Riding Tandem

00:00:01 - Vivian Kvam Welcome to Riding Tandem , a podcast about building businesses, leadership and creating positive impact for our communities. I'm your host, Vivian Kvam, and I invite you to ride Tandem Works with me as I have candid conversations with inspiring business owners, leaders, and experts who are building on their dreams and creating impact. Get ready to be encouraged and learn practical tactics to help us build successful businesses, become incredible leaders, and have positive ripple effect.

00:00:33 - Vivian Kvam Welcome to this week's episode of Riding Tandem. Excited to jump in, as always, with a really fabulous guest today. My guest is Dr. Jennifer Churchill, and she is a management psychologist, an executive coach and athlete. And I'm going to read, actually through her bio here because it's so great and she's just an incredible person. You're going to catch this quickly. She has a great combination of experience that provides a very powerful foundation for her holistic coaching approach, which is one of the things I love is how she brings all of these things together. And like the coach of a winning athletic team, Jennifer inspires her clients to believe in themselves and to stretch beyond the limits of what they believe they are capable of achieving, which is so needed. So I'm excited to talk about that more today. Pulling out potential in people is awesome. Jennifer completed her undergraduate degree in psychology at Kenyan College, where she competed at the national level in swimming, which I am fascinated to know more about this. She holds a Master of Science and a PhD in Counseling Psychology, as well as an MBA from the University of Denver. So if you're not catching on yet, she's very accomplished, which is awesome. She recently completed her is it LNN or Inn? Jennifer?

00:02:00 - Dr. Jennifer Churchill It's Inn. Institute of Integrative Nutrition. Yeah, perfect.

00:02:04 - Vivian Kvam Thank you. Her Inn health coaching certification to round out her holistic coaching perspective and making sure that she just has that healthy leadership development approach. So all these things come together and we're going to get to mine out all the wisdom that she has today. She also, though, continues to train like an athlete with consistent swimming, healthy lifestyle practices, which equips her to do her best work and to help her on the road to becoming a more competitive golfer. So this is just like such a great bio. I love it all. Lastly, and I'm excited to segue into this right away, Jennifer, she is the host of the Happy Healthy Leaders Podcast, a brand new podcast that you have to check out. And the title was created by fully clarifying and identifying her purpose and why and the why of what she does. And this is a quote I'm just going to read here from her. It says, My purpose in life is to help develop happy, healthy leaders who build happy, healthy organizations to lead happy, healthy employees and I'm sure you know where this is going. Who then create happy, healthy homes from which they raise happy, healthy children who don't need to recover from their childhood as adults. And I was just like, I read through that, Jennifer, and I got goosebumps. And I was like, this is why you're here. So welcome.

00:03:26 - Dr. Jennifer Churchill Thank you so much. Wow, it's like overwhelming to hear all of that. I forget sometimes how long I've lived on this planet.

00:03:34 - Vivian Kvam Incredible. Sometimes people are like, oh, I don't need to give you a bio. And I'm like, no, this really helps us set context. And you mentioned in your bio just about being the holistic and the well rounded and that you've sought out opportunities. It makes me think of like a renaissance woman when I your bio and picking up that passion that you seem to have, where did that come from to bring all these different things together?

00:04:03 - Dr. Jennifer Churchill Yes, probably lots of different experiences, but I would say two very formative ones, starting as a swimmer from a very young age and growing through a lot of accomplishments but also a lot of challenges and adversities as a swimmer and as a woman, as a swimmer. And during the time I grew up, we didn't have a lot of awareness around the impact of, I would say, I mean, bullying on children growing up and we have so much more awareness around it now. So a lot of my formative experiences, they were really exciting and obviously I was really accomplished swimmer. But there were some things that through my swimming experience, I definitely had to quote unquote, recover from, right? And so I would say that whole internal process that increased self awareness around all of those developmental experiences helped me as a swimmer, but primarily as a swimmer, I developed a very disciplined mindset, a very strong approach to being a high performer, like really understanding what my mindset needed to be to accomplish what I did through the collegiate and national level. And that helped really pave the way through school, through other things I wanted to do and accomplish. And also, despite some of the not awesome experiences I had as a swimmer, I developed a sense of what it meant to be part of a team. I was on many, many teams throughout my swimming experience and watched I had several coaches and I watched and observed them without even realizing where it was going to go one day. Being passionate about just how people coach, how people perform, how people show up in the world. That all came from swimming. And then as I started my education at the collegiate level and then into graduate school, I knew I always wanted to be in a helping profession. But I had no idea it would take this curve and pathway to working with businesses as a psychologist, because that industry was very, very new when I started out in school, and there was not a lot of graduate programs that actually focused on that. But I was able to find one at the University of Denver that brought all of my schooling together and helped me form an awareness of this is what I want to do. I want to work with organizations and their leaders to help develop their employees in a way that they were more productive. But also we spent so much time at work, 80% of our time at work, why not be happy? And so that's where the happy piece came from is having engaged workforces, understanding where inclusive cultures was extremely important to that engagement and also all of that leads to productivity and performance. And so through some research that I was able to do in my PhD program, I worked with the National Transportation Safety Board and did a lot of stress interventions on ship captains, airplane pilots and also train conductors. Actually, we did longitudinal studies on stress interventions and their impact on their work performance and also essentially safety. Because when you think about the transportation industry, one of the downsides is that there's a lot of risk to safety not only for those that are operating the vehicles, if you will, collectively, but also for those that ride or are transported or around those types of vehicles. So it really opened my eyes to how health impacts performance and the psychology of someone showing up at work. So a lot of those experiences came together throughout my PhD program, which led me it was so obvious that I knew I wanted to work with organizations. But the piece that became more clear. And that's the end piece of that purpose statement there that you read of the little bit where I feel like it's a little bit grandiose, but I'm hoping that it catches on. Is. I can recall an experience in my PhD fellowship where I was working with an outpatient in an outpatient and inpatient mental health clinic with children who are separated from their families due to abuse by the primary caregiver. And I then had to reunite the child with the parents who was working with another clinician. And I knew at that moment that while it's an amazing service that we were able to provide and I do believe that we provide a lot of healing in a clinical setting, I wanted to get out into more of the macro system of what impacts people's lives. And it's the ability to be employed that really does impact a lot of happiness at home. Helping organizations grow to create more opportunities for healthy employees is one of my passions. To help then ultimately allow employees who are possibly parents to translate their skills to their home to care for their children in a way that they are also happier and healthier. So that's a piece of it. And the health piece I haven't even gotten to yet, but that's something new in the last few years as well. But I'll just pause there because I know I said a lot.

