Start with People, Get Results with Jeannie Weaver, VP of Retail Marketing at AT&T

Mental Health in the workplace is top of mind, especially these days. With all that’s going on in the world, Covid continuing to upend plans, and burnout running rampant through organizations, leaders need practical, tactical solutions to helping their people (and themselves!) deal with mental health challenges. So on this final day of Mental Health Awareness month, Erica moderates a mental health roundtable discussion featuring leading experts in the diversity, inclusion, and belonging space. On this episode we have Daisy Auger-Dominguez, chief people officer at VICE media, Leonora Zilkha Williamson, human capital strategy and executive coach, and Nicholas Griggs-Drane, director of diversity and inclusion at Endeavor. In this episode, the panelists discuss how to recognize mental health matters in the workplace, how leaders and employees alike need to feel psychologically safe in order to be honest and vulnerable (and how to model that from the top), how different generations and geographical regions process mental health matters differently, why having mental health benefits are table stakes now in the recruiting process, and why it’s so important to give people time to unplug and rest in order to combat burnout.Thanks to Terawatt for presenting this panel—“Because everyone deserves a good coach.” Please Subscribe, Rate and Review on Apple Podcasts You can also listen to the show on: StitcherOvercast GoogleSpotify Resources:Quotes:Leonora: “We absolutely need to understand the state of your mental wellness in order to build what’s going to come next for you.”“Gen Z is not going to stand for having mental health be something that’s shoved under the rug and looked down upon. For them—and I see this in my classroom at Vanderbilt—it is no different to tell a professor that you’re not coming to class because you’re having a mental health breakdown than it is to say, ‘I have Covid.’ Those are equally valid reasons to bow out for the day.”Daisy:“The work of diversity, equity, and inclusion is about creating a wholeness, a connectedness, a belonging in the workplace, and it’s really hard to feel connected and a sense of belonging in the workplace when you can’t share what is happening in your life.”“Awareness is nice, but awareness without action doesn’t get you anywhere…The action comes from your managers…How do you encourage the conversations with your employees so that they feel comfortable coming to you, they feel a sense of trust coming to you, that even if you don’t have all the answers, you’re showing that evidence of care.”Nicholas:“The industry is moving toward a goal of diversifying our spaces, but when you have someone from an underrepresented group in a space where they may not feel welcome, there’s additional burdens they’re experiencing.”“Mental health and mental wellness are directly attached to your experience and how you experience your day to day and how you experience yourself when you show up to work and how all those then connect.” Links to Websites or Resources, text numbers email signupsTerawatt’s websiteDaisy’s book, Inclusion RevolutionLeonora’s website, Platinum Rule AdvisorsErica’s websiteOrder Erica’s book, Rituals RoadmapOrder Erica’s book, Bring Your Human to Work Text ‘human’ to 66866 to sign up for Erica’s newsletter where she shares how to honor relationships well and how to bring your human to work and life.Connect with the panelists on LinkedIn:DaisyLeonoraNicholas Connect with Erica: InstagramTwitterLinkedInFacebook

What does it take to scale a business from an idea to unicorn status? Suneera Madhani would say to look to family values—specifically the ones her Pakistani parents instilled in her. With her brother, Suneera co-founded Stax Payments, a fintech platform now processing $23 billion in payments, so it’s clear that these immigrant family values are working. Suneera speaks with Erica about her three-bucket principle to prioritizing what matters most, Stax’s rituals around shared meals, why they’ve chosen a hybrid model for the office, and how onboarding should be intentionally thought through from the moment a prospective hire receives an offer letter. Suneera also runs the CEO School, a platform dedicated to educating women entrepreneurs on how to scale their businesses and go from founder to CEO. Suneera launched this platform after learning that less than 2% of female founders ever break $1 million in revenue, so now she aims to increase that number. CEO School includes a podcast as well as a membership with monthly classes, community events, fireside chats, and a quarterly curated product box. Additionally, Suneera’s new CEO School Course—an 8-week experience, with workshops on power, pitch, process, product, people, and profit—is open for enrollment May 19th-May 25th, and you can sign up below!  Please Subscribe, Rate and Review on Apple Podcasts You can also listen to the show on: StitcherOvercast GoogleSpotifyResources:Quotes:“Less than 2% of female founders ever break 1 million in revenue.”