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Michael Crafton is the President and CEO of Nelbud Services Group. Founded in 2005, the company’s origins were humble to say the least, with only Michael’s pickup truck and $800 in hand. He has since grown the business into the largest self-performing kitchen exhaust hood cleaning company in the country and been recognized four times as an award-winning top workplace in Indiana.  Michael strives to create a best-in-class employee experience and accomplishes this by creating sustainable careers that empower, attract, and promote an engaging culture. In this throwback episode, you’ll hear Michael emphasize how the happiness and satisfaction of employees directly impacts customer experience. Michael also shares ways to integrate the mindsets and cultures of different regions, based on his experiences supervising numerous mergers. Truth You Can Act On:   1. Happy Employees Create Happy Customers    Supporting Quote:  Micheal Crafton: “I may or may not have been accused of being survey happy, because I am.I absolutely love hearing how people are feeling and thinking. So we actually take legitimate and actionable steps when we do these surveys. And one of the things that we kind of preach is it's kind of like, you can't complain if you didn't vote, you know, please tell us what you're concerned with or what you're really happy with so we can make it better or we can continue doing it. We did a survey back in December of 2017, and the number one thing we got back was work-life balance, which was kind of expected. You know, you kind of expect it, but you also don't. I want to kind of realize it. And one thing we did from that survey, and I think it went a long way with the group, is we had two PTO days. We had a volunteer time, and then we kind of created this semi-flexible kind of emergency work time that they could use when they needed, and that was a direct reflection of that survey as a company.”   2. Rely on Employee Referrals When Hiring   Supporting Quote:  Michael Crafton: “So there was a time in our business life cycle where 100% of our employees were employee referrals, and I really wish that kind of pace continued because it was kind of a self-policing kind of set the expectation for all, for all new hires, but also current employees, because everybody was a friend, but also a friend of a friend. It is absolutely critical to the success of our business. We estimate that it costs us between six and $10,000 to hire a person that leaves within the first hundred days. So for us, it's important that we make the right hiring decisions at the right time for the right person, and we have, not a hundred percent, but I would say eight out of 10 employee referrals stay longer than 100 days. And typically, you know, two to three or four years or so we actually pay $250 every 30 days up to the hundredth day. So it's a thousand dollars for the employee that referred the new person. And then we actually pay the new person 250 bucks dollars as well on their hundredth day as a kind of a reward for making it to that point. We kind of take a chance on, you know, in taking the referral from their friends, which I think is important.”   3. Dynamic Company Culture Must Adapt   Supporting Quote:  Michael Crafton: “In January of 2015, we did a merger. It was actually the biggest merger we've ever done with a really large company on the East coast based out of Atlantic City. One of the things that we didn't anticipate, and especially I didn't anticipate, is both the East coast and the Midwest have really phenomenal, hardworking, passionate people who, I feel like are, you know, equals in the sense of characteristics, but on the East coast, the personalities are a lot different. The funny story I always tell is when I did the opening speech for the merger, you know, I'm from the Midwest born and raised and, you know, I'm typically really kind of flamboyant and I'm like happy and loud, and I like to hug people, and you know, on the East coast, it's a lot more guarded and people want to get to know you before they hopefully kind of reach in for the hug. It was just a really weird dynamic. And to be honest, the failure that we had is I just thought instantly everybody was just going to buy into the culture and kind of love the vision and the mission. And it wasn't like that. And it took us almost two entire calendar years to fully integrate and get that buy-in of especially the core values, which are in my opinion, the most important before we were able to kind of take that next step. And those first two years were very rocky. We went through a really unique time. Not that we performed poorly, we just didn't hit the growth targets that we had set for ourselves pre merger, and I think that a lot of it had to do with the culture. So it's been about three years now. We've