00:09:49 - Vivian Kvam So one of the things I love about what you just said is just a previous episode to this one. We were talking with Casey Putney, and this is literally the tangent that we ended up on, because it's something I'm also incredibly passionate about, is that as business owners, you're talking about when you're in your employment setting, whatever. That is, whether you're self employed or you're employed part of a team, how much impact we as business owners have on our team and the employees or the contractors or even the clients that we interact with. And it was literally the point that we came around to. And this is why I'm like I know. This is why I'm just excited for this conversation. Do we realize what impact we have? Because those people go home and they are spending 80 plus percent of their lives within their work environment, and then the impact that has on their family and then on their neighborhood and then on their community. And that's what we were really kind of jamming on a little bit. And so this is just like a beautiful follow up conversation to that that I love.

00:10:57 - Dr. Jennifer Churchill I don't think it's very good.

00:10:59 - Vivian Kvam I think it's perfect.

00:11:00 - Dr. Jennifer Churchill Okay, good. Well, that's awesome. I love those connections that we're able to make between episodes, that's for sure.

00:11:06 - Vivian Kvam Yes. So speaking of connections between episodes, before we go too much further yeah. Tell us about your podcast because congrats on launching and having thank you.

00:11:16 - Dr. Jennifer Churchill Out there.

00:11:16 - Vivian Kvam And that's exciting.

00:11:18 - Dr. Jennifer Churchill Yes. It's definitely out of my comfort zone. I'm behind the scenes and all the work I do, unless I'm doing a team development experience and an occasional keynote speaking event. Because my niche, my sweet spot, is really in that one on one relationship. Having had some clients now for almost, like, 18 years, they just keep me with them through different positions and different organizations. And so that's where I really excel. But I would say that my whole career. My dad would always say, you publish or you perish. And he was an English major, even though he ended up becoming a physician. But writing was a really big deal to him. It still is. And I started several books, I've tried to write articles, and it's just not my thing. It's just not my thing. But I knew I wanted to provide value. I love bringing information together and sharing it with people. And while I do that with my clients, I had an opportunity to meet somewhat of, like, I would say, Nick's, like a little angel in my life. Nick Cassner. I'm going to give him a shout out here. My producer and oftentimes co host of the show has just really supported me in this process. But I would say it's really to leave something behind. Part of my legacy. I heard it might have been in a country song, quite honestly, where we have two death. Of course we have two deaths. The day we die, and the day people stop talking about us. And so I thought, you know what? It was a Malcolroy song, actually. Okay, I remember that now. And I thought, if I can help one person by listening to a podcast, that's worth it to me. And it's fun. It gets me to do something different. And it's a form of publishing that I just thought I would never actually get to. So I love to be creative and entrepreneurial, so it's hitting all of those buttons for me. So the concept really did come out of really tuning into more of the health aspect of my holistic coaching approach in the last few years. And that's where in 2020, I had enrolled in actually pre pandemic. Actually, in January I enrolled into this health coaching certification program just as a personal journey in my own personal wellness and as I constantly looking for ways to impact my own performance. And we don't consider different aspects of health enough as it relates to how we think, how we make decisions, how we motivate people. And there's so much more research coming out about it now and all of the connections. So that's the component that I'm including in hopefully most of my episodes is what aspects of how you are taking care of yourself from a health perspective, from every angle, impacts your leadership and combining it with then obviously the traditional concepts of leadership around communication, how to have difficult conversations, self and other awareness, how to develop a team all of those things. And putting it all together for my clients has been just like next level for my work. And I just wanted to share that in a form of value to people who aren't my clients and share more of it to the world.

00:15:06 - Vivian Kvam I love it. And it's called Happy, Healthy Leaders with Dr. Jennifer Churchill.

00:15:12 - Dr. Jennifer Churchill Yes.

00:15:13 - Vivian Kvam Awesome.

00:15:14 - Dr. Jennifer Churchill Thank you.

00:15:14 - Vivian Kvam Be sure to check it out. We'll put a link, of course, in the notes.

00:15:17 - Dr. Jennifer Churchill Thank you.

00:15:18 - Vivian Kvam Check that out. I was saying before we hopped on here, I have listened to a few and if for no other reason, there's great content in there. But you have such a soothing voice.

00:15:28 - Dr. Jennifer Churchill So thank you.

