Inspiring Your Team Through Storytelling with Anthony Weaver | Ep. 327
In this enlightening episode, Tiffany Grant welcomes back Anthony Weaver, a repeat guest from episode 199. Anthony shares his in-depth knowledge and strategies for leaders through his concept of HOPE, which stands for Hero’s journey, Organizational purpose, Passionate impact, and Empathy in action.
This episode dives into the essential stories leaders should communicate to effectively connect with their teams and inspire higher performance and engagement.
Key Takeaways
1. Hero’s Journey
– Share personal stories of challenges and growth to help team members relate and draw inspiration.
2. Organizational Purpose
– Communicate the vision and mission of the organization to give employees a clear target and purpose.
3. Passionate Impact
– Recognize and communicate the individual and collective impact your team has on the industry and the company.
4. Empathy in Action
– Share customer stories and feedback to emphasize the importance of their work and create a sense of fulfillment and motivation.
About Our Guest
Anthony Weaver is a leader in his field, managing hundreds of employees. He is known for his pragmatic approach to leadership, emphasizing the importance of storytelling to build stronger, more cohesive teams. Anthony also runs a popular YouTube channel, “About That Wallet,” where he discusses financial literacy and leadership.
Connect with Anthony
- Website: https://aboutthatwallet.com
- Social Media: @aboutthatwallet
- YouTube: About That Wallet
Connect with Tiffany
- Website: https://moneytalkwitht.com
- Social Media: @moneytalkwitht
Call-to-Action
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Tune in next Thursday for another insightful episode of Money Talk with Tiff. Don’t miss out on Tiffany’s practical financial tips and inspiring guest interviews.
Copyright 2024 Tiffany Grant
Transcript
You know what it is. That's right. It's time to talk money with your money
Speaker:nerd and financial coach. Now tighten those purse strings
and open those ears. It's the money talk with Tiff
Speaker:podcast.
Speaker:Hey, everyone. I am so excited because I have a repeat guest on the line.
I have my cousin, Anthony Weaver. Not my real cousin, though,
Speaker:but if that name sounds familiar, he was on episode 199, and he
Speaker:talked about building habits, and I got a lot of good feedback about
that episode, and so I'm bringing him back. And this time, we're
Speaker:talking about four stories that every leader should
Speaker:have to connect with your team. So. Hey, Anthony. How are you?
Hey, Tiffany. It's been a while, and I have
Speaker:been doing really well. Awesome. Awesome. Yeah, I know. Like, when we talked
Speaker:the last time, it was episode 199, and now we're on,
like, 300 and something, so it's been. I know it's
Speaker:been quite some time, so people might not remember your voice, so I had to
Speaker:bring you back to refresh their memory.
I greatly appreciate it. All right, let's go ahead and hop right in.
Speaker:So you are a leader in your career. So
Speaker:you have a team of hundreds of employees that you manage.
And so what are some things that managers or
Speaker:leaders should have in order to connect with their
Speaker:team? Well, you have to think back about
why leaders are leaders in the first place. And one of the reasons why they're
Speaker:leaders is because, one, that they have have somebody to follow them, and
Speaker:two, they looking at the leader for direction. But also as a
leader, you're not just there for the mission. You're also there for the people, which
Speaker:is putting the people first. And one of the ways to
Speaker:actually connect with your staff,
your employer, your employees, is to really
Speaker:tell a story, tell something that really can
Speaker:resonate with the everyday person.
You've been in their shoes. What are the things that you're looking
Speaker:to provide value to their lives and so forth, just to kind
Speaker:of bring home that you're human. It's almost like, you ever talk to your parent
and be like, have you ever been a kid before? Like, you know, life
Speaker:is hard, and you be like, well, the mother or the
Speaker:parent or the dad. Be like, so suck
it up. That's what we had to do. So. And that's what
Speaker:a thing is in leadership. It's like you have to kind of bring it back
Speaker:to the staff. Now, when you say that, that sounds
very vulnerable. So are you saying that a leader or
Speaker:a manager or what have you should be vulnerable with their
Speaker:employee and if that's the case, how deep does this go?
Cause I'm like, are we talking about, oh, this is what I did for the
Speaker:weekend, or, like, how vulnerable are we getting here?
Speaker:Well. Cause I was preparing for this particular
interview, and I was going through all the stories that I've told my
Speaker:teams, and I usually tell a new story every week, and
Speaker:one of the things that I do in telling a story
is talk about the rags to riches stories, like those obstacles
Speaker:that you've been through. And I kind of couple this together and call it the
Speaker:hero's journey. So you, as a leader now,
you've been through this, even if you're a young
Speaker:person, in leading a lot of older folks. I've been there.
