Adam Torres and LaVonna Roth discuss culture.
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Show Notes:
Organizations often focus on improving culture. In this episode, Adam Torres and LaVonna Roth, Founder, Keynote Speaker & Chief Illuminator at Ignite Your S.H.I.N.E., explore what it takes to improve culture in the workplace.
About LaVonna Roth
LaVonna Roth is the creator of Ignite Your S.H.I.N.E.®, an organization that is making an impact in education and corporate settings throughout the United States, particularly amongst women. Previously a teacher for 10 years, Roth used to lack the confidence necessary to speak in front of others. When she was asked to train other employees in her school district, she says her brain screamed “no,” but she verbally said “yes” anyway. From there, she became a consultant and planted the seeds for Ignite Your S.H.I.N.E.® She wanted to help support others to help them gain the confidence that she lacked for so long.
Tapping into her education background, LaVonna likes to talk to students about confidence. She views confidence as a huge factor in the success that people will have, not just in school, but in their careers as well. She wants people to look into other positive traits while acknowledging their own strengths.
About Ignite Your S.H.I.N.E.
Ignite Your S.H.I.N.E.®, a boutique consulting firm that equips organizations with a framework and the resources to embody a Human-Focused Culture.
A Human-Focused Culture puts those doing the work at the heart of what organizations do and the impact they strive to make.
They help you create a Human-Focused Culture by harnessing the S.H.I.N.E. Framework, increasing psychological safety, and building a strong foundation based on the brain sciences.
Full Unedited Transcript
Hey, I’d like to welcome you to another episode of Mission Matters. My name is Adam Torres, and if you’d like to apply to be a guest on the show, just head on over to missionmatters. com and click on be our guest to apply. All right, so today my guest is LaVonna Roth, and she is the founder, keynote speaker, and chief illuminator over at Ignite Your Shine.
LaVonna, welcome to the show. Thank you for having me, Adam. And thank you for all that you do. we, we got a lot to talk about today. So today we’re going to talk about creating a human focused culture and to get us kicked off here. Levana, we’ll start with our mission matters minute. So Levana at mission matters, our goal and our aim is to amplify stories for entrepreneurs, executives, and experts.
That’s our mission. Levana, what mission matters to you? What matters to me is a lot around how we look at the human and understand the, all the things that come with that. And as I have had experience, and I think a lot of other people probably have, worked in a very toxic environment where I was screamed at and cussed out.
The next minute being hugged and thankful that I was with them and riding some of those ways, those highs and lows at times, and also having other experiences of where I’ve been uplifted and treated so wonderfully and really want to support where I am working and their mission and their goals. Just going through all of that made me realize we have a choice in how we treat people.
And so creating a human. And going back to, again, that choice, that is what my mission is, and particularly around women and women in leadership and how we are sometimes perceived or stereotyped to come with it. So how do we uplift women at the same time while we’re creating a human focused culture so that they are seen in leadership roles?
Hmm. That’s amazing. First thing first, LaVonna, , how did you come up with this name, Ignite Your Shine? I love the name, by the way. Ignite. Ignite. Thank you. Thank you. So it was originally the word smart because I am a former teacher and I was thinking, okay, so we’re going to talk about and break down the barriers because I just love to push, push thinking, but not thinking, but to really dive in.
Like, when we say this, what does this mean? And we do it this way. Why are we doing it that way? And the curiosity. So I had a smart because I was going to go after an education. How we defined smart is a phenomenal putting our students into a box. That box is reading, writing, math and science, and we believe every person is gifted.
The question is how not just with our education system has been set up. So somebody said to me one day. LaVonna, you’ll never change the definition of smart. Now, I’ll be honest, Adam, my personality was like, watch me, you know but then Self doubt that love to creep in and I thought what if they’re right?
And so I thought about it more and I realized it’s not just about smart It’s like really how does like how do we build confidence? How do we get somebody to in other words shine popped in my head and I went Yes, how do they shine? And I knew I wanted an acronym of something that could be used as a framework to guide people through different components.
