This is a transcript full of insights and stories! It is Part One of a Four Part Series of conversations between two self-described Champions of TED* (*The Empowerment Dynamic). If you’d prefer to listen to the audio podcast you will find the 14-minute sound-bites OR the full 40+ minute audio episode via these links:
Susan Dunlop: Welcome to Coffee and Contemplation with Susan Dunlop, episode 73. I am Susan Dunlop, a self-leadership coach and 3 Vital Questions facilitator living in Noosa on the Sunshine Coast of Queensland, Australia. If this is the first time you’ve joined me, welcome. And if you’ve been tuned in before, thank you for coming back.
On Coffee and Contemplation, we explore intriguing stories, and life and business lessons of individuals who are passionate about making a difference in the lives of people they care about and creating a ripple effect of good across the world. My guests are leaders, believers, and creators, each committed to their unique missions.
Today’s guest is Sheri Lawrence from Dallas, Texas. I first met Sheri on the final day of the 3 Vital Questions trainer certification I was participating in back in 2021. The Center for the Empowerment Dynamic’s time zone and mine are never quite in sync. I was seeing through the office window that the sky was turning a beautiful orange-pink as the sun was rising.
It was the end of spring here. We completed all our study modules. Next Sheri came on the screen as leader of the community of practice with a warm invite for us to participate. After all, that’s what community is all about. That day, Sheri affirmed that she’s the champion of TED* and that she does most often stay in the background.
I felt the sparkle of her energy and commitment to bringing this work to the world. I could see she was the champion of TED*. Over the next few years, we met in group conversations at her 9 am and my 2 am. On LinkedIn, I saw that beneath Sheri’s name are the words, Lifelong Learner. Leadership is not about titles, it’s about what you do for others, and I love that.
Sheri’s bio on LinkedIn reads:
An unusual path to coaching and leading and gives her a valuable perspective and empathy for those she connects with. Her grit and determination have led her in a direction few would have expected, and she uses those lessons learned to help others realize what is possible.
You don’t have to let your past define you, is a statement she lives by. Sheri spent 10 years in the relocation industry on the operations side before transitioning into a sales role, earning much recognition from her clients for her ability to take the time to understand what their needs were and develop long-term strategies to service those needs.
She began coaching and mentoring other salespeople and found her love of coaching and training, which led her to become a certified sales trainer and coach. Sheri joined the team at Studio Movie Grill in 2010 and has held several roles throughout her tenure. Now as the VP of Learning and Development and Sales, she focuses on her passion: being a people builder. She has been the champion for integrating the leadership training and development through the organization and making it available to all team members at all levels to ensure everyone has the opportunity to grow. Studio Movie Grill credits the learning to being a critical reason the company maintained a creator mindset through the pandemic and a bankruptcy, retaining a majority of the management team.
In her career, Sheri has earned several sales performance awards, executive leadership certifications, and sales and coaching certifications. Sheri is a graduate of the Stagen Leadership Academy, an internal coach for their curriculum, a 3VQ certified trainer, and champion for TED*. She earned a life coach certification and volunteers to coach others.
In 2022, she was recognized as one of the top 50 women leaders in Dallas and top 50 learning and development professionals.
Wow.
Sheri’s here shaking her head about herself. We’re going to dig deep into what brought Sheri to TED* and we’re going to talk one on one for the first time. I’m really looking forward to seeing where this conversation will take us.
Welcome Sheri.
Sheri Lawrence: Thank you. I’m just so excited to be here with you.
Susan Dunlop: I’m really looking forward to having a comfortable conversation because we both get this TED* work and I think it’s a way for us to be able to talk simply about the basics of it and let’s see where we go.
Sheri Lawrence: Yeah, I like that you said the basics of it because, you know, in some ways, it seems like such a simple concept but it is so amazing and, we’ve often talked in the community about how David wrote this little book that turned into this unbelievable work that changes lives. So, there is a lot of just getting back to the basics of how we are as humans.