“This [success] was all a compilation of saying ‘yes.’ Saying yes to opportunity, saying yes to following my heart, following my passions. But I will tell you, there was a point last year where I faced complete, utter burnout. That’s usually what happens when we say ‘yes’ to too many things. We really have to recalibrate, where can I say ‘no’? And without feeling guilty about saying no. It’s definitely a struggle.”“You can have your plate and you can fill it sky high, but usually if you look at a healthy plate, it’s balanced in three components. That’s how I view the three-bucket principle.”“I think onboarding begins from the offer letter; it begins even on the interview process…So we take it all the way back to say, ‘How can we drive incredible experience all the way through?’ And that’s just done with purpose and intention and showing your value system.”“I work with my brother; this is a family business as well. Part of our DNA was always one team, one dream. And we’re always team above self. That’s how I want our people to be, and that’s truly this team that we have.”Links to Websites or Resources, text numbers email signupsThe CEO SchoolThe CEO School courseStax PaymentsSuneera’s post on immigrant family valuesSuneera’s Forbes article on the Great ResignationErica’s websiteOrder Erica’s book, Rituals RoadmapOrder Erica’s book, Bring Your Human to WorkText ‘human’ to 66866 to sign up for Erica’s newsletter where she shares how to honor relationships well and how to bring your human to work and life.Connect with Suneera:InstagramCEO School InstagramStax Payments InstagramTwitterLinkedInFacebook Connect with Erica: InstagramTwitterLinkedInFacebook

Contrary to popular belief, the highest performing teams are not necessarily conflict free. In fact, healthy disagreement—or creative friction—leads to more innovation, more trust, better ideas, and higher performance. Amy Gallo, author, podcast host, and contributing editor at Harvard Business Review, sits down with Erica on this week’s episode to discuss how to disagree in a human way. This conversation equips leaders and employees alike to build trust and psychological safety in relationships and teams (the foundation of healthy conflict), navigate difficult conversations, and establish norms around disagreement. They also touch on how and why there are gender differences in disagreement and advocacy, why a hybrid work environment makes conflict more difficult, and how to approach—top down OR bottom up—disagreement on whether employees should return to the office fully or be able to keep a flexible schedule. Anyone who’s ever struggled with conflict in the workplace will find this conversation enlightening and helpful.  Amy’s latest book, Getting Along: How to Work with Anyone, Even Difficult People, is out September 13th and available for pre-order now.Please Subscribe, Rate and Review on Apple Podcasts You can also listen to the show on: StitcherOvercast GoogleSpotify Resources:Quotes:“That leads to what Patrick Lencioni, the author of The Five Dysfunctions of a Team, calls artificial harmony. So it’s this idea that we look like we’re getting along, we’re all nodding and agreeing, but then there’s this sort of simmering tension or resentment that’s underneath the surface that never comes up. Or comes up sideways, and you have these big explosions.” “You need trust in order to have disagreements. You need to respect the other person in order to voice your disagreement. You need to have a sense of belonging and safety. And when you don’t have those things, whether it’s in a marriage or on a team, it’s going to look like everything’s fine, because disagreements aren’t coming up, but things often are very, very wrong. And you’re not going to get all of the benefits of disagreeing, right you know, [like] innovation. What Linda Hill at Harvard Business School calls creative friction, that comes with you and I disagreeing, we’re gonna come up with a better idea if we surface our underlying assumptions, and we articulate our point of view, and we go to bat for our ideas and then collaborate and integrate each of our ideas into something better, right? We get better work outcomes. We also tend to have stronger relationships because to disagree you need to have trust, and once actually have disagreed, you do have a conflict and you’ve worked through it, you’ve set the precedent that our relationship will survive even if we disagree.”“Having difficult conversations, having disagreements are table stakes when it comes to trying to create inclusive work environments.”“One of the basic things is, as a leader, if you haven’t said out loud, ‘We will not always see eye to eye, and I think that is a good thing,’ say that tomorrow to your team. Because you have to lay the groundwork that disagreement is a normal, inevitable part of other human beings interacting. And it’s not going to be shut down if it comes up. We’re going to hear it, we’re going to listen to it. And setting norms around how do we do that.”