And that’s when it hit me that sign, sign is the fit. This is the way to go. And so it, it became the name. Amazing. And you mentioned former teacher. So going from teacher to entrepreneur, what was that like? A ride and experience as it is for all of us, by the way, but I’m just interested in your experience.
So it’s all of us go through it. So, so how’s that transition? Like, what does that look like? Well, it wasn’t intentional. I’ll say it that way. I I don’t know. What’s the teacher for 10 years and then I had a leadership degree was getting ready to step into leadership in the school system when I had a chance to step out and someone had offered me and it was a sales position.
And at the time I was like, sales, you know, oily. Yuck. Like, no, don’t want anything to do with that. But I was talking to somebody in the district and they said, you know, live on it. If you become an administrator and then you leave and you try to come back, you will come back as a teacher, but you will be blacklisted to not be the administrator because you already left us once.
And I was like, what? And so, but okay. I’m going to jump. So I did jump and I ended up doing the sales position and I had a blast because for me it’s all about relationships and what does the person want and how do we have what they want or how do we fit that or are we not the right fit? And I went, I was like, I went right out of the gates and I was number one, number two in sales every month.
It was an eight month. They moved me up to Regional Manager of the Southeast, which I did not want. But I ended up doing it because they had come to me after a month later and said, LaVonna, we really want you to do this. We’ve been interviewing and we want you to be the person. So, I did it, but what I found was that I loved the parts about stretching people.
Then a retreat with somebody else, and they went all about those data and things, which is super important. There’s a role for that, but I was the one doing, you know, things like everybody up. We’re gonna do this, the stretch, and then you just stretch further and just doing different mindset things. And there’s a lot of at the time.
I didn’t really realize it’s also the motivational aspect. So, combining all of it. And what ended up happening is I had people coming up to me and saying, you have no idea how badly I needed that. And I was like, like, holy cow. Like. Yeah. Okay, this is interesting. And then I’ll fast forward. I had a headhunter.
When I got home from that retreat, a headhunter called me and said, got your name from the school district. We have a company who’s looking for someone for consulting. So I did, but that one was a month and a half into it. All of marketing was laid off. And three months later, I joined the layoff crowd.
So that works for the toxic environment that I already talked about. And I came home one day after four months and honestly crying a lot because to be screened. And no one in there. As a matter of fact, there’s a bet on how long I’d last when I walked in and I found out it was the eighth person in 10 months in my position.
So I came home one day and I said to my husband, I said, you know, if they can run a company and treat people like that, then I can run a company. People write, and Adam had no idea what that meant, but whew, we went on a roller coaster of learning curve spins, and it’s so much fun. I would not change it, but wow, I’m just glad nobody warned me in advance.
Yeah. , I love that you share your story and thank you for that, and I like when someone is also willing to share, you know, the things that were a little bit tricky on their journey or perceived as, but I mean, all these learning moments because, You know, be listening to this and, and think to themselves, it’s easy to look at somebody as they’re succeeding and think that it’s easy, right?
But they don’t necessarily always see those other things that go into it where it’s like there’s always more to the story. It doesn’t usually work where you just open up a business and everybody runs to your door and hands you their money. That kind of doesn’t usually happen. Only a couple people I’ve seen that happen too, but that, that wasn’t my experience.
Exactly, exactly. I want to, I want to get further into this concept of culture and what you’re doing with organizations. So how do organizations that that want to, I mean, I, I don’t think anybody innately goes into this, this thing called entrepreneurship or business and says, Hey, yep, I want a terrible culture.
I don’t care. You know what I mean? I don’t think people do that. Like, so understanding that maybe there has to be a certain level of awareness. Yeah. To the that there’s a culture there in the first place or lack of which is a culture in itself, right? How should people be approaching or looking at or attacking this this idea of culture in the workplace?
Like where do you start? I think I was, you know, looking to see where things are currently. How are people Feeling what is being impacted or not impacted by the culture that is already established and set. And for me, it comes a lot with, yes, looking at what’s happening, but having honest conversations with people, too.
