Browse recordings of past virtual events, workshops, and webinars anytime. You’ll find topics for leaders of all levels sharing practical systems that you can immediately apply in your organization.
Stepping away from day-to-day tasks for a team retreat allows employees to recharge, gain fresh perspectives, and foster deeper connections. This break from routine encourages creative thinking and collaboration, and it ultimately leads to more effective teams and stronger culture.
KNow Research’s annual offsites are crucial gatherings that unite their distributed team to collaborate on important team initiatives. These offsites provide the team with face-to-face time where they deepen relationships to enhance year-round collaboration. It also grants them dedicated time for solving problems, refining processes, and brainstorming new tools.
Katrina Noelle, President at KNow Research, will help us explore how team retreats and offsites help strengthen both employees’ work and overall team culture, and she’ll share some of KNow Research’s best practices. Then, we’ll open up the floor for a large group conversation where you can share your experience, and learn from other Small Giants.
Storytelling is your organization’s currency. This ancient art form has the power to literally move your audience to give, support and share the important work you do with the world. If you don’t know where to find your best stories, this session is your roadmap! Pulling from her world as a professional counselor and filmmaker, Kristin Sukraw, Chief Storytelling Officer at StoryFind, will walk you through how to craft a purposeful storyteller list, conduct insightful discovery interviews and ultimately how to choose the best storyteller for your next initiative.
Customer service extends far beyond the realm of employees who directly interact with customers. It is a collective responsibility that involves every team member, regardless of their position. Every employee contributes to the overall customer experience.
With the help of Gallie Munoz, Customer Experience Supervisor at ClearVision Optical, we’ll explore the interconnected roles all employees play in shaping the customer journey. We’ll also dig into strategies to help every teammate recognize their impact.
Gallie will share ClearVision’s best practices for fostering a customer-centric culture. Then, we’ll open up the floor for a large group conversation. Join us for a collaborative dialogue where you can share your experience, and learn from other Small Giants.
Paul Spiegelman
Small Giants Community
Bo Burlingham
Small Giants Community
It’s hard to believe that it has been 15 years since Bo and Paul started the Small Giants Community! Like many of us, Paul was inspired by Bo’s book and that started a series of conversations, leading to them bringing purpose-driven leaders together as a Community.
Years later, the principles Bo wrote about in his book are stronger than ever, and we’ve seen the focus on culture and values become company differentiators. All of us continue to benefit from relationships and learnings with like-hearted leaders.
Join us as Paul and Bo take a walk down memory lane, share stories, challenges and what’s changed over the last 15 years. What happened to the original companies Bo wrote about? How has the Community evolved? Are there newer common characteristics of Small Giants companies? What are Bo and Paul up to now? Bring your questions for a genuine and touching fireside chat!
Paul Spiegelman
Small Giants Community
Bo Burlingham
Small Giants Community
Rane Lallier
VP of Client Experience
Venturity Financial Partners
When the leadership team at Venturity Financial Partners realized they were losing clients at an alarming rate, they knew a new approach was needed. With thoughtful and intentional planning, this CXO and accounting services firm created a dedicated Client Experience work group to revitalize how they worked with clients externally and managed them internally. Fast forward to today, Venturity has a net promoter score of 91 among their clients, when most accounting firms have a score of 40!
Tune in to learn from Deanna Walker, the CEO, and Rane Lallier, the VP of Client Experience, and dig into how they’ve prioritized and executed on the goal of improving their clients’ life cycle experience, and as a result, reinforcing the company’s core values.
Rane Lallier
VP of Client Experience
Venturity Financial Partners
Stephen Shedletzky – or “Shed” to his friends – has focused his career on helping leaders listen to and nurture the voices of others — to foster an environment where people feel it is both psychologically safe and worth it to speak up. In this session, we will uncover how creating such an environment is the responsibility and the advantage of leaders at every level who want to be great at leading and who want to create a better version of humanity while they do it. The bottom line, for everyone, is that organizations with speak-up cultures are safer, more innovative, more engaged, and better-performing than their peers.
A sought-after speaker, coach, and leadership advisor, Shed has led hundreds of keynote presentations, workshops, and leadership development programs around the world. As a thought leader on psychological safety in the workplace, he works with leaders in all industries where human beings work.
In this session we will:
– Unpack the two main questions of a speak-up culture: Is it safe? Is it worth it?
– Explore why speak-up cultures are good for people and good for business
– Learn tactical and proven methods to listen to your people and cultivate a feedback rich, speak-up culture
– Unpack leaders’ responsibility and advantage in building a speak-up culture
Devyn Bachman
Senior Vice President at John Burns Research & Consulting
Lesley Holland
Regional Director Portfolio Management at BNY Mellon Wealth Management.
With everything that is happening at a national and local community level, we have been hearing that Small Giants are keenly observing the economic climate and are prioritizing how to ensure their businesses are in a good position for the new year.
Join us for an important virtual conversation with two leaders who have their pulse on the current state of the economy and what’s trending ahead — Devyn Bachman, Senior Vice President at John Burns Research & Consulting, and Lesley Holland, Regional Director Portfolio Management at BNY Mellon Wealth Management.