Speaker:I'm actually been doing it. Doing it now, the reason
why you want to share this story is to kind of bring to them
Speaker:how did you actually get to the position where you are? Or you can say,
Speaker:hey, I started, you know, building
a machine in the basement. Like, actually, that's how I
Speaker:started in it. Like, I broke the family computer. Back then,
Speaker:you only had one computer for the whole house. I broke it, and I had
to fix it. That's how I learned to. To do it in the
Speaker:first place, and that's what got me started in my journey
Speaker:in it, and then now become a leader, because I was like, hey, I've been
there now. Let me just pass the torch on to the next person that wants
Speaker:to learn. Gotcha. And I have a. Yeah, I have a full
Speaker:acronym, though. It's really called Hope. And let me just share that out
right quick. It's, h is for the hero's journey, which we just talked
Speaker:about. O is for the organizational purpose,
Speaker:p is for the passionate impact, and e is for the
empathy and action. Gotcha.
Speaker:Okay, so for h, the hero's journey. So
Speaker:you want to let your team know. Like, this is how I got started. This
is how I got here. This is what my whole, like, my career looked like.
Speaker:The highlights, y'all, we don't have to get into. Yes, yes. So, at this last
Speaker:job, I don't know what happened. We getting into the highlights.
Okay. And so, for o, what other stories do we need to tell our team?
Speaker:So, with o, you're looking at the or organizational purpose, which is
Speaker:you. This is your vision story. So think of Steve jobs. He
was very good at saying, like, hey,
Speaker:I want to see people having these three items in
Speaker:their pocket, and people's like, how
nobody knew what that would look like, but that was his
Speaker:vision. And to order to make that happen,
Speaker:he just had to keep saying, like, we need to get here, not sure how.
And that's where the team comes in and figure out that how.
Speaker:And that is one of the things that I think that's the most, uh,
Speaker:impactful ways that you can actually lead. For me personally,
I am more of like a sage. Like, I'm not a sage on
Speaker:the stage, I'm more of a guide on the side kind of guy, where it's
Speaker:like, I know exactly kind of what y'all doing, but I don't,
I don't need to know what y'all doing. I just know I need to get
Speaker:here. And having that vision story is really
Speaker:impactful from a leader perspective. Gotcha. Gotcha. Okay. And that makes
complete sense. So give them the target, give them the
Speaker:vision of where the organization is trying to go, where your department's
Speaker:trying to go, and then let them figure out how they're gonna get there.
Now with that being said, do you tie this into
Speaker:like their KPI's or their goals or things like that? So you allow them
Speaker:to create that to get towards the company goals? Yes,
because allowing them in the KPI's are key performance indicators
Speaker:to kind of help them understand on where the measurements are. So it's
Speaker:like, hey, if I want to move the
industry to have at least 5000
Speaker:computers deployed out, they had to figure out,
Speaker:okay, well, what does it take? Work backwards. Let the team
figure that out. Because that's the whole purpose of why you hired them in the
Speaker:first place, is to do the work. Everybody wants to do the
Speaker:work. That's the reason why they want to do the job. Sometimes people are
forced to do the job, but you know, if you love them, that
Speaker:autonomy, it opens them up to actually feel
Speaker:like they part of the team. Yeah, I definitely agree with that. And I'm sure
we have all been in situations where we had a micromanager that tried to tell
Speaker:us everything to do in our job and that is not a
Speaker:pleasure, full experience. So I definitely like
this, this guide to the side approach that you have now
Speaker:let's go into P. What is the p? So P is about the
Speaker:passionate impact. And this combines like the world and
individual impact stories where some of these
Speaker:things, they can't be measured by things.
Speaker:So usually they try to say, like, in order to build success,
you have to have things that are measured. But this one right here is
Speaker:mostly about the stories. What is the business or
Speaker:your team in general have an impact to the
company? So think of Chick fil A.
Speaker:Actually, not Chick fil A. Well, we can. You can do anybody. So
Speaker:think about Chick fil A, even Chick fil A, even though they just a fast
food restaurant, but you go there for the experience and
Speaker:you go for the smiles. And that is one of the things that the
Speaker:owners were shooting for. The owner S.
Truett Cathy, who started this back in
Speaker:1946 for Chick fil A. Like, this is one of
Speaker:the things that they were looking for is how can they provide impact to
the community while giving them quality service at the same time?
Speaker:So you can do that with your team. It's just talk about, like, what is
Speaker:that one. One impact that you providing to the
industry? Gotcha. Gotcha. Okay, so what is
Speaker:the impact that you are providing to the industry? And does
Speaker:this also include themselves? So, like, their professional
impact as well? Yes, there is a story. I
Speaker:believe some people who are biblical, you might have heard
Speaker:this story already, but when you start changing the language
of your staff, so say if there was a guy that was
Speaker:cleaning and he was actually sweeping the church
Speaker:or whatever that was in the process of being done, it
wasn't the fact that he was saying that, oh, I'm here every day sweeping.