I feel like that’s one thing that I really appreciate and I’m thankful for that. I can usually get someone to have an honest conversation with me. But I also think it’s important to establish psychological safety and the confidentiality behind it. So , when I look at this, and a lot of times it has to do with working with leaders is, you know, how are we talking to people and how are we treating people?
And how are we, what are we prioritizing? So, For example, I know it’s easy to go to the numbers. I know it’s so easy. First of all, it’s easy to look at numbers and see what data tells us. But the second part of that, too, is that we can get hyper focused on that and forget about the people. And so we talk about putting people first.
Because we look at putting people first, and we build up confidence, which is what SHINE is all about. It’s building up the confidence. We started to create a human focused culture that really elevates the people with their strengths, gifts, skills, and talents and their passions. And now they have this drive of I’m being seen.
I’m being heard. I have, I value, not just put into this role and told what to do and when to do and how to do it and having my deadlines and you have to hit your numbers, but you didn’t hit numbers. Our goals are down. We need, you know, from, or the numbers are down from our goals. It’s. All these like processes that come into our own mind, and as we work through this, it impacts everything that we do and it impacts whether there’s innovation, whether we’re going to take a risk, whether it’s OK for me to fail.
And if we don’t put people first, then we treat this whole, I show up, I do my job and then I go home and I hate it. So therefore, I’m going to go take five more bathroom breaks. I probably should refill my Coffee at this point. You know, let me make a few phone calls. As a matter of fact, I’m just gonna start looking for other jobs, but when we shifted to putting the human 1st and putting people 1st and the process that we tend to follow, and we do this within our own company is that, you know, having celebrations like we start.
Every single meeting was a celebration and it’s a personal professional because one, it sets the tone for the meeting. That’s culture, but then two, we learn about each other and we say like one minute per person. So it’s not like tell me your whole life story for the next 10 minutes and then we’ll take turns.
It’s super fast. But the piece that I love is we really work on practicing three things. And one is that if something is said within our company or within a culture when I’m working with them, Can we use the process of approach it with empathy first? Their story’s not my story. Their journey is not my journey.
So how do we begin to step back and just say, I don’t have to agree with you. I don’t have to believe what you believe. I don’t have to, you know, buy into all the things what’s it called, the Kool-Aid, but. Can I practice empathy first? And once I have empathy, can I then stay curious based upon what is shared?
So instead of defenses going up or it’s challenging possibly even a core value, how do I stay curious with this? And with my own feelings and with what they’re saying? And then the third one we say is to seek to understand. We approach with empathy, Okay. Stay curious and seek to understand that helps a lot of the challenges of what we face.
And so that’s 1 of the pieces that come to mind with a lot of the work we do. And then the other 1 that I’ll say to that is a big core of what we do is we work with internal over external and what I mean by that is that. We get so focused on work on the external factors. The external factors, I’ve already talked about some of that with numbers and data.
But external factors can also be, on Friday we have Jean’s Day. You know, or we’re bringing coffee and donuts in on Monday. Those are all external, those are great little mini boosts that help a culture in some way, but that doesn’t get to root causes or root things that happen within a company or that people bring to a company or are An organization, but when we have an opportunity to go internal, what that means is simple things such as celebrating each other.
What is the celebration to have? But even deeper than that, we’d love to say that people don’t bring a work to home and home to work, but that is a fallacy in my mind. I believe we definitely merge the 2, but we want to the pandemic. Right? Like this, I feel like if somebody’s still walking around thinking we don’t bring this home, like work home, like it changed, maybe we had this magic ability to compartmentalize in the past, which I had, I had a job or two early on in my career where I could really compartmentalize pretty dang well, if I look back, but like post pandemic, come on, who has that skill anymore?
No, I agree. I agree wholeheartedly. But we do, we bring it back and forth. And so knowing that we’re bringing everything that affects us internally as a person. And I cracked up because I mean, if I could summarize it, ignite your shine is really ignite your confidence, but nobody, no company sitting around going, you know what we need more of?