“Part of me believes we need to reclaim this language that’s always negative. To me, conflict is when our needs, wants, desires are not aligned. And we have to figure out how to align them or how to get to an answer where at least some of those desires, wants, and needs are met, but maybe not all of them.”“You need to be crystal clear about why you actually want people back [in the office]. What purpose is it serving for the organization, for them as employees? You know, people have gotten used to being able to pick up their kids from school or at the bus stop. You’re asking them to disrupt a routine that they’ve gotten used to and, as you say, have been able to do their jobs just as well.”“Given what the labor market looks like right now, I would be very hesitant to enforce something that’s going to make a lot of people unhappy. There are people who are willing to leave over [forced RTO], and a lot have.” Links to Websites or Resources, text numbers email signupsAmy’s websitePre-order Amy’s book, Getting AlongErica’s websiteOrder Erica’s book, Rituals RoadmapOrder Erica’s book, Bring Your Human to WorkText ‘human’ to 66866 to sign up for Erica’s newsletter where she shares how to honor relationships well and how to bring your human to work and life. Connect with Amy:InstagramTwitterLinkedIn Connect with Erica: InstagramTwitterLinkedInFacebook

When Liz Fosslien and Mollie West Duffy pitched their second book, Big Feelings: How to Be Okay When Things Are Not Okay, to their publisher in January 2020, the authors were met with questions about its relevance. Fast forward six months (and three months into a new and terrifying global pandemic), and the publisher recognized this was, in fact, a very relevant book to publish. It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out why. In these turbulent times, with millions participating in The Great Resignation, new Covid variants emerging every few months, derailing our collective plans to move on, and many dealing with the grief they’ve experienced from the loss of loved ones to the virus, Big Feelings couldn’t have come at a better time. Liz Fosslien, the co-author and illustrator stopped by Left to Our Own Devices to dig deep into big feelings. On this episode, Liz and Erica discuss the new book, how to express selective vulnerability (aka, bringing your most appropriate self to work), the importance of being intentional and taking time to connect and check in with colleagues, and how to introduce more stability into our teams during ever-changing times. Liz also offers two salient examples from Humu and IDEO on how to onboard in ways that will give new hires a sense of psychological safety as well as permission to bring their human to work.Big Feelings: How to Be Okay When Things Are Not Okay, by Liz Fosslien and Mollie West Duffy is out today! Pick up your copy wherever books are sold. Please Subscribe, Rate and Review on Apple Podcasts You can also listen to the show on: StitcherOvercast GoogleSpotifyResources:Quotes:“Our work is not an invitation to be a feelings firehose. We talk about this a lot in the context of leadership. And we have a practice that we call selective vulnerability. So it’s really, how do you balance sharing, which builds trust and does bring teams together and increases performance over the short and long run, but you also can’t really over share, right? It is still a workplace context and especially if you’re leading a team, part of your role is to create stability and clarity for that team.”“I have emotions, some of them are really, really difficult. You will have them too, that’s perfectly okay. But as your leader, I’m still thinking about how to make sure we’re all okay together in the future.”“I will say, I am an introvert. My job involves a lot of writing and thinking, so I personally love working from home. I think back on being in an open-office floor plan, and it boggles my mind how I got anything done ever because it’s so overstimulating. So I think the keys are, when you are in person, really prioritizing relationship building and connection and seeing that as how you’re going to perform better in the long term.”“I’ve learned to take a deep breath and say, ‘Okay, we should have that five minutes [at the beginning of a meeting] just to check in with one another. And it actually makes the call much, much nicer. So I think it just requires you to be more intentional and have the moment of, ‘What do I want out of this meeting, what is my goal in connecting with this person, and then how can I structure the next 30 minutes to make that happen.’”“Somehow I always forget how restorative it is to just step away from my computer and walk outside. And I’m lucky enough to live in California, where that’s an option year round. It’s like, wow, being outside in the sun for five minutes has this huge impact, and I’m just always not doing it!?”On Humu’s onboarding: “[Laszlo Bock] was like, ‘Hey, this is your first day, and I just want to reinforce that the interview—the audition is over. You’re not auditioning anymore. You’re here and we want you to grow and learn and ask a lot of questions. You’re going to make mistakes, but you don’t need to be worried about your position—that part is over.’”