaders battle every day.

Did you know, however, that our audiences don’t get tired of entertaining, interesting content? Particularly when that content is surrounding a focused topic. 

I never get bored of the antics of the Pearls Before Swine comics, or of JauncyDev, the content creator who famously creates videos giving human personalities to different dog breeds. Millions of people eagerly await every single derivative that these content creators bring to the table, month on month and year upon year.

We, as thought leaders, are no different. When we allow ourselves to go deeper into our content to find derivatives and angles on the topics we’re already in love with, our audiences come along with us.

3 Ways to Get Re-Energized From Your Own Message

The ‘Book Oracle’

Open your book to any page and read a couple of paragraphs out loud while running a voice recording app on your phone in the background. Then stop looking at the book but keep talking, stream of consciousness style, riffing on your own content. Transcribe what you say and see what new nuggets arise.

The ‘Indignant Response’

Set Google Alerts for keywords or topics in your book, and allow yourself to get catalyzed by what pops up. I used this method in the creation of this message- it’s a response to the article on AI generated content issues where I learned about the KFC fail.

The ‘Dear Abby’

Collaborate with a colleague, fan, or team member who is familiar with your work to send you a question each week for you to answer. These questions can be created for each chapter of your book, or episode of your podcast. Freely allow yourself to answer and ask questions as you capture this exchange in a document, in emails, or even in video or audio exchanges.

The last thing any of us need right now as humans, much less as leaders, is more noise. Focusing on content ‘craft’ vs. ‘crap’ is the gift we can give ourselves as a good use of our time, and the gift we can give the people we serve to make their time and attention worthwhile.

Inspired to turn your Voice into influence and become a Thought Leader worth listening to?

Let's Talk

3 Ways to Improve DEI Programs with Internal Podcasting

By Tina Dietz, CEO Twin Flames Studios

Twelve years ago, over 80 percent of Americans reported that they held companies highly accountable for promoting diversity, ensuring human rights, and educating employees to take action (ConeInc.com Who’s Responsible?, 2010). More than a decade later, how has that accountability translated? How can we continue to battle unconscious bias in the workplace?

DEI is not a new and trendy idea, nor is it a “nice to have.” A corporate culture that promotes diversity, equity, and inclusion is an expectation-and for good reason. If your company is not diving in and doing the work to cultivate a culture where diversity is welcomed as the norm, you’re missing out. What gets unlocked with diversity is the endless innovation and creativity brought out by your employee’s authentic selves. 

The human voice has qualities that transcend demographics. Various vocal features such as the “contagiousness” of laughter, structures and themes in oral storytelling techniques, and the detection of when someone is trustworthy via someone’s voice are hardwired into us as humans. The implementation of internal corporate podcasts allows for the diversity in companies and organizations to flourish, to reinforce and develop company culture and values, and democratize leadership. 

But why podcasting? You might be surprised that research shows that audio-only communication can increase team-cohesion and productivity. 

With audio-only communication and internal podcasting your organization can:

  • Develop better listening skills
  • Cultivate an environment to form deeper connections 
  • Establish a culture of verbal equity
  • Decrease bias
  • Increase your team’s overall happiness 
  • Reduce stress levels
  • Create psychological safety

Many companies are implementing podcasting as part of their DEI programs. Here are three powerful benefits of internal podcasting to promote and develop diversity and inclusion in the workplace with specific examples:

  1. Podcasts give ERGs an opportunity to have a voice

Employee-led resource groups (ERG) promote diversity and inclusion by ensuring everyone gets an opportunity to have a voice. 

Some great examples include:

  • Sodexo Diversity & Inclusion is one of the company’s six strategic imperatives, including their DEI podcast, with 25 percent of the executive bonuses linked to diversity objectives. 

  • The Lehigh University podcast, featured in PodBean. When asked, “Is there a wider value to the podcast?” This was the response: 

“The podcast has allowed staff members’ stories to have greater reach than their normal range might offer. For example, one of the staffers is a role model to, and supportive of, the LGBT+ community at Lehigh. Students and faculty members who otherwise may not know, were made aware of this person's commitment to being an important resource. Another episode featured the story of the university’s performing arts center director. This story served both to highlight the diverse careers and paths to them at Lehigh and also to show people beyond the campus the many functions the university serves in the community,” Hillary Kwiatek.