Takeaways include:
Devyn Bachman
Senior Vice President at John Burns Research & Consulting
Lesley Holland
Regional Director Portfolio Management at BNY Mellon Wealth Management.
As a Small Giants company, your strong sense of purpose and culture set you apart from the competition in attractive ways. But are you communicating that to your clients, prospective employees, and other stakeholders?
Mark O’Brien, CEO of Newfangled, will provide strategy and tools for marketing your expertise effectively through digital media. By leveraging tactics that involve social media, email, and online marketing, Mark will explain how to maximize your marketing efforts to gain a wider audience and greater name recognition.
Takeaways include:
How many questions do you ask your colleagues a day? How many of those create thoughtful conversations and stronger bonds? Good leadership requires collaboration and getting input so that your whole team feels connected to what they’re doing. But that connection needs to go beyond asking the easy questions like “what do you think?” and “how are you?”. To build a strong team with deep-seated trust requires digging deeper. We need to ask better questions.
Amber Johnson, a leadership and strategy consultant and former Chief Communications Officer at the Center for Values-Driven Leadership, will facilitate this interactive virtual event. Amber will dive into the value of asking each other better questions, and how we can do so to build trust and strengthen innovation within our teams. Through exercises and discussion, Amber will help you improve your questions to build better relationships and better results.
Takeaways include:
Heidi Baumgart
COO at Skidmore Studio
Lisa Whealon
VP of People and Culture at Deli Star
The new year is the perfect time to think about fun and fresh team-building exercises to introduce to your organization. We’ll be talking to two Small Giants leaders who are passionate about making their people feel welcome, included, and understood.
Lisa Whealon, VP of People and Culture at Deli Star, will talk in detail about how her organization aims to make every new hire feel fully immersed in their team from the onset. This is done through fun, intentional experiences such as a “signing day”, a start day “happy hour”, and completing a recognition profile, just to name a few.
Once your new hires are immersed, it’s important to continue building those team bonds over time. Heidi Baumgart, COO at Skidmore Studio, will show us how to do just that by walking us through the user manual exercise. This exercise, which combines personal reflection with team development, allows individuals to flex their creativity, while also teaching each other how to best communicate and work together.
Takeaways include:
Heidi Baumgart
COO at Skidmore Studio
Lisa Whealon
VP of People and Culture at Deli Star
Jennifer Trakhtenberg, Senior Talent Leader of ClearVision Optical
Missy Light, Training & Development Facilitator of Pegasus Logistics Group
Doug Kueker, Co-Founder & Chief Learning Solutions Officer of Vivayic
You’ve gotten the talent in the door – people who are skilled, have a values alignment with your company, and are a great cultural add – but how do you keep them around? Most employees want room to grow within a company, and see that as a strong reason to stay long term. But we’re not just talking about promotions and title changes; for many Small Giants companies who have a small team or a flat structure, that’s not always possible. So, what are some other ways to help your employees grow, and give them a sense of development that they can be proud of?
Join us for our next virtual event to dig into the topic of employee development. We’ll talk to Jennifer Trakhtenberg, Senior Talent Leader of ClearVision Optical, Missy Light, Training & Development Facilitator of Pegasus Logistics Group, and Doug Kueker, Co-Founder & Chief Learning Solutions Officer of Vivayic. The panel will cover:
Jennifer Trakhtenberg, Senior Talent Leader of ClearVision Optical
Missy Light, Training & Development Facilitator of Pegasus Logistics Group
Doug Kueker, Co-Founder & Chief Learning Solutions Officer of Vivayic
Economic changes create concerns as well as opportunities for Small Giants who stay one step ahead of their competitors. Join us for a virtual conversation with John Burns, CEO and Founder of John Burns Real Estate Consulting, whose 110-person firm monitors cycles carefully for executives at some of the largest investment companies in the country. Loren Feldman, the Founder of 21 Hats and a journalist who has reported on small businesses for more than 20 years, will facilitate the discussion. As two Small Giants business leaders who have their pulse on the current economic climate, they’ll discuss how people should prepare themselves and their businesses to navigate these uncertain times, and what to expect in the months ahead. Attendees of this virtual Q&A session will learn:
Have you identified your bench of future leaders? Are they confident, emotionally-intelligent individuals who are prepared to lead? Is your organization struggling to have its values understood and practiced at every level of the organization?
In this panel discussion facilitated by Small Giants Community co-founder Paul Spiegelman, three Small Giants Leadership Academy graduates will share how the experience has impacted their leadership and organizations. These leaders will share what it’s really like to participate in the Leadership Academy and reflect on the most impactful takeaways from their year of learning.
The Small Giants Leadership Academy is a nine-month training program for emerging purpose-driven leaders to learn and grow together. With enrollment now open for the next class, this is your chance to hear from graduates and understand the program from the perspective of those who have experienced it.
Find out why one graduate called the Leadership Academy “the perfect program for an emerging leader” and learn about “the lifelong relationships with amazing people” that continue to serve graduates to this day. We’ll also answer your questions about the program, like who in your organization is the right fit and how this experience can fundamentally change the trajectory of your organization.