00:15:28 - Vivian Kvam Very easy to listen to as well, which is just lovely. So I love it.

00:15:33 - Dr. Jennifer Churchill Thank you.

00:15:34 - Vivian Kvam I am curious to know more about just you say about how swimming and your training as a psychologist kind of merged together and helped you build this successful business. And I'd like to know more about that. How did you bring those two things together?

00:15:54 - Dr. Jennifer Churchill Well, it's interesting. Well, many of the same high performance processes, successful leaders and successful athletic coaches and athletes possess many of the same traits. And actually, my PhD dissertation looked at compared the two groups. So I intentionally studied if there were any differences or similarities between the most successful executives globally and I pulled from different resources for that and controlled for different confounding variables against the top winningest division one, two, three athletic teams across the country. And so it was just generally an itch to answer a question and also a way to actually market my business. Because one thing I knew very young is I didn't want to work for anyone writing my first business plan in 6th grade in the form of like a drawing and there's a whole story there that we don't have time for today.

00:16:58 - Vivian Kvam I love that though. Started so young, I knew, I mean.

00:17:03 - Dr. Jennifer Churchill I'll just share with you. I watched my dad work really really hard and I didn't get to see him a lot. And although he was there for a lot of very important soulmates and important events and there are always to talk, but he's like one of my favorite people and I always wanted to spend more time with him. I developed this awareness of okay, I want to work really hard too, but I want to do it for myself to provide the flexibility for family. And so that's really the impetus for knowing at a very young age that I wanted to have my own business and carve my own path. I didn't know what I was going to do yet, but I knew that for sure. And so when I was doing my dissertation, it was a way for me to also just market myself as an incoming executive coach, management psychologist. So that's the first way I integrated the two. And the reality is there are not a lot of differences between the two groups. And so the high performance traits actually that were similar across groups were the ability to build warmth and trust. And that was by far the highest correlated outcome from my research. And it's still today being written about and talked about in terms of a form of how to build a high performing team is without trust, it's really hard to move people towards a goal and also to understand what motivates them, because if they don't trust you, then they don't necessarily open up to let you know how to help them. So trust we can go many different directions to that. But that was the major finding of my original research that really launched my career. I was able to start working with small businesses pretty quickly. I had great mentors who took me under their wing and brought me into clients. That's one piece of it. But I would say that swimming is an interesting sport in the sense that you spend most of your time underwater alone. And I would say that it is probably one of the hardest sports in my opinion. Even though I think all sports are hard to train at a top level to really be dedicated to because the elements are against you. Getting in cold water for 5 hours a day and being underwater even though you're part of a team for most of that time. It really built a level of discipline in my way of living that I think without swimming, I don't know that I would have ever had. And that just lends itself to always wanting to do the hard thing, which is why I went to school for as long as I did, started my business as soon as I did, and working with and really that led me to working with the best, most brilliant minds that I could possibly work with in my career. So I don't know if that answers your question completely, but it does, and it's interesting.

00:20:08 - Vivian Kvam Two thoughts came to mind as you're talking is so the ability to build warmth and was it connect trust? Warmth and trust. And I've been reading through a number of leadership books, and this is a reoccurring theme with slightly different words, et cetera, but one of the things that has stuck out to me, and I've shared recently with some teams that we work with, is as they've been trying to work on just better connections. One of the things that stuck out to me is that people connect the strongest over laughter. And for some reason, I guess I didn't put a ton of thought into it, but I would have guessed if you had asked me if Jennifer, you're like, hey, how do you think people connect the most? I would have probably said, through something painful, that you would have the deepest connection. However, in reading this, many studies have shown that it's actually through that warmth piece, right, of laughter. I think of laughter as being warm and it's a moment and it makes sense because when we're in fear or tribulation, there can be a bond that happens, but there's also a division that happens, whereas with laughter provided we're not laughing at people. That's never kind, obviously, but when you're laughing together, there is this warmth and connection. And you trust somebody when you can crack a joke and laugh. So that just stuck out to me. I was like, oh, yeah, there that is again.

00:21:31 - Dr. Jennifer Churchill Yeah, well, I can add one more element to that. That comes up in a lot of my coaching, is when you're sharing, let's say more of like a painful experience. There's a little bit more so there's three neurotransmitters that are released by the brain that we call the Happiness Trifecta. And the three are Dopamine, Serotonin and Oxytocin. What happens when we laugh? Our more oxytocin is released than any of the other three, and it's the longest lasting. And so you can experience that through laughter, because oftentimes through laughter, there's an engagement of you don't have to touch people to experience an oxytocin connection. That's a big myth that I always like to debunk, because when we have those positive experiences that build warmth and trust, it's because we have an exchange of oxytocin between us and the other person or groups of people when we have a painful experience. I know you didn't ask me this question, but I feel really like I think it's really interesting because or something more sad, let's say. It doesn't have to be painful all the time is it creates more of a dopamine release because there's an adrenaline aspect to something painful that is contributing to that fight or flight mode that you described. That's ingrained in our nervous system, our central nervous system that's very short lived in terms of that hit that you get from Dopamine serotonin is a whole nother different story. We don't have time for today. But I would say that's why laughter really is the one way that you connect most with people is because of that biological exchange of oxytocin.