2. Audio-only format decreases bias

Have you ever gathered with your team only to discover there are some who speak to one another more than others? They tend to seemingly speak one-on-one in meetings leaving several other team members out of the conversation. In other words, they dominate the meeting. As humans, we naturally tend to gravitate to those we like the most, whether intentional or unintentional. In-person and zoom meetings leave room for distractions from non-verbal queues to appearance. DEI in the workplace requires a multifaceted approach. Corporate podcasts decrease benevolent and unintended biases, as well as decrease the malevolent or discriminatory biases. Podcasts allow for us to become better listeners and establish a culture of verbal equity. Decreasing bias bolters company culture and creates new relationships. 

  • “We show that when interacting partners have audio cues only, the lack of video does not hinder them from communicating these rules but instead helps them to regulate their conversation more smoothly by engaging in more equal exchange of turns and by establishing improved prosodic synchrony. Previous research has focused largely on synchrony regulated by visual cues, such as studies showing that synchrony in facial expressions improves cohesion in collocated teams” (Physiology & Behavior).

3. Internal podcasting promotes psychological safety

Anxiety, panic attacks, and lack of confidence can hinder our ability to speak when all eyes are on us. Zoom and in-person meetings can produce visual distractions and unconscious bias. In audio-only mediums, like podcasting, employees feel psychologically safe from those hindrances. Research shows that eliminating visual distractions and nonverbal cues can help. When we turn off the camera and rely only on audio cues, the conversation flows and improves cohesion in meetings. The ability to identify others’ emotional states by simply listening is a powerful tool that few of us fully access as leaders. Internal podcasting allows us to create that safe space and prioritization of listening. 

The added benefit of internal podcasting in regards to reducing stress levels, is the ability of the listener to move while listening. Movement and exercise is important to manage and reduce stress levels, thus assisting in the prevention of or mitigation of anxiety and depression. Podcasting reduces stress levels, creates psychological safety, and improves your team’s overall happiness.

While podcasting as an audio-only format can remove unconscious bias, it can also highlight diverse voices (as we touched on in points one and two). 

When companies weave psychological safety and DEI together, employees feel safe to bring their whole selves to work. Having a diverse workforce improves productivity, innovation, creativity, and saves organizations money (Nathan & Lee, 2015). 

According to researchers from the University of Iceland, when supervisors actively listened to their employees, employees reported higher dedication and vigor. This correlated to an increase in reciprocal communication, more psychological safety throughout the organization and improved physical and mental health. Taken further, this indicates that when leaders establish an environment where everyone’s voice is heard and people engage in thoughtful participation, we create a climate where we can maximize strengths, address weaknesses and curb burnout. 

Valuing diversity leads to psychological safety within organizations, fostering more positive, open-minded, creative, and better-performing employees.

Corporate internal podcasts can increase team-cohesion, creativity, and productivity by championing diversity, equity, and inclusion. The audio-only format of podcasts removes distractions and bias, creates a stress-reduced space for everyone, and provides an efficient method to highlight diverse voices to your entire organization. Click here to learn more about how to use podcasting to promote DEI in your workplace.

6 Reasons to Use Podcasts as Part of Your Learning Management System

By Tina Dietz, CEO Twin Flames Studios

No one wants to work for an organization that doesn’t invest in their employees. We’re seeing proof of this with “The Great Resignation” that’s been happening throughout the US. According to Gartner, a Global corporate research company, lack of career development is a leading cause of employee attrition, with 40 percent of workers stating it as a key factor in their decision to leave.

Richard Branson said, “Train people well enough so that they can leave, treat them well enough so they don’t want to.” Training like this is challenging when your staff is handling multiple priorities and craving innovative, tech-savvy options. However, it’s worth it because organizations that offer better training solutions see improvement in employee innovation, productivity, and retention.

