What's Your Story: How Leaders Tell Stories to Influence and Connect with Audiences

Disruption happens a lot across the corporate world. Sometimes, from a company's perspective through realigning functions. And sometimes by employees themselves as they make choices to try different things. But whether disruption is caused by a company or an individual, it's occurring more frequently.

And from our vantage point, we see individuals who aren't ready for it…and aren't good at resetting around a challenge or an opportunity that disruption causes. The book sets out to help individuals understand why disruption occurs and how to plan for resets.

This episode of What's Your Story has guest host, Lia, who interviews Sally, Hurst, and LaKesha about book insights, highlights and maybe see if they'll share a few tips from our latest book, Disrupted! How to Reset your Brand and Your Career.

More about The Creators

Sally Williamson is the founder of SW&A and an expert in all things related to spoken communication. Sally brings more than three decades of experience, insights and a general love of connection to empower more than 15,000 leaders and managers to influence and impact any group. Disrupted! is her fourth book.

Hurst Williamson is the ultimate utility player who can uncover client needs, lead a workshop or weave an incredible tale. He owns every room and brings genuine engagement to communication. He is the heart of the career journey and a proud member of the generation most disrupted. But he sees it as an opportunity to tell your story and own your journey. And he's helping many of our clients do just that. Hurst co-authored Disrupted! and it is his second book.

LaKesha Edwards is a life-long learner who loves research, insights and discovery. With a Ph.D. added to her own career journey, she questions what we're learning and how we're solving it. And with SW&A, she creates the steps to continue a development experience by thinking through what we learn, what we teach and how we coach. And quite frankly, she keeps us all on our toes. She led the research behind Disrupted!

Show Notes

• Disrupted! How to Reset Your Brand and Your Career

• Disruption happens all over the world and it's occurring more frequently.
• This book sets out to help individuals understand why disruption occurs and how to plan for resets.

• Why Disrupted! How to Reset Your Brand and Your Career was written:

• It felt like the right time for the topic and they had the tools to sell it.
• As a communications firm they have a broad view of business change.
• SW&A wanted to support individuals and how they deal with disruption.
• This time, around wanted to include two new minds in the process to have fresh perspective about a topic that will directly affect their generation.
• The timing of COVID-19 offered the space, insight, and necessity for this book.
• This book has blended all their different talents together.

• What was Disrupted! How to Reset Your Brand and Your Career trying to uncover and discover?

• • Focus on developing the skills of current employees.
  • Noting talent strategies have shifted with business beliefs.
  • Talent acquisition is trying to bring in the needed talent to solve for gaps.
• Where does that create insight for a reader or an individual who's thinking through their own career path and development?
• • Talent Leaders have encouraged employees to take ownership of their own career path.
  • Training for employees to directly support company goals is 82%.
  • 8% of their time is focused on development outside of company goals.
  • If your interest does not align with the company's goals, it will not be a priority.

• Talent development is in charge of supplying the people to let that growth happen. Goals get narrow fast - if an individual doesn't fit in the scope, they will fall behind.

• Employees must take ownership to develop their skills to make sure they stand out.
• Employees must not rely on somebody watching out for them- they must own their career.
• There is not a master database of employee's development, skills, and career goals.

• How to stay competitive?

• Feedback - is the best indication of what an employee's file at a company is. Seek feedback to control personal brand. Seek feedback from individuals that make you nervous.
• Personal brand is how people think about you and talk about you when you're not around.

• What are the critical skills needed today?

• Communication and influence.
• Problem solving and critical thinking.
• Agility during times of change and uncertainty.

• To be a better strategic thinker is to be a better strategic communicator.
• Talent recruiters will look for talent outside an organization if specific skills are needed quickly.
• How are disruption and reset related?
• Disruption is what everyone feels.

• It happens to everybody and at any time. Not always handled well.

• The rest are the people who take control of disruption.

• How they pivot.
• The art of how you take disruption and turn it into insight.

• What does reset look like?

• Everybody will have to reset at some time in their career.
• An individual will change jobs 7-10 times in their career.
• Reset comes down to the interview.
• In the Talent Acquisition podcast they were asked how many people are good at interviewing? Less than 5 percent.

• Talent acquisition is competing for top talent. Many people don't understand how to explain their skills through storytelling. Acquiring skills that fit a specific job is not always through traditional experiences.
• In the book they look at different career levels early, mid, and peak career.
• People are successful in reset if they have a compelling brand and a compelling career narrative.