beat budget every single month. We have more, our demand is so high that we're having a hard time with our supply, meaning we can't hire quick enough. Our customer service ratings are through the roof. We're integrating or innovating as fast as we humanly possibly can, and we've done multiple acquisitions in the last six months that we hadn't done in two years. So it's 100% a testament to complete and total company buy into what we're trying to accomplish as one team.”   4. Set Your Priorities   Supporting Quote:  Michael Crafton: “For us, it's really, really important that we focus on culture, talent skill, and in that order, because it's not that there's a lack of talented people out there. I think that there's a lack of skilled people. And because we obviously, I said before, we have to train our people internally. So as long as we can find a culture fit  that is talented, we can teach the skill, whereas most companies, and where we were before, we would look for skilled people to fill roles, not paying any attention to the culture fit, or maybe the talent fit. To repeat, it’s culture, then talent, then skill third. So for us, as we continue to grow and as we focus on programs to not only teach that skill, but replicate the culture fit that they are to the team, it's just, again, it's really, really important that our senior managers stay engaged, and there has to be constant communication.” Book Recommendation: The New Gold Standard: 5 Leadership Principles for Creating a Legendary Customer Experience Courtesy of the Ritz-Carlton Hotel Company, by Joseph Michelli

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Brian Helleland, CEO, and Mary Ann Perez, Director of Care Experience work at St. Jude Medical Center in Southern California. While they have different roles in the company, both are passionate about nurturing pride for their organization. In this episode Brian and Mary Ann speak to the importance of training and how it is the job of a leader to make culture tangible. Truth You Can Act On 1. Own Culture Initiatives Supporting Quote Brian Helleland: “We're not shy about talking about hashtag St. Jude pride or the St. Jude pride campaign. We're transparent about it. We're not trying to manipulate or trick anybody that we're creating this culture to make people happy to be here. We want our staff to be part of generating the pride and that we're all building this pride together. Not that we're trying to build it as leaders.” 2. Share Positive Stories Supporting Quote Mary Ann Perez: “I saw a lot of stories from our own caregivers with photos, maybe of a poster that a community member had left out in one of our parking areas. And just every time the caregiver posts, at the end they have #StJudePride. It’s not just the organization saying how important St.Jude pride is, but our own caregivers recognizing it and feeling it themselves. They don't feel like they can tell a story of St. Jude without including the hashtag St. Jude pride.” 3. Be Human-Centered Supporting Quote Mary Ann Perez: “We have an applause program, which actually generates about a thousand to 1400 per quarter of recognitions that come from patients and families. They go from caregiver to caregiver, from physicians. In addition, we have an online recognition form where we receive recognitions again from caregiver to caregiver, in addition to online stories. Another mechanism we have in place is our daily huddles, and our daily huddles occur in every department every day, and we highlight a different caregiver’s story.” Brian Helleland: “One of the other things that I use as a metric is how many of your caregivers do you know by name? Executives are embarrassed sometimes to go around and talk to people and are afraid to introduce themselves because they may not know the caregiver by name or the employee by name, and I'm like, that's fine. Go out in another couple of days and go out, and when you didn't know 50 people's names, maybe the next time you don't know 30 people's names. And at some point in time, you're going to know almost everybody's names, but those there's little things to just get over on employee relations and be a relationship driven organization.” 4. Make Your Rounds Supporting Quote Brian Helleland:  “It starts with the leadership. You've got to invest, not just money, but you’ve got to invest time. You’ve got to walk the halls and talk to people. I tell our leadership all the time. If rounding is not your favorite part of the day, you're doing something wrong.” Book Recommendations   The Mentor Leader by Tony Dungy Radical Candor by Kim Scott No Happy Endings by Nora McInerny Purmort   Sponsor Wambi - Wambi is about human connections. We view feedback as the fuel for interpersonal growth and are always striving to achieve the highest versions of ourselves and to lift others up along the way.

