Episode 229: Can a Leadership Book Change Your Team's Culture? A Sneak Peek into Our Virtual Book Club
As leaders, what if we thought about hitting key life metrics as much as we think about hitting key performance metrics? Sure, we want sales and production to increase, but we also want to see our teammates going to that pottery class after work because they have the capacity to do so, and because they want to do it.
In today’s episode, Erin gives you the 411 on how to create a work culture that honors human beings, not human doings and the inside scoop on one of improve it!’s newest offerings: virtual book club.
If you’re looking for a change at work but you’re not sure what it is yet – this is the episode for you.
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Erin Diehl is the founder and Chief “Yes, And” officer of improve it! and host of the improve it! Podcast. She’s a performer, facilitator and professional risk-taker who lives by the mantra, “get comfortable with the uncomfortable.” Through a series of unrelated dares, Erin has created improve it!, a unique professional development company that pushes others to laugh, learn and grow. Her work with clients such as United Airlines, PepsiCo, Groupon, Deloitte, Motorola, Walgreens, and The Obama Foundation earned her the 2014 Chicago RedEye Big Idea Award and has nominated her for the 2015-2019 Chicago Innovations Award.
This graduate from Clemson University is a former experiential marketing and recruiting professional as well as a veteran improviser from the top improvisational training programs in Chicago, including The Second City, i.O. Theater, and The Annoyance Theatre.
When she is not playing pretend or facilitating, she enjoys running and beach dates with her husband and son, and their eight-pound toy poodle, BIGG Diehl.
You can follow the failed it! podcast on Instagram @learntoimproveit and facebook, and you can follow Erin personally on Instagram @keepinitrealdiehl here. You can also check out improve it! and how we can help your organization at www.learntoimproveit.com. We can’t wait to connect with you online!
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Episode 229 Transcription
Erin Diehl (00:01.666)
Improve it peeps, oh welcome to the show. I'm singing you in cause you were my friend. I hope wherever you are you stopped, smell the roses, listen to this little ditty and celebrated life because my friends I have so much to celebrate with you here today. Now if you clicked on the show you know the title.
Can a leadership book change your team's culture? You know I've got an answer. And I'm gonna give you a snake peek into something that we have coming up here at I'll Improve It. And if we have never met, this is your first time listening to the show. I'm Erin Deal. I'm the show host. I'm also a first time author and just released a book, February 20th of 2024 called I See You, a Leader's Guide to Energizing Your Team Through Radical Empathy.
and I'm the founder of the professional development company, Improve It. We use improv comedy to train leaders and teams through experiential learning, laughter and play. We will help your team improve your soft skills or what we call power skills through play. So with that said, I want to welcome any new peep here to our community. We are called the Improve It Peeps. And let me say this. I have
felt this community this past couple weeks. Now you're listening to this show mid-March. I am recording this show early March and it's been about a week and a half since the book released. And I have to tell you peeps, y'all came in hot. Okay? You came in on fire. Your fingers were hitting the add to cart button on Amazon because guess what? We sold that baby out.
Okay, like we literally sold all on Amazon on our launch day, which was insane. We hit top new release as well as number one in the business health and stress category. So thank you so much for being such an amazing community. I feel honored and privileged to know all of you. And if I don't know you, say hi, send me an email at info at learn to improve it.com.
Erin Diehl (02:20.766)
It has been an incredible week and a half just hearing from you. I love seeing pictures when people get the book. Some people have done videos of the unboxing. I love getting tagged in your stories on LinkedIn on Instagram because honestly, it means so much to me. Number one that you want to read it number two that you are reading it. And then when I get pictures of the book highlighted and earmarked and posted noted, I mean, I'm literally doing a cartwheel papal. Okay.
because I love to read and I love to do that with books. And that's what I wanted this book to be. I wanted it to be a workbook. I wanted it to be your diary. I wanted it to be your journal and your best friend. So thank you for sharing the book and just know that the book is now back on Amazon and you can get it at Barnes & Noble, Target, a lot of local retailers as well.
And I've yet to go into a bookstore to find it myself. So I'm going to do that soon. But if you do, please send me a picture. I would love that so much. And if we aren't friends, you can find me on itsAaronDeal on Instagram at itsAaronDeal and Aaron Deal of Improve It on LinkedIn. So also you guys, my dog, Big Deal, is sitting with me today. You might hear him snoring. He's literally snoring in the background. So
Just a side note, big deal is with us. I wanted to just share my gratitude for you, this incredible community, but I also wanted to share some of the key learnings that I have witnessed as this book has made its way into the world.