Jim Hume
Founder of Phire Group
When it comes to marketing and branding, many companies create internal documents touting their culture to employees (ie the classic ‘mission, vision, values’ poster), and then separately produce external messaging of what they think the outside world wants to see and hear. In reality, these are two content streams that should have little to no divergence at all.
As Small Giants Community leaders, many of you may inherently understand this, but the execution side can be easier said than done. For our next virtual event, Jim Hume, founder of Phire Group, will guide us through his company’s proven process of practical ways to bring these two worlds together and create one cohesive brand that spotlights your culture authentically.
Jim Hume
Founder of Phire Group
Paul Spiegelman
Small Giants Community Co-Founder
Steve Cadigan
Author,Workquake: Embracing the Aftershocks of COVID-19 to Create a Better Model of Working
It’s no secret that companies and employees across the globe have experienced a lot of change in the last couple of years. The pandemic has turned many of our notions about work on their heads, but it doesn’t all have to be viewed as insurmountable challenges. Here to help us navigate this new working world is Steve Cadigan.
Steve is a sought-after speaker and talent advisor, and he has worked with some of the world’s leading organizations across a span of industries. Through research and years of experience, Steve emphasizes the adaptability of organizations around their people, and finding quality, aligned talent to build the best teams possible.
Last year, Steve published his first book, Workquake: Embracing the Aftershocks of COVID-19 to Create a Better Model of Working. Rather than focusing on the persistent language that human skills will be increasingly replaced by automation and AI, Steve wants to change the conversation. In Workquake, he talks about how being human has never been more critical and how we have more agency in applying our talents than any other time in history. He dives deep into this topic, which has been accelerated by COVID-19, through case studies, stories, and his own experiences.
Join us as Small Giants Community Co-Founder, Paul Spiegelman moderates an interactive conversation with Steve Cadigan about his book, his projections for the future of work, and more.
Paul Spiegelman
Small Giants Community Co-Founder
Steve Cadigan
Author,Workquake: Embracing the Aftershocks of COVID-19 to Create a Better Model of Working
Sonia Funk is a registered Nutritional Therapist, as well as a Corporate Wellness Strategist and the owner of The Whole Avocado. She’s traveled the world as a teacher and student, and has learned a lot about wellness through her many adventures (she describes her life as “Eat Pray Love” meets “Forrest Gump”). Her work with The Whole Avocado is a culmination of over 15 years of work and research.
Taking care of your physical and mental health (and that of your employees) isn’t just good for yourself – it makes perfect business sense.
Invest in your business by investing in your employees. Attend our next virtual event with Wellness Strategist and Registered Nutritional Therapist, Sonia Funk, and learn from her the three aspects of health to incorporate into your strategy.
Sonia will present the reality of human experience, turn it into biology and timelines, and then right back into numbers, explaining the impact on your business’s bottom line. By applying an evolved perspective to problems in your company, you’ll be able to answer old questions from a new angle, and see the long-term ROI for you and your employees.
Watch this virtual event for these takeaways:
Delcie Bean
CEO of Paragus Strategic IT
Jerry Ripperger
VP of Stock Plan Services Consulting at Principal
Delcie Bean started the company that became Paragus when he was 13 years old. As Paragus has become one of the most successful, fastest-growing IT firms in the region, Delcie has increased his commitment to humanitarian causes and dedication to the community. In 2014, he created Tech Foundry, an educational nonprofit designed to address the need for a skilled IT workforce in the region by providing in-depth training for underrepresented communities. He also believes in giving back to his employees. Paragus has a unique Employee Stock Ownership Plan (ESOP) structure that puts ownership of 40% of the company in the hands of its 50-plus employees. Paragus is a Forbes Small Giant company.
As an advocate for owners and employees of growing businesses, Jerry Reipperger tours the country educating advisors on serving their business-owner clients. Currently he focuses on implementing employee stock ownership plans (ESOPs) and equity compensation plans (both long term incentive plans and employee stock purchase plans. Jerry is an industry-recognized benefits spokesperson and author with articles published in numerous trade publications. He’s also been quoted by the Associated Press, New York Times, BusinessWeek, Forbes, CNN/Money, Dow Jones, and Wall Street Journal. For more than 30 years, Jerry has been consulting with advisors and businesses on benefit programs including consumer-driven health care, health savings accounts, health reimbursement arrangements and wellness programs. Jerry has degrees in management, economics and business from the University of Northern Iowa and Drake University.
There are more than 7,000 ESOPs in the United States, covering more than 14 million employee-owners. Beyond that, there are countless more organizations that have pursued their own models for employee ownership, and when you consider the benefits on company culture and business outcomes, it’s surprising that more companies haven’t followed suit. So, is employee ownership right for your business?
Employee ownership requires a strong understanding of the company’s culture, a purpose-driven direction, and avid communication with employees, particularly when it comes to finances. Many Small Giants businesses already have these systems in place, or strive to improve upon them, making employee ownership a potential route to success.