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Bill Eckstrom is the Founder of EcSell Institute, a global research based organization that works with leaders to help them better understand, measure, and elevate coaching's impact on performance. Bill’s primary passion is growth, especially the growth that occurs in individuals and teams as a result of coaching.  In this episode you’ll hear Bill discuss the different qualities and quantities of successful leading, and the importance of measuring the impact you want to have. Truth You Can Act On   1. Humanize One-on-One Meetings   Supporting Quote Bill Eckstrom: “The biggest complaint people have about having one-on-one meetings with their boss is, ‘All my boss wants to talk about are the numbers. That's my one-on-one meetings. It's really a review of my pipeline. Nothing that my boss couldn't get, my manager coach couldn’t get from the CRM. They just want to talk about results.’ Here's what's interesting. The most critical component when we think of quality of coaching, the baseline, the foundation for growth and performance, is relationship and one-on-one meetings. The biggest sin we see within those is the manager. The coach is not using them to further perpetuate a relationship. That's the biggest mistake within the one-on-ones. The way they should be done is there should be a connectivity, a way to build trust, further relationship with initial personal updates. And as simple as they sound, you'd be shocked at the number of people who don't use a one-on-one to just take the time to say, ‘Hey, how was your weekend?’ That's really what’s needed.”   2. Make Feedback Constant   Supporting Quote Bill Eckstrom: “Feedback should be woven into the fabric of any relationship between boss and employee. Feedback should be natural. It should always be there. It should not be always so formal that it means I have to sit down. No. Feedback should always be there, and that needs to look and take on more of a form of questions than anything else.”   3. Challenge Your Employees   Supporting Quote Bill Eckstrom: “The catalytic factor is the ability of a leader to effectively challenge me and put me in a state of discomfort to create growth, because growth only occurs in a state of discomfort. So basically what that is saying is, I could be a wonderful meter in terms of creating relationships. I could do a lot of these things, but if I don't challenge my people, if I don't make them uncomfortable in a healthy way, we're not growing.”   4. Measure Impact   Supporting Quote Bill Eckstrom: “Measure. It’s that simple. You know, you could teach all this. You could promote all this. You could try and bring this into your organization, but that's really insignificant if you're not measuring its impact. If you don't create a baseline of it, whether it's through engagement or some other way, if you don't create a baseline and understand it. It’s just logical. There should be a force to process or measure. Train, educate, implement, and track. And step number one is to measure. What I would tell people is, you can talk about it all you want, which is really insignificant because if you're not measuring it you have no idea if it's going up, down, or sideways.” Book Recommendations James Michner Man’s Search for Meaning by Viktor Frankl  The Coaching Effect by Bill Eckstrom        

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Dr. Maureen Fagan is the Chief Nursing Executive at University of Miami Health System in Miami, FL. She is passionate about leading resilience and helping people recharge.  In this episode, Maureen recounts her leadership journey this year on the frontlines of healthcare and shares best practices to help employees find their “reserves”.  Truth You Can Act On    1. Listen to Hear and Empathize    Supporting Quotes Maureen Fagan: “You see an executive that's on the floor in what we would call the trenches. That's our slang for being on the unit and seeing the patients and meeting the patients and hearing their stories, and I can see that when I do that nursing leadership in the end, the nurses on the frontline that are their staff step back and listen to me. They listened to me talking to the patient. And when I'm talking with the patient, I'm cognizant of the fact that I'm modeling the behavior, that I would like them to have the comportment of what I would like them to be providing.” Maureen Fagan: “You're staying on point with what the patient is explained to you. And if the patient is sad about, um, having gotten COVID and they just couldn't believe it, and that they didn't think it would happen to them, you're obviously saying, ‘I'm so sorry that this happened to you.’ You're being able to meet them where they are at this moment. So what you're doing is focusing the negative mindset that the patient is in currently, and then you're saying, in your mind, ‘How am I actually going to be focusing on something positive?’ So you're taking that mindset, that negative mindset, and giving it the reframe that we talked about to something positive.”   2. Don’t Take the Bait   Supporting Quote Maureen Fagan: “I think if you reflect back and use the lens of objectivity, you know, I know I got triggered by when he, or she said this or that. And then that made me do what? I tell my staff, and I've told myself this for years, don't take the bait when something is happening right there. There might be somebody that you're having a conversation with and it's becoming provocative for some reason, and you want to make a point. I think if you actually respond back with, ‘Well, you know, I think that because ___,’, that actually just cascades. And so when you're looking back on this after the event is over or the conversation is over, I think when you reflect back that begins your process of how you restore and rejuvenate yourself based on your reflection.”   3. Take Time to Recharge   Supporting Quote Maureen Fagan: “Part of my self-care is when I get home, I am quiet for a solid hour. I don't watch television. I don't read. I sit outside and I think sitting outside, no matter what the temperature is, if you're dressed the right way to be able to actually breathe without your mask outside, without anyone else being around you is a saving grace in this pandemic.”   4. Have Energizing Talks   Supporting Quotes Maureen Fagan: “One of the things we like to do is to come on [Zoom] a little bit earlier and just chat it up. That's been fun because whoever is on early, you get to say hello to and talk about other things, too. And when the new folks come on, you can see them come on before they actually come on. So, if you're already talking, the other person realizes, ‘Oh, you know, I really want to talk to these people, too.’ And now we have another two minutes before we're actually going to start the Zoom. So I find that a lot of fun.” Maureen Fagan: “I think to be, to be a little silly changes the energy in a room and to be silly with, um, without hurting someone's feelings. So silly stays in a realm of being funny and being childlike in its environment. And that is a very high energy field to be like that it's like singing, singing is another very high energy field that you can capture. But silliness does that too.” Book Recommendations The Omnivore’s Dilemma by Michael Pollan Brené Brown Sponsor   Wambi.org – Wambi is about human connections. We view feedback as the fuel for interpersonal growth and are always striving to achieve the highest versions of ourselves and to lift others up along the way.    