So, if companies know they’ll get better results, why do so many organizations struggle with having quality training programs? The truth is that it can be difficult to convey the wealth of knowledge your senior leadership has obtained over their years of experience. Another harsh reality companies face is how to access the information their employees consume when they’re sent to workshops and seminars. Having an efficient way to disseminate the information they learned may be hard to deliver all at once. And, what about the times employees don’t seem to retain the information or a way to easily reference back to it? 

You’re in good company if you can relate to these issues. Training programs can be costly and time-consuming to deliver company-wide, but they don’t have to be. The fastest-growing segment in Human Resource spending is employee learning systems and the adoption of new tools and technology. Businesses across the globe are learning new ways to improve their employee’s continuous learning, including the use of internal podcasting for onboarding and training.  

Why Internal Podcasting?

Benefits to using internal podcasts to improve your learning management system (LMS) include:  

  1. Podcasting democratizes mentorship.
    • Senior leadership can bring their experience and wisdom to the entire organization or individual departments (customized topics) so their time and energy are maximized while reducing the perception of favoritism.
    • According to a CNBC study, workers at practically every level are significantly less likely to quit if they have a mentor, and 90 percent of employees reported being happy in their job when they are being mentored. 
    • Studies also show that when a company uses a mentorship program, they experience a 50 percent higher retention rate and 93 percent of employees believe their mentoring relationship was helpful. 
    • 68 percent of millennials who stay at their organization for 5 or more years have a mentor, compared to just 32 percent of those without a mentor.
    • Using podcasts for senior leaders to mentor “one to many” will eliminate most of the typical challenges mentor programs entail, including any perceptions of favoritism, coordinating and managing the process, identifying and developing qualified mentors, matching mentor to mentee, time constraints, and high costs. 
  2.  Podcasting repurposes long workshops into bite-sized evergreen content.
    • Training programs that your company has invested in, such as workshops, can be turned into podcast episodes. This repurposes content into evergreen learning that is bite-sized and highly accessible via their LMS and/or secure podcasting apps.
    • Hiring trainers and consultants is an investment that can be fleeting. There is a lost opportunity to make the most of training that you’ve invested in by having these recorded and then transformed into accessible modules and podcast episodes to help with implementation and understanding of the material.
    • Finding extra time for employees to complete training can be challenging. Listeners stay engaged with short yet entertaining podcasts anywhere, anytime. Bite-sized information is more likely to be retained, so what better way for your employees to learn and develop than through podcasts.
    • Employees can go back and listen to podcasts as many times as they need for the information to sink in. Repetition is key to memorizing or understanding information and modifying or changing behavior. 

     3. Highly accessible

    • Internal podcasts are easy to consume and as accessible as music. Audio is available when team members can’t watch or read content, allowing learning to happen anywhere. 
    • 87% of people who listen to podcasts enjoy them because they can listen while doing other things. The top activities for listeners are exercising, driving/commuting, and doing housework.

     4. Accommodates kinesthetic learning and reduces screen fatigue.

    • The average adult spends 11 hours per day of screen time, whether that is a computer, phone, tablet, TV, or other electronic device. “While this problem is more pervasive in office-based jobs, it does involve those who don’t work on computers as well, since many go home and spend hours on their phones and TVs after work,” says Vivian Tran, MD, internal medicine physician at Scripps Clinic Mission Valley. Excessive screen time causes a variety of negative health impacts, while podcasting gives your eyes a break.
    • Not only employees with an auditory learning style benefit from podcasts. Kinesthetic and visual-kinesthetic learners benefit as well. These types of learners tend to be less accommodated in many companies, given the sedentary nature of office environments and the long-held belief that most people are visual learners. However, more recent studies find that multimodal learning is more common in today’s workforce. Employees can listen on a lunch break workout, walking to another wing of the building, during their commute, or better yet while performing the task they’re listening about so they can learn while doing. 

     5. Provides a more personal approach than eLearning courses. 

    • When employees are given the opportunity to learn more about their leadership team, more relatability and respect can be fostered. These connections help companies retain their employees, making your investment in them so much more rewarding.
    • Internal podcasts provide a more personal approach and increase retention of training materials when delivered with a storytelling style. The content can provide relatable stories, interactions, personal advice, and Q&As to enhance training.