“The audition is over! We’re so excited you’re here, you’re bringing all these valuable skills to the team. Please lean into your abilities—that’s why we hired you.”“The 7 emotional states [from the book]: are uncertainty, comparison, anger, burnout, perfectionism, despair, and regret.”Links to Websites or Resources, text numbers email signupsOrder Liz and Mollie’s book, Big Feelings, out nowLiz and Mollie’s websiteLiz’s websiteErica’s websiteOrder Erica’s book, Rituals RoadmapOrder Erica’s book, Bring Your Human to WorkText ‘human’ to 66866 to sign up for Erica’s newsletter where she shares how to honor relationships well and how to bring your human to work and life. Connect with Liz:InstagramTwitterLinkedIn Connect with Erica: InstagramTwitterLinkedInFacebook

Gary Ware was working as a VP at a digital ad agency when he realized that  being completely depleted, feeling broken, and having no drive to do anything was perhaps *not* normal. Gary was experiencing what many of us have faced, especially during the pandemic—burnout. So Gary took an improv class and realized play is what was missing in his life. On the podcast this week, Gary chats with Erica about his journey from burnout to breakthrough by incorporating play and games into the work day. He illustrates how applied improvisation and games help teams and colleagues unlock creativity, confidence, and better communication. Gary shares the challenges of reimagining in-person games to an online environment once the pandemic hit, signs an employee may be on the verge of burnout, why playing a silly game as a team before a client call can make everything go more smoothly, and why sense of intimacy must be created if we want to form a genuine connection.  Please Subscribe, Rate and Review on Apple Podcasts You can also listen to the show on: StitcherOvercast GoogleSpotify Resources:Quotes:On his former position: “The vibe was, ‘You sleep when you’re dead. Hey, you know what, we’re here to work, we’re here to work hard.’ It was interesting because it was, ‘work hard, play hard,’ however there was no playing at all. When you work a 12-hour day and then you go home, the last thing you want to do when you go home is do anything other than sleep.”“As a leader you can start to understand, are people showing up to meetings and *not* bringing their whole selves? And I don’t think it’s intentional. When you’re running at that [overworked] level for so long, you start to deplete yourself. Are people being a little bit more cynical than before? Those are some of the early signs that people may be starting to burn themselves out.”“That’s the beauty of play. Play is pleasurable and when you’re in true play you want to share with other people.”“We started creating psychological safety just by playing these silly games. We started seeing the purpose of, ‘Oh, wow, this is actually helping us listen better. This is helping us connect better with each other.’ And of course, performance increased.”“One of the cool things about [the 5 Things game] is that it starts to prime your brain to look for connections, to look for these blind spots. And then when we would go into meetings, we would be more open to suggestions from our clients. We would actually see [more] ways that we could help our clients.”“When the pandemic first happened and everything stopped being in person and went virtual, it was challenging. How can we create this intimacy when we are miles apart, on camera, and people are stressed out. And so I had to reimagine everything. I had to essentially dissect all my activities and say, ‘Alright, what’s the purpose here. Can it work in a virtual environment?’ But in the spirit of ‘Yes, and,’ I would go into these meetings, and I would just be quite frank with them, and I’d say, ‘Look, I get it. You’ve probably been on Zoom meeting after Zoom meeting, and the last thing that you want is to do some silly games.’ And I would just call out the current environment. And by doing that, it creates this level playing field of like, ‘Alright, cool. You’re not trying to sugar coat this situation like nothing wrong is going on in the world.’”“When you create a sense of intimacy, that’s where the oxytocin happens. That’s where we get the dopamine and the endorphins and then we can focus.”“With the companies I’m working with, how they’re looking at their office is almost like a clubhouse. ‘We’re all together. This is going to be the time when we’re going to connect. This is the time when we’re going to do things that are more experiential so that when we disperse, we can be more productive. We will feel like we made those connections.’” Links to Websites or Resources, text numbers email signupsGary’s website, Breakthrough PlayErica’s websiteOrder Erica’s book, Rituals RoadmapOrder Erica’s book, Bring Your Human to WorkText ‘human’ to 66866 to sign up for Erica’s newsletter where she shares how to honor relationships well and how to bring your human to work and life. Connect with Gary:InstagramTwitterLinkedInFacebook Connect with Erica: InstagramTwitterLinkedInFacebook

