Episode Transcript
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Hi and welcome to the Make Work, WorkBetter podcast.
I'm your host, Dr.
Marc Reynolds,President of FYV Consulting.
This is episode one of season one.
We're excited to get this podcastlaunched.
We've already done a bunch of interviewsthat I'm excited to share with you,
and we've already made some of the miniworkshop series
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that follow those interviewsFor the Make work or Better podcast,
we operate under the assumptionthat things can always improve.
We can always grow.
We can always be better.
Through this podcast,we have two main goals.
First we want to give executivesand leaders in the business world
a chance to share the lessonsthey've learned.
(00:47):
We want to give them a platformto share their voice.
We want to give them a chanceto share those lessons in their own
genuine, authentic voice.
The vibe we're going for, and that iscommunicated when we have these interviews
is essentially let's have a conversationas if we come to the end of a business day
and we're just having a personal oneon one conversation about life
(01:10):
and the lessons we've learned.
Second, it's to give other peoplethe chance to explore
and find their own voice In better words,to found it,
meaningto build it from the ground up, to decide
what they want to be, who they want to be,how they want to engage in business
and their personal lifeand the world around them,
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and craft that so that their
intentions match their behaviorand their action and their communication.
So that's essentially what'sgoing to be happening in this podcast.
To reiteratetwo big elements of this podcast.
So don't be confused
when you see some really long podcastsand some really short ones,
the interviews will be longer and you'llsee them labeled there as interviews.
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The second type is right afterthose interviews, we'll do mini workshops.
Where we will give you specifictips, tricks
and practical applicationsthat relate to the things
in the interviews that precede them.
Those of you that are excited
for these interviews and to learnfrom these micro workshops, go ahead.
I give you permission to skip to the nextinterview or the next micro workshop.
(02:15):
But for those that are interestedor if you come back later
wondering who we areand what we have to offer,
I want to give you a little bit of contextabout my story,
who I am,and how I found my voice in this sphere.
I've been really fortunate.
Engagingin this particular sphere of executive
coaching and corporate consultinghas just kind of fallen in my lap.
(02:38):
And consequently,I'm making a career pivot from my normal
everyday activity and my trainingand expertise in opera stage
directing over into executive coachingand corporate consulting full time.
Now, you
might think That's the strangestcareer pivot I've ever heard.
And I've actually been told that.
And I don't disagree with you.
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in fact, it wasn't until an executivethat I've been working
with for a long time and that you'll seean interview coming up here,
helped me understandthe logic, helped me understand
what my previous careerpath of being an opera stage
director and professional educatorat the collegiate level,
(03:20):
has done to prepare me
to really offer somethingnew, exciting, effective
and relevant to today's
corporate world,both to executives and their employees.
So let me explain.
As an opera stage director,I have three main jobs.
One, it's to manage large groups of people
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so that we can all work towards
one commonvision and communicate one clear story,
but alsoso that I can empower each individual
to really run with their expertise,their area of interest and ability
so that each person can really contributeto their fullest potential.
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My job for the past20 years has been to help others
communicate in a way that's genuine,authentic and believable.
You might think opera really?
That is what you're trying to do.
Well, you missed it.
Opera, especially inthe US, is like trying to sell
a great product to an audiencethat doesn't know and doesn't care.
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It's doubly hard because we're workingin a foreign language.
And luckily, that's really helped me herein the corporate world
because I'm super comfortable dealingwith people in a variety of different
languages and cultures and helping themto work efficiently together as well.
But opera and believability, really? Yes.
The only way to get an audience
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to engage and believe in want to come back
to this very unnatural art formis to make them believe that
this very unnatural art form is natural,genuine and authentic.
That it's believable,that it's clear and it's interesting.
Third, my job has been to workwith small teams, design teams,
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executive business teams, investors,and a lot of different people
from a lot of different backgroundsworking together
to help them work efficiently,and keep them in a creative mode.
helping them learn how to channel all thatenergy, communicate and engage in a team
in a way that's efficient, doesn't tripegos, doesn't trip defense mechanisms
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and gets people really excitedto make a fantastic product.