     6. Podcasts are perfect for employee onboarding. 

    • Podcasts for onboarding introduce new employees to the mission, vision, values, and goals of the company. They also help communicate culture and DEI, get to know who’s who on a more personal level, and create a sense of belonging. “Organizations with a strong onboarding process improve new hire retention by 82% and productivity by over 70%” (The True Cost of a Bad Hire, Glassdoor).
    • Podcasts give new employees information that will help them be successful, including what is expected of them in their particular role. New employees and employees switching roles will feel more confident about their performance. It will also be easier for those transferring departments to develop new skills, learn new strategies or understand new SOPs.
    • For example, VMware, a virtualization company, implemented an innovative approach to overcome the challenges of training busy people. They implemented single sign on (SSO) and assigned training credits for each employee as they listened to each training podcast.

The quality of your employee training and ongoing learning opportunities are crucial to the lifeblood of your business in today’s competitive talent market. Your company can utilize internal podcasting to create training and development solutions that will solve its training and development woes and improve employee engagement. To learn more and book a time to explore how internal podcasting can foster more productivity, loyalty, and innovation on your teams, please Contact Us today.

5 Ways to Solve Interdepartmental Communication Woes with Internal Podcasting

By Tina Dietz, CEO Twin Flames Studios

Employee engagement can feel like a never-ending uphill battle. Companies never accomplish great things if their talent just shows up to collect a paycheck, but how do you ensure your employees feel connected to your organization, stay long term, and encourage others to do the same? 

Internal podcasting is a powerful tool to cultivate a culture of employee engagement. Internal podcasts are usually produced with the help of a production company to privately reach their internal audience of employees and stakeholders. 

It's no secret why using internal podcasting to improve employee engagement is catching on. Compared to other forms of media, podcasts are easy and inexpensive to produce — and their popularity speaks for itself. A whopping one-third of Americans listen to podcasts regularly, according to Buzzsprout.

Podcast listeners crave new and edifying content to listen to. In fact, the second most popular podcast topic is news according to Edison research. Why shouldn’t it be content that serves your company’s mission and builds your company’s culture? Your employees are used to listening to their favorite news and educational podcasts, so they will trust your corporate podcast as a relevant source of information for training and development. Internal podcasting reaches employees in ways that traditional meetings and corporate culture training cannot.

Done correctly, podcasts are a powerful tool to motivate and develop employees, ultimately leading to better team cohesion and talent retention.

So, how do you do it right? Here are five ways to use internal podcasting to engage, develop, and retain employees …

1. Highlight Top Performers and Rising Leaders

We’ve all heard that one of the best ways to improve moral and employee engagement is to recognize achievement. However, the big question is “How?”. You can only have so many pizza parties, and the “Employee of the Month” plaque is getting a little tired.

A better solution — feature a top performer or rising leader on the company’s internal podcast. This is a chance to shower good work with positive attention in a very public way. The podcast producer could:

  • Share a big win and highlight the team members responsible.
  • Feature promotions and rising leaders within the organization.
  • Recognize outstanding performers by name and describe their success.
  • Highlight top performers and leaders as subject matter experts where they can share a story or host a Q & A as part of a training exercise. 

Employee recognition encourages excellence and creates a sense of shared purpose. It also improves engagement. Employees love to listen along and celebrate the success of their teammates and aspire to be featured on the company podcast as a reward for their contributions as well.

Business and tech consulting company Slalom puts this practice into practice with a segment of their Slalom On Air podcast called “Wins to Know,” highlighting big wins within the organization to its audience of over 8,000 employees.

2. Reinforce What’s Working in the Company

One of the advantages of podcasting is the opportunity to communicate a message to many people at a time. What better venue than a podcast to disseminate best practices, and training, so everyone in the organization can reinforce what’s already working and keep everyone on the same page?

74% of podcast listeners tune in to learn new things, and 82.4% of podcast fans listen to 7 or more hours of podcasts each week, so you also don’t have to twist yourself into knots distilling a complicated best practice into a 2 minute sound bite — you can use stories and examples to explain and still have confidence that the audience will actually listen.

Employee engagement, development, and retention starts with proper onboarding and training. Many savvy organizations are turning to internal podcasts for training, development, and onboarding procedures. For example:

  • Virtualization leaders VM Ware includes podcasts as mandatory training for new onboards, even using their back-end monitoring tools to verify completion of the training requirement.