The first is this book has energy. And funny enough, it's set, if you have read it, to a curriculum called Energy U. And it's not like a boring, fuddy-duddy curriculum, okay? It's got legs, it's got vibes. Anyway, you'll find that out when you read it, but I'm not gonna spoil that for you. But I have found that this energy is an energy of love. When I hold the book itself, I know what's in it, because I wrote it, but for me, it just has this
Erin Diehl (04:39.426)
vibration and I realize as we're coming up to another election year as the world is still figuring itself out post-pandemic that we need this energy of love now more than ever. I don't want to live in a divided country. I want to live in a world where I can look at my neighbor and see them as my neighbor because guess what? That's what they are. My neighbor.
We are all one. We are all one universal space and place. And that's what this book is. It is energy. It is a guide back to love. And obviously, you know, it's a leadership book. So I'm talking specifically about bringing this energy back to work, baby. Talking about love in the workplace. Now I know if you're listening to this show, you feel me.
Let's try to get Bob, who has always been doing things the same way they've always been done, to listen to this and to see the world as an opportunity to give great energy and love to other people versus a transactional moment in time. Because guess what? We spend way more time at work than we do with our families over the course of the week, unless you work part-time.
I want to love who I'm with, I want to love what I do, and I want people in my existence to feel seen, heard, and valued. Period. If more organizations can make sure that people, individuals, leaders gave more to themselves, took time off, gave themselves an opportunity to relax, to fill their cup, to…
take that guitar lesson, take that improv class, do the pottery class after work. If leaders were made sure of that they hit their key performance metrics and that we make sure that we hit our key life metrics of love, what a freaking place we could build.
Erin Diehl (06:56.066)
When people feel more love themselves, they have more love to give to others.
When you have more love to give to others, the people feel impacted around you. They feel your love spill over. It's just a domino ripple effect. It's inevitable. And when you feel that radiate through your organization, guess what? People wanna show up. And when people wanna show up, they are productive. And when productivity rises, that person and that individual thrives.
as well as the collective whole. It starts with conversations about self-love. It starts with conversations about giving to yourself so much that you have so much love to give to other people.
That's the conversation. That's how it starts. You can talk the talk, but then you gotta make sure you walk the walk. So this book not only talks, it walks, and it gives you tangible tips and tricks and activities that you can do individually, and then you can take back to your teams. And let's say you're not the leader of your team, but you love the activity. Shoot, do it yourself. Show your leader how you want to be led.
So one problem I saw in the release of this book
Erin Diehl (08:27.176)
Was that?
It affects the people who read it, but it only affects the people who read it if we actually allow them to feel what it is that we're talking about doing. And how in the world do we get more people to read it? I'm not trying to sell books, I'm trying to spread a message of love for yourself, for human beings, and for the people that you spend the most time with, your coworkers.
And guess what? That'll spill over to your family too.
So here's what we came to the conclusion of.
In order to get people to actually feel this, they have to experience it. It's improv at its finest. It's experiential learning, my friends. So we decided we're going to create a virtual book club. Now, this isn't your Tuesday night neighborhood book club. This is a virtual leadership book club led by yours truly, the gal who wrote it. And some of the amazing facilitators here at Improve It. We're not only going to show you.
Erin Diehl (09:38.906)
and have you just see what we're talking about. We're going to have you feel and be a part of the experience. So here's the deal. The E-deal deal. There's several steps to this. Here's how it's going to work. Step one. Now you do need to get the book. I said I'm not trying to sell books. If you literally don't have $23.95 and you want me to give you a copy of this book, send me an email. I will send it to your house.
I literally will do that. That's how much I believe in the power of this message.
Get the book. You can get it cheaper on Kindle. There's also an audible version. Get the book is step one. There's also, if you're interested in getting this for your team, an opportunity to buy it from a website called Porchlight. This is on our website, it's erindeal.com. We'll give you all the retailers you can go to, but that has bulk pricing. So if you wanna get it for...
30 people on your team, you'll get a 30 person discount. Porchlight.com and that's, you can get everything on its air and deal.com. So that's step one. Step two, we are having two in-person, oh nope, that's a lie, two virtual events that are going to be open to the public. They are free with purchase of the book. This is the honor system y'all, so you know, come.