Susan Dunlop: Mm. That’s what I thought. I called the series Transformative Leadership with TED* (*The Empowerment Dynamic) and the rhythm that I’ve set up across August and into September, delayed because I couldn’t talk and cough at the same time, is going to start today, Your Path to TED*. I agree. It’s the basics, there’s so much to it when you understand it more, but I think that to get people just to even know a little bit about the beginnings of what brought you to TED* would be a lovely place to start.
Sheri Lawrence: I was working at Studio Movie Grill and was the executive assistant for the CEO and I was really struggling. He is very entrepreneurial and without intent, he was creating a lot of drama everywhere. I don’t know if you’re familiar with the Peanuts group. They do the cartoon Peanuts and Charlie Brown and all of those.
Well, in there, there’s a character, called Pigpen and Pigpen wherever he goes, he leaves this trail of dirt and stuff behind him. And that’s kind of how I envisioned it, it wasn’t intent, but boy, there was a trail behind our CEO every time he walked around the company and that trail was drama.
I was introduced to the Stagen Academy and found TED* there and my life totally changed after that.
Susan Dunlop: Okay.
Sheri Lawrence: I remember while I was going through the learning, we had a coach assigned to us. I was on a call with my coach because I was behind on my work. She asked me why I was behind and I said, It’s because of our boss. I can’t do this. He’s always changing paths. And she didn’t let me get away with it. She just stopped me and she said, so, you’re a victim and you don’t have any ability to change this?
I remember feeling so frustrated that she didn’t get it. We hung up from that call and it was the next day after I reread part of the book about the drama triangle.
And it was just like, Oh my gosh, I am being a victim. And it just didn’t even dawn on me. After that, it changed and I realized it doesn’t matter how my boss handles things. I have the ability to control how I handle things. And I am not going to be in the drama triangle. I am going to jump over to The Empowerment Dynamic, and, of course, as you know, Susan, it’s not just like a light switch! All of a sudden we are living in The Empowerment Dynamic for the rest of our life. But it’s that first step. Right?
Then little by little, you just keep practicing and practicing. And so it was just this amazing aha for me of realizing that through much of my life, I had been this victim, even though I saw myself as this positive, go out there and get things done kind of person.
Susan Dunlop: Lovely. And I think a lot of people will relate to that with that entrepreneurial boss. I was relating to it too as an entrepreneurial person who was go, go, go, go, go. You made me thinking, oh yeah, poor you, that you had to put up with someone like me. But you realized it, that it comes down to you internally and how are you processing that? Doesn’t it?
Sheri Lawrence: That’s right!
Susan Dunlop: Right.
Sheri Lawrence: Yeah. And I was putting all this blame on him. When in fact it wasn’t his fault. He was being who he authentically is. And are there better ways to do things sometimes? Of course, there are. There were things that he could improve. But I was creating all this extra drama by being a victim and blaming it on him.
So I didn’t have to take responsibility for how I was handling things.
Susan Dunlop: Yeah. And did you feel tired all the time when you were being in that space?
Sheri Lawrence: I was exhausted all the time. I was working way too many hours because I was spending too much time being in this emotional state of the drama triangle. Right? It was exhausting. It was not productive at all. And of course we all know that any drama in the workplace rubs off on other people. So, then it just continues to grow. So much like the vision of Pigpen, what I realized instead of him being Pigpen, I kind of was being Pigpen!
Susan Dunlop: Uh oh!
Sheri Lawrence: Yeah.
Susan Dunlop: None of us want to be Pigpen.
Sheri Lawrence: No.
Susan Dunlop: So, what was the moment or experience, aside from that, that made you believe in TED* so strongly? What was it about TED*?
Sheri Lawrence: It made sense. It just made sense. All of a sudden, when you realize that all of these things that are getting to you emotionally, that are driving your anxiety and your stress and everything, when you realize that whether you’re creating it or not, you’re contributing to that. It just makes sense to go, oh, wait a minute!
One of the big things we learn in TED* is we can’t control what others do. Nor should we, right? We don’t need to be worried about what other people are doing. So, yes, somebody else can be in the drama triangle, can be creating all of this drama, but we don’t have to jump in there with them. We can stay in The Empowerment Dynamic.