We need confidence. You know what we haven’t spent as our confidence budget. Nobody’s looking at it from that lens. Yeah, so how does that tie to ROI? You might as well throw that in the discussion while we’re at it, because some people will listen to it and they’ll say, okay, we understand, but how do I make money from it?
But how does that tie into ROI? You might as well add that to the mix while we’re at it, huh? So you asked how does it tie into the why? Yeah, no, to the ROI, not the Y, the ROI. Oh, I, because , we’re, , I’m calling that out for the skeptics that are listening. The ones that are like, well, this sounds good, of course, but I can’t, you, you know what I mean?
No, I love this because the ROI is, again, it’s a focus, right? Mm-Hmm. , whether we’re gonna make it or break it. And that we watch our ROI too, and I, I’m just as guilty as others to suddenly start heading in the direction and start talking all numbers and such. What? I watched those, the deflation within my team.
Mm-Hmm. . And I see. I see that productivity starts to dip when I ask them for questions on like, let’s say that we’re going to try to find a good solution to something we end up seeing is that they get so stuck in the, the ROI side, the goals, the logical steps. How are we going to make that happen that they don’t see the vision of how might we do this?
And those are two different areas of the brain. So, We have, it takes a lot, but the more stress I get or the more, you know, focus I get on what’s happening here, I wait, we’re going to not the direction we want to go. So those, I get it when you are thinking ROI is the bottom line on what your company or your organization is going to exist.
In the future or not, but if you don’t put people first, think about the downside of them coming to work, not wanting to be there. You are not going to have high productivity. You’re not going to have the creativity of being able to find the solution. Like, there’s so much research backed on this, but yet we still fight it as a society.
And I don’t quite understand why. Yeah, I I don’t understand why as well, but I think, I feel like we’re, we’re getting further along, you know what I mean? Like , it’s, there was a time when you talk about some of these things and it’s just, if it wasn’t just straight business or straight , like business theory or something else and you start thinking about the person as a whole or how they come to the workplace.
place and workplace happiness I was reading this whole, Hershey by autobiography or biography, I should say. And it was talking about, like, going into the 1900s, what the work conditions were like and everything else. So if you think about the evolution, we’re way further along than maybe many other in our country.
And I’m. Speaking specifically for the U. S., obviously, there’s a big, big world and different situations all over the place, but I feel like we still have , a lot of way and a lot of opportunity, right? Because we spend a lot of our time working, period, in our entire lives, so if we can do it and have some fulfillment outside of, just the regular getting , going to work, coming back and making a living, then all the better, right?
Yes, yes, and I’m grateful for the shifts that we make. Just keeping that focus and pushing forward with that is part of the mission. Yeah, amazing. Well, LaVonna, I have to say it has been a lot of fun having you on the show today and learning more about your work. And your journey as an entrepreneur and really what you’re doing as the chief illuminator over at Ignite Your Shine.
That being said, if somebody’s listening to this and they want to learn more, they want to connect, I know we just tipped the iceberg on what you have to offer. What’s the best way for people to follow up and to connect? I appreciate that. Yes. So my website is igniteyourshine. com. That’s a great place to start and to get a grasp of what the framework is and such.
And then on social media, feel free to follow. It’s at LaVonna Roth, so L A capital V O N N A R O T H. And you can also follow at Ignite Your Shine, and that would be on LinkedIn, Facebook, and Instagram. Amazing. And for everybody that’s listening, just so you know, we’ll put all the links to that in the show notes so that you can just click on the links and head right on over and to the website and check out LaVonna’s work and connect with her.
And speaking of the listeners, if this is your first time with mission matters and you haven’t done it yet, this is your invitation hit that subscribe or follow button. We have many more mission based individuals coming up. This is a daily show. Yes. You heard me correctly. We have daily show. Each and every day, we’re bringing you new thought leaders new insights, and hopefully new inspiration.
That’s going to help you along and your journey as well. And LaVonna again, thank you so much for making some time for us. Appreciate it. Thank you. And everyone, I’m going to say exactly what he just said. Follow. I’ve listened to multiple podcasts. Incredible. So thank you, Adam.