Speaker:He was like, no, I get the opportunity to clean the house of God.
Speaker:I get the opportunity to put. Make sure that people
come into a clean, poor pit, have the opportunity to come into
Speaker:a sanctuary where they proud to be in. This is my
Speaker:contribution. This is my impact to the congregation,
is almost taking yourself out of the equation. But
Speaker:what are. What are your actions doing to improve
Speaker:the lives of everybody else? Gotcha. Gotcha. So, making
that connection or helping your employees make that connection,
Speaker:how do I fit into this bigger picture? And I'm not just here to
Speaker:just get a paycheck. Like, my job is actually important and
makes everything else move. Yes. Gotcha.
Speaker:Okay. Right on spot. Perfect. All right. And then let's get
Speaker:into the e. What is the e? For now,
e is the empathy in action, which is
Speaker:your customer's story. And I want to bring up chick fil a
Speaker:again, because how many times you heard somebody say, you know,
my pleasure, and it just give you that little tingly feeling, like, oh,
Speaker:yeah, I just come here just to hear somebody say, my pleasure today. Because, you
Speaker:know, the world is nice, but sometimes you just have
a bad day. You just go to chick fil a bars,
Speaker:but you go head on,
Speaker:and you have somebody who's like, my pleasure, just put a smile on your face.
And this is one of the things that happened with
Speaker:Truett he said that he was at a hotel, staying at
Speaker:a hotel. An employee responded to his thanks in a
sincere my pleasure. And because he
Speaker:remembered that feeling, he wanted that for every customer
Speaker:in his store. So he put that part of their training
program. So because you're,
Speaker:again, it's that customer impact
Speaker:that could actually change the way how you run your business. It's like, this
is why, like, you can take a live snapshot
Speaker:if you actually give out interviews, surveys.
Speaker:And when you get surveys from your customers and you say, this
is why we do what we do. This is
Speaker:why we continue on to provide good
Speaker:customer service. We put smiles on our faces. We do the best that we can
do because of the stories that we
Speaker:are receiving from the customers. And this is your empathy in
Speaker:action. Okay? So getting the
customer stories or getting the customer impact and relaying
Speaker:that to the team, I feel like that's super important because
Speaker:how many times have you been in a situation you didn't get any feedback about
how you did or how you're doing? And it's kind
Speaker:of demotivating. Like, I remember when I was in corporate
Speaker:America and, you know, we would do, like,
the yearly reviews or whatever, and I would practically have to
Speaker:beg for some critical feedback because I'm like, if I'm
Speaker:doing everything right, like you're saying, then
what's, like, what are we doing here? Like,
Speaker:there has to be something that I can improve there. Because
Speaker:if not, like, why am I not in your position? Then, you know?
Exactly. You gotta tell me something. And so I
Speaker:really like that you are putting that as one of the
Speaker:acronyms, is to make sure that you share out with your team what's
going on and sharing those stories that you hear from the customers or other
Speaker:departments hear from the customers. And that's another point, too.
Speaker:A lot of times, departments are siloed. And so you
never hear about, like, for instance, the good stories that sales
Speaker:has never hears that in product management, who never hears
Speaker:that in it, you know, so on and so forth. Right? And
so I feel like even just having this shared out
Speaker:company wide and then disseminating down to your team
Speaker:is awesome. So let's recap for the people. Cause we went over a
lot. We wanna give our teams hope. And what does hope stand
Speaker:for? Hope stands for hero's journey.
Speaker:O is for the organizational
purpose, p is for passionate
Speaker:impact, and e is for empathy and
Speaker:action. Gotcha. Gotcha. So this was really good information. I
know there are business owners listening or people that are in
Speaker:positions either in management or even as employees.
Speaker:And if you're an employee and you're listening to this episode, you're probably
like, this does not apply to me. My manager does not do this. But maybe
Speaker:you can say, you know what? You should listen to the money talk with TIFF
Speaker:podcast and listen to this episode with Anthony
Weaver where he goes over some things that can help, you
Speaker:know, get us motivated. You might not want to say it like that. They might
Speaker:be like, okay, what you talking about? But edge that in there
because I feel like this is really important for leaders to know
Speaker:and leaders and managers to know. So,
Speaker:Anthony, with all of that being said, if people were interested in
finding out more about you or learning more about hope,
Speaker:see what I did there? How could they find you?
Speaker:They can find me on the socials at about that
wallet, or you can even come to aboutthat wallet.com
Speaker:and just check out all the latest and greatest things