00:23:23 - Vivian Kvam Yeah, that's fascinating. This is why I love these conversations. I'm like I'll scribble notes on the side for myself. Great. The other thing that stuck out to me, you're talking about swimming. So I by no means ever swam at your level. However, my parents were insistent on swim lessons and I did all the swim lessons all the way up to the top level and then kept repeating because my dad was adamant that we were in swim lessons and there were no more levels. And so it was join the swim team or lifeguards kind of like the next step. I was a ballet dancer and my instructor said, no way, because you'll develop these shoulders and you can't have that dance. I opted out. But I can say just relating to you and what you were saying, that under the water experience. And I would say, even as I was headed into like, lifeguarded training, you dive to the bottom and get a cinder block and bring it back up to the top. So often I've thought of these things, of there's a serenity under the water and an excitement and accomplishment that happens when you're swimming, but there can also be I remember moments of I'm not going to make it back to the top, or things are happening around me and I'm not sure what they are. You hit the wall and you're like, do I flip now or do I wait another second? Am I going to have the best off here? And I think about business owners who say so often I feel like I'm underwater, or I feel like I'm drowning, or I feel like I can't come to surface, I feel like I can't catch a breath. And all of these words that we use, I could totally see what you're saying. There's the beautiful side of it, but then there's that struggle that I could completely relate to. And being one of the things I know we wanted to talk about was just that being self aware. When I was swimming, I remember having to be very self aware of me, my space, where I was kind of anticipating what mental state I was in to just like you said, get in the cold water. I mean, I had to be aware of myself. Yeah, that's a really interesting way to think about it. I love that picture, and it just made me think of how often we use those words to describe what it feels like to be in leadership or in business.

00:25:49 - Dr. Jennifer Churchill That's an amazing connection you just made, Vivian, because it's all about the ability to breathe. That concept of, like, I feel like I'm drowning, I'm underwater. And when we are able to come back to our breath and we can talk about this, we can connect this to self awareness, when we're able to come back to our breath, our core of life, like how we live without breath. We don't survive in those moments of distress or feeling like we're underwater is one of the first steps and gateways to your self awareness. Taking the time to recognize when you have that trigger. I mean, one of the really critical aspects of increasing your self awareness is to really dial in and pay attention to what your potential triggers are and those you can always feel somewhere in your body. And oftentimes it does come back to we can feel like we're grasping for error in those moments, and or we're tense our heart's racing, or we're tense in our back, or depending on where everyone's different, where they carry their stress or where they carry the triggers. So one of the most powerful things a human being can be is fully embodied. And what I mean by that is being able to connect. When we experience something physically on a biological level, connecting it to our emotions and what we're thinking about and what we're doing. And oftentimes it's really hard for people to connect how they're feeling physically to what's going on in their environment. And so when we're able to slow down and really connect to breath and I do a lot of breathing exercises for some of my executives that I coach and work with, is really the gateway to more self awareness, because then we're able to connect our body to what we're thinking and feeling.

00:27:56 - Vivian Kvam Why do you think it's so difficult to connect the two? Because I think about, like, the thing I'm closest to is my body, and everything in the business world or within a business that you're running is happening outside of your body. And yet it's so easy to feel much more connected to that than to ourselves. And I'm just curious about that. Why does that happen?

00:28:20 - Dr. Jennifer Churchill Well, to truly know ourselves is actually the scariest thing on the planet, in my perspective. To truly know ourselves, all of ourselves, everything we love, everything we hate, everything we want to change, is the scariest thing, I believe, especially for high performers. That's why high performers actually experience I mean, experience more depression, actually, than those that are not high performing, because once they achieve a goal, they don't spend a lot of time there in their success. So the highs and lows are much more extreme for high performers. When you think about it, when you achieve a goal, you focus on what's outside of you, not on what's inside of you. So that is something I'm extremely passionate about, helping my leaders connect to more. And it's still kind of like now that we have so much more rich research on neuroscience and connecting all of these aspects that used to be woohoo, what's the word I'm looking for? Yeah, a little spiritual. More spiritual. Now that we have some so much like in the last two decades, we have so much more rich science to back this up. So that's one of the reasons I'm really passionate about my podcast, is to just expand on that and connecting it to people's, individuals understanding of themselves and how it impacts other people around them and what they do. So I think that's one of the challenges. Two things is scary and also we're just now seeing a lot of really good research come to surface and so more people are talking about it. But it's amazing when I go into an organization with some of the most successful people running top, like Fortune 50 companies, they still aren't tapping into this as a resource, so there's a lot of opportunity there.

00:30:27 - Vivian Kvam Okay, so Jennifer, I'm curious as I've thought about this even within our own business, some asking for myself, but I think I'm asking for everybody here. How do you think we can help our teams connect with their own self awareness as well? Because I think there's a lot as that research is coming out. There's a lot about how do I become self aware and many tools we can use and ways we can think through that. But then I start thinking, next step, how can I help the people around me become self aware? Is that something that I can do? Is that something we as business owners can do? Or does it have to be very individual?