• 1st half of Disrupted! How to Reset Your Brand and Your Career is about personal brand and coaching around feedback. It's broken down between early, mid-career and peak career.
• 2nd half pivots into a career narrative. How to think about organizing all your experience together. Mindset shifts on how you think and talk about yourself.

From a distance, you could assume that product creation and innovation is easy because it seems to happen quickly. But you'd be wrong. It actually requires an army of technologists and engineers to keep innovation moving and to deliver products in a speedy fashion. And they aren't alone. Long before a product reaches a build phase, there are multiple steps to analyze a market, identify a need and propose a product against a market opportunity.

Sometimes there can be a communication conflict between senior leaders and technical teams, and often, the outcome is a lack of understanding and buy-in. It's why one of the key development needs amongst technology teams is learning to communicate with an executive audience.

On this episode of What's Your Story, Sally is joined by Mac Smith, who leads Cross Portfolio Research for Search & Assistant, at Google. And he's going to share his experience with why communication conflicts happen, and how they can be improved.

More about Mac Smith

Mac is the Head of Cross Portfolio Research for Search & Assistant at Google. He leads a 25 researcher organization on research programs that bridge Google Search & Assistant product lines. The team combines product support with cross portfolio programs and processes that increase the overall speed and quality of a 100 person research organization. Before this role, he was the Head of User Research for the Core Search Product.

Show Notes

• Is there a struggle between executive teams and tech teams?
  • Much of the content struggles to connect at the right altitude to connect with the executive teams.
  • For tech teams who are thinking about how a particular product would work, much of the content in the area of comfort lies around their expertise:
    • The how
    • Data
    • Risks
    • Blockers - etc
• Try starting with the main point instead of throwing details.
  • The experts struggle envisioning not having all the details to make a decision.
• The challenge has always been there are repeats on different scales. What has changed as they increase scale is the amount of time the execs have, as well as the complexity they are dealing with has grown exponentially.
  • Perspective difference hasn't changed - as the organizations have grown, the amount of time you have to make that decision has changed.
  • In smaller scale companies, you have more of an opportunity to work with those decision makers. As the company grows, it becomes more structured and you have fewer opportunities to make those connections.
  • Most of the leadership has spent a considerable amount of time as product engineers prior to becoming executives in tech.
  • It's important to understand the complexity of systems that run your business so you can make decisions that bridge business, experience and technology.
• The challenge is many of the engineers have never been in the executive position.
  • From the executive perspective: the aperture of their view, the connection, and the time have all changed - that is the biggest perspective.
  • Executive teams need to come in the door and think about what decision they will make that day.
  • Leaders connect dots. Looking at something a moment in time vs something over time.
• For researchers there are two parts to the job:
  • 1. The craft of collecting information.
  • 2. The role of being an advisor and a steward of that information.
  • If you are advising or influencing a leader your job does not stop upon delivery of the information, you also need to help/guide that person (the executive) to make a decision.

• The need for people to have effective communication in their roles has gotten greater.
  • Growth makes communication more challenging.
  • In the early stages of a company, you see more expert to expert conversation.
  • When the audience grows you are no longer having those expert-to-expert conversations. Growth requires you to evaluate how you communicate.
• How does your expertise connect to the bigger picture, and can you understand the perspective of that executive to help them make that decision or fill in a gap for them?
  • What is the consequence of not being understood?
    • You don't get what you want. You need to connect it to what the executive wants. If you give me this, you will get this.
• What is the biggest consequence for not being an effective communicator?
  • Most executives see the company as one large team and they want that team to be successful.
  • If they don't feel the idea is effectively being communicated, they will send people away and tell them to come back with more research.
  • The communicator must understand what is needed by the executive.
  • Time loss is the biggest challenge.
• What are the common mistakes that happen over and over again?
  • Presenter starts the conversation from their perspective and misses context completely.
  • The takeaway is buried at the end of the conversation.
  • Presenter is not prepared for the drill down by the executives. Presenter must realize the executives want them to be successful and ask questions attempting to help. They are essentially asking the presenter to give them a reason to change or do something. In this scenario, tech experts miss an opportunity to connect with exec staff because they feel tested.
• Most technologists want to be better communicators and the biggest challenge they face include being anxious or unsure about effective communication.
  • Tech groups are phenomenal learners, they work hard to make it fit and make it work.
• How to improve skills as an effective communicator:
  • Start at the end, not from your perspective. Start with the end goal for the audience.
  • Encourage people to prototype their results that they need to get to and show to others. Modify based on their feedback to show the end that you're going to hit.
• Do stories have a place in technology?
  • Facts and data are not memorable - add a layer of storytelling to that data. It helps others to understand what you are trying to accomplish and connect to broader business perspective.
  • Set out the board context and framework – here is the what and how of this story, and then illustrate that with concrete stories. When you marry those two together- it takes a complex space with conflicting information and makes it very concrete and relatable.
• If you learn to communicate well, the chances of you becoming one of the executives becomes significantly higher in terms of probability and speed at getting there.