And whether they choose to move out of the drama triangle or into The Empowerment Dynamic or not, we can choose to be in The Empowerment Dynamic.
Susan Dunlop: Was that hard to do when you first started doing that? When you had a pig pen type of boss?
Sheri Lawrence: Well, of course, because you know, it’s much easier to blame it on somebody else, right? Than to have to say, oops, there’s some things I need to change, doggone it. Right? But, you know, it’s also that realization. I always like to say, when you don’t know, that’s one thing. When you do know and choose not to make a change or do something about it, that’s a totally different thing.
And so I do remember when all of a sudden all of this clicked. It was like, now that I know this, I’ve got to figure out how to work more into it and learn how to use it and learn how to be in The Empowerment Dynamic more. Because what I saw is that is a place where you don’t have to allow everybody else’s drama and your own drama to drive how you handle your life.
At the time I had a 13, 14-year-old son and so that gave me even more reason to do it because I wanted to be able to be the best parent I could be and he and I saw the world totally differently. So it also really helped me understand that I could see him as a creator and just because we don’t agree didn’t mean that he was wrong.
Susan Dunlop: I love that. I love that piece. And it feels almost difficult to come back to sometimes is that seeing others as a creator, even if they’re not believing they are or not acting like they are, but to be able to pull yourself back up. For me, it’s like, there’s actually a physical movement in this whole drama to empowerment.
It’s like drama to me keeps me down, sort of, squat to the left of me. I feel like I’m just in this ball. When I can see others as a creator or see myself as a creator, I sort of get taller and go up towards my right. It’s just like, ah, there’s oxygen out here that I can draw on and move forward with, from where I am.
Sheri Lawrence: I love that. You’re exactly right. I also notice how much more relaxed I am when I’m in The Empowerment Dynamic. I don’t have knots in my stomach. If I’m in a meeting, I’m not hunched forward. I’m relaxed. My shoulders are down. I’m not tense. And we all know body language sends a huge message as well.
And so, when you’re with other people and you’re relaxed and like you said, you’re taller, right? That in itself changes the dynamics when you’re in a group.
Susan Dunlop: Oh, for sure, and that’s just a simple basic part of it, isn’t it? It’s like a basic can be let your shoulders drop, believe that other people have got this creator essence in them that we’ve learned more and more of since the work we’ve done with David and Donna has expanded.
Sheri Lawrence: Yeah.
Susan Dunlop: So it’s a beautiful place to come to. And as you said earlier, that it’s not like we stay there. We drift backwards and forwards into drama all the time. I’m pretty good at that right now.
Sheri Lawrence: Oh yeah. Oh yeah.
Susan Dunlop: So moving on, how has your own leadership style evolved since you began using TED*?
Sheri Lawrence: That’s a really great question.
In my twenties and thirties, as I was learning to be a leader, I was pretty harsh. I remember one of the things that people would tell me is that when somebody came to me with a problem or an issue, I would do this kind of thing with my lips and my eyes would roll. I didn’t know it. Right. And then they told me what that made them feel like.
So I certainly worked on that early in my career, and that might’ve gone away but what caused that didn’t go away. And with TED*, my leadership has become so much better. Now, at first I had to kind of convince myself of this, right? Because when you’re starting and you’re trying to practice it, it doesn’t come automatically. You’re trying to change habits and things like that.
Now I truly enjoy sitting and listening to our team members here. Whether they are on the same page with me, whether they’re not, I love being able to understand their perspective. I love being able to walk through a challenge that they give me and being able to see the result on the other side.
I’m kinder, more humble. I listen so much better than I ever did before. I communicate so much better because of what I’ve learned being a leader and being a creator, how you see others is so much different than how you see them from the drama triangle. So every interaction I have, whether it be email or in person by zoom, my biggest thing is to understand what the other person needs, wants, has in their mind.
And I just think as a leader, when we come together, to every meeting or to every interaction with the other person on our mind and on our heart, we may make mistakes. Everybody makes mistakes, right? It’s okay. The message it sends other people is that we care about you.
Susan Dunlop: That’s beautiful.