00:31:08 - Dr. Jennifer Churchill That's a really good question. And I have, I would say, a few layers to my answers, to my answer. The first is you're doing more already than you think you are by thinking about it. And if you're able to, like I said, embody your own practices and be a role model of how to do it is the first step. And when I say role model is to be able to appropriately, with the right amount of vulnerability, explicitly talk about how you are developing it for yourself. There's an educational component and an awareness component and a sharing and that builds trust with you and your team as well. So that's the first thing is modeling it. But then there's also some really great practices that you can implement on your team of any size. And that is one aspect of role modeling. It is to be able to create a conduit for a good feedback process for yourself. And one of the best ways to do. That is create a customized 360 process of getting feedback. I'm sure you've heard of 360 evaluations before and there's a few ways of doing it. You can always buy an assessment tool. I don't use those as often as especially if you're talking about a leader, as often as creating a really customized, very succinct 360 process where you can get feedback from your direct reports or your peers and have it be targeted. And this is the key, have it be targeted to whatever your strategy and your business goals are. But it's still about your leadership. It's still about how you show up as a leader, as a team member, but having it really founded in what you're trying to achieve as a business. So I do that for all of my clients when they want a 360. So I customize that for everyone. Because no 360 can integrate every organization's strategy into how they collect that feedback. The thing too is, and the reason that that's the better way of getting feedback rather than just asking for someone for feedback. Although you can get there if you have enough trust between yourself and your team or your peers, whatever direction you want to talk about the feedback needing to come from it is really embracing a difficult conversation around what it is that you would like to understand. Like what's the story you're telling yourself about what happened and what is the story that they might be able to share with you that is happening and bridging the two because somewhere in the middle is the truth. Those are two forms of just being able to get to a point where you have enough trust to have that candid conversation and that difficult conversation. But also creating a really thorough process around getting collective feedback in a 360 manner is one way that then because then what happens is they internalize the questions naturally, they reflect on what they're reflecting on for you. And there is this self imposed reflection, what I call meta reflection of what they're considering for other people. They will then apply and be considering for themselves. Hopefully. That's the key. So those are, I would say, the two approaches I would start with I.

00:34:49 - Vivian Kvam Love that and it ties in so well to some of the workshops that we offer, are really their feedback workshops. It's creating a feedback loop. And I think that customization piece that you're hitting on is so important. There are really great assessment tools out there and there are if you feel intimidated or start with something. But one of the ones that makes me think of we did Imagine Hours, which was collecting feedback from the community at large for a foundation. And that was a scary, vulnerable thing in a way for the community to participate in, for the foundation to participate in. But the reward has been immense for the whole community. But then I think about we did another one just to illustrate the customization piece for a restaurant bar and their staff. And we literally so the one for the community was called Imagine Hour. And it was very inspirational and making sure that people felt that they could share and dream, but also offer some critique, but not grow tomatoes. Not looking for that. So the same a similar approach, but for the bar and restaurant. We called it. What's? Effed up. And it appealed to the people that they have on their team. They were like, yeah, this is intriguing. I'm interested. Imagine Our wouldn't have worked for them. But it was a very customized approach. And then the way we unpacked, it was very customized to bring front of house, back of house, so kitchen staff, wait service, bartenders, which if you've ever worked in food industry or you've watched any of the movies, there can be some real division and it's hard to get them to talk together. People did leave feeling excited, heard, generating more ideas, talking more and able to talk about their leadership. And so it was huge, but very different approaches, similar in what we were gathering. But if they hadn't been customized, I don't think it would have been nearly as successful.

00:36:53 - Dr. Jennifer Churchill No. You're spot on, Vivian. If you have the time and the ability and really, if you have a good group of leaders or team members to create that customized approach, that is always the better direction to go when you're wanting something actually that sticks, I think, in my opinion. So that's awesome. I love those ideas.

00:37:18 - Vivian Kvam Yeah. And they have stuck. It's great. But I think the other thing is then to not just do it once, but continually have those opportunities or it feels contrived, maybe if it's just a one and done kind of thing.

00:37:31 - Dr. Jennifer Churchill Right. It needs to feel real for the whole organization or team or business. And that does take consistency over time. Yeah. Okay.

00:37:42 - Vivian Kvam But you hit on something that I for sure want to be able to dig into your wisdom on, which is the difficult conversation piece. Because to do something like that, you are opening the door and inviting in difficult conversations. There's no way around it. In almost all cases, there will be some great thing, news that comes out, good feedback, but there's always that door is now cracked. And people will edge in and say, well, I don't like this or this leadership style doesn't work for me, or I don't feel compensated appropriately. All these things that come up, how can we as business leaders really be prepared for that? Step into it, be brave, have empathy, like all of these things when it's easy to walk in and just be like, well, you don't know the half of it.

00:38:37 - Dr. Jennifer Churchill Right? Yeah. So I have a very unique point of view on this, and it's similar. It's akin to what I would call premarital counseling.

00:38:49 - Vivian Kvam Great. This is perfect.

00:38:51 - Dr. Jennifer Churchill Yeah. Because oftentimes where many leaders and organizations get in trouble is that they don't establish guidelines and expectations before it happens. Which is probably one of the reasons I will always have a job, right? While we will always have a job, you and I. Is it's retrospect, it's in response to something going awry and them not being prepared around understanding how to approach it because they haven't talked about what if this happens? So there's a process to integrate something like this into an organization. That takes time. But when I work with leaders, when they're developing their team, whether it's already established or they're hiring new people, I will sit down with each individual stakeholder. Let's just use titles for now that people would know. But the CEO, all the C level folks, the VPs, the directors, and talk about just communication expectations, how they like to be managed and coached. But then also what is the best way for us to have a difficult conversation. And we talk about that approach and create basically a model in a communication process for the organization that's understood, that's expected. There's a safe way for someone to approach someone. I mean, similar, like they have safe words when something feels like really threatening and that's when that individual on the other side of the conversation is like, okay, this is serious, I need to slow down. So establishing a protocol, a structure in advance is super powerful and you can build that at any time. But you really do need to be intentional and talk about it from every single direction in the organization. What is the pathway for that communication? If someone is feeling like they're not being heard or they have a serious issue to bring to the table. When we're talking about psychological safety and inclusion on organizations now it's become even more of a really critical conversation from so many more angles now that I take it very seriously with all my organizations, if it doesn't come up as something reactive, I've been bringing it up right up front. More and more of like, this hasn't come up yet, but let's talk about when it does because it will. And so we sit down, we have brainstorming sessions around it and talk about what exists, what doesn't exist, and really establish really explicit expectations with one another amongst their team to know how to handle it. I would say if you have that in place, you're going to be really successful 50% to 60% of the time, which is more than zero, which is usually what happens if you don't have something in place that might feel like a really low percentage, but I would guess that you can understand why that actually is high. Because as human beings, we're so complicated, there's no way we can predict anything perfectly. But the idea is there is something in place that contributes to someone feeling safe. To be able to do that, that's going to get you to the halfway mark hopefully.