Few activities prepare a young person for the world of work better than participation in team sports. With skills like leadership, performance under pressure, work ethic, teamwork, problem solving, and the ability to strategize, athletes are naturally set up to be successful. And that’s just what this week’s guest, former Team USA Women’s Hockey team captain and three-time Olympic medalist, Meghan Duggan, has found. Meghan joined Erica on the podcast to discuss her transition from leading the Olympic team to gold to manager of player development for the New Jersey Devils NHL hockey team. Meghan’s main focus these days is planning and strategizing with recent draft picks and young pros at the beginning of their career life cycle so they can become full-time, multi-million dollar NHL players. Meghan talks about the moment she decided she would be an Olympian (at just 10 years old!), why family and professional rituals matter, and her work as president of the Women’s Sports Foundation, where they work to build greater equity, inclusion, and participation for girls and women in sports. Anyone going through a professional transition will find Meghan’s journey and this episode helpful.  Please Subscribe, Rate and Review on Apple Podcasts You can also listen to the show on: StitcherOvercast GoogleSpotify Resources:Quotes:“I had to dig deep. I had to go through some hard times and look myself in the mirror and figure out, okay, hockey’s gone, but you’re a mom, you have all these qualities you’ve learned through playing, like you mentioned Erica—leadership, performance under pressure, work ethic, the ability to strategize and solve problems and work as a team—I had innately in me, and I had to find ways to bring them out and figure out how I was going to use those things and add value somewhere else.”“I think rituals are huge, right? They get you in the right mindset, they make you feel prepared, they give you confidence. I love those things. You know if you have your own rituals, you can always fall back on them when things are hard or things go awry. They’re so important, and I love watching rituals play out in the sports world.”on the Women’s Sports Foundation: “We do a ton of research around what sports do and how they bring different things into our lives, right? For young girls, whether it’s physical health, mastering skills, discipline, confidence, leadership, positive body image, all these things. We talk about C-suite women. When you look at that, 94% of C-suite women played sports at a young age, which is just incredible, right? But not surprising when you think about what sports bring into our lives.”  Links to Websites or Resources, text numbers email signupsMeghan Duggan - Team USANJ DevilsWomen’s Sports FoundationErica’s websiteOrder Erica’s book, Rituals RoadmapOrder Erica’s book, Bring Your Human to WorkText ‘human’ to 66866 to sign up for Erica’s newsletter where she shares how to honor relationships well and how to bring your human to work and life. Connect with Meghan:InstagramTwitterLinkedInFacebook Connect with Erica: InstagramTwitterLinkedInFacebook

From a one-man business consultant working out of a spare bedroom in 2007 to a team of 100 employees, 1 billion dollars secured in business financing, and a leading fintech marketplace for small businesses, Joe Camberato—or, Grow By Joe, as he’s known on the internet—knows a thing or two about growth. Which makes sense, because Joe’s mission is to help drive growth, both for clients and employees. So how does he do it? This week on the podcast, Joe Camberato, founder and CEO of National Business Capital, speaks with Erica about how to build a business from scratch. And the secret for Joe is to harness the power of culture. And culture doesn’t have to be overcomplicated, but it does have to be experienced. Joe discusses NBC’s team rituals, like the 9:01 AM daily stretch that gets everyone centered for the day, how they build fun into the day-to-day work, how their culture team intentionally crafts events and resources for the company, and why leaders should let people have the flexibility they need to deal with stuff going on in their lives—we’re all human after all. Listen in for a straightforward approach to bringing fun back to work. Please Subscribe, Rate and Review on Apple Podcasts You can also listen to the show on: StitcherOvercast GoogleSpotify Resources:Quotes:“If you’re having a tough time getting people to come back, I think it’s a really good time to relook at your business and your culture. People want more today than just a place to show up to work. They want a fun environment and companies that bring more to the table.”“How do you explain culture? It’s not an easy thing to explain. I feel like you really have to experience it and see it and witness it. One word is fun. We talk about this all the time…there’s not a rule book that says you can’t have a fun time in the office; you can’t have fun while doing your work. And it’s not just all about having fun. We hold ourselves highly accountable…It’s about work/life integration.” “We’re not so stiff and stuff with things. We respect and understand things happen in people’s lives. If something comes up or something happens, I’m not worried about, are they using their PTO day for that? I really don’t care. If it’s a life thing go figure it out, go handle it, go do it.” Links to Websites or Resources, text numbers email signupsGrow By Joe Youtube channelNational Business Capital websiteErica’s websiteOrder Erica’s book, Rituals RoadmapOrder Erica’s book, Bring Your Human to WorkText ‘human’ to 66866 to sign up for Erica’s newsletter where she shares how to honor relationships well and how to bring your human to work and life. Connect with Joe:InstagramTwitterLinkedInFacebook Connect with Erica: InstagramTwitterLinkedInFacebook