The other key piecethat I found to being an opera director
that has been crucial has been Often
we work under a very tight time frame.
We have a lot of pressure
to deliver quickly to large audiences.
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Consequently, all these different areas
that I've been learning,training and gaining experience in
have acted like a crucible
where it is intense, is extreme
in terms of the personalitiesand the situations that I'm put into.
So what I foundis that jumping into the business arena
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is actually much easier
to get really quick results
that are dramatic and help peopleget to where they want to be.
So thoughthis might look like a strange career
pivot, what I found inpractical experience is really
that it's a very simple transitionfrom one to the other.
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And I've been really fortunateto have clients come to us
and see that potential before I did.
and then get feedback
that helps us both refine our productthat we're offering you,
but also shows us that what we're offeringis something that is desperately
needed in the business world.
So what does FYV consulting do?
(06:55):
First FYV stands for Found Your Voice.
That might seem a little kitschyand cheesy.
Let me explain.
It's not just found your voice, as inoh, I found it,
but it isfound your voice as in, build it.
Create a foundationwhere you get to choose
and develop how you interactand communicate with the world around you.
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You say,but I want it to be genuine. Authentic.
Oh, it will have to be genuineand authentic for it to be your voice.
But the challenges.
There are many ways to be genuine,authentic in our own body.
We want to find the way
that is going to get you the resultsthat meet your goals and objectives.
Our second overarching goal withFound Your Voice Consulting is to empower
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employees to have a voice,
to develop their own voicein the business world,
and to help executiveshear their employees in a way
that is as authentic, genuine and true
to those employees experienceas it can possibly be.
How do we do this?
We do this in two main ways.
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First, we do executive coaching.
Executive coachingfor us is not executive mentoring.
Well, what's the difference?
Executive mentoringis about telling you what to do.
Make this investment,make this choice strategy wise.
Talk to this person. Make this move.
Mentors are extremely valuableand we hope you have many of them.
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Coaches serve a very different function
The function that we serve is first,
to be a safe placefor you to share your real experience.
What's going on? Say it out loud.
Talk through the good, the bad,the difficult without you having to be on,
without it getting back to other employeesand without you having to worry
about that information leakingor affecting how people perceive you.
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Because of those conversations,we then are in a good position
to help guide you, support you,
and help you discover your own goals,your own voice,
and how you're trying to communicateand engage with both business
internallyand with clients and investors externally.
Finally, our goals consultants are to helpyou think clearly, to externalize
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your thoughts, to be a sandbox for you,to be able to work through your thoughts
and process them in a way that is safe,
in a way that can be mirrored back to you.
One of the thingsthat being an opera stage
director has taught meis how to be a really effective mirror.
Now, if that sounds like a strange term,the reality is
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all humans have the same problem.
We can't look at ourselves.
We're in our body.
We're doing it.
We cannot see how what we're doingis being communicated.
We can video it.
We can try to find other ways to monitor.
And those are really helpfuland we'll help you with that.
But it's really helpfulto have another human being
(10:01):
who their job is to look at you and say,this is what I'm seeing,
this is what I'm hearing.
Here's what you're doingthat is communicating this thing
so that you can be like,yes, that matches what my intent is.
Or No, that's not what I intended.
Then at that point,our goal is to help you achieve your goals
in both communicationand in the decisions that you have.
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Another service
we offer for our executive coachingis external communication coaching.
So that's whether you're preparingfor an interview over video, a podcast,
or you're just doing a
presentation to the companyand you need some feedback on
how to make it come across as believableand engaging and authentic.
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We can help you with that.
The second servicewe offer is internal communication.
Say you have a discussion or a meetingthat makes you a little nervous,
a little anxious, that has the potentialto go sideways on you.
Our expertise is helpingyou learn how to communicate and advocate
for yourself or others in a waythat is not going to trip
those defense mechanisms and those egos,but it's going to jump straight
(11:08):
to the core of the issue and resolvethe challenges that are in front of you,
and to take advantage of the opportunitiesthat are presented to you.