Sheri Lawrence: You can’t always say yes to everything. When you’re a leader in a big organization, there are times you have to say, no, that’s not the direction we’re going. Or, Hey, I love the fact that you brought an idea, but it’s not the right time, but you do it with care. You do it with care for the other person. That’s just so different before when I was younger, everything was all about me. Whatever I say, whatever I do, how can I get what I want? One of the questions in TED* is, what do you want? What I’ve learned through the years now is one of my first questions to our team members when we have a meeting is, what do you want? It just makes me a good person all the way around.
Susan Dunlop: So two things there I’m picking up on was: we talked about the exhaustion of being in drama. Coming from this place where you’re kinder, more humble, you’re listening better, you’re communicating so much better and you’re caring, that’s a quieter space to come from, isn’t it?
Sheri Lawrence: Very much so. Yeah.
Susan Dunlop: I love that. Yeah.
Sheri Lawrence: You don’t feel the need to be the person in the room, so to speak, talking. In executive meetings in the past, I felt like I had to speak up at everything that was happening, right? I had an opinion, I had to speak up and now my joy and I think my contribution comes from listening to what everybody has to say and when appropriate speaking. Now, I will tell you, I’m a very passionate person. So at times my mouth’s going to take off and, but we’re all who we are and that’s okay.
Susan Dunlop: And we do have so many thousands of words that we need to use in a day. So, you’ve got to get them out somewhere, don’t you?
Sheri Lawrence: That’s right.
Susan Dunlop: So the other thing that I picked up in there, and you might want to touch on it, but it’s up to you.
What caused it didn’t go away, you said at the beginning of that. And then you said you don’t have to be the person in the room talking.
I know myself, from probably the lack of self-confidence I had when I first worked in a law firm. They moved me up from junior receptionist to being the manager of people, with no experience. There you go. There’s your job. I remember sitting and hosting meetings of the whole secretarial and admin team for lunch and often they’d just sit there silently and so I had to fill that space, but I was exhausted. I didn’t know how to communicate and I think that’s okay to admit because I was only what, 25, maybe 30 max, but I now understand where I have come from with that.
How about you? Did you want to share on that? What caused it?
Sheri Lawrence: Yeah, I love that. Listen, you’ve got your TED* ears on. I think for me, it’s once I looked in the mirror, so to speak and saw who I was as a leader and, and I wasn’t horrible, but I wasn’t who I wanted to be.
Well I wanted to be that leader that I felt good about every night on my way home. Yes I knew I would make mistakes. I knew that meant that on a daily basis, I would feel good, about how I interacted, things that I did, how I build other people up and in the things that I did to help them get, to where they wanted to go.
And so for me, it was that look in the mirror, so to speak, to say, wow. I just didn’t realize that all of this around me was happening and how I was either contributing to it or causing it. And so that caused me to really dig in. I think I was born a learner. So, for me, once I see something, either I don’t know or I need to learn, then I just kind of dig in and go for it.
Susan Dunlop: Hmm. And I sort of sense that from your bio, the type of roles that you’ve played, the sales role. You’re interested in people. As a salesperson, you are, compared to other sales that I’ve come across, but I feel that’s where this work fits into that as well, is understanding what’s going on underneath for yourself.
Sheri Lawrence: Yes, and I will tell you, and you and I in the community talk a lot about how do we spread this, right?
One thing that really helped me too is when I was going through this training and was introduced to TED*, there were several of my coworkers, we were all going through it at the same time and I saw them grabbing it and saying, huh, there’s something here.
So we saw each other changing a little bit and that really spurred my curiosity that, oh, wait a minute. It’s not just me. There’s something going on here. And then we started talking about it. And when you see something that truly works, you want more. I mean, as a salesperson, I went to, I don’t know how many conferences. All these things that you go to and you get pumped up and excited about this and then you come back in about three or four weeks it’s all gone. This was different. I was seeing this change our people that went through it and I was, every day being involved in conversations that were all of a sudden different.