These days, we're all exhausted. And it's not just the physical tiredness of managing kids, virtual schooling, shifting work locations in a house, or balancing disruptions as our personal lives and workspace converge. It's a mental tiredness and fatigue, and the effects are pretty dramatic.

It's a good thing that companies were already working on body and mind wellness. Wellness support and training has become an integral part of many company's benefit plans and training initiatives. The added stress and uncertainty of the pandemic has intensified the conversations about mindfulness, meditation, and a company called Headspace.

On this episode of What's Your Story, Sally's guest is CeCe Morken, President and CEO of Headspace, and she's here to share her experience with how she found herself in this role and the benefits of finding your purpose.

More about CeCe Morken

CeCe Morken serves as President and Chief Operating Officer of Headspace. She is a highly accomplished technology industry executive with 35 years of experience building and growing organizations, from start-ups to global, publicly traded companies.

CeCe joined Headspace after 13 years at Intuit, where she led multiple business units. She served as Executive Vice President and General Manager of the Strategic Partner Group, responsible for the accountant, financial institution, and enterprise platform business generating $700M in annual revenue — in addition to leading both the Corporate/Government Affairs and Corporate Responsibility functions for the company. Morken was also responsible for building strategic partnerships between Intuit and financial institutions, government and educational entities, and enterprise platforms, and also responsible for expanding global engagements, which doubled the velocity of contracts in the target countries of the UK, Australia, Canada, and France.

Before serving in this capacity, Morken led Intuit Financials Services (IFS). She led this business through a technology and business model transformation that moved the business to the number one ranking in share and product design across online and mobile platforms, leading the industry in open platform designs. Subsequently, CeCe led the strategic decision to divest the business and close the sale to the private equity firm Thoma Bravo in August of 2013.

Morken is a graduate of North Dakota State University, with majors in Economics and Business Administration, and attended the University of Chicago Booth's executive development program. Morken currently serves on the Boards of GENPACT and NDSU College of Business.

Morken has also been recognized as one of The Most Powerful Women in Accounting (2017), National Diversity and Leadership Most Powerful Women in Technology (2017 and 2019), and has received the Intuit CEO Leadership Award in 2011, 2014, and 2017, and the Bill Campbell Coaches Award in 2018.

Show Notes

• Headspace: Improve health and wellness of the world. This organization helps people build healthy routines through mindfulness in an app.
  • 46% of people over the age of 18 will have a diagnosable mental health issue
  • 60% of those are untreated
• Purpose of Headspace: Corporate social responsibility and working in service for the greater good.
  • What is the impact of mindfulness thinking?
  • How mindfulness has changed the workplace
• Study by Headspace:
  • 65% of employees report that most of the stress they feel is from work
  • 42% state that work/life balance is the greatest source of stress
  • 45% of those lose 2 hours a day because of stress
• There has been an increase of CEO's listing mental health and mindfulness as a priority in the workplace. With the emphasis on this from other companies there are positive results and improvement.
  • Employers need to enable people to bring their whole selves to work. Virtual environment has mad that difficult
• The Headspace work environment is one to model. They offer the following:
  • Meeting breaks
  • No meeting days
  • Every other Friday off
• Headspace offers support programs for companies and shares their best practices with their employees
  • Offer flexibility for the caregivers in the family to prevent losing women in the workplace
• Mindfulness isn't about taking more time, it's about being present. It's not about time, it's about frequency. Being purposeful with your time.
• Headspace got big names like Sesame Street, John Legend, and other celebrities involved.
• Headspace Outreach
  • Working with Governor Cuomo's office giving all New Yorkers access to their app for free
  • Worked with other states hit hard, early on, by the pandemic
  • Made their app free to every unemployed person, all health care providers, and educators
• Headspace provides content like: music, stories, sleep casts, etc. All offerings are backed by science and clinical studies.
• Headspace worked with Sesame Street with the goal of helping young minds develop healthy habits.
• Hundreds of thousands have taken advantage of their app.
• CeCe shared a Storytelling meditation clip from the Headspace app on Wisdom: Mind, Body, Speech
  • The clip covered intention, mindfulness, voice and body of speech.
• How to manage, inspire and support a team virtually:
  • Best practices for management:
    • Don't just ask "how are you?" ask "really…how are you?"
    • Start the conversation with their development, not just the business outcome
    • Be a good role model - take breaks, set up healthy boundaries
    • Ensure that you've got clarity of common purpose and do "less" better
    • Remind people why you are there and what you are focused on.
    • Speed - don't wait for normal - make a difference and take advantage of the situation and lean in more.
    • How you spend your time is important, pick your career for the right reason.
    • Find purpose in your work.
    • Do something that makes your heart beat faster every day.

