Bring Your Whole Self To Work

My guest on today’s podcast is Stuart Crabb. Stuart and I met five years ago at a Wisdom 2.0 conference (notice a running theme?). At the time, he was working at Facebook and was kind enough to take a small group of us on a tour of the social media company’s Palo Alto campus. As the Head of Global Learning, Stuart helped design and grow Facebook’s Learning and Development program. When he started at Facebook there were about 500 employees, and when he left earlier this year, there were about 15,000.  He has recently started a new venture, Oxegen Consulting, and shares a wealth of insight with us on the podcast today.   What does Bring Your Whole Self to Work Mean to Stuart? Stuart understands bringing your whole self to work isn’t just good for organizational cultures, it’s actually good for individual performance. The opportunity to be the same person you are at work and still be the same person you are when you are not at work is the essence of bringing your whole self to work. Stuart says when a person is

My guest on today’s podcast is my friend Chantal Pierrat. Chantal and I first met at a Wisdom 2.0 conference a few years ago. I remember being struck by her passion and her authenticity. She was in the process of leaving her job at Sounds True Publishing to found her organization, Emerging Women. Chantal and I hit it off instantly and we began discussing, among other things, the importance of feminine leadership in business and the world.  I appreciate the great work that Chantal and her team at Emerging Women are doing to empower female leaders and entrepreneurs, and all of us.   What does Bring Your Whole Self to Work Mean to Chantal? Chantal says the concept of the whole self has shifted for her over the last few years. To bring her whole self to work she needs to include her spiritual self. Part of being a whole human being is being a spiritual human being. Her belief that there is something larger than her at play in the universe should integrate with who she is at work.    Her Spiritual Quest Chantal fe

My guest on today’s podcast is Jay Allen. Jay recently retired from his role as the Chief Administrative Officer at Charles Schwab, which is where he and I met a few years ago.  Schwab is one of my favorite clients and getting to know Jay and work with him and his team in recent years has been a real honor for me. He retired last year to keep a promise to himself. Early in his work life, Jay vowed to have time to follow his passions. His career history before Schwab includes working for IBM, NBC, GE, a start-up, and his own consulting business.    What does Bring Your Whole Self to Work Mean to Jay? Jay shares a story of when he was given the role of manager over a group of people within his existing department. A peer who was also a friend was waiting in line to talk with him. When it was her turn she walked in and said something he will never forget. She said “They didn’t give you this job because they thought you could be a good manager. They gave it to you because they liked who you were.” Jay says it was

My guest on today’s podcast is my friend Michelle Gale. Michelle and I met at a Wisdom 2.0 conference back in 2011. Wisdom 2.0 is an organization that holds events all over the world which focus on bringing technology and mindfulness together. After working in sales, as a teacher, and as a recruiter, Michelle became a coach.  Her experience as both a recruiter and a coach led her to an opportunity to work at Twitter in the early days of the company as it was beginning to grow.   Michelle left Twitter back in 2012 to focus on coaching full time.  Today she works with organizations, as well as with parents and families, focusing on mindfulness.     What does Bring Your Whole Self to Work Mean to Michelle? Michelle believes it’s all about showing up as your authentic self at work. She says during part of a person's time at work they should be sharing their greatest gifts by working in their flow or their genius.   A Transformative Year Michelle realized she was ready for something new after working amid chaos as

My guest on today’s podcast, Lisa Earle McLeod, is a good friend and the author of five books including Selling with Noble Purpose and Leading with Noble Purpose. Her consulting company created the concept of Noble Purpose which is a declarative statement about the impact an organization has on its customers. It incorporates telling the market what your company stands for and why your organization exists. Lisa is an expert in sales and leadership. She writes for Forbes.com and she has been featured on NBC Nightly News, the Today show and Good Morning America. She has delivered keynote speeches all over the world for Apple, Pfizer, Hootsuite and many other well-known organizations.      What does Bring Your Whole Self to Work Mean to Lisa? The phrase bring your whole self to work makes Lisa feel relaxed. She relates it to her job as sales manager for a college newspaper when she was authentically herself without being conscious of it. In contrast to her first “real job” after college (in sales in the 1980s) wh

Today’s guest, Melissa Daimler, is someone I’ve known for 15 years. She knows a ton about the coaching world because she was the very first employee of Coach University, which is one of the top coach training schools in the world. She moved from New York City, where she ran her own very successful coaching business and arrived in the San Francisco Bay Area in time for the dot-com boom. Melissa’s desire to be part of a team led her to the Epylon Corporation, as their Director of People. She then moved to Adobe where she spent 10 years in various HR and Talent roles.  Four and a half years ago she took a job at Twitter as their Head of Learning and Organizational Development. She sits on the board of the Association for Talent Development and she’s written articles for  the Harvard Business Review.    What does Bring Your Whole Self to Work Mean to Melissa? Melissa has always been interested in how to use work as an opportunity to grow and learn. Throughout her non-traditional career journey, she has had both g