But where to begin? Join Delcie Bean, CEO of Paragus Strategic IT, as he tells of his journey to turning Paragus into an ESOP and the insights he learned along the way. Alongside him will be Jerry Ripperger, VP of Stock Plan Services Consulting at Principal, whose in-depth knowledge on the subject from an overhead perspective ranges from government influence to client experience.
During this one-hour panel discussion, you’ll learn:
Delcie Bean
CEO of Paragus Strategic IT
Jerry Ripperger
VP of Stock Plan Services Consulting at Principal
Beth Rivera
Head of the People Team at UncommonGoods
Khalilah “KO” Olokunola
VP of Human Resources for TRU Colors Brewing
Beth Rivera: Beth Rivera is the Head of the People Team at UncommonGoods, an eCommerce company that offers remarkable designs by independent makers, with a positive impact on both people and our planet, since early 2018. Prior to joining UncommonGoods, Beth spent over 20 years at UBM, a global B2B events company, in various roles in HR (such as Divisional Head of HR, Learning and Organizational Development), starting her career at UBM and some of its’ subsidiaries since graduating from the University at Albany. Beth is a native New Yorker, born, raised, and still living in Queens, NY.
KO, Khalilah Olokunola: KO is VP of Human Resources for TRU Colors Brewing, a company that hires active and rival gang members. In this position, she is the force behind defining a company culture that drives both personal and professional growth. KO is a passionate advocate for workplace diversity, inclusion, and second-chance hiring. She is an accomplished author, speaker and coach.
How could your team thrive if you were all empowered to live a full and balanced life? Employee benefits can be life-changing for your team members and dramatically improve the financial, mental and overall well-being of themselves and their families.
Small Giants believe in building an organization that takes care of employees in the totality of their lives, knowing that when your team members thrive, business will too. At a time when many companies are reexamining and revising the benefits they offer, why not create great ones that better support and care for your employees?
In this one-hour panel, hear from two visionary leaders who are on the forefront of offering employee benefits that support the ability to live balanced, fulfilled lives in and out of work: Khalilah “KO” Olokunola, Chief People Officer of TRU Colors Brewing and Beth Rivera, Head of the People Team at UncommonGoods. Each leader will share specific examples of the most impactful benefits they offer, why, and the details you should know in order to bring them to your own organization. We’ll also answer your questions throughout the panel.
Watch this virtual panel to learn:
Beth Rivera
Head of the People Team at UncommonGoods
Khalilah “KO” Olokunola
VP of Human Resources for TRU Colors Brewing
Bob Glazer
Entrepreneur, Best-Selling Author and Speaker, Founder & CEO at Acceleration Partners
JeVon McCormick
President & CEO of Scribe Media
Bob Glazer: Entrepreneur, Best-Selling Author and Speaker, Founder & CEO @ Acceleration Partners which is an international affiliate marketing company. Acceleration Partners was a Forbes SG. Bob has spoken at the summit and his colleagues have also taught in the Leadership Academy.
JeVon McCormick: He’s made millions in the stock market (even though he didn’t go to college), he was the President of a software company (even though he can’t code) and he’s currently the CEO of a publishing company (even though he can’t spell). JeVon is the President & CEO of Scribe Media – a publishing company. JeVon spoke at a previous summit.
There’s a wave of turnover coming your way – half of workers intend to look for a new job this year. Is your organization prepared to weather the turnover tsunami?
As the pandemic eases, many workers are resuming the job searches they put on pause during the pandemic, and they’re joined by droves of people who are burned out, disengaged, or simply seeking other options in the new remote landscape. We want to help you and your team prepare for the turnover that’s coming.
Watch this month’s virtual panel to learn how to:
Bob Glazer
Entrepreneur, Best-Selling Author and Speaker, Founder & CEO at Acceleration Partners
JeVon McCormick
President & CEO of Scribe Media
Jes Osrow
Co-Founder of The Rise Journey – HR, DEI, and Org Development Consulting & Head of Learning and Development at Quartet Health
MicheleLewis Watts, Ph.D.
Chief Equity Officer at Woods & Watts Effect & Director and Assistant Professor of Sport Management at Madonna University
Sommer Woods
Chief Inclusion Officer at Woods & Watts
In a truly equitable and inclusive workplace, people of all backgrounds and identities feel valued and respected and have an equal opportunity to be successful. Organizations that cultivate an inclusive culture often earn deeper trust and loyalty from team members and enjoy more innovation and increased revenue growth. But what strategies actually work when it comes to racial equity in the workplace?
In this one-hour roundtable, we covered your most pressing challenges and questions around race and equity at work, including:
Jes Osrow
Co-Founder of The Rise Journey – HR, DEI, and Org Development Consulting & Head of Learning and Development at Quartet Health
MicheleLewis Watts, Ph.D.
Chief Equity Officer at Woods & Watts Effect & Director and Assistant Professor of Sport Management at Madonna University
Sommer Woods
Chief Inclusion Officer at Woods & Watts
In this fireside chat, Jack Stack, father of the Great Game of Business and economist, speaks to the financial state of small businesses in America a year after the COVID-19 pandemic began. Facilitated by Small Giants Community co-founder Paul Spiegelman, this conversation helps leaders know what they can expect economically over the next 12 months, how to prepare, and how to get their whole team involved in helping businesses thrive.