How do we shift society as a whole towards more diversity and inclusion? It starts with the people and brands defining culture itself—“the icons, visionaries, renowned experts, award-winners, champions, leading brands and institutions.” And nowhere do they influence culture more than at Endeavor, a company that represents this top tier talent in sports, entertainment, fashion, live events, and media. On this episode, Erica spoke with Alicin Williamson, Chief Inclusion Officer, and Nicholas Griggs-Drane, Director of Diversity and Inclusion at Endeavor. Alicin and Nicholas help build D&I into the fabric of Endeavor, and thus the culture at large. In this episode Alicin and Nicholas discuss how to make sure everyone can show up as their full selves, using science and stories about underrepresented groups to shift the conversation, how to onboard with D&I baked in, and why putting diversity and inclusion first is a competitive advantage. This episode is an absolute must-listen for anyone in HR and people functions.Please Subscribe, Rate and Review on Apple Podcasts You can also listen to the show on: StitcherOvercast GoogleSpotify Resources:Quotes:Alicin:“You can’t talk about growth mindset without talking about inclusion.”“One of the ways I think about this is defragmentation of power. There is more agency that individuals have and are thinking about as they figure out how they spend their time, and what they’re willing to have happen and do. And, frankly, underrepresented people—people of color, LGBTQ+, women—have a lower tolerance for having to navigate around the delicate egos that we have had to forever.”“The notion of diversity often ends as soon as you say yes. ‘We’re so excited to have you. You’re reflective of these voices that we’re interested in having and we don’t have.’ And then you show up, and you’re expected to assimilate. So it’s really important for the hiring managers and the onboarding team to remember—we’re not actually indoctrinating anymore. That’s not what the business is. We want them—these voices, whoever it is. They’re going to set us on this path to the future. Make sure that we give them the tools and the support to do that.”“This is more than logistics. The world is reopening; hopefully we’ll continue in the same direction. There are a lot of people who didn’t get to bury loved ones. There are a lot of people who sat home by themselves for nearly two years. There are a lot of people who have needed to navigate things that they were already challenged with, and that they found things were exacerbated by this global pandemic and trauma. We are ready to make it so that people—however we bring them together, in whatever intention—that it is meaningful. That is mindful of what had to be navigated and overcome to get from [say] Jersey to the Flatiron.”Nicholas: “What does it mean to be an employee at one of our businesses, right? At a specific vertical? What does that mean when you’re in a hybrid model? How do you get that engagement so people feel seen and that we’re meeting them where they’re at in this half-virtual world still, no matter how much we want it to be fully in person. We have to adjust, and it is a competitive advantage when we do. And specifically with underrepresented people. The marketplace is hot.”“We have this conversation all the time—you can recruit underrepresented people all you want, right? But if they’re not set up for success on day 1, 2, 3 through their 90 day entry point, they will walk out the door, and they have every right to walk out the door because they were failed.“There’s all these pieces of making people feel a part of the organization  in a way that’s authentic—we should do this for everyone—but if you as a people manager have that ability, and then you can systemically build that into your practice…I think it’s understanding that onboarding people takes work. And people notice it if you don’t. And then they will go to the next person who cares about their time and their energy and their expertise or their career that they’re putting in your hands.”Links to Websites or Resources, text numbers email signupsEndeavor’s websiteErica’s websiteOrder Erica’s book, Rituals RoadmapOrder Erica’s book, Bring Your Human to WorkText ‘human’ to 66866 to sign up for Erica’s newsletter where she shares how to honor relationships well and how to bring your human to work and life. Connect with Alicin:LinkedIn Connect with Nicholas:InstagramLinkedIn Connect with Erica: InstagramTwitterLinkedInFacebook