As a leader, your brand, style, message of the company, and the company itself are intertwined. SW&A has coached several leaders and considered themselves the "wingman" for people in leadership positions. On this episode of What's Your Story?, Sally talks with instructors Francie Schulwolf and Lia Panayotidis about their experience as The Wingman.

More about our guests

Francie Schulwolf: Francie's focus is on developing strong, confident communicators. With close to twenty-five years of global, corporate experience in advertising, marketing and communications, she is intimately familiar with the demands executives face. This understanding, along with her honest and warm style, create a safe and comfortable environment for individuals to learn and grow.

Lia Panayotidis: As a lead instructor for our style programs, Lia focuses on raising awareness of individual brands and working with people to strengthen personal presence. She creates an insightful learning environment in each program and can make the most vulnerable discussions a little easier. She approaches each program with a natural joy of connection and fifteen years of diverse experience in training and development

Show Notes

• As a leader, your brand, style, message of the company, and the company itself are intertwined.
• Sally Williams and Associates coach several leaders and consider themselves the "wingman" for people in leadership positions.
  • Wingman means the person behind the leader who is focused on that individual to become successful.
• Sally has spent several years speaking in front of groups and now uses the tools she learned in leadership and visible roles to help others.
• Coaching is about observing others.
  • There is more joy in watching someone else succeed.
• What is the role of communications as an influencer?
  • Having the ability to get people to deliver on a message they can get behind.
  • Understand every CEO has a different approach and skill set.
  • Being the voice behind the curtain that makes everybody sound really good.
  • Understand how to separate content from style components.
  • Practice and teach others how to become self-aware and develop self-confidence.
• Coaching is all about connections and getting leaders to the next level.
• What is done with the content collected?
  • SWA talks about celebrations and people.
  • SWA learns from each new leader they work with.
• Coaches are trying to figure out what is going on and how to get their leaders/clients to that next place.
  • They work toward figuring out how to help them discover their voice and how to get them there.
• What is frustrating as a coach?
  • Coming into a session and encountering apprehension from the beginning and an unwillingness to be open. When clients have their guards up from the start.
  • Seeing the potential that the coach knows is there and they are matched with resistance.
  • Clients who don't realize the value of feedback.
  • Leaders who refuse to watch themselves on stage to learn.
• What makes a great coach?
  • Creating a safe zone where clients can try new things.
  • Coaches who are still learning.
• The clients that are remembered are the ones that really made a difference during the training.
• The ones who grew a lot not.
• Leadership is about:
  • learning what is happening in the room
  • Embracing the intent is behind what they are doing
  • Discovering how the listener is doing
• Coaching is taking the love of people and development and putting it together.
• How do you coach mastery?
  • You give them the tools and show them how to master it.
  • Encourage clients to be intentional about practicing.
  • Realize that each person's goals are different and embrace it.
  • Ask the clients:
    • What do you want for yourself?
    • What do you see for yourself?
  • Success is gauged by audience response.
  • Helping clients realize it comes down to their own desire to master it.

Every communicator plays a significant role within an organization, but some of those roles get more visibility than others. Sales shares about customer insights, marketing relays their brand and product strategies, and something we've seen grow in the last five years, is that data security teams have become big communicators, with many CISO's managing the communication to leadership teams and corporate Boards.

On this episode of What's Your Story, Sally connects with Kim Keever, Senior Vice President and Chief Information Security Officer of Cox Communications, one of the leading cable, internet and home automation providers to talk about the increased demand for security insights and how she brings clarity to a pretty complex topic.

More About Kim Keever

Kim Keever is the Chief Information Security Officer and Senior Vice President of Security, Analytics and Technology Services for Cox Communications. Her teams are responsible for all aspects of Information Security for Cox Communications, the Center of Excellence for Analytics and for Technology people programs. Since joining Cox, she has built an industry recognized security program. In early 2016, Kim's team received an innovation award from CSO Magazine, and Kim was named a top woman in technology by Multichannel News. In both 2017 and 2018, she was named one of the most powerful women in cable by Cablefax.