With companies facing the reality of ongoing virtual work, leaders are stepping up to the challenge of recruiting, hiring, and onboarding employees they’ve never met. In this roundtable, we facilitated a discussion among purpose-driven leaders about the best practical tips for hiring and onboarding employees in a virtual work world.
Coming off the heels of a year of uncertainty, setting goals and a vision for the future is more important than ever. In this roundtable discussion, we facilitated a conversation with Small Giants leaders who are experts in organizational, individual, and personal goal setting. We discussed:
Worried about the mental health of your employees? Struggling to genuinely connect with your team members while they work from home? Not sure how to have tough conversations with your team about the impact of current events?
In the midst of a global pandemic, nationwide protests for racial justice, multiple wildfires, economic uncertainty, and social isolation, there’s another crisis looming in the near future: our mental health. The events of this year are taking a toll on our mental health, and many business leaders are wondering how to support mental health in the workplace — especially with so many people working from home.
We opened up our Zoom room and brought leaders together for an informal, open roundtable discussion to share strategies for supporting employee mental health and advice for how to approach this topic with compassion, honesty, and openness.
We discussed:
Click to view notes from the roundtable.
Company culture is a squishy idea and notoriously tough to formalize. Carefully defining your culture is work, often hard work. Yet doing this work makes hundreds of future decisions much easier.
In this interactive workshop, Carl Erickson, founder and chairman of Atomic Object, shared his culture framework that’s eighteen years in the making, using Atomic’s culture at each level in the framework to illustrate each element.
During this interactive session, Isaac Presley, President and CEO of Cordant Wealth Partners, answered participants’ financial planning questions and taught them about setting financial goals, managing cash flow, 401(k) investing, and how to make the most of your company stock.
We covered:
You can also invite Isaac to do a presentation like this for your entire team by reaching out to isaac@cordantwealth.com.
Amber Johnson, Ph.D.
Center for Values Driven Leadership
Jim Ludema, Ph.D.
Center for Values Driven Leadership
What does science have to say about leading high-performing teams? What are the driving behaviors and how can you encourage them within your own organization? In this interactive workshop, Amber Johnson, Ph.D., and Jim Ludema, Ph.D. brought evidence-based insights for leading high performing teams and shared strategies for implementing them with your team.
We covered:
Amber Johnson, Ph.D.
Center for Values Driven Leadership
Jim Ludema, Ph.D.
Center for Values Driven Leadership
Are you a parent with school-aged children at home? Or a leader with team members who have young children at home? Chances are you’re pretty stressed out right now — managing work and home life just got a whole lot harder, and with many schools switching to partial or fully remote learning, it’s a long road ahead.
We rolled out the welcome mat to our Zoom room and brought working parents and leaders together for a casual, open roundtable discussion to share strategies for managing work and family stress, supporting team members with children, and how to approach homeschooling as a working parent.
With so many (awesome!) parents in the Small Giants Community — leaders, emerging leaders, and employees alike — we want to do our part to tackle this challenge as a community. This was an idea-sharing session and open dialogue around your greatest challenges, strategies that are working for you, and how you think employers can support team members through this.
Torey Carter-Conneen
AILA
Leslie DeMent
Tailwind
Have you identified your bench of future leaders? Are they confident, emotionally-intelligent individuals who are prepared to lead? Is your organization struggling to have its values understood and practiced at every level of the organization?
In this panel discussion facilitated by Small Giants Community co-founder Paul Spiegelman, two Small Giants Leadership Academy graduates shared how the experience has impacted their leadership and organizations.
Torey Carter-Conneen
AILA
Leslie DeMent
Tailwind
Chris McKee
Venturity
Mackey McNeill
Mackey Advisors
Wayne Titus
AMDG Services
In this panel discussion, financial experts shared insights and tools to help you navigate the current economy, understand loan regulations and plan for the future — all through the lens of purpose-driven leadership. We’ll covered:
Chris McKee
Venturity
Mackey McNeill
Mackey Advisors
Wayne Titus
AMDG Services
In times of change, the most effective leaders are those who create positivity and psychological safety for their team members. Watch the recording of this virtual workshop with Zach Mercurio, Ph.D., to learn how to identify and focus on the three most important aspects of change leadership: the purposeful, the positive, and the possible and put it into action at your organization.
Participants in this virtual workshop:
One of the best ways to instill your company’s values into its culture is to reward employees when they act in alignment with your company’s values.
In the strongest company cultures, core values aren’t just words on the wall — they’re the steadfast principles that guide everything from strategy to hiring and customer service. Employees at every level know them, connect with them, use them in their everyday language, and base decisions around them.
In this workshop, attendees learned:
Get calm and present with this virtual guided meditation session led by Small Giants leader Rob Dubé. In this session, Rob leads the group through a 10-minute guided meditation and helps us all examine six simple habits to help us thrive in uncertain times.
When teams have trust and psychological safety, they take the kind of social risks that transform organizations.