Susan Dunlop: I was delivering the program to a whole school in Hong Kong, 50 staff, and I was witnessing what you’re saying, and it was just filling me up with so much joy to see that. This principal and vice principal decided to bring that to their staff. They just chose to, and they said we’d love them to have TED* in their lives. They weren’t even saying for work, they were saying in their lives! I was like, Oh my God, what are these type of leaders like? And they were all saying how awkward it was at first… they were going, Oh God, we’re TED*ing at each other and sounding like we’re making up this new language.
Then by the end of it, they were just so chill. They were all just, yeah, let’s do a do-over. Let’s do this. Â It was a beautiful thing to watch. But knowing the ripple effect of that… as you said, there was a few of you doing it and there was something bigger going on for all of you.
I just think of the lives that touches, like it touched your son. It touches the people who were anywhere near you on the way home from work that you’ve got that different sense about you.
Sheri Lawrence: It’s really, really amazing. We’ve integrated it here. It was probably six months after we finished that training and we’re like, This belongs here and we worked really hard to integrate it and I can tell you it’s amazing to me now that everybody gets an opportunity to learn TED* from the new hourly team member that we have, all the way to the CEO.
We talk about it. We have the same language. One of the most amazing things that happened early on that really drove us to keep it going was we had a company meeting where we literally had every different staff. It wasn’t just an executive meeting. It was everybody. And to be able to hear the language being spoken by everybody.
And we’re kind of a funny company. We like to joke around. So to be able to hear, one of our hourly staff say to the vice president, Oh, I think you’re persecuting us, in fun because we always talked about don’t weaponize it. For me, I didn’t think life could get any better to be able to see a room full of people with all different levels, in our company, having an amazing conversation, sharing that similar language and understanding and really listening to each other. I mean, it’s a game-changer.
Susan Dunlop: It’s unique, isn’t it? That just gave me goosebumps, just the idea of that type of meeting that, to let your people feel that sense of I’m allowed to speak because I know I’m going to do it with compassion, with understanding, to be able to say, you’re persecuting us or say, Hey, I’m feeling victimy right now. Can I just start over? Just to be able to have a common language, to be able to give yourself a moment to start again because we all haven’t learned how to communicate well necessarily as children and throughout our early twenties or whatever.
So to be able to bring that to a workplace and let people see that is the way that an organization can operate is incredible.
Sheri Lawrence: Yeah. I love what you just said. And there were a couple of things I expected when I started championing this, what I didn’t expect was how much our team members appreciated us offering it to them.
I didn’t think about that piece of it. I thought I know it’s going to improve productivity; that it’s going to improve our communication; and that having a common language is good. All of these things, and I know what it did for me, but what I didn’t expect is so many of our team members coming up to me after the classes, six months, a year, two years later saying, This is so amazing. We should never stop doing this. How can we get this down to more team members? It’s changed my life.
I have stories of general managers calling me and saying, this not only has made me a better general manager, but it’s made me a better parent, and just on and on. And that was the piece that I didn’t really think about.
And that’s the most important piece.
Susan Dunlop: Yeah. Yeah. Wow.
The stories, you must have a lot of stories there that you could share, so I’m going to ask you to pick one. Let’s try and see. I’ll give you a minute. Have a think. Could you pick a personal story or a story about a challenge in the workplace that you faced and how, say, maybe the TED* principles helped you to overcome it?
Sheri Lawrence: Hmm. Yeah. So, this has been a few years ago, but what came to my mind is we had a VP of marketing and he had been with us a couple of months, and I was struggling to communicate with him. So he had never been through TED*. It felt like no matter what I tried, we couldn’t communicate and, I had to certainly work with the VP in marketing for my role.
We tried meeting offsite, we tried meeting onsite and we tried having somebody come with us. I mean, I tried all of these things and I was just like, what am I missing? And one of my co-leaders said, he doesn’t know about TED*. And I went, Oh, you’re right. I mean, he’s only been here two months. So I met with him and I said, look, can we time out on our meetings regarding work? And can we just talk about a couple of things here regarding communication and learning? Because I think there’s something that you could do for me, that would help me better communicate with you.