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Bill Auxier is the President and CEO of Dynamic Leadership Academy where he specializes in executive coaching, specifically in the healthcare industry.  In this episode, Bill breaks down the method called team stakeholder-centered executive coaching, and discusses the power of personal assessments and feedback. To learn more about Bill and team stakeholder-centered executive coaching, you can tune into his podcast Rural Health Leadership Radio at rhlradio.com or visit his website at billauxier.com  Truth You Can Act On    1. Focus on One Thing to Make a Difference   Supporting Quote Bill Auxier: “For the executive team, they felt like they needed to become better communicators, but one of their big picture objectives was improving employee engagement. So working with them, identifying a goal, a team goal around communication, and then working on that with each of the senior leadership team members, as well as a group. Each person created their own individual goal that contributed to the team goal, and through that stakeholder centered coaching process, we measure the results of their growth in their behavioral change and their growth and communication.”   2. Pivot Feedback to Feed-Forward   Supporting Quote Bill Auxier: “Feedback is important to me because I can learn from it, but I can't change anything, whereas feed forward is a suggestion on how I can improve in the future. We can't change the past. We can learn from the past, but we're all striving to perform better in the future. And that's why we want to emphasize feed forward because to a certain extent, we got to let go of the past. The past is behind us. We learn from it, yes, but we need to let go of the past. Then in that moment live in the present and then work towards the future. And that's what feed forward is all about.”   3. Change Your Behavior   Supporting Quote Bill Auxier: “If I told you that I was wanting to become a better listener, because I think I need to be a better listener, and I think it would make a big impact on our ability to work together. So occasionally I'd like to ask you for some feedback and feed forward. I can read all kinds of books, I can Google how to be a better listener. I can read all these articles. I can be doing all these trick things in my brain to be a better listener, but if I never asked you if I'm being a better listener, how am I going to know if I'm being a better listener? I can learn from that. I'm constantly asking you for feedback and feed forward, so after a while, you're going to say, ‘Hey, I guess they are taking this seriously, and he really does want to become a better listener.’ And then when I implement an idea that you suggested to me, you're actually going to notice it because you suggested it to me...And so not only am I changing my behavior, you're noticing how my behavior is changing because we're always talking about, and so that's how you can change behavior and the perception of that behavior simultaneously.   4. Say “Thank You” After Feedback   Supporting Quote Bill Auxier: “When you ask someone for feedback, after someone tells you, you can only respond with two words, sometimes three words, but those two words are ‘Thank you’, or you could include their, their name, ‘Thank you, Nikki.’ The reasoning behind that is, has anyone ever asked you for feedback about something, you give them feedback and then they tell you why you’re wrong? Does that encourage you to give that person more feedback? No, because they didn't really want feedback. They want you to agree with whatever they did. So if you're going to ask for feedback, and if you're going to build trust, and if you're gonna encourage others to do this again, when you ask for feedback or when you ask for feeds forward, after you listen to what they say, you don't interrupt them. You let them tell you what they're going to tell you. You can only respond with two or three words. ‘Thank you’, or “Thank you, NAME.’ That's it.” Book Recommendations Triggers by Mark Reiter and Marshall Goldsmith What Got You Here Won't Get You There by Marshall Goldsmith