Especially in times of crisis, it’s important to know how to forge meaningful connections with your team members and offer the trust and support they need. Forbes calls Chad Littlefield, co-founder and Chief Experience Officer of We and Me, Inc., a “global expert on asking questions that build trust and connection in teams.” In this free, virtual workshop, leaders and entrepreneurs will connect, share current experiences and work together to learn how to adapt.
By the end of the workshop, attendees walked away with two concrete, actionable tools for amplifying connection, belonging, and trust in your own organization during these challenging times.
We covered:
• Research and practical experience around building workplace relationships
• How to break down communication barriers, in-person and virtually
• Tools and strategies for sparking genuine connection and deeper conversation
In response to the COVID-19 pandemic, teams across the country suddenly find themselves in virtual work situations. This can pose a challenge to culture-focused companies that want to care for their employees. The good news: the principles of a positive culture translate to sustainable virtual environments, too — and they offer exciting new ways to engage team members and do great work. In this workshop, we heard from Small Giants leader and CEO of Big Cartel, Anna Brozek, about how their entirely virtual team stays connected, productive, and culturally aligned.
We covered:
• Building a positive culture with virtual teams
• The best tools to use to communicate with virtual and local employees
• Fun ways to surprise and engage employees from afar
Learn how to create an employee onboarding program that sets new team members up for success and ensures you retain top talent. From the first handshake to the six-month mark, onboarding is an involved, dynamic process that demands time, attention, and resources.
In this workshop led by Connor Lynch of Rescue Agency, attendees learned how to create an employee onboarding program that sets new team members up for success and ensures you retain top talent.
We covered:
Small Giants leaders know that hiring the wrong person is costly, time-consuming, and can do serious cultural damage. But even with the best intentions, without a strong hiring process, wrong hires can still sneak in.
In this Fishbowl (a.k.a. webinar!) we’ll learn from Vivian Lee, SVP of People Innovation at Arkadium about their process for hiring top candidates quickly and ensuring they’re culturally aligned.
Arkadium’s interview process is thoughtful and strategic: all hiring managers follow an interview guide that is anchored in the position’s scorecard and defines what success in the role looks like. In this Fishbowl, you’ll learn about:
Michael Whelchel
Big Path Capital
Zane Adams
Buchi
In this month’s Fishbowl (a.k.a. webinar!) attendees learned from Michael Whelchel of Big Path Capital and Zane Adams of Buchi about how purpose-driven leaders can raise new capital or sell majority or minority parts of their businesses while protecting the company’s mission above all else. Tune into the recording to learn:
Michael Whelchel
Big Path Capital
Zane Adams
Buchi
Positive workplaces don’t happen by accident. Purpose-driven leaders know that behind the best company cultures, you’ll find leaders who put in consistent, intentional hard work to build this aspect of their organization.
But, what happens to the culture if you and your employees don’t see each other every day? What happens to the camaraderie and trust that make positive, successful companies? How do you build and maintain your culture with a virtual or distributed team?
In this webinar, attendees learned from 2019 Forbes Small Giants leader Behfar Jahanshahi on how InterWorks’ culture grew and flourished as its team became a distributed workforce.
He covered:
Learn how this agency became a ROWE – a Results Only Work Environment – and how this approach creates a culture of autonomy, flexibility, and results.
In a ROWE, meetings are optional and employees work when and where they’re most productive. Results and quality become the key drivers of success — resulting in higher employee engagement, more quality work, and better overall efficiency within your business. In this Fishbowl (a.k.a. webinar!) attendees heard from Ashton Adair, Director of People and Engagement at Mojo Media Labs about how Mojo became a ROWE and the impact this system has had on the business, its operations, and employees’ lives. We learned:
One in five US adults experiences a mental illness in a given year — and even more experience the struggles through a friend or family member. Despite its prevalence in our lives, the stigma associated with mental illness often prevents open discussion about it. Ultimately, this stigma delays diagnosis and treatment — and the conversation can be even harder to have in the workplace.
Opening the dialogue and creating a safe and accepting environment to talk about mental health is just another way purpose-driven leaders can care for employees in the totality of their lives, as well as, support them to do their best work.
In this Fishbowl, Meg Switala and Karen Nelson of TiER1 Performance shared their process for leveraging the workplace for starting the conversation about mental health. Attendees learned about their experience following this journey at TiER1 and the positive impact it has had on their employees’ lives and their company culture.
From this Fishbowl, attendees learned:
But opening the books is only the beginning. In order to get the most out of being a financially transparent company, you have to help your employees become financially literate and understand the stories behind the numbers.
For example: Do your employees know how much revenue it takes for the business to make $1 in profit?
In this webinar, Steve Baker, Vice President at the Great Game of Business, walked us through exercises you can use with your team to teach basic financial literacy and how to use that knowledge to make better business and personal decisions.
Check out the recording of this interactive fishbowl (a.k.a webinar!) with Small Giants leader and mindfulness expert Rob Dube. Rob is the author and founder of donothing: the most rewarding leadership challenge you will ever take.
