Every group of people who work or spend time together develops a culture; regardless if leaders are trying to create it or not, they'll have one. And since culture will eventually happen, leaders' best alternative is creating one, sharing it, and pushing it forward.  

Today, I'm joined by my brother Travis Hoopes; Travis works for a skilled nursing and rehabilitation center, and he leads over 100 people. He is known for having a great culture within his operations where he worked, and the people he led became great leaders. 

In this episode, we talked about the importance of creating a healthy culture in the workplace, the best practices to do it, and its massive effects. Travis kindly shared his experiences as an employee, being invited to share a company's culture and now as a leader inviting people to share his. We talked about the best ways of communicating and inspiring others to engage with our company's culture and how we know we are doing an excellent job as leaders. 

In This Episode, You Will Learn:

• What is culture, and what it takes to create a new one or change an existing one (3:01)
• What are the best kind of cultures and why (4:38)
• The importance of making people feel noticed when creating a culture for our company (9:01)
• The importance of sharing success (17:37)
• The Disney Land attitude. Travis' experience as an employee not getting a company's culture (18:23)

Let's Connect!

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In our personal and professional lives, we often find ourselves in situations that require us to move things from our way first to then solve what we need to solve - Rubik cube-style. And in those situations, it is also common we fail to identify the things that get in our way. 

In this episode, we will talk about the obstacles in people's way that stop them from completing a task and how hard it is to perceive them. We will discuss the importance of having different perspectives to solve an issue and why it is easier for someone else to identify obstacles in our path. Finally, we will analyze our roles as leaders in offering different perspectives.

What You Will Learn In This Episode:

• Escaping a traffic jam (1:21)
• How I got trapped in a task that looked easier than it was (2:57)
• A different perspective. The unexpected solution (4:24)
• The power of offering a different perspective (5:34)

Resources:

• Rush Hour - Traffic Jam Logic Game and STEM Toy
• Unblock My Car - Park Move Out. App version

Let's Connect!

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Sam Foss's famous poem "The Calf Path" explores many themes and messages on society's habits. It talks about legacy, choice, and how even fragile beings have the potential to choose the path they want to follow. In the corporate world, it is frequently used as an analogy for having systems in place, following steps and procedures to ensure the work is getting done without mistakes. However, calf paths could also lead to ineffective or outdated ways of doing things, and that is what we'll talk about in today's episode. 

In this special episode, I'm joined by two of our executive directors from our company, Certified Fire And Security, Aaron Tuttle and Danny Holmgreen, to talk about calf paths. We had a fantastic conversation driving down the road about questioning procedures and the different ways of talking about changes with our teams. We spoke of the openness needed to revise how we do things and how humbling it can be to change a procedure we created. We also talked about proposing changes to make our team members' lives more accessible and evaluate if the outcome we expect is worth taking old systems down. 

What You Will Learn In This Episode:

• What is "The Calf Path" poem about (1:38)
• Why it is necessary to look closer at old habits and ways to do things in our company (5:34)
• The relevance of questioning old procedures (10:42)
• What makes taking down old systems and processes easier (15:20)
• Leadership's role in proposing and making changes (20:42)

Resources:

• Poem: Sam Walter Foss - The Calf Path 

Connect with Aron:

• LinkedIn

Connect with Danny:

• LinkedIn

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Passion is an excellent guide and the result of everything done with passionate enthusiasm is always more satisfactory. As leaders, we are passionate about our project, we enjoy spending time on it, and we want our clients and customers to get a fantastic experience. For instance, customers can tell right away the difference between an employee's and an owner's attention in a restaurant. So the challenge is not finding passion in leading or leading on a project we are passionate about but transferring our passion to our team members.  

In this episode, we will talk about the difference passion can make when it guides our actions. I'll share a fun story my family and me experienced a couple of years ago and put me to think about the importance of treating our business with passion and what we can do as leaders to generate in our team members and employees the same passion. 