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Mark Miller is the VP of High-Performance Leadership at Chick-fil-A and the best-selling author of nine books, including his most recent, Win Every Day. For over twenty years, Mark and his team at Chick-fil-A have researched what drives organizational performance and applied it to their everyday operations. In this episode, Mark shares practices and tools to help leaders execute and cultivate a healthy workplace. Truth You Can Act On    1. Commit to Pursuing Mastery   Supporting Quote Mark Miller: “We actually think mastery, even though it's maybe not an everyday word, that it is the right word. I want to be really, really clear. The goal here is to do the right thing the right way every time, but it's not the expectation. And we think there's a huge difference. If an expectation is unrealistic or impossible, it will de-motivate people, but a goal, particularly a challenging goal, can inspire people.”   2. Own the Numbers   Supporting Quotes  Mark Miller: “We cannot find a high performance organization on the planet that does not put a priority on measurement. And we went down that track early and we said, measurement is critical. Measurement is essential. And it is one of those enablers of accountability. But we didn't want it to be just about measurement. It's about an individual saying, ‘I will own the numbers. I will take personal responsibility for the outcomes, and then I will do what I can do to impact and have a positive effect on those numbers.’” Mark Miller: “I hear a lot of leaders who make excuses and blame people for their numbers. The best leaders say, ‘We've got to own these numbers. Even if they were impacted by circumstances, beyond our control, they are our numbers and they are the reflection of the behaviors, and they are the outcome of our efforts.’ We've got to get on the solution side of this. We cannot move to the blame side. The best leaders rarely blame other people. They accept responsibility and they say, ‘How do we turn this around? How do we solve this?’”   3. Help Others Win    Supporting Quote Mark Miller:  “I think it has to become the culture of your organization. And I think culture is really the collective habits of the people. And if this is articulated, if this is part of the vision that the leaders share, if the leaders model this, if they'll actually coach for life, as opposed to just coaching for work, and then they create the expectation. They recognize and reward people who do actually help others win and know that everyone else has committed the same thing. And it is counterintuitive on many levels, but it has turbocharged some organizations that I'm aware of because it gave permission to people to do what they wanted to do.”

This episode of Gut+Science Healthcare is a throwback to a guest Bernie McGuinness, Chief Executive Officer at Majestic Care. The business specializes in community-based skilled nursing throughout Indiana, including short-term rehabilitation, long-term care, and memory care. With more than 20 years of experience in senior healthcare management, Bernie understands the inherent stresses of the modern-day healthcare professional. You’ll hear Bernie share how he fosters a “culture first, people first” organization and his desire to develop emotional ownership for his care team members. He also breaks down his “Five S’s” strategy; a system that empowers people to take big ideas and turn them into daily strategies for sustainable and prolonged growth. Truth You Can Act On - The 5 S’s   1. Shine   First impressions make incredible impacts. Continued impressions create expectations. What does your physical work environment say about your culture? Set a high priority on fostering a clean and inspiring environment to demonstrate the value of your employees.   2. Smile    Turnover is high in many industries, including healthcare. Don’t overlook or undervalue the basic need of all employees: to feel welcomed and appreciated. A warm greeting manifests a winning culture of people-first.   3. Start Strong    Start each and every day out strongly. Promote the importance of employees arriving and starting their tasks on time. Start every meeting exactly when scheduled. These daily acknowledgments of respect fuel a culture of success.   4. Swagger   A confident employee shouldn’t be a random anomaly. Confidence stems from a deep understanding of not only internal products but also dynamics within your industry. Strive for swagger by providing your employees with tools to be informed and engaged. 5. Show Off     It’s easier for management to take pride in what they do, as they tend to see the bigger picture of how all of the moving parts come together. Foster this sense of pride and ownership within your workforce by promoting employees at all levels to share their success stories. Sponsor Wambi.org – Wambi is about human connections. We view feedback as the fuel for interpersonal growth and are always striving to achieve the highest versions of ourselves and to lift others up along the way.

