Todd Cherches: “ABC - Always Be Curious. When I was a kid, I would ask my mother things like, ‘Why is the sky blue?’ Some parents say, ‘I don't know’ or ‘I have no idea’. My mother would say, ‘Oh, that's a great question. Let's go look it up together’. And that's now part of my teaching philosophy. While some instructors tell their students to put their phones away – when my students ask me a question that I may not have the answer to I say, ‘Take out your phones and let's look it up. Let's see who can find the answer the fastest’ and I make it into a knowledge scavenger hunt. 

When corporate clients come to me saying, ‘We need leadership training’ – I'll ask, ‘Who is it for? What do you want covered? When? Where are you? Why are you doing this? What's the purpose? What's the intent?’ Then we figure out the How and I can figure out How much. That's my linear process. What's funny is some potential clients say, ‘I don't have the time for that. Just tell me how much. How much is your leadership training?’ And I'll say, ‘How much is a vacation?’

Always ask Who, What, When, Where, Why, and How. 

QBQ, what's the Question Behind the Question? Why are they asking that question? There's a reason behind people's questions. So that's part of the philosophy of always being curious and digging deeper. When you visualize an iceberg in the water, all you see is the tip. There's way more beneath the surface and it's up to us to explore deeper. 

So be curious and wonder why.”

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Have a listen as I interview my special guest, Todd Cherches.

Todd Cherches: “No one has all the answers – we're all just trying to figure it out. That's actually very freeing. I tend to quote Socrates, which always annoys my wife, ‘All I know is that I know nothing’. The more we realize what there is to know the more we realize the less we know, especially with things changing faster than ever these days. 

There's also the classic joke that ‘teenagers think they know everything’. Then they go away to college and come back four years later only to realize how smart their parents are. 

‘It's amazing how much my parents learned while I was gone!’

My father used to say, ‘People are so consumed with possessions, the nicest car or whatever. The only thing that really matters in the overall scheme of things is people’. 

I'm working as an executive coach and I teach leadership at NYU and Columbia universities. It's all about people. So even in my work, I don't focus on strategy or finance or anything related to the business side of things. I focus solely on communication: giving feedback, how to lead, inspire, and motivate people. So that mantra of 'people are the only thing that matters' is also ingrained in the work I do.

The title of my book, ‘VisuaLeadership’ is spelled with only one L. Most people don’t even notice the L in leadership is missing. The idea behind that is, 'who you are and how you lead is inseparable from the lens through which you see the world'. 

It's important to see the world through the lens of other people in the spirit of diversity, equity, inclusion, and belonging. When we envision a world, not just as we see it, as other people see it, we can help others to make their visions come true as well.

The rainbow colored eye on the cover of my book represents how each of us see things differently.” 

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Have a listen as I interview my special guest, Todd Cherches.

Todd Cherches: “My wife had wanted dogs for many years. I put it off for a variety of reasons and finally caved during the pandemic. That was the best decision we ever made. Our dogs reduce stress. They also cause some stress, but the stress reduction outweighs the stress they cause. I grew up in Queens, New York. I have one brother and he is five years younger than me. Our family lived in a small apartment until I was twelve. We moved into a house on Long Island and lived in the suburbs. I went to college in Albany, New York and then moved out to LA where I worked for ten years in the TV industry.

I started playing Little League at age eight. Even though I learned to play baseball very young, I wasn't very good that first year. I was so scared of swinging and missing that I didn't swing at all. There's a classic quote by Babe Ruth who said, ‘Never let the fear of striking out keep you from playing the game’. That’s a great stress reducer right there. That's a great philosophy. You can 'not do anything' and 'fail automatically' or you can 'try' and maybe you'll actually hit the ball. 

I became a good hitter over time and I'm still playing softball on a couple of teams, although I missed this season due to a back injury.

My father was very laid back. His priorities were: don't get hurt, have fun, just try your best.”

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Have a listen as I interview my special guest, Todd Cherches.

Eva Hoffman: “For many years of my life, I was not interested in spirituality or religion. In recent years, I have become more open to spirituality. I teach my little great grandchildren about energy, energy healing, and reconnecting their hemispheres with Brain Gym exercises. I teach them to breathe slowly, because that is the first important thing for meditation. I think it's extremely important to teach children about things beyond our senses. We're not really teaching them, we are confirming what they somehow already know. 

The new generation is living in a very different world from the world that I lived in as a child.

It’s so interesting to watch each generation becoming more open. We learn so much from children. Somebody wisely said that ‘we learn more from them than they do from us’. 

Until quite recently, I did not like saying I love myself. I would say, "I accept myself". I can do it now, but I can still feel a bit of a block.”

Have a listen as I interview my special guest, Eva Hoffman.

Eva Hoffman: “Growing is about expanding, becoming multicolored and multi shaped like a beautiful garden of flowers. I love watching young people because they are so beautiful. I don't teach secondary school children anymore. It's the age when they are really blossoming. They are just so incredibly beautiful, like a flower. I think, 'how wonderful it would be for me to find out who you are, and what kind of flower you are in this moment'. That's the feeling I get when I see them.