3. Highlight Positive Culture Developments

Highlighting positive developments within the company doesn’t have to be limited to individual performance or business practices. The company podcast can also highlight examples of great company culture – teams or groups that took initiative to solve a problem or improve morale.

For many companies, an internal podcast became a cornerstone of company culture during the COVID-19 pandemic, when unplanned remote work led to the risk of a breakdown in company culture. As work from home and hybrid jobs remain popular, podcasts are an important tool to reach both on-site and remote employees.

Reinforcing corporate culture  encourages other employees to do the same. They might not have even realized what goes into a healthy company culture or how they can actively contribute. Demonstrating it to them through the podcast is an efficient way to raise the bar for the entire organization.. Here are a few things to keep in mind when using podcasts to reinforce company culture:

  • Highlight your organization’s values and be sure your script aligns with your corporate culture
  • Invite employees to company events
  • Weave in personal stories, hobbies, or humor to improve engagement and inspire deeper connections among employees
  • Provide updates on company goals and vision 

4. Unify the Team Behind a Story or Mission

One of the best ways to get an employee to regard a job as more than just a paycheck is to cast their role as service to a broader mission. Employees who buy into the mission don’t just have a job — they have a purpose. A team united around a mission is unstoppable.

How do you make a mission resonate? By telling a story. Storytelling is the oldest tool in human history for captivating an audience and uniting them around a theme. Use part or all of your podcast to tell the company’s story.

You may have heard of the importance of storytelling in business to grab your customers’ attention. Storytelling is also an excellent way to create connections between leaders and employees. Rather than only being told information, workers feel empathy and connection to their supervisors. Crank up the drama and don’t be afraid to make it personal. Employees respect their bosses more when they are vulnerable, have flaws and a compelling story that shares their leadership journey.

When healthcare administration company Signature Performance brought on two new C-level executives, the company used its internal podcast to introduce the new leaders, let them tell their story in their own words, and articulate their vision for their role and contribution within the organization. It was an opportunity to use the power of hearing someone’s voice to build connection and trust.

An internal podcast is easy to start, cost effective to produce, and simple to distribute. Best of all, it’s one of the best ways you can effectively reach and communicate with your company’s most important asset — its talent. Don’t waste the opportunity. Use your internal podcast to build team cohesion, foster positive company culture, and decrease turnover expenses by earning your employees’ commitment and loyalty for the long haul.

Do you have further questions about how internal podcasting can help improve your employee engagement? Contact us today.

4 Ways to Use Internal Podcasting to Engage, Develop, and Retain Employees

By Tina Dietz, CEO Twin Flames Studios

Employee engagement can feel like a never-ending uphill battle. Companies never accomplish great things if their talent just shows up to collect a paycheck, but how do you ensure your employees feel connected to your organization, stay long term, and encourage others to do the same? 

Internal podcasting is a powerful tool to cultivate a culture of employee engagement. Internal podcasts are usually produced with the help of a production company to privately reach their internal audience of employees and stakeholders. 

It's no secret why using internal podcasting to improve employee engagement is catching on. Compared to other forms of media, podcasts are easy and inexpensive to produce — and their popularity speaks for itself. A whopping one-third of Americans listen to podcasts regularly, according to Buzzsprout.

Podcast listeners crave new and edifying content to listen to. In fact, the second most popular podcast topic is news according to Edison research. Why shouldn’t it be content that serves your company’s mission and builds your company’s culture? Your employees are used to listening to their favorite news and educational podcasts, so they will trust your corporate podcast as a relevant source of information for training and development. Internal podcasting reaches employees in ways that traditional meetings and corporate culture training cannot.

Done correctly, podcasts are a powerful tool to motivate and develop employees, ultimately leading to better team cohesion and talent retention.

So, how do you do it right? Here are five ways to use internal podcasting to engage, develop, and retain employees …

1. Highlight Top Performers and Rising Leaders

We’ve all heard that one of the best ways to improve moral and employee engagement is to recognize achievement. However, the big question is “How?”. You can only have so many pizza parties, and the “Employee of the Month” plaque is getting a little tired.