Whether joining a meeting from Zoom, on a walk, or in-person, Jeannie Weaver knows that intentional connection is key to how she leads a team of 45+ in the retail marketing and special experiences space at AT&T. The pandemic disrupted so much, but it never changed—only reinforced—her approach to leadership: start with people. Her team has been able to thrive through these turbulent times by recognizing individual contribution, curating experiences together, and focusing on gratitude. In this episode, Erica and Jeannie discuss how to actually walk the walk, how daydreaming helps Jeannie feel most like herself, and why grace and vulnerability for ourselves and others is the most important takeaway from the past two years. Jeannie is a model of leadership for anyone responsible for a large team in an even larger corporation. Listen in for a human-centered approach to this type of organization.Please Subscribe, Rate and Review on Apple Podcasts You can also listen to the show on: StitcherOvercast GoogleSpotify Resources:Quotes:“When you start with people as your approach, the results come.”“We will get together because there’s just this craving of the energy, the human connectedness, right? I want to be with people, but I want to be with people with intention.”“I need to make sure this is not a ‘do as I say,’ but truly ‘do as I do,’ and I need to tell you that I am doing those things—‘Oh, I took a walk today.’”“Starting with gratitude in the book club and in meetings [equalizes everyone]. People you normally didn’t hear from now put forward things that are on their heart, that are important to them. And then that starts to snowball. Other people start lighting up and engaging and participating.”  Links to Websites or Resources, text numbers email signupsAT&T’s Hello LabErica’s websiteOrder Erica’s book, Rituals RoadmapOrder Erica’s book, Bring Your Human to WorkText ‘human’ to 66866 to sign up for Erica’s newsletter where she shares how to honor relationships well and how to bring your human to work and life. Connect with Jeannie:TwitterLinkedInFacebook Connect with Erica: InstagramTwitterLinkedInFacebook

Food is a vessel for connecting people. It helps build community and break down barriers. That’s the vision behind Season Four’s first guest, James-Beard-award-winning chef, TV personality, and author, Chef JJ Johnson. Chef JJ’s most recent restaurant venture, FIELDTRIP, is a made-to-order dining experience based around rice, as it’s the universal ingredient that connects us all and can be found at the center of the table in almost every community. In this episode, Erica and Chef JJ discuss the impact of the pandemic on the restaurant industry, how FIELDTRIP pivoted to donate meals to healthcare workers on the front line, how Chef JJ hopes the industry will come back more equitably for all stakeholders, and the answer to his own “Now What?”—how he plans to utilize the Series A round he raised to grow his business. On this Pi Day, Chef JJ’s experience with centering community around good-for-you food offers accessible insights to anyone seeking to bring people—in work and in life—together around a shared meal. Please Subscribe, Rate and Review on Apple Podcasts You can also listen to the show on: StitcherOvercast GoogleSpotify Resources: Quotes:“Food was this vessel of connecting people to then make—hopefully the food that was going to hospitals around the country—was making doctors and nurses and frontline workers and anyone that worked under those roofs perform better.”“The great thing about the restaurant industry is we’re fighters, we figure it out. Hopefully it evolves, and when I say I don’t think it will come back the same, I hope that tipping comes back differently, I hope that minimum wage comes back differently. I hope we can really figure out for people to look at the industry as, not a luxury, but a necessity. And I think a lot of people look at restaurants as a luxury, but they employ a lot of people, and even some of our first jobs are in restaurants.”“On the spaghetti effect, that has helped camaraderie, right? Because now when people come into FIELDTRIP, you see firefighters coming in, you see police officers, you see guys that have lived in this community for 100 years—their family—and they’re all eating next to each other and then having a conversation, ‘Oh, what’s in your bowl?’ ‘What’s that black rice taste like?’ And then that helps build community. Or break down barriers that weren’t able to be broken down before.” Links to Websites or Resources, text numbers email signupsChef JJ’s websiteFIELDTRIP’s websiteErica’s websiteOrder Erica’s book, Rituals RoadmapOrder Erica’s book, Bring Your Human to WorkText ‘human’ to 66866 to sign up for Erica’s newsletter where she shares how to honor relationships well and how to bring your human to work and life. \Connect with Chef JJ:InstagramTwitterLinkedInFacebook Connect with Erica: InstagramTwitterLinkedInFacebook