He’s like, well, what is it? You know? So I started talking to him about TED* and I said, you know, I have just really embraced this, and if you would just spend some time with me going through TED*, I think it would help both of us.
He was open to it, and he did and I gotta tell you, little by little, after that, we spent, I don’t know, three or four weeks working together. When we would meet, it was just about TED*, talking about TED*. After that, we were able to sit down in a room, just he and I, and talk through work issues, and we were on different sides a lot of times. Never escalated, it wasn’t emotional, and there was no drama. It really did make a shift.
Susan Dunlop: So that’s simple really, that was four weeks.
Sheri Lawrence: Yeah.
Susan Dunlop: Okay.
When I first did it for myself, I chose to use the model against my personal life when I used the workbook, doing the course, and then I’ve done it again just to review as I said before, how I looked at myself as that 25, 30 year old, manager.
So you can keep applying it across different disciplines, parts of your daily relationship with one person at work, or how you can improve a relationship with someone else from your side.
Like you did that from your side and you let him step into the space with you.
Sheri Lawrence: Yeah, because I knew enough to know. Number one, he didn’t know it. So I couldn’t necessarily speak to him directly, right? Because he didn’t know the language. He didn’t understand the work, but I knew there was something going on with me.
If I couldn’t sit in a room with him and be able to get to where we needed to be, there was something going on with me, but I couldn’t put my finger on it. That’s the only thing I could think of is, look, there’s something going on with me. I am not going to give up, but maybe it will help if I can go through TED* with him.
And maybe by going through TED, I’ll get that. I’ll figure out what it is, where we’re not connecting. And, that was a big one for me because that helped me realize that it’s not enough just to read the book once, teach it once. This is something that as a company with our outcome wanting to be, that we use TED* every day in our company, this is something that we’ve got to do on a regular basis. So we have people go back through it. And for me, we show movies for a living, right? For me, it’s like, when you go to a movie, and you watch a movie, and you come out of it and you’re like, Oh my gosh, I love that movie.
You go see it again. There’s always, it seems like there’s something you didn’t see the first time. Right. That’s what TED* is like. You go through it the first time and you get all this stuff. Then you go through it again. You’re like, Oh my gosh, I didn’t get that the first time. Well, yeah, of course you didn’t because now you’re kind of integrating it a little bit more.
So for me, TED* is like, you just go and keep seeing the movie exactly as many times as you want.
Susan Dunlop: I find it really easy to listen to the audio book of it. It’s only what, three hours. It lets it just drop into you.
When you’re doing that with someone, and we are going to talk about skeptics in the fourth episode, but, okay, so you’re sitting there with someone, you’re not quite getting him, he’s not probably getting you. I imagine: a lot of leaders would go, that would be typical, a normal day, that that would happen in most conversations; or a lot of people would also think, what’s this, just another model? Is this real? Is this something that can possibly change the way our place operates? Just from that perspective, is there anything you can shed some light on there?
Sheri Lawrence: Yeah, you know, you’re so right. There are a lot of companies that have said, Hey, we’re gonna take this leadership training or this training, whatever it is, right? Everybody takes it. We’re gonna be better. Well, it’s kind of like Okay, well, if you want to make a major change in your life, you’re not going to take a pill and all of a sudden wake up the next morning, right?
So, there’s a lot of companies that try that because that’s kind of what we’ve been taught. We’ve been kind of taught, oh, you got this problem at your company? Hire a consultant to come in, boom, it’s over with. Or, go take this training, boom, it’s over with. You can do training. Consultants are great, but you have to commit to it. It’s the commitment the company makes that makes the change. That’s why we decided we’re going to make a commitment. We gave ourselves five years.
Susan Dunlop: Oh, okay.
Sheri Lawrence: We’re going to do, and we’re going to see, and if we see in five years that it’s made a difference, then we’ll keep it going. Well, we didn’t need five years to see that it made a difference, right?
That’s what it is. It’s that commitment and it’s not just doing something one time and thinking, okay, now everybody’s got it. Somebody internally has to champion it and it has to start at the top of the organization because if the executives aren’t speaking the language and practicing it, then for the most part, a lot of other people in the company, they look at it and say, yeah, they’re making us do this, but they didn’t have to do it. So how important is it really? Right.