00:42:27 - Vivian Kvam I do love that. And it makes me think about in production world, I used to own a production company and one of the keys there is everyone does know their role and they know exactly who they talk to in what situation. So if you're in charge of the lighting, you don't necessarily go straight to the director. Right. There's channels, but in certain circumstances, you know, if this is happening, you bypass that and you do go to this person. And it can seem like a lot of rules and constraints, right?

00:43:03 - Dr. Jennifer Churchill Sure.

00:43:03 - Vivian Kvam But it helps a production day go so smoothly where a million things can quite literally go wrong and they can be life and death or they can make it so you don't what they call get the day. Right, which then is expensive. But one of the post production supervisors we have, he would always start the meeting with our team and he would say, okay, here's the plan, and just reminders and you're talking so and so and that and then he would always say, and assume Benevolence.

00:43:31 - Dr. Jennifer Churchill Yes.

00:43:32 - Vivian Kvam And I loved it because essentially what he was saying was, we can't account for everything that's going to happen, but because we've done the work of trying to put this into place, assume that we do care about you and we assume that you care about us. And so when somebody it goes awry or they snap or they talk to the wrong person, we're going to assume Benevolence, because we have done the groundwork to try to think about and mitigate these things before they happen. And so I've stolen that and used it a lot outside of that production world of we're trying to figure out how the best customer service in this situation and here's the plan and we've talked about it, but at end of the day, we're going to assume Benevolence with each other because we're building that trust. And like you said, 50, 60% of the time is pretty good because you just can't imagine every scenario.

00:44:27 - Dr. Jennifer Churchill Right. It's so beautiful that you say that, Vivian, because it's true. Oftentimes the story that we tell ourselves in our heads is not consistent with what's actually happening or the story the other person is telling themselves in their heads. And so if you can have two parties who might be struggling with one another, but they are assuming the best intention in the other, that could be a really beautiful bridge. So I'm glad that you said that.

00:44:51 - Vivian Kvam Yeah, it does help, for sure. And I think of that just gosh, I can't get this swimming analogy out of my head of that being underwater feeling is so good. But I think that helps. Again, like when you're thinking about your team and you do have a chance to take a breath or you come up for air and you look around you're like, that wasn't what I was expecting to see. But we're assuming benevolence. We think let's just regroup and see if that's true before people start. I've certainly heard of people who are in situations with business owners who just got really toxic and they're literally throwing things across the room and what a difficult place to be in because they're not sure how to have the conversation or they don't have any structure to even pull from.

00:45:40 - Dr. Jennifer Churchill Yeah, we are a complicated species as human beings. And I would say leadership is much more difficult than, you know, sending a rocket to the moon. I mean, and because we can actually predict and adjust that that rocket's trajectory, even if there's changes in the atmosphere, in the environment that gets that rocket to the moon. But we can't always predict or understand those when it happens to us as human beings. So it's really challenging.

00:46:18 - Vivian Kvam I'm curious just and I know this is kind of an off the cuff question.

00:46:22 - Dr. Jennifer Churchill It's okay.

00:46:23 - Vivian Kvam People always say when you start a business and you're a business owner, you've got to have your accountant and make sure you have good financials and write your business plan. And there's kind of like here's the three to five things you must do. I'm wondering, would you rank having this way of communicating up there in those top things to do? Of course. Right? We never talked about that. Never.

00:46:51 - Dr. Jennifer Churchill No, we don't. And it's interesting. I haven't written a business plan since 6th grade. So, I mean, my business is not as complicated as, let's say, a product business. But when it comes to planning different things. But yes, in terms of the challenge is when you think about businesses and small businesses especially, they don't always have an HR person on staff. I mean, that's expensive. So when we're talking about small to mid sized businesses, having this process and a team internal is actually a luxury for many organizations and not always the first thing people want to invest in because they don't see the direct correlation to the return on the investment. And oftentimes it's a qualitative return that we can't actually always measure in a budget. But I would say that if you are listening to this and you don't have those resources, it is absolutely something that you can create and develop on your own through. One of my favorite books comes from the Harvard Business School. It's called how to have difficult conversations. It is like one of my foundational recommendations that I give everyone to read. And the reason I like it is because there's actual tools in it. There's an outline, there's a process, step by step guide. You don't need to be a psychologist or a coach to actually implement some of these tools and skills into your business. So that would be one thing is if you don't have those internal resources, reach out to Vivian or pick up that book. That can help you because it is really critical to longevity of your organization to have an engaged safe. A team that feels safe and that is the foundation of a safe team, is to be able to have tough conversations and not feel like they're going to be harmed. And that is what can hold people back sometimes from having them.