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Jennefer Pursifull is the VP of Marketing and Sales at Medxcel, where she believes in the importance of collaboration. At Medxcel, Marketing and HR join forces to increase overall engagement of both clients and employees. She knows when you have employees who are proud of the company, telling their stories is the best way to spread a company’s brand. In this episode, you’ll learn how she builds brand ambassadors by equipping people to tell their stories . Truth You Can Act On   1. Align Marketing and HR   Supporting Quote  Jennefer Pursifull: “We have a research side of our marketing group, and they really do the customer relationship survey. They oversee our service, transactional surveys on customer satisfaction, and then they do this piece of associate engagement research. And in the last year we have developed an associate index that we combined with our relationship and service, transactional service strategy to create a health index for our remote sites. Our associates do their job out in hospitals and healthcare locations, and so they're dispersed across the country. And one of the things that our HR team really struggled with was understanding the environment within each one of those sites. We now have this index, and we come together with HR, and we look at the index, how the site is doing. We look at the data within that site, and then HR really focuses on kind of the HR basics--the training and leadership development skills, understanding what needs to be supported from technical education and leadership education--and our team looks at what are those drivers of engagement and how do we support the connections between the leaders? And what's around the pieces that will make the greatest impact on how our associates build pride and build their confidence and their support of the organization?”   2. Do Research First   Supporting Quote  Jennefer Pursifull: “I think anytime you start something new, you really need to start with the data. And that's what we did. We started with the research on our customer side, then we added the research on understanding our associates engagement level, and then we use the analytics it takes to bring those two together. So start with the data. Once you have the data that will guide you, watch what your next steps are. Where do you need to focus to build your associate engagement levels? And that's just working on the assumption that the associates engagement level, as it goes up, move towards a brand ambassador position. And we have absolutely seen that result once that associate engagement level is high and your associates are just naturally telling the story of your organization and how they fit and work within this organization.”   3. Equip Employees to Be Brand Ambassadors    Supporting Quote  Jennefer Pursifull: “There are a lot of internal ways that we tell those stories, and as you tell them, you actually encourage people to share their stories. But then our brand team very much uses these stories externally, and we use them in social media. We use them in identifying sometimes a story that will turn into an actual case study in one of our accounts where we can focus on a successful service delivery partnership with a customer. We use it on our website, and we use it when we're out speaking and those opportunities really to share the stories that our associates have shared with us.” Book Recommendations   Why We Sleep by Matthew Walker   Sponsor   The Zone – The Zone is the space where happiness and high performance coexist. We believe in making organizations more human and for this to happen we should not have to trade one for the other. We’re offering 10 free coaching sessions to Gut+Science listeners. Visit https://thezone.co/gutscience/coaching to get started.    

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Brad Tieszen is the Vice President of Operations at Parkview Health where he runs several specialty clinics. As a part of his daily routine, he’s intentional about being visible by ’s intentional about being visible by taking time to complete patient rounds and participate in huddles with his team. He’s fervant about recognizing excellence whenever he sees it, knowing it is key to unlocking engagement.  In this episode, you’ll hear Brad share his passion for being actively engaged and living in the moment.  Connect with Brad on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/bradleytieszen/ Truth You Can Act On   1. Operate in the Moment Supporting Quotes:   Brad Tieszen: “I have to be in the moment, and I have to be engaged with the tone of my voice, with the look in my eyes, and the language that I choose to use to inspire our people. And in return, they inspire me.” Brad Tieszen: “All of our bandwidths are different, but that is where the intentionality comes in, that deliberate in the moment, onstage presence that I go back to. You just can't take that time off.You can't take a day off, a moment off, because that may be the moment of getting somebody from a six to a seven, or a seven to an eight. That moment of getting somebody from engaged to actively engaged.”   2. Recognize Excellence Supporting Quotes:   Brad Tieszen: “I feel that all human beings from time-to-time appreciate being seen, and it motivates you to keep doing it. It reinforces those positive behaviors, and those recognitions of excellence, they can be around innovation, service excellence, special care. It can be as simple as just saying, ‘Hey, thank you.’ It can be, ‘Hey, welcome to the Parkview family. It's your first day. It can be wild.’ ‘That was world-class teamwork.’ And it goes to their leader and that leader can do a bunch of stuff with it.”   3. Ask How People are Doing Supporting Quote: Brad Tieszen: “I will do one thing all the time where I say, ‘Hey, on a scale of one to 10, you know, 10 being the very best one being the rock bottom worst. Where are you personally and professionally?’ And I can get tens. I've gotten ones before. I can get some eights, but what I always do with that is I say, ‘Hey, you're at an eight, how, how can I help get you to a nine?’ And to hear somebody say, ‘Well, you just did. Just by asking about how I am just got me to a nine.’”     4. Be Visible   Supporting Quote: Brad Tieszen: “My challenge to myself every day, and therefore to the others, is to get out   there and be visible. Get out there with your teams and with your people and be visible, whether it is leader rounds or being visible through the virtual platforms we're on, you know, through a video message. Even though at times we can't be as physically visible as we like, be creative and take advantage of the virtual platform and send a video message. Do everything you can in your leadership role, regardless of your leadership title, to say, ‘Who can I recognize today?’” Book Recommendations   Leadership, Strategy, and Tactics  by Jocko Willink  Team of Teams by General Stanley McChrystal Good to Great by Jim Collins Principles by Ray Dalio The Energy Bus by Jon Gordon   Sponsor Wambi.org – Wambi is about human connections. We view feedback as the fuel for interpersonal growth and are always striving to achieve the highest versions of ourselves and to lift others up along the way.