Kim is a graduate of Georgia Institute of Technology. She is a member of several industry associations and boards including Alliance for Telecommunications Industry Solutions (ATIS). She is active in volunteer organizations including Children's Healthcare of Atlanta Technology Advisory Board and support of homeless shelters located in Atlanta.

Show Notes

• There has been an increased demand for security insights since 2014 because of large company security breaches.
• Leaders started looking for an increase in security insights out of worry and wanted to know: what happened, how did it happen, and could it happen to us?
• How do you talk to leaders about security without scaring them?
• We talk about security with a risk based approach:
  • Call out the highest risks first.
  • Do a little bit at a time.
  • Give them context.
  • Give them a comparison so they can better understand where the risks are.
• There are two types of CISO's:
  • High tech.
  • Business focused.
• The ability to explain the technology in a business context and alert companies to what the risks are is important because it's the most effective way to help CISO's operate. Companies will be more likely to get buy-in and senior leaders will feel more comfortable with the security team.
• How do you understand the magnitude of what to keep a watch on?
• There are different areas in which data breaches are happening:
  • Bad Guys.
  • Nation State Actors.
  • Hack-tivists.
• When you start talking about security and risk, you run the risk of making companies look bad as far as their security of data goes.
• Don't let your vulnerability be because of funding. How can you partner with other departments or organizations to get the funding needed to reduce the risks and fix the issues early on?
• Don't bombard your listeners with too much detail, give them the facts but don't overwhelm them.
• Train your employees on effective communication, and continue to practice it.
• Be sensitive of the information you share.
• Help clear up misunderstandings or potential misunderstandings.
• When you speak about complex things, you may need to say them multiple times and tell them in different ways in order for listeners to fully understand and remember.
• The security team is trying to educate the entire organization, more than just talking about security risks.
• Hands on experiences have helped prove the need for heightened security. Finding ways to make security fun and interesting tends to help the content resonate with people.
• A strong leader is someone that employees are willing to follow.
• As a leader, hire people who are smarter than you and have diversity of thought; those who are independent in their work and want to do the right thing.
• Give employees opportunities to keep them engaged, allow people to own their own space, and let them grow in their career.
• Keep your employee's best interest in mind, and always keep an open dialogue.
• Security is a great field to get into. Having a background in technology helps, and this career is in high demand and won't go away.
• Be willing to gently show people that they may not be doing enough in one area.

As we focus on a pandemic around the world, we are all searching for information and for answers. On a personal level, we're relying on our government and our media to share what's happening. It's an unprecedented topic and a new normal in our homes, schools and our lives. But we also wonder about our professional lives. And companies have to interpret the impact of that new normal for employees. In most companies, that calls up the communications and human resources teams to activate or develop a crisis communication plan.

SW&A hosted a special panel with some of our colleagues and friends, who know how to manage crisis communications. You'll hear insights and best practices on what employees and customers need and want during trying times. It takes clarity in ambiguity, confidence in uncertainty and some guidance and advice from those who've been there a time or two.

Panel:

Patti Wilmot: former HR Leader - Patti has over twenty years' experience as a former-chief human resources officer. She has helped create award-winning leadership development programs focused on creating a "bench" of future leaders. She brings expertise in assessing talent, improving the effectiveness of leadership teams and helping leaders leverage their strengths to improve effectiveness and impact.

Steve Soltis: former Executive Communications Leader - Steve is a senior adviser with MAS Leadership Communication. Soltis recently retired from The Coca-Cola Company, where he led both executive and internal communication for the past 11 years. In his role at Coca-Cola, Soltis was responsible for orchestrating the company's entire C-suite executive visibility efforts and for formulating its employee communication strategies and execution.

Francie Schulwolf: Former Communications Leader at InterContinental Hotel Group - Francie's focus is on developing strong, confident communicators. With close to twenty-five years of global, corporate experience in advertising, marketing and communications, she is intimately familiar with the demands executives face. This understanding, along with her honest and warm style, create a safe and comfortable environment for individuals to learn and grow.

Sally Williamson: Founder of SW&A - Sally is a leading resource for improving the impact of spoken communications. She has developed key messages and coached leaders and their teams to deliver them effectively for more than thirty years. Sally specializes in executive coaching and developing custom programs for groups across company verticals.