But when the executives do it and they practice it and they’re having those conversations with the next level down saying this stuff is really great. We want you to go through it because this is going to be great for you. It changes the whole dynamics.
Susan Dunlop: Ah, the case studies speak to that too.
When I first came to become a trainer and got access behind the scenes to everything and it was reading all these little reports and I read your case study and there was a Cleveland Clinic and there’s Driver Select. It all was about the leader relating to themselves better in the end.
Sheri Lawrence: Right.
Susan Dunlop: I’ve seen that when we were purchased, my organization got purchased by a national organization. And so I’d come from, having been the CEO of that and having to work beneath those people for two more years. I’d wonder, how do you ever integrate something even from the board level so that people believe that you are really on board with this, that you’re not just asking them to change, fixing from the bottom up. The lack of trust is there, if you do that. I saw that across that organization with all their multiple offices they had, I felt, wow, the trust is really just ruined here. So you need to get past that.
Sheri Lawrence: Yeah. Susan, you know, this, that Ted really does make an impact. So once somebody starts practicing it, right. And everybody gets their aha moment at a different time. There’s no right or wrong time, but once somebody starts practicing it and really understands it, it becomes much easier. Right. To share it because you’re anxious to share it. You want to tell other people that you work with, Oh my gosh, this stuff is great. You know? And so that’s when those amazing stories, those individual stories come out and start getting shared through the company.
You see the impact it can make and makes it a whole lot easier to want to integrate it and really drive it through the organization.
Susan Dunlop: I’m so excited about being able to bring this to Australian organizations or as I did in Hong Kong. It is something that I wished I had, when I was that burgeoning leader and, throwing myself into a CEO role and having this big dream, but doubting myself so much in that people aspect that I can’t get that right and self-blame was a big thing for me.
I just wished I had it back then, but I thought, well, if I know all that, and I’ve experienced that, I do see other people, I can see that they might be going through that pain as well, so if we could all own our victim, persecutor, rescuer roles that have played out in our lives, but see that light, see that empowerment dynamic triangle of creator, challenger, coach, that’s in us.
That’s what I found was beautiful to learn through all of this, that, that they are roles that are inside us. We just don’t practice them as much.
Sheri Lawrence: So well said. Something you made me think about too, you’re talking about that 20-something-year-old, right? That gets put into this management responsibility of some sort, whatever the role is, and all of a sudden you’re like, Oh my goodness!
One of the big areas which we’ve seen vast improvement is in our new managers. I mean, our new managers are anywhere from 25 to 35 years old. They haven’t gone through leadership training before. They haven’t had anybody teach them anything like this, how to handle emotionally challenging issues that come up in the workplace.
And boy! They are just so grateful. The investment in them is so worth it. Investment in everybody is, but to be able to see these younger managers blossom and know for the first time how to handle some of these… and you brought up, the confidence that this gives all of us. And it also allows us to realize that It’s okay to be who we are.
This is who we are. And we’re a work in progress, all of us.
Susan Dunlop: That’s right.
Sheri Lawrence: It’s just amazing for young managers.
Susan Dunlop: Oh, I think so. As you said, for you to be showing up, as I repeated before, as that kind, humble person who can listen better, or to be the 25-year-old new manager who’s getting to learn that! Then what does the future look like for that person, to take that work and the ripple effect they’re going to make in the communities they serve? Just incredible.
So you did talk about TED* being a long-term strategy rather than a one-off initiative and you’ve mentioned five years as your goal. So how far are you into it now?
Sheri Lawrence: We are 10-plus years.
Susan Dunlop: Oh, okay. Way past five years.
Sheri Lawrence: Yeah. 10-plus years.
We have started a new piece where we have the majority of our team members are hourly team members working across 19 locations. And those have been the hardest, right, to get in front of. Many of them are high school or college-age students, but you know what? Of all people, they really need it too.
So we have been playing with the way how to get that in front of them over the last year because anytime we ask an hourly team member to train, we have to pay them, because they’re an hourly team member. So we have found some ways now to do it by just giving them little bits and pieces along the way.