So in short, as an executive coach,our goal
is to unlock your ideas,
your goals, and your expertiseso you can express yourself
and achieve themto the fullest of your ability.
The second main thingthat FYV Consulting does is
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third-party skip-level interviews.
Hopefully you understand the value of skiplevel interviews.
That's pretty obvious ina regular practice in most organizations.
You might be asking yourself though,
well,why would I want a third-party to do that?
Isn't the whole point for meto go to employees throughout the company,
get a clear vision and talk to themso they feel heard and valued,
(11:53):
and the answer is yes.
There's two challenges with that.
Number one, you as the executivedo not necessarily have the time to talk
all those people regularly enough togather the information in a timely manner.
Second, and this is wherethe third-party part becomes really
crucial, is if you're their boss
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or you're a member of the boardor your H.R.
Or you have day to day interactionswith this person, Most people are going
to instinctively and subconsciously alterthe information they share
so that it's presented it to you in a waythat is going to better their situation.
In short, you're not going to getthe most accurate information.
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Consequently,when you have these interviews,
even if they're being honest,you won't be able to fully
trust that the informationyou're getting is accurate.
If you
have a third-party also doing skiplevel interviews
and talking to your employees,then you can start seeing the trends.
You can start identifying the common
patterns, themesthat are coming up over and over again.
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Well, how what we do really differentfrom what you might do
or HR or anyone else in your companywhen it comes to third-party interviews.
Well, we have a unique process where firstwe sign an NDA so that we can't share
any of your company's secretsor the hard things that come out.
Our lips are sealedwhen it comes to those things.
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Second in our contract,we have you sign that we will not disclose
individuals information or informationthat can point to a specific individual
without their specific permission.
If you say, well,then it's worthless to me.
No it's not.
That's a crucial step for those employeesto feel safe to really divulge
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their true experience.
Now, if you're thinking, well,
this is just be a place for themto vent and complain.
It might be initially,but ultimately, our goal is to gather
all the information, identify the trends,the things that many people are saying
and communicating,or if there's just a person
that sees a very targeted problemand it doesn't tie back to them, to share
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that information by sharingwhat are the types of comments being made.
And second, the recommendationsthat we would make based on those comments
so that a if we're presenting younew information that you haven't
heard before, you can move quicklyand act on that information
and confirmthat it's really an issue yourself.
Second, you can verify what you're hearing
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and how well your interviewsare capturing your employees experience.
The final piecethat makes our third party skip
level interviews uniqueis that if you want to verify
that, the comments that we're hearingactually indeed happened,
that they came from your employees,we keep very detailed notes
that are available to your attorneysor ours for verification.
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Why that's important is attorneyscan then use attorney client privilege
to look over our notes,protect your employees, and still verify
the truth of what we're shared with you,and that it indeed
did come from one of your employees.
After we do either executive coachingor skip level interviews or both,
we’ll, then sit down and talk
with the sponsoring executiveand offer recommendations.
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Some of those are servicesthat we offer beyond
executive coaching and skiplevel interviews.
It might be that we come inand do a 1, 2 day, or week
long workshop over conflict resolution,communication internally, externally,
management training, change leadershipor team efficiencies.
Or it might be that we workwith individual teams online, or we do
(15:34):
some kind of mix of online or in-personwith teams or your entire company.
We hope that you'll check out our websiteand contact us.
You can find our contact informationon the website fyvconsulting.com.
You can also see information down belowor if you go to the website
you'll see a Book Now button.
Go ahead and book a time.
(15:55):
It's a free consultationwhere we can talk through
what your needs areand see if we're the best match.
If we're not, we also have other partnersthat we'd be happy to recommend
you look into.
Now that I've shared with you who I amand I've shared with you
what FYV consulting does,we hope that you join us for the other
episodes where we get to learnfrom these other amazing leaders
and have micro workshopswhere we give you practical tips
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and ways to apply the thingsthat you'll learn from the interviews.
Thank you for listening.
Don't forget to click like, subscribeor follow us
so that when we put up new podcastepisodes, you can follow along too.
We look forward to seeing you next timeand helping you make work work better.