In this Fishbowl, attendees learned how meditation will help you become a more mindful leader and person by:
What’s the secret to attracting and retaining millennial employees? It’s simpler than you might think — today’s workforce values an employer that cares for them in the totality of their lives. It sounds simple, but what does that approach look like in practice? In this Fishbowl, Chris Stakich, CEO of Rustic Pathways, will share the six-prong framework his company uses to attract, develop, and retain a workforce of more than 200 millennials across the globe. Based on Tony Robbins’ Six Core Human Needs, Rustic Pathways has cracked the code for engaging millennials.
Attendees learned how to create an environment where team members:
Key Takeaways:
Chip Conley
Joie de Vivre Hospitality
In this Fishbowl, we heard from Chip Conley, the founder and former CEO of America’s Joie de Vivre Hospitality and the Strategic Advisor for Hospitality and Leadership at Airbnb. Conley explained how applying psychology to understand his stakeholders’ motivations helped him:
Chip Conley
Joie de Vivre Hospitality
Michael Whelchel
Big Path Capital
Matt O’Hayer
Vital Farms
There comes a point in time, when all Founders and CEOs must exit their business. One opportunity Small Giants may consider is searching for liquidity options that won’t jeopardize their company’s core purpose. The introduction of outside capital, whether a minority or majority liquidity, represents a vulnerable decision point that can have permanent effects on the mission, future, and legacy of a company. In this fishbowl discussion, Michael Whelchel, Co-Founder & Managing Partner of Big Path Capital, and Matt O’Hayer, Founder & CEO of Vital Farms, highlighted exit and liquidity options for Small Giants, with a special focus on how to preserve mission through your company’s most important financial transactions.
Key Takeaways:
Attendees leanred about the following exit & liquidity options with a special focus on preserving purpose & values. The webinar addressed these questions:
Michael Whelchel
Big Path Capital
Matt O’Hayer
Vital Farms
Deciding when an employee should receive a promotion or a raise can be difficult, especially when deciding how much. In this fishbowl, Karen Clark Cole, CEO & Founder of Blink UX, and Brigitt Rains, Director of Operations, shared how they developed an internal system to make career trajectory, promotions, and asking for raises transparent and easy in their organization.
Key Takeaways:
One key attribute that differentiates a Small Giant from other businesses is the devotion given to employee development. We know that when people feel valued in their workplace, they work harder. How much harder? 6 times, to be exact. Can you imagine walking in on Monday morning to the buzz of folks working hard and loving it because their Strengths are at work? Motivated employees results in motivated profits…and there’s nothing wrong with motivated profits.
Heidi Convery, a Gallup Certified Strengths Coach and founder of Flourish LLC, introduced attendees to the productivity and profitability effects of building a Strengths based organization.
Key Takeaways
Leaders were encouraged to take the Top 5 Clifton Strengths Assessment before the fishbowl.
Small Giants understand that culture dramatically drives and impacts profit. As the width of your team’s smiles expands, so does your bottom-line. In this energized fishbowl, Kris Boesch, CEO and Founder of Choose People, weaves valuable content, enlightening stories and tangible no-cost ways to help you improve the impact of your culture on your bottom-line. Participants were able to take her doable best practices and lessons learned and implement them within their organizations to see immediate results.
Key Takeaways Include:
Scott Moorehead
Culture of Good
Ryan McCarty
Culture of Good
Building culture in your company is a crucial component to being a Small Giant. What differentiates a Small Giant from others is their focus to embed culture into their business strategy. Culture of Good, a company that built an emotional operating system, teaches for-profit companies how to operate their business with the soul of a non-profit. How do we do this? By creating community programming that gets employees excited and passionate about their work. In this fishbowl, attendees learned from Culture of Good Co-founders Scott Moorehead and Ryan McCarty, on how to increase employee engagement and get better team results by letting your employees bring their souls to work.
Key Takeaways
Scott Moorehead
Culture of Good
Ryan McCarty
Culture of Good
In this fishbowl, attendees learned from The Purpose Institute’s co-founder and Chief Purposologist, Haley Rushing, on how to bring the power of your organization’s purpose to life in a systematic, meaningful and sustainable way. She covered a wide range of activation areas including how to use your purpose to drive recruitment and talent management, how to create purpose-driven customer experiences, how to use it as a springboard for innovation, how it can intersect and amplify CSR efforts and, most importantly, how to establish purpose-driven metrics of success.
In this fishbowl, attendees learned the following key takeaways:
Amy Whipple
Purple Squirrel Advisors
Carrie Schochet
Purple Squirrel Advisors
Amy Whipple and Carrie Schochet of Purple Squirrel Advisors specialize in customized recruiting in the accounting, finance, human resources and operations functions for companies across industries and ranging from 8 million to 700 million in revenue. In this interactive Fishbowl, attendees learned about the aspects of recruiting and hiring that Amy and Carrie have identified as crucial to bringing exceptional candidates on board, including how to write comprehensive job descriptions, identifying and avoiding common discrepancies when writing job descriptions, and mastering behavioral interviewing.