Show Highlights:

• What is the picture of success? What do you want to achieve through this situation?
• How can businesses leverage this situation? How to win hearts and minds.
• What is your central message and who are your stakeholders?
• Know how your employees are doing, understand what your consumers are needing to hear.
• Timing is critical and consistency is key.
• Address compensation as best as possible for employees. Be honest with your messaging, if you don't know the answer let employees know.
• You can be just as clear about what you know and what you don't know.
• Always show unity with leadership and re-enforce it in your messaging.
• Figure out who are your best messengers who can clearly communicate. Be in constant contact with your employees.
• Come out with messaging that connects with your brand and your culture.
• How to construct a plan that shows a picture of success - do this through employee engagement and build off of that.
• How do you help a group think about clarity and how to understand it?
• How do leaders deliver this messaging to their teams? There needs to be a means to get the message to them, let employees know how it will get to them and be consistent.
• Front line people managers are incredibly important during this time, this is the time to step up and this is the time to reach out to employees.
• Contact each individual employee frequently and know what is going on with your employees.
• Even if you don't have something to say to employees, still have that touch point to contact them frequently. Employee care is incredibly important. Keep morale up.
• Make sure your employees hear about what you are doing before the public knows.
• Get senior leadership out, touching base with employees personally.
• Learn to develop manager talking points from leadership.
• What companies are doing a good job with communicating their message through the crisis?
• Clarity of truth is important. Not all companies can give good news.
• This is the moment that will define your leadership.
• It's overwhelming as a leader right now, leaders need to be the calming force and utilize empathy.
• Leaders need to be able to send information both ways, up to higher leadership and down to employees.
• Don't let a world wide crisis become your crisis, do everything with kindness and with accurate information.
• Ask people how they are and if they know what they are supposed to be doing during this time.
• How we treat our team members now will come back to us.

Innovation is king. But that doesn't mean everyone understands it or knows how to leverage it. In fact, many view it as the silver bullet and the easy button that changes everything overnight. And that's just not how it works. Innovation evolves step by step and can be years in the making before a viable product or concept can be leveraged. And that's why companies invest in future technologies. On our latest episode of What's Your Story?, Sally speaks with Bharath Kadaba, Chief Innovation Officer of Intuit, about his role building and leading the Technology Futures group within Intuit, and how that group communicates about their work in a way that builds interest and buy-in.

More About Bharath Kadaba

Bharath Kadaba is Senior Vice President and Chief Innovation Officer at Intuit, and leads the Technology Futures group. His organization is responsible for creating game-changing technology in support of Intuit's mission to power prosperity for consumer, small business and self-employed customers.

Since joining the company in 2008, Bharath has served in a variety of executive leadership positions. Prior to his current role, he was Vice President and Engineering Fellow with responsibility for leading engineering teams that built innovative new technology for the company's QuickBooks, TurboTax and Mint product lines. Before that, he led advanced technology development as Vice President for Global Ready Offerings, and Vice President for the Global Business Division, Product Development, respectively.

Before Intuit, Bharath was Vice President of Media Engineering at Yahoo, where he led the development of a shared services platform to serve as the foundation for all media properties (news, finance, sports, games, etc.) and significantly expanded the U.S. media product capabilities. Prior to Yahoo, he was an executive with Siebel Systems, AristaSoft, and News Corp., after spending 15 years at IBM and IBM's TJ Watson Labs.

Bharath earned a Ph.D. in Computer Networks from the University of Hawaii at Manoa, and a BSEE and Master's in Computers and Control from the Indian Institute of Science.

Show Highlights

• Innovation evolves- What is it and how do you leverage it?
• Why do companies invest in future technology?
• How does a company define a future technology group?
• How do we bring technologies and build products that benefit our customers?
  • Start with the customer problems.
• The goal is to help consumers lead a prosperous life as technology is constantly changing,
• what is the match between the customer problem and the new technology?
• Purpose: To help customers at the same time as building future technology.
• Customers always want to see how they can make more money.
• Small teams that are obsessed with technology - How can we change the way humans interact with machines?
• There is a need for people who are passionate about the work, problem solver, innovative, and future thinking.
• The beauty of the deep craft expertise is somebody who knows the tech well and can problem solve.
• Always be willing to explore multiple solutions. Fall in love with the problem not the solution.
• What is a craft expert?
• How do you find a craft expert and a person with curiosity and expertise?
  • Find somebody customer obsessed, they will be the first to solve the problem.
• Customer Collaborative commerce? What is it?
• How does your team think about clarity when outcomes aren't always clean/how to find clarity in communication?
• Understand what is clear and what is ambiguous - Always set the expectations of what you know and don't know from the start.
• Communication and narratives are critically important. Know what the challenge is and why you have the challenge.
• How to show that you are about the future and relevant today at the same time.
• How to invert a story so that it's built entirely from the consumer's perspective?
• How to teach a team to do good work and illustrate what they do?
• How much has awareness gone up since they began talking about what they do?
• How storytelling has brought to life the impact of what they have done and how they do it?
• Doing Great Work is not enough, you have to stand up and tell a story.