00:49:01 - Vivian Kvam Yeah, I'm with you. As I think back to first starting a business, this was not on my radar. I wanted to be a kind person. I wanted to treat people well. That was about as deep as it went. I didn't necessarily have the skills to do that outside of intuition. We did things like, oh, we'll buy lunch, and we kind of jumped into this. Like, we'll buy lunch, we'll have fun outings, and we'll do all these cultural things that I guess I would say are more the symptoms of a good culture. We jumped straight to those and we skipped how to develop just develop the relationships. And frankly, we couldn't afford to do the things that we were doing. And it put a lot of strain on us, which then made difficult conversations pop up because it's like, well, why aren't you grateful for this? We're busting our backs to be able to afford lunch for everybody, which sounds kind of crazy, but we were. And it actually added more strain. And then I didn't know how to have those conversations. So when I backwards, I'm like, you know, what would have been healthier was to have engaged with things like that from day one with a team of two and then three and four and Add. But it was like we waited for the mental break before we were like, oh, my gosh, what are we? Something's wrong. And then you're trying to redo things, and it's like doing your own books and having an accountant come in and just shake their head and go, you should have called.

00:50:30 - Dr. Jennifer Churchill Exactly. Yeah. It's so true, because what you're identifying is what motivates people. Every individual is different. And I always think about, I know Gary Chapman, his original book, Five Languages of Love, I'm sure you've heard of it. He's created and adapted it to workforces and teams. But that's what you're hitting on, is everyone is motivated and influenced in different ways, and sometimes it is just a conversation which is free from a financial perspective, from an energy and time perspective. Obviously there's a cost there, but it's worth it. It's worth it. So it's really understanding what engages each person. It's similar to how we like to give and receive love in all of our relationships.

00:51:18 - Vivian Kvam Yeah. Goodness, I could talk about these things all day.

00:51:22 - Dr. Jennifer Churchill Me too.

00:51:23 - Vivian Kvam I hope you'll come back and I'm going to just keep listening and encourage others again to check out your podcast.

00:51:29 - Dr. Jennifer Churchill Thank you.

00:51:31 - Vivian Kvam Clearly, that's why you have a podcast. It can't be covered in one episode.

00:51:35 - Dr. Jennifer Churchill Well, thank you. I'm excited. Yeah. I'm continuing to figure out how to share more there. And similar to you, I could talk about this all day long.

00:51:47 - Vivian Kvam It's gold. I have loved everything that we've talked about, and I think it just starts to scratch the surface for people. And I'm excited for the world to have you as a resource. I think it's fabulous that you're published, publish or Parish.

00:52:00 - Dr. Jennifer Churchill Is that what you'd publish or Parish? Yes.

00:52:03 - Vivian Kvam I love it. It's very drama filled, but I think it's true. And yeah, it's great.

00:52:10 - Dr. Jennifer Churchill I think it's a quote from someone. I'm going to Google it and figure it out. I don't know if it was Winston Churchill, but it came from somewhere. It's a very old quote.

00:52:18 - Vivian Kvam You consider yourself published in a way then, because of the podcast. Like, that. Will check the box for dad.

00:52:24 - Dr. Jennifer Churchill Yeah, for now. When they visited here, up here in Minnesota, they were here for their 50th wedding anniversary. And my first three podcast, three episodes were about to launch. And so I had them listen to them and they really got moved. They were like, pretty emotional because obviously they don't watch me work. My work is confidential. So they were able to kind of get a sense of what I do after all these years, and they were proud. So check that box.

00:52:57 - Vivian Kvam That's beautiful. I love that. Gosh, I love that so much. Okay, so I have some rapid fire questions for you.

00:53:04 - Dr. Jennifer Churchill Okay, awesome.

00:53:05 - Vivian Kvam I stole this. We were talking about this. I love to listen to Brene Brown's, and I'm listening to her Dare to Lead podcast, and she does these rapid fire questions, and I'm like, I am stealing that. So here comes some questions, if you're ready.

00:53:19 - Dr. Jennifer Churchill Okay, let's go.

00:53:21 - Vivian Kvam So, Jennifer, what do you think is the biggest misconception about owning a business?

00:53:29 - Dr. Jennifer Churchill That's easy. That you don't have to work as much. I mean, that's that, you know, that you're that's the biggest misconception. I I work ask anyone who knows me personally, I work all the time.

00:53:44 - Vivian Kvam So I'm with you there on that one. I do have people who go, well, can't you just take today off? Or someone will call me like, what are you doing? And I'm like, working. Of course. It's the work day. That's funny. What's an important piece of advice that you have been given and you have actually applied to your business?

00:54:06 - Dr. Jennifer Churchill That is a really good question. Wow. Nothing is like, really jumping out at me right away, but I would say the thing that I'm integrating more in the last few years is remember why you're doing it and remembering your why, which is really where the podcast was birthed from. In the last few years, I've been much more connected to my why and my purpose in the world and how my natural charism, if you will, of encouragement comes through everything I do. So that really helps me in business tremendously.

00:54:50 - Vivian Kvam I like that. And you started out the podcast. One of the things you said and I jotted down is and why not have fun doing it? Why not enjoy it, too?

00:54:59 - Dr. Jennifer Churchill Yeah.

00:55:00 - Vivian Kvam Okay. What would be your favorite kickback and relax beverage?