A better solution — feature a top performer or rising leader on the company’s internal podcast. This is a chance to shower good work with positive attention in a very public way. The podcast producer could:

  • Share a big win and highlight the team members responsible.
  • Feature promotions and rising leaders within the organization.
  • Recognize outstanding performers by name and describe their success.
  • Highlight top performers and leaders as subject matter experts where they can share a story or host a Q & A as part of a training exercise. 

Employee recognition encourages excellence and creates a sense of shared purpose. It also improves engagement. Employees love to listen along and celebrate the success of their teammates and aspire to be featured on the company podcast as a reward for their contributions as well.

Business and tech consulting company Slalom puts this practice into practice with a segment of their Slalom On Air podcast called “Wins to Know,” highlighting big wins within the organization to its audience of over 8,000 employees.

2. Reinforce What’s Working in the Company

One of the advantages of podcasting is the opportunity to communicate a message to many people at a time. What better venue than a podcast to disseminate best practices, and training, so everyone in the organization can reinforce what’s already working and keep everyone on the same page?

74% of podcast listeners tune in to learn new things, and 82.4% of podcast fans listen to 7 or more hours of podcasts each week, so you also don’t have to twist yourself into knots distilling a complicated best practice into a 2 minute sound bite — you can use stories and examples to explain and still have confidence that the audience will actually listen.

Employee engagement, development, and retention starts with proper onboarding and training. Many savvy organizations are turning to internal podcasts for training, development, and onboarding procedures. For example:

  • Virtualization leaders VM Ware includes podcasts as mandatory training for new onboards, even using their back-end monitoring tools to verify completion of the training requirement.

3. Highlight Positive Culture Developments

Highlighting positive developments within the company doesn’t have to be limited to individual performance or business practices. The company podcast can also highlight examples of great company culture – teams or groups that took initiative to solve a problem or improve morale.

For many companies, an internal podcast became a cornerstone of company culture during the COVID-19 pandemic, when unplanned remote work led to the risk of a breakdown in company culture. As work from home and hybrid jobs remain popular, podcasts are an important tool to reach both on-site and remote employees.

Reinforcing corporate culture  encourages other employees to do the same. They might not have even realized what goes into a healthy company culture or how they can actively contribute. Demonstrating it to them through the podcast is an efficient way to raise the bar for the entire organization.. Here are a few things to keep in mind when using podcasts to reinforce company culture:

  • Highlight your organization’s values and be sure your script aligns with your corporate culture
  • Invite employees to company events
  • Weave in personal stories, hobbies, or humor to improve engagement and inspire deeper connections among employees
  • Provide updates on company goals and vision 

4. Unify the Team Behind a Story or Mission

One of the best ways to get an employee to regard a job as more than just a paycheck is to cast their role as service to a broader mission. Employees who buy into the mission don’t just have a job — they have a purpose. A team united around a mission is unstoppable.

How do you make a mission resonate? By telling a story. Storytelling is the oldest tool in human history for captivating an audience and uniting them around a theme. Use part or all of your podcast to tell the company’s story.

You may have heard of the importance of storytelling in business to grab your customers’ attention. Storytelling is also an excellent way to create connections between leaders and employees. Rather than only being told information, workers feel empathy and connection to their supervisors. Crank up the drama and don’t be afraid to make it personal. Employees respect their bosses more when they are vulnerable, have flaws and a compelling story that shares their leadership journey.

When healthcare administration company Signature Performance brought on two new C-level executives, the company used its internal podcast to introduce the new leaders, let them tell their story in their own words, and articulate their vision for their role and contribution within the organization. It was an opportunity to use the power of hearing someone’s voice to build connection and trust.

An internal podcast is easy to start, cost effective to produce, and simple to distribute. Best of all, it’s one of the best ways you can effectively reach and communicate with your company’s most important asset — its talent. Don’t waste the opportunity. Use your internal podcast to build team cohesion, foster positive company culture, and decrease turnover expenses by earning your employees’ commitment and loyalty for the long haul.

Do you have further questions about how internal podcasting can help improve your employee engagement? Contact us today.