We know storytelling's place in the business world, but have you considered the role it plays in academic institutions across the nation? In our first episode of What's Your Story?, Season 2, Sally speaks with Pete Wheelan of InsideTrack about how he uses storytelling alongside professional coaching, technology, and data analytics to increase the enrollment, completion, and career readiness of students.

Pete Wheelan is dedicated to leading mission-driven, high-growth companies unlocking human potential and currently serves as CEO of InsideTrack, the nation's leading student success coaching organization.

Under Pete's leadership, InsideTrack has now served 2 million + students and 4000+ academic programs for clients including Harvard, the Cal State System and Ivy Tech. He led the purchase of InsideTrack by Strada Education Network, a $1.4 billion public charity focused on improving high education outcomes, and InsideTrack's acquisition of Logrado, the foundation for InsideTrack's uCoach technology and analytics platform. Pete also serves as Executive Chairman at Roadtrip Nation, a fellow Strada Education Network affiliate.

Before InsideTrack, Pete served as COO/CRO of Blurb, a leader in self-published books, and as SVP of strategic marketing and business development for Lonely Planet. He also founded online portal Adventureseek and was a strategy consultant with BCG.

Pete received a B.A. from Dartmouth College and an M.B.A. and J.D. from Northwestern University.

Show Highlights

• What is the power of stories in academic settings?
• Inside Track is a company that started in 2001 that was trying to solve the issue that college is hard and most institutions don't provide support that is not academic or financial aid related
• What are the big issues that stop students from completing their academic programs?
• For communication, the best way is to meet students where they are, utilizing email and texting and not just a phone call.
• What are students seeking with InsideTrack's service?
• Most higher education institutes have gone from a growth mindset to a fixed mindset
• Why is the sense of belonging a big struggle for new students?
• What are the causes of a student actually dropping out?
• How do you approach universities to integrate this program?
• How does the storyline with the school take shape?
• Inside Track coached 300-400,000 students in 2019
  • Inside Track has access to student satisfaction and work to help remove obstacles and challenges for students
  • Student success has become increasingly important in the institution
• What are some things InsideTrack provides for students?
• InsideTrack has been a resource for over 2 million students
• With students, InsideTrack provides reputation and relationships that develop over time - it's not a one and done.
• How do you keep the human at the core of your program but use technology to enable them?
• To sell this program the best case is having partners and clients tell their story via a case study,
  • Teaching sales to lead with stories in their conversations
  • Bring coaches and coach managers into early conversations with potential partners
  • Use first generation students as coaches to represent and share their story- makes it real and relatable
  • Stories that are repeated by other institutions using their stories and coming back as a referral
• InsideTrack is a predominantly virtual workforce.
• Advice on inspiring employees?
  • Communication
  • Authenticity
  • Repetition
  • Clarity and consistency
• When you are approachable it provides credibility for the other communications to an employee.

On today's episode, we're speaking with Patricia Martin of Cox Communications about the importance of effective storytelling and communication among technologists. Patricia also shares some insight into the impact good leaders can have on inspiring others.

Patricia Martin joined Cox Communications in 2005. In her time there, she has led several key initiatives at Cox, including the creation of the first national team of virtual construction estimators and Cox's first-generation Video Back Office National Center of Excellence. Martin oversees the Network Operations Centers and Tier II support teams for both Residential and Cox Business support models. In 2017, Martin streamlined the Service Assurance NOC to one operating model with two locations, Atlanta and Phoenix. She synchronized national teams and subject matter experts toward improving customers' experience and set a new road map within the company for other functions to emulate.

Martin is a graduate of the University of Oklahoma and of the WICT Betsy Magness Leadership Institute. She has been recognized by Women in Cable Technology (WICT) and CableFax for her leadership skills, her ability to drive results, her unwavering commitment to her team and customers, and the positive changes she has delivered at Cox Communications.