We honor you and that you've read the book because it won't be as great of an experience if you actually don't read the book. So the first one is going to be Tuesday, April 9th from 1 to 2 p.m. Eastern. It's an hour. So that's step two. You can sign up for this or you can sign up for the event on April 17th and that's going to be from 11 a.m. to 12 p.m. Eastern.
Erin Diehl (11:35.49)
These are the exact same events. We just made them two different times and two different days of the week. So hopefully different people could attend. And if you wanna come to both, come. We would love to have you. So you'll find the links to this in the show notes and please register yourself, register your team. We're gonna probably have up to 100 people on each. So up to 100 registrants. And we've already started to get people coming in and I'm recording this.
in late February. Okay, I record early. So no, sometimes you're not getting real live updates, but this is as live as it's getting because we're gonna be live on the Zoom. So once you get the event right, you're gonna get a Zoom link sent to you. And then step three, you gotta read the book, all right? You gotta read it, highlight it, bookmark it, post it, note it, all the things.
And then step four is attend the event, either on April 9th or April 17th, and get ready to be edutained and experience this message in real time. And also I wanna just share this with you, there are some special giveaways for those in attendance. So not only with purchase of the book, do you get the free workshop, you're gonna get some freebies at the actual live book club itself.
Now here's what you can expect during this experience. It's going to be a 60 minute, one hour virtual Zoom session with myself and Improve It Facilitator. You'll have a quick warmup exercise to get you pumped and comfortable. This is going to be on camera and on mute most of the time. So I want you to come camera ready, listen.
I haven't washed my hair in three days. Don't worry about that, okay? Just come as you are. You don't have to dress up, but we do ask that you're on camera because we're gonna be doing some partner and group discussions on different topics covered throughout the book. We'll have some breakout rooms. It's gonna be action packed in one hour.
Erin Diehl (13:38.466)
You're also gonna do some activities from each section of the book, and then we're gonna end with a Q&A. So if you have questions and wanna ask them, I'm gonna be there as your resource this entire time, my friends. So I hope you join us either April 9th or April 17th of 2024. I would love to get to know you in person. You have to tell me that you are an Improvipeep and you heard about it here first.
because you are my people. And it's fun because I don't get to see you in real life. You get to hear me. This is a one-sided conversation and I only get to know you when I actually get to see you or hear from you. So this would mean the world to me if you came to either of those two events. And I wanna just let you know my final thoughts on the book and where we're at because I'm sure I'll have more epiphanies along the way.
But what I do know is that this book isn't just meant to sit on a bookshelf. It was meant to be highlighted and bookmarked and dog-eared and posted noted. It was meant to give you resources, not only for yourself, but for you and your team. It was meant to make you feel something. And I have heard from people that you can feel the energy of the book as you read it.
I've also heard it's a very quick read, which I'm grateful for because I love books that you can't put down. I literally write the same as I talk, so it is very conversational and I do hope it gives you the right energy that you need to start giving back to yourself.
It's also meant to make you feel something, to make you move, to make you create change, to make action happen in your life.
Erin Diehl (15:39.858)
And how we actually get to that point of action and change is we have to feel a certain way in order to move. So if you feel me, I want you to get yourself a seat on April 9th from 1 to 2 p.m. Eastern or April 17th from 11 a.m. to 12 p.m. Eastern. Again, these are going to be the exact same sessions. You can come to one.
or the other are both if you're feeling it, but it is going to also give you insight on how our virtual book club is going to look and feel. This will be the only public virtual book club offering we have because then we are going to start making this a service offering for leaders and teams. And it is one of the most nominally priced things that we offer by the way. So.
come to this. We're going to start opening it up to our clients and teams. But if you're curious about how a virtual book club could look or feel for your team, come try it for free with purchase of the book on April 9th or April 17th. I am so excited for where we are on this journey together. I know that this is just the beginning of something very great. And I know if you're
that you resonate with this message because you wouldn't have stayed listening this long. And I also know that you believe that you have the capacity to share and be and feel this message. So please join me in sharing it. In the book, we talk about visionaries and missionaries, and we talk about how missionaries are there to help carry out the visionary's vision. And let me tell you, you are the visionary and the missionary, okay?
You have a vision inside of you that needs to be activated. And I'm here to make that activation happen. I cannot wait to see you on either April 9th or April 17th. And you know what I'm going to say. Keep failing, keep improving because this world needs that very special it that only you can bring. I'll see you next time.