In this Fishbowl, attendees learned the following key takeaways:
Amy Whipple
Purple Squirrel Advisors
Carrie Schochet
Purple Squirrel Advisors
How do you tell a top-performing employee something that they don’t want to hear? How do you take in feedback from your employees, without coming across as defensive? Giving and receiving feedback well are two of the most-valued – yet difficult to master – skills for any leader. Claire Lew, , has spent her working life studying 15,000+ leaders and employees in 25 countries to develop a methodology for The Feedback Loop: How to Give & Receive Feedback Well. After over three years of research across hundreds of companies, Claire will share a playbook for how the most effective leaders give and receive feedback.
Key takeaways:
Cultivating meaningful relationships with customers is part of being a Small Giant. However, what separates a Small Giant from others, is their ability to embed customer service into their culture. imageOne, a document lifecycle management company, has created a culture of customer service that has generated millions in revenue. In this fishbowl, you will learn from imageOne Co-founder, Joel Pearlman, on how to systematize and quantify customer service in your organization:
Key Takeaways
In this fishbowl discussion, Liz Zavodsky, Director of Membership & Engagement at Northwest Earth Institute, shared examples of meaningful community engagement and how this impacts employee engagement.
Key Takeaways:
In 2014, Pegasus Logistics faced a crisis – employees were leaving, the culture was decimating, and sales were at a stall. So, when a group of dedicated longtime employees formed a “coup” and took to the leadership team about what needed to change: investing in employee development was one of the first on the agenda. Now, 3 years later, Pegasus’ sales and culture are thriving, including higher employee engagement levels, productivity, and overall retention. Candice Gouge, Talent and Culture Cultivator, at Pegasus Logistics discussed the employee development tools she designed and implemented to create a culture of leaders including Individual Development Plans and multi-level leadership tracks for all employees.
Key Takeaways
Mills Snell
Pendleton Street Advisors
Matt Morley
Pendleton Street Advisors
In this fishbowl, Mills Snell and Matt Morley from Pendleton Street Advisors, shared what to measure when tracking investment in company culture and what trends to look for over time.
Key Takeaways:
Mills Snell
Pendleton Street Advisors
Matt Morley
Pendleton Street Advisors
Paul Spiegelman
Small Giants Community
Kris Maynard
Essential Ingredients
Jill Nelson
Ruby Receptionists
In this panel discussion, attendees heard two values-driven leaders share their succession stories: Kris Maynard of Essential Ingredients will share how he implemented an employee stock ownership plan (ESOP) and Jill Nelson of Ruby Receptionists will share how she sold her majority share to a culturally-conscious and responsible venture capitalist firm.
Key Takeaways
Paul Spiegelman
Small Giants Community
Kris Maynard
Essential Ingredients
Jill Nelson
Ruby Receptionists
A powerful mindset is only one aspect of good leadership. Leaders also need to infuse that mindset into their teams and culture. Research in human physiology is revealing that when the heart and brain are working together we enter a coherent state and our frame of mind shifts. We increase cognitive function, increase creativity, increase decision-making abilities, and decrease cortisol (the stress hormone). How you show up physiologically as a leader matters more than you think. Interestingly, when we change our physiological state, we also influence the physiological state of the people we interact with. As teams enter physiologically coherent states together they are more authentic, feel more supported, are more productive, and more innovative. Attendees joined Tyler Mongan from Heart Lab as we explored human physiology, coherent leadership and how your physiology impacts your company.
Key Takeaways
Values-driven leadership is something we all strive for as Small Giants leaders. But as Chris Hutchinson has discovered through his work with leaders and teams, it is not easy to get the right level of engagement from our teams. There really can be “too much of a good thing” when it comes to values-driven leadership. Through a short pre- questionnaire, participants will begin to evaluate how their leadership style is impacting employee engagement and positive conflict. During the interactive Leadership Fishbowl, Chris shared practical tools to help leaders generate positive conflict and employee participation.
Shawn Busse
Kinesis
We all know that hiring for culture is key. But in order to attract the right talent, your brand has to accurately communicate your company culture. In this day and age of transparency and access to information, everything is interrelated: for example, if you’ve got a great customer-centric website, but no talk of employees, you’re dramatically limiting your candidate pool. Similarly, if you’ve got a great culture, but a weak external brand (bad website, limited social media, poor community engagement) you’ll miss out on great talent looking for something special.
In this interactive workshop, Shawn showed attendees how to identify shortfalls in their brand communications, bringing them closer to delivering a consistent message that accurately conveys your company culture.
Shawn Busse
Kinesis
Brad Herrmann
Text-Em-All
Hai Nguyen
Text-Em-All
Brad Herrmann
Text-Em-All
Hai Nguyen
Text-Em-All
At Chief Outsiders, Tom & Art believe that culture is their primary competitive advantage. It is what allows them to attract and retain the best talent who create the most value for their clients. Their approach to hiring for culture is rooted in their core values. Join Tom McCrary, Managing Partner, and Art Saxby, CEO and Founder for a conversation about their process for vetting values in the hiring process.
Sunny Bonnell
Motto
Ashleigh Hansberger
Motto
Sunny Bonnell
Motto
Ashleigh Hansberger
Motto
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