Podcast Rec: Something You Should Know

 

I love listening to podcasts while I’m doing routine, potentially mundane things like cleaning, getting ready in the morning, waiting for the bus. It’s a great opportunity to exercise my brain while I’m doing tasks that don’t require the extra computational cycles. I’m curious about the world around me and always wanting to learn something new and “Something You Should Know” does a great job of presenting information in an engaging way. It’s one of my favorites for listening to first thing in the morning as I get ready for work.

So today I listened to not just 1 but 3 episodes that really piqued my interest, mostly around the theme of trust, which is a topic I’ve been thinking a lot about recently. From needing to become more trusting on a 1-on-1 level and getting to know our neighbors again, to the role of trust at a larger global level. And how at the end of the day, all business comes down to trust -not only establishing trust with your customers, but also between employees and employees.

088 What’s Wrong with Boys? & How Smart Companies Treat Their Workers

OK so feminism is another one of my “hot topics”, but I am strongly against gangin up on men as a retaliation. We shouldn’t bring the underprivelaged up, by bringing white men down. That’s just more sexism. Men also suffer negatively due to gender biases. A great example is the current structure of the American primary education system. So let’s all bring awareness to ALL KINDS of biases and work towards designing better systems that serve more people.

Which segues nicely back to the trust topic because you can’t design a system of rules that serve a wide variety of people. Trust is essential in administering in any system. I love this quote in response to the “it’s not personal, it’s just business” line:

“100% of employees are people, 100% of customers are people, meaning it’s the most personal thing in the world” and the irony is the leaders who take care of their people will always outperform the competition. ALWAYS”
Another quote I absolutely loved from this episode:
Leadership is not about being IN charge. Leadership is about taking care of people IN YOUR CHARGE.

Only recently have I started smashing to bits the traditional and heavily biased concept of a “leader” that is valued in American business and society. I always saw my attributes of never taking credit, always accepting blame humbly, and coming from a mindset of service to others as the reasons why I am not and will never be a “leader”. It’s amazing to now start to see how being empathatic, giving credit away, and taking responsibility are actually the characteristics of some of the best leaders. So now I need to work on Courage. Risk. Humiliation. And like this episode points out – I won’t find this alone – I need people in my corner building me up.

Oh and hey – turns out that whole thing about it using more energy to turn a light/off and on when you leave the room for a minute is a total myth. Which totally ruins my excuse for my bad habit of turning off lights when I leave a room. I guess I’ll have to write an apology to my ex.

074 How to Heal Emotional Injury & How Trust Works

In addition to the trust topic, they also talk about mental health care and how we need to treat it more like physical health – both in prevention and healing. Another topic that I’m particularly passionate about (*cringe* passionate is so over-used, but it’s what I’ve got right now). We need to start talking more about mental health and being pro-active. Although, what remains murky to me – and probably a lot of people is where that line between not ignoring/suppressing emotional pain and talking and feeling it then crosses over into dwelling. That’s not a criticism of this episode, more a general observation after consuming a lot of this type of content.

Oh and hey – then you learn neat stuff like not using metal grill brushes to clean your grill because umm metal brush hairs are kind of a bummer if they get into your digestive system.

092 Simple Strategies to Be Much Healthier & How to Be Happy At Work Even if You Hate Your Job

This episode really spoke to me, not because I’m unhappy at my new, shiny job, but because I’ve gone through the process of having a jerk boss and going through the moment of realization of “Hey man, that’s YOU, not me” and going from reactive to responsive. And all the other steps described of trying to change/improve my environment until finally getting to the point where you I needed to make the call about walking away from an environment that I couldn’t change, but that was changing me.