00:55:06 - Dr. Jennifer Churchill Well, I'm really into this recovery drink called Pneuma right now, and so I gave up drinking, like, three years ago, like, drinking alcohol. And so I've been really diving into all these different forms of sports beverages, but that would be my favorite, is that but there's quite a few. I mean, you have to be creative when you want to have a relaxing beverage. When you don't drink alcohol.

00:55:36 - Vivian Kvam Mocktail cocktail bars and things like that. They're really popping up, and they're they are drinks.

00:55:42 - Dr. Jennifer Churchill Yeah, they are. And those are all great, too. But I would say at home that's my go to is Pneuma recovery. And the flavor is dragonfruit.

00:55:51 - Vivian Kvam Love it.

00:55:52 - Dr. Jennifer Churchill It's really good.

00:55:54 - Vivian Kvam Is there a song, a book, or a podcast that's inspiring you right now?

00:56:01 - Dr. Jennifer Churchill Oh, wow. Okay, so, yes, I on repeat right now. My favorite new song is from CC. Oh, my gosh. I should remember her last name because I literally listened to it probably 100 times yesterday. But The Goodness of God is a song that I'm listening to, like, on repeat right now. She's gospel singer, and I would say wineins. Yes. Thank you, CC Winnins. Yes. She's the daughter of CC, who is Whitney Houston's aunt. And I would say that's the song. Do you want me to answer all of them or just the one?

00:56:37 - Vivian Kvam You can answer all or just the one? I give all three because some people are like, I don't listen to podcasts. Some people are like, I don't read books. I only jam to music. So I give all three.

00:56:46 - Dr. Jennifer Churchill Yeah. So I tend to find a song and really stick to it pretty regularly. But, yeah, I would say the other book that I really rely on a lot is an old book written by a former founder and president of Intel, Andrew Groves, and he wrote a book called High Output Management. He passed away in 2016. But one of the things I've just noticed is I've been going back to classics in some of my research when I'm thinking about working with clients, and just his personal story is amazing, but his tips around decision making and how to really approach management is just beautiful.

00:57:32 - Vivian Kvam What would you tell your 18 year old self, knowing what you know now?

00:57:36 - Dr. Jennifer Churchill Oh, my gosh. That you are loved and perfect already. Like you're enough. Yeah. That you're enough just as you are. Nothing else.

00:57:51 - Vivian Kvam Last three for you. What excites you the most about the future?

00:57:56 - Dr. Jennifer Churchill I think I would say just our children. Being able to think about everything I do comes back to the future for our children, and I feel like we're in an interesting time in history with things that are impacting our kids right now that we don't know the actual long term benefit and or consequence of. And I think they're smarter than we realize, and we're going to learn a lot from our children in the next couple of decades.

00:58:30 - Vivian Kvam Love it.

00:58:31 - Dr. Jennifer Churchill Yeah.

00:58:32 - Vivian Kvam All right. What is something people often get wrong about you?

00:58:39 - Dr. Jennifer Churchill There's so many things.

00:58:40 - Vivian Kvam How do I answer that question?

00:58:43 - Dr. Jennifer Churchill I would say that I'm extremely shy and very introverted, and so people think that I love to go out a lot and because of what I do and I work with people, but no, I like to be with my core group of people, if not alone most of the time. So that's one piece. But I would say, too, that I'm confident. People over assume how confident I am, and it's something I work on every day, is to just love myself enough to believe in what I do.

00:59:21 - Vivian Kvam Totally relate to that. All right. Last one for you, then.

00:59:25 - Dr. Jennifer Churchill Okay.

00:59:25 - Vivian Kvam What do you think business owners can do to make the world a better place?

00:59:30 - Dr. Jennifer Churchill Know everyone's name. I don't care how big your business is. Know everyone's name and address them by their name. You have no idea how powerful it is for someone to hear them. Hear someone else say their name. It's our very first form of identity that we recognize as a child. And so I'm so intentional about every interaction that I go into coffee shop, gas station, whatever it is that I always look at their name tag and address them by their name. And it amazes me that they slow down and they are like, how'd you know my name? You're wearing a name tag. And so really take it upon yourself to know everyone's name that you meet and especially within your organization.

01:00:17 - Vivian Kvam Hello.

01:00:17 - Dr. Jennifer Churchill Sad. Yeah.

01:00:18 - Vivian Kvam And that's one that I have to work on. I have to write people's names down in margins, but I want to remember their name. So trying to find hacks for that is one of the things that I work on a lot. So I appreciate that. Thank you so much for sharing your wisdom and being on today.

01:00:34 - Dr. Jennifer Churchill Thank you. Oh, my gosh. You're welcome. Thank you so much for having me. This was fun. It went by so fast.

01:00:41 - Vivian Kvam Yeah. Great. Okay, well, just a reminders to wrap up again for people to go check out your podcast, and it is called I'm going to make sure I get it right. It is called the Happy Healthy Leaders. Is it the happy or just Happy Healthy? Because I want to be able to type it in right. I think it's happy, healthy.

01:00:58 - Dr. Jennifer Churchill It's lowercase the but it's happy, healthy leaders with Dr. Jennifer Churchill. Yeah. Perfect.

01:01:04 - Vivian Kvam Okay, podcast, leave a great review for her.

01:01:08 - Dr. Jennifer Churchill Thank you.

01:01:10 - Vivian Kvam Thanks again for being honest.

01:01:11 - Dr. Jennifer Churchill Oh, my gosh, thank you. I can't wait to have you on my show. Great.