In This Episode, You Will Learn:

• Looking for a place to sleep on the way. What can go wrong? (2:33)
• Appearances can be deceiving. A house beautiful on the inside (5:01)
• We slept on the floor, and we didn't mind (7:20)
• What happens when team members don't share the same passion (9:04)

Let 's Connect!

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• Email: [email protected] 

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As leaders, we are responsible for the environment we create. Even with the best of intentions, we can create tension in our workspace. In her book "Multipliers," Liz Wiseman divides leaders into two groups, tyrants or liberators. Tyrant leaders create tension, diminishing their teams' capability, while liberators generate an intense environment where their teams have a profound obligation of doing their best. 

In this episode, we will talk about leadership styles. We will go through the main characteristics of tyrant and liberator leaders and how they stimulate their teams. We will also describe Liz Wiseman's three practices to become a liberator leader. 

In This Episode, You Will Learn:

• What I picture in my head when I think of a tyrant leader (1:01)
• What is a tyrant leader, and how it affects their teams (2:13)
• How liberator leaders influence their teams (3:45)
• Play your chips. Giving space to the team to express themselves (5:38)
• The importance of labeling our opinions (9:24)
• Showing vulnerability and giving people permission to make mistakes and learn from them (13:38)

Resources:

• Book: Liz Wiseman - Multipliers: How the Best Leaders Make Everyone Smarter

Let's Connect!

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Holding someone accountable for a specific outcome is a way of showing love. We demonstrate to them we care about them, we trust they will do a good job, and we know they can be better. We also offer the possibility of experiencing the fantastic feeling of accomplishment, of reaching a goal. As leaders, one of the most rewarding things we can provide our followers is setting clear expectations about a task and hold them accountable to complete it. 

This episode is about expectations and accountability. We will talk about how satisfying it can be to complete a task with clear expectations and how gratifying it is to be held accountable. We will also talk about how we can hold ourselves responsible when things go wrong, and instead of looking for the mistake in others' actions, find where we fail as leaders for that to happen. 

In This Episode, You Will Learn:

• Rinse often. One of my first experiences with clear expectations and being accountable for a task (2:01)
• The third time's a charm. Why we might fail even when the expectations are clear (4:31)
• Despite the common belief, people want to be held accountable (7:40)
• Blaming others and its consequences (10:01)

Resources:

• "Wisdom stems from personal accountability. We all make mistakes; own them... learn from them. Don't throw away the lesson by blaming others." - Steve Maraboli
• Make your Bed Speech by Navy Admiral William H McRaven
• Book: Hal Elrod - The Miracle Morning: The Not-So-Obvious Secret Guaranteed to Transform Your Life (Before 8AM)
• Book: James Clear - Atomic Habits: an Easy & Proven Way to Build Good Habits and Break Bad Ones
• Habit Stacking, James Clear

Let's Connect!

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All of us have morning routines, even if we are not aware of them. Regardless of the day of the week or the time we get out of bed, we go through our phones, sit in bed thinking of nothing, or take a shower. Morning habits are acquired, we repeat them because we are used to them, but it also means that we can change them. And not only that, but we also have the power of including habits in our morning routines that can enhance our productivity, health, and general well-being. 

Last week, we talked about the importance of sleeping; in this episode, we will talk about morning routines. You will hear how developing meaningful morning routines can help us thrive during the day and what simple methods we can use to incorporate healthy habits into our mornings. We will explore the S.A.V.E.R.S method, and we will also talk about the habit loop. 

In This Episode, You Will Learn:

• How to start the day with a win (1:01)
• The S.A.V.E.R.S method. Six steps into an excellent morning (3:29)
• How hard it is to incorporate a new habit (6:46)
• The habit loop. Seeing a reward at the end of the tunnel (7:52)
• Triggers need to be specific and intentional (13:47)

Resources:

• Make your Bed Speech by Navy Admiral William H McRaven
• Book: Hal Elrod, Robert Kiyosaki - The Miracle Morning: The Not-So-Obvious Secret Guaranteed to Transform Your Life
• Book: James Clear - Atomic Habits
• Book: S.J Scott - Habit Stacking: 127 Small Changes to Improve Your Health, Wealth, and Happiness

Let's Connect!