It is interesting that when a plant grows higher, the roots grow deeper. As human beings, we need this balance between growing up and having deep roots. When I think about roots, I also think about people. We come from different countries and we start growing our roots when we are born. 

I am Polish and I have lived in England for 40 years now, which is a long time. My father was half Jewish and is Polish. My mother was born in Poland as well. For some people, it's a very big issue when they are uprooted because their roots never grew deep enough. This can happen with plants as well. I think my roots have gone quite deep. I don't have problems changing places. I do get attached to people, rather than places. 

Understanding your roots is important.”

Have a listen as I interview my special guest, Eva Hoffman.

Eva Hoffman: “We have wonderful experiences when we connect with others. I take all of my students, regardless of age, through what I call a self-discovery learning adventure. What we discover is that, although we may seem the same, we are all beautifully different. Because we are beautifully different, we are all special. I am special and you are special. We are all special and it's extremely important that we all realize that fact. A lot of young people, even small children already at school, don't feel that they are special. 

Not all children feel that they are special in their own homes. That is something to be remembered. I enjoy teaching my great grandchild positive self-talk. For example saying, “I am special” about themselves. Initially, I had trouble saying that myself. 

Some school children are labeled Special Needs. I can sympathize with that and yet I believe that every child is a special needs child. When we believe that, we treat them as individuals. 

I also believe that we need to teach children about unity, the fact that ‘we are all one’.”

Have a listen as I interview my special guest, Eva Hoffman.

Eva Hoffman: “I have been a lifelong learner and yet I never liked school. I didn't like it when I was little and I didn’t like it as a teenager. The moment I left school, things changed. When I became a teacher, I promised myself that if I saw my students not loving to learn, I would change my profession. I believe that it’s a crime if there’s no heart in the teaching or the learning.

I am from a loving family of lifelong learners. My parents were musicians and professionals at a music academy. When my father was eighty-seven years old, this is what I heard as I walked into the house, "Look what I have just learned!" A typical greeting of his.

I was not a bad student. It's interesting, because my friends remember me as a very good student. I don't think I was. I mean, I got the right grades. I managed everything that I needed to manage. I passed all the exams, there was no problem of that kind. There also was no heart in the teaching. I had only one teacher who really taught me something that I carry on until today. In my mind that was not good enough. I promised myself that as a teacher, I’d be remembered in a different way.

I've been extremely interested in people and when you get to know them, when you are interested in them, the next step is loving them. 

I have always loved teaching and when I have a chance to teach, I feel the connection. I feel love.”

Have a listen as I interview my special guest, Eva Hoffman.

Carol Banens: “I am grateful for the gratitude journaling I have done for years. I am also grateful that I continued writing in that journal after my husband died. I did it every night, no matter what. I can remember sitting upstairs with my diary open thinking, 'what am I grateful for?' And I made sure I found something, whether it was my warm bed in the winter or the air conditioning in the summer. 

Grief is about looking back and looking at loss.

People tend not to live in the present moment. We're either worried and thinking about what went wrong, what we should have done or we are busy getting anxious about the future. 

The wonderful thing about gratitude is that we can keep adding it into our day. This is when the joy of life returns.”

Have a listen as I interview my special guest, Carol Banens.

Carol Banens: “Once you're in grief, and you've lost someone, you realize there's so much more that perhaps you could have done for them, listened to them, or asked of them. I'm a piano player. My dad was a surgeon and quite a good jazz pianist. He'd say, practice hymns and play chords, it will give you chord sequences. And of course, I never listened because he was my dad. After he'd gone, I ended up marrying a jazz pianist. That's when I realized, oh, my dad was right. If only I had done that. Did I learn from that? Not enough. 

I relished my husband, but not as much as I could. I think we can always do more. 

I didn't ask him to teach me a really groovy Happy Birthday. When you're at a birthday party and there’s a piano and people find out you can play piano they often say, "Can you play Happy Birthday?" And it's like, “No”. That's such a silly little thing. But it's one of those things I wonder about. That was Brian's skill. He was a musician. Why didn't I tap into that? Was it because I was always too busy? 

I was too busy to smell the roses. I was working and looking after my mom.

We don't know how long others will be with us or we with them. So, taking the time to appreciate who you have with you and why they're with you is important. If only we could hear that lesson before they are gone so that we can do it in advance.”

Have a listen as I interview my special guest, Carol Banens.

Carol Banens: “Being kind can mean so many different things. When it comes to grief, it doesn't mean trying to fix grief. Let's get that out there. Because you don't fix grief, you live through it. You get to work through it. In grief, being kind to yourself can be calling on a friend for a chat, monitoring the intensity of your grief, or journaling about your grief (what you’ve lost and what you still have). Being kind to others in grief is about remembering that they are on decision overload. They might not even know what they want or what they need.

When my husband died, and before I could even think about mowing the lawn, my realtor sent over a lawn crew. This continued all summer. What a gift and a blessing. Talk about instilling gratitude! It took away a burden I didn’t even know I had. It was one less thing for me to think about.

So when I think about being kind, sometimes it's the practical things that make all the difference in the world.” 

Have a listen as I interview my special guest, Carol Banens.