This is integrated. Every leader in our organization goes through this. It’s in our orientation for all new employees. It is in a lot of different learning modules that we have on our LMS. It’s in our documents. I mean, we use the five-step action plan when we have something going on that we need to work on, especially as a team. So it’s become integrated. There are TED* books all through our company. It is just part of how we do business now.
Susan Dunlop: Okay. The small snippets are important too. I think that’s part of what I was looking at when I’m bringing it to organizations here is to not get in the way of the daily workload, but also I used to employ people on a casual basis because we were a labour-hire business, so yeah, I get that. When you’re trying to educate, you’ve got to be conscious of the cost of that and to work out how to do that without impacting their time off, because really it’s their time off that you’re asking them to step back into work for.
So what would be a small snippet that you would do, if you could give me an example of one of those?
Sheri Lawrence: Sure. So one of the first places we start is what is the drama triangle? And so we just do a few minute snippet of, hey, what is the drama triangle? And, for our younger team members, the examples that we would use with that snippet would be toward the high school or college, something that really relates to them, so that they get it a little bit quicker.
Our goal is to get them so interested that they’re going to read the book and that they’re going to go through some of the other training that we offer. So we’ll just do a little snippet on, hey, what is this drama triangle thing anyway? And hey, what is this empowerment dynamic? How are you feeling when something comes up, how do you feel? What’s your orientation? And so they’re just two to three-minute snippets.
Susan Dunlop: Okay. Pretty much within the time frame, they’re saying, of people’s concentration anyway nowadays, isn’t it?
So you’ve been on a lot longer journey than the 10 years. You’ve been 15-year journey with TED* altogether for you personally, is that right?
Sheri Lawrence: Yeah, about 14, 15 years.
Susan Dunlop: Wow. Okay. What’s been the most rewarding aspect for you personally and professionally?
Sheri Lawrence: Personally, the impact I have on others. The gratitude I have for this work, it has made me such a better human, which means that every interaction I have with people is more valuable for me and them. I just like who I am because I practice TED* and that sounds real sappy and real like, yeah, whatever. But it is totally the truth.
I know how important face-to-face impact is. It can be going to the local coffee house, ordering a coffee, right? And you’re in there for whatever, three, four minutes. But that impact with the barista can either add to their drama or take away from their drama, or that barista can add to my drama or take away from my drama, right? And a three-minute impact can be so effective in helping somebody’s life be better.
And that’s what TED* has done for me.
Susan Dunlop: That is a wonderful place for us to end, for people to contemplate. It wraps us up with the idea of, as Donna and David say, it’s easy to understand, but it’s not that easy to practice. We do need to practice this work, but you’ve been putting it into practice for some time and you still get it and you still are championing it.
We’ll go on to, what are we going to go on to next time we have a chat? I’ll just have a quick look before I wrap up. We’re going to go into the Power of TED* in Action next time. The one after that is going to be Overcoming Challenges and Expanding Horizons and we will wrap up with Insights and Advice for Skeptics.
So Sheri, thank you so much for joining me today. I really appreciate the time you’ve given me and you’ve given me insights beyond what I have ever had before to this work that I love too.
Sheri Lawrence: Well, thank you. I always like to say, watch out world. When you get two TED* champions together, a lot can happen. There may be a little bit of mileage between us, but boy, we can make that seem really small.
Susan Dunlop: Oh, I know.
Sheri Lawrence: You’re an amazing champion, the things that you’re doing. I appreciate the honour to be able to spend some time with you.
Susan Dunlop: It’s a pleasure.
So listeners, was there a key takeaway that you got from this conversation today and all that Sheri has shared with us?
If you’ve got any questions from today’s episode, please send them to me at [email protected] or you can message me on LinkedIn or I’m on Instagram as simple: leadbelievecreate.
I am forever thankful to my beautiful guests for allowing me to understand them more and to share their stories. Trust that you are blessed, even when you forget that you are blessed. Take care of yourself. I look forward to being back soon and bye for now.