Happy Monday! Every Monday we drop some #MondayFire to help you get excited about your week. Here we go! Our question for you today: How can you operate in your strengths?  Subscribe to get your Monday Fired up.

Monica Lloyd, a PreSales Manager at Ascentis, has always been an advocate for education and collaborative learning. In the midst of COVID-19, learning is a continued topic, and she is helping other organizations apply the concept virtually. In this episode, Monica explains how much more employees retain when they have a rounded learning experience. You’ll hear how collaborative learning requires ownership, action, and teaching others in order to be truly effective.  Connect with Monica via LinkedIn at https://www.linkedin.com/in/monicalloyd/ or via email Monica.Lloyd@ascentis.com.  Truth You Can Act On   1. Master your facilitation skills. Supporting Quotes:   Monica Lloyd: “We put together a different training. One of the things we started doing is we do mentorships, and we also do very real world examples where we sit them down and say, ‘Hey, you were hired. You have previous sales experience. Tell me what you have done in this situation.’ And then we have people share. We used to do it in a classroom environment where we could do that sharing, and the way we've adapted it in the last three months is on a Zoom meeting. And it's interesting because you have to call people outright. ‘Hey, Bob, like tell me about your experiences.’ And with those shared experiences we'll also start shaping the training and changing the training. Every time I give the training, it's different every single time, and a lot of it has to do with things that we learn from the participants along the way.”   2. Inspire your leaders to serve as teachers to their peers. Supporting Quotes:   Monica Lloyd: “Active learning can be peer to peer. It can be watching a best practice video and finding a challenge and getting maybe even a group together on a Zoom meeting and figuring out how to solve that challenge in today's workplace.” Monica Lloyd: “A lot of times we're used to top down, saying ‘This is what I think it should be. I'm going to tell you what it is,’ and in collaborative learning, you're really stepping out of it. If we go back to the wizard of Oz, you're playing Glinda, right? Glinda at the very beginning could have told Dorothy the answer was click your heels together and go, but she wouldn't have learned anything.”   3. Collaborative is a constant initiative. Supporting Quote: Monica Lloyd: “You can't do collaborative learning in a vacuum. It has to be constant. So every month you're revisiting it. ‘Is this still relevant? Do we need to change something?’ And especially now, and everyone uses the word “new normal”, and I'm actually changing that. I'm going to start a trend of calling it the “now normal”, because it's normal today, but it doesn't mean that it's going to be normal tomorrow. So those training materials are going to change and evolve, and you need the people that are in it, that are experiencing it to give you the changes.”   Book Recommendation   The Four Agreements by Miguel Ruíz Extreme Ownership by Jocko Willink    Sponsor Ascentis –  Ascentis is a SaaS-based Human Capital Management software that offers easy-to-use HCM, HRIS, online payroll, talent management, recruiting, and timekeeping solutions. Request a complimentary review of your processes and policies at https://www.ascentis.com/gutscience

Happy Monday! Every Monday we drop some #MondayFire to help you get excited about your week. Here we go! Our question for you today: What are your healthy workday habits? Subscribe to get your Monday Fired up.