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Sleeping is one of those things we know is important, and yet, we don't treat it that way. Our sleep quality impacts all of our body functions, including the most essential, our brain activity. In most cases, our days are so full that we don't have time to get enough hours of sleep. The question we should ask ourselves is, how important are the things that keep our days full. If they are not that relevant, we are trading hours of sleep for less important things or activities. 

Today's subject is sleep. We will talk about how easy it is to be careless about our time to rest and the consequences of insufficient sleeping time. We will dive deep into the effects of a sleep-deprived mind, how it can affect our performance at work and at home, and its impact on the long term. Finally, we will explore Matthew Walker's 11 steps for a night of better sleep and how they can help us protect our most valuable asset, ourselves. 

In This Episode, You Will Learn:

• The role of distractions at the sleeping time (3:27)
• Why we should prioritize our most valuable asset (6:24)
• The effects of sleep deprivation in the long term (12:16)
• 11 Steps for better sleep (16:14)

Resources:

• Book: Greg McKeown - Essentialism: The Disciplined Pursuit of Less
• Book: Matthew Walker Ph.D. - Why We Sleep: Unlocking the Power of Sleep and Dreams
• Matthew Walker's 11 Tips for Improving Sleep Quality
• Matthew Walker TED Talk - Sleep is Your Superpower

Let's Connect!

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All of us have different goals, aspirations, or things we would like to achieve. Sometimes we manage to accomplish them, sometimes we struggle a bit, but every time we fail, no exception, we look for someone to blame for our failure. We blame our phone because it won't stop going off, or some noise outside, perhaps some breaking news that got our attention - it can be anything. The truth is we should blame ourselves; we trick ourselves into looking for distractions, and a good distraction is something no one can resist. 

In this episode, we will talk about the distractions we find and keep us far from achieving our goals, our vision. When we commit to a task that'll help us get where we want to be, we are focused, we think with clarity, and we know that is the best choice for us. The hard part is maintaining that level of focus and commitment; after some time, we don't think as clear as the moment we decided to follow that action plan. In the middle of the way, we start distracting ourselves to look somewhere else, like magicians do in their acts of distraction.

In This Episode, You Will Learn:

• Goals and commitment is a matter of perspective (4:49)
• Who is to blame for our distractions? (9:05)
• The importance of keeping a close eye on our goals (10:41)
• Finding constructive distractions (12:48)
• Creating Keystone habits and red flag mechanisms (14:55)

Resources:

• "You can always find a distraction if you are looking for one" - Tom Kite, World Hall of Fame golfer

Let's Connect!

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Some people have no choice but to be resilient and determined to overcome physical challenges. Others might have to deal with situations they weren't born to do, and still, through effort and hard work, they can learn to do a good job. Those who find themselves in a leadership position without being natural leaders can learn the skills. People will respond to them because only genuine people inspire in others the will to be followed. 

Today's episode was inspired by a challenge I put myself into, learning how to write with my left hand. After almost a year of practice, I observed some improvement in my handwriting, but the experience made me think about different kinds of leaders. This episode is about how hard work and effort can inspire people and how naturally talented people can sometimes neglect their improvement and be defeated by the so-called "underdogs".

In This Episode, You Will Learn:

• The importance of forcing us to learn new things for the sake of it (2:09)
• Getting better at something using the right tools (7:29)
• Hard-work always pays (10:46)
• Different types of leaders and their methods (14:25)
• People want to follow who is genuine (15:27)
• Leadership is a two-way street (17:57)

Resources:

• Book: Barbara Getty - Write Now: The Getty-Dubay Program for Handwriting Success
• "An organization's ability to learn, and translate that learning into action rapidly, is the ultimate competitive advantage." – Jack Welch, former CEO of General Electric.

Let's Connect!

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• Facebook

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