Show Highlights

• What is Technology Service Assurance? How do you successfully keep multiple platforms operating while knowing who is the right technologist to contact?
• PIR - Post Instant Report- It's important to communicate with your customer base letting them know what occurred and how it won't happen again.
• How does a team communicate internally to non-technical audiences when they are facing a challenge?
• Why is it important to be a good storyteller especially during budgeting time?
• How do you build confidence in your technologist through storytelling? Focus on the issue, and leave the details for others who will understand.
• What is the importance of developing a structure to share information? Consistency in how you deliver your message in a technology world is extremely important.
• Why is communication important when leading an organization? People who are great communicators will be great management and directors.
• How do you establish a connection with an audience? Make sure your message meets people where they are. Set them up with a storyline to help people digest it and explain the reason of "why".
• How can using stories help lessen the blow of a big change for employees? Helping people understand why tough decisions were made allows them to see that it was something happening with them and not to them.
• Why is it important for leadership to tell stories and be vulnerable? People want to know who they work for. Listeners connect to stories on challenges and disappointments, they want to see the journey.
• Connect with people as a leader, because that is what people will remember.
• What makes a good leader? Vision, strategy, empathy, and a backbone of steel.

On today's episode, we're speaking with Allison Ausband and Evia Golde about how Delta Airlines and United Way of Greater Atlanta are taking on one of Atlanta's darkest topics, human trafficking, and brought it to life so the statistics became more than numbers. Allison and Evia also shared a few success stories that have come out of Delta's #GetOnBoard training.

Allison Ausband is Senior Vice President–In-Flight Service for Delta Air Lines, leading a team of 24,000 flight attendants, supervisory and support personnel around the globe,as well as Delta's onboard global food and beverage operation and experience.

She previously served as Vice President–Reservation Sales and Customer Care, where she was responsible for 10 customer engagement centers in four countries, which handle over 37 million customer contacts each year and generate over $2 billion in annual revenue.

Under Allison's leadership, Delta's In-Flight Service team has achieved all time customer satisfaction scores. While in Reservation Sales, she developed and launched Delta's social media customer service model as well as a home-based employment program, creating a new virtual workforce culture that yields more than $2 million in savings each year. She also led the corporation's strategy to move from the bottom to the No. 2 position in DOT Consumer rankings, and under her leadership achieved JD Power certification for Delta's engagement centers--the first US airline to ever achieve.

Allison began her career at Delta in May 1985 as a flight attendant.

Currently, Allison is Delta's executive sponsor for human trafficking and leads their annual Breast Cancer Research Foundation campaign. She is a member of Leadership Atlanta Class of 2014. She is a University of Georgia Board of Trustee and serves on the Board of Directors for Delta Community Credit Union and the Board of Trustees for the William R. and Sara Babb Smith Foundation. She is also an active member of her local church serving on the personnel committee.

A retired attorney, Evia has served as the Human Trafficking Committee Chair for Women United Atlanta since 2014. Women United is a group of 100+ donors who support the work of the United Way of Greater Atlanta, and Women United's signature issue is to eradicate child sex trafficking in Atlanta and Georgia. During her tenure with the UWGA Women United, she has held the role of Cabinet Chair and in 2016 was Co-Chair of the Safe Harbor Ballot Committee, a campaign that helped successfully pass the Safe Harbor Amendment to create a permanent Fund for victims of exploitation in Georgia. She is the recipient of the United Way of Greater Atlanta 2017 Leading a Life of Purpose Award.

In addition to her work at the United Way of Greater Atlanta, Evia has been a Community Advocate raising awareness to combat the sex trafficking of Georgia's children. She has been involved as a volunteer, advocate and fundraiser with multiple organizations fighting to end child sex trafficking, including Wellspring Living, youthSparke & Street Grace. She currently sits on the Board of Wellspring Living, a non profit that has been serving survivors of childhood sexual abuse and exploitation since 2001.

Show Highlights

• There are 25 million victims of human trafficking - How do you take a tough topic and bring it to life so the statistics become more than numbers?
• Why did Delta take on this dark topic and how did it get involved in the prevention of it?
• 2011 ECPAT Code of Conduct was created and Delta was the first airline to sign it and took a leadership role as a company to fight human trafficking
• What has been Deltas biggest success story? -Getting people on board to take the initiative to stop human trafficking. #getonboard
• What are the signs of human trafficking? Examples of human trafficking identifying training: employees were able to save two young girls because of what they learned in the training
• Why is the awareness piece so important? Why wasn't it talked about before?
• How and why did the United Way get involved?
• Why does Atlanta have such a huge human trafficking problem?
• How has UPS been involved in combating human trafficking?
• How did the See Something Say Something campaign begin?
• During the Superbowl, there were169 arrests over 11 days.
• What is Georgia Pacific's role in the fight?
• What is the Safe Harbor Law and what does it do and how did it impact Georgia?
• How do relatable stories change the way you look at the issue?
• Why are people willing to listen now as opposed to a few years ago?
• What are the things the victims are doing to help other victims?