My guest on this podcast episode, Matthew Luhn, worked for over twenty years at Pixar - helping create the stories for some of the most successful animated films in history: including Toy Story, Monsters Inc., Cars, UP, and Finding Nemo.  Today, he is a keynote speaker and consultant to some of most influential businesses and brands in the world like Apple, Charles Schwab, Google, Adidas, Disney and many others.  These companies contact him when they want to know how to inspire creativity and innovation internally as well as how to make better connections with their customers. Matthew’s unique story creation experience with Pixar, Industrial Light and Magic (ILM), and The Simpsons, along with his anybody can succeed attitude, make his “Story for Business” seminars and workshops a sought after experience.       Fostering Creativity  With his father’s encouragement, Matthew attended the California Institute of the Arts instead of running the family’s popular toy store business. His father exposed him to obscure

My guest today, Bob Andrews, is someone I’ve known for many years.  He is a dear friend and someone I greatly appreciate.  Bob has had an interesting career - working as a teacher, then as a retail store manager, and ultimately building his career in the field of Human Resources.  He was the head HR for Jamba Juice and held various HR jobs at Gap Inc.  Bob is now working for himself, doing something he has always felt passionate about - executive and leadership coaching.   What does Bring Your Whole Self to Work Mean to Bob? Bob says the phrase “Bring Your Whole Self to Work” pushes a few of his buttons. He has been challenged by bringing his whole self at work throughout his career and has worked with others who struggle with being fully themselves and with showing up fully at work. As an example, early in Bob’s career he completed a survey answering each question the way he imagined a strong leader would. He answered in the voice of the person he wanted to be instead of who he really was. Then, after 25 yea

Michael Bungay Stanier is my guest on this week’s episode of my podcast. He is the author of many books including Do More Great Work and, his latest, The Coaching Habit. Michael’s company, Box of Crayons, help organizations to do less good work and more great work.   What does Bring Your Whole Self to Work Mean to Michael? Michael references the insights in the book The Dark Side of the Light Chasers by Debbie Ford and how the ‘I Am That’ process allows a person to acknowledge all that they are and show up as their whole person. He says there is something about understanding how you are different in this world and doubling down on what makes you unique.    Embracing Discomfort Balancing tension is hard. There is a fine line between strategy and guessing. Michael says to experiment in a way that limits risks is the way forward. He observes that most people don’t wrestle long enough with questions and they will generally default to safety.   An Inspiring Project In Michael’s book, Do More Great Work, he advocat

Today I’m speaking with my friend, Eric Severson. Eric has been working and studying the field of Human Resources for over 25 years. He spent many of those years at Gap Inc., which is where we met.  At Gap Inc., he served as the co-CHRO in charge of global enterprise talent strategy and operations.  He is a leader who works to create culture and support the growth of talent.  In 2014, Eric was appointed by the US Commerce Secretary to be a part of the National Advisory Council on Innovation and Entrepreneurship (NACIE). The organization's initiatives include looking at how to create organizations where people can bring their whole selves to work and be successful. They also focus on how organizations and corporations can be positive influences in society at large.    Resources: Mike Robbins Website Mike Robbins on Facebook Mike Robbins on Twitter Mike Robbins Speaker Page Eric Severson on Twitter CHREATE National Advisory Council on Innovation & Entrepreneurship

Today I’m speaking with my friend Dr. Dacher Keltner, a professor at UC Berkeley who is also the co-founder and faculty director of the UC Berkeley Greater Good Science Center. He is a renowned expert in the biological and evolutionary origins of human emotions and he studies awe, compassion, beauty and love. He just wrote a new book, The Power Paradox, and has also authored two previous books, Born to Be Good:The Science of a Meaningful Life and The Compassion Instinct.   The Greater Good Science Center  The Greater Good Science Center began in 2001, as print magazine, with the intention of bringing peace and well-being to people. It has since become a place people go to for acquiring knowledge and learning how to put that knowledge into practice. The center capitalizes on core ethical ideas in our data-driven society. A talk at Stanford led to an exciting opportunity for Dacher to partner with Facebook. The result of their partnership was the modification of Facebook’s approach and platform, which gave user

This is the very first episode of my new Bring Your Whole Self to Work Podcast. I really wanted to do something special for this first show and was so excited that my friend, the amazing Chip Conley, agreed to join me.    What I Know About Chip Conley Chip is a business leader, a thought leader, and a person I respect and admire a great deal. At 26, he started the Joie de Vivre – which became the second largest boutique hotel company in the world.  He sold the company back in 2010. Chip is the author of four books with a fifth one on the way and for the past 38 months he has worked as a mentor to the founders of Airbnb and a leader within the company as they’ve grown exponentially. He is a true renaissance man of life, business and of personal growth.    The Courage to Walk Down the Entrepreneurial Path Chip remembers the advice from the Whole Earth Catalog, which was to “start cheap, stay small and stay local”. This advice allowed him to make mistakes and modify appropriately. Chip figured that if he had to

So, why am I doing this new podcast? Well, during my 15 years of speaking, writing and coaching I’ve gotten to know some incredible business leaders, thought leaders and other fascinating people. As I started to work on my next book, Bring Your Whole Self to Work, I decided I wanted to interview some of these folks as research for the book.  Then I decided it would be cool to record these conversations and share them with others.  So, that was the inspiration for this podcast. I want to learn about the twists and turns in their careers – their ups, downs, insights, challenges, inspirations, and more What has allowed them to bring all of who they are to their work? What makes this challenging? What have been the benefits of this in terms of their success and fulfillment. I’m also curious about the things that entrepreneurs and business leaders do to consciously create a culture of authenticity, innovation, and creativity in their organizations.  How do they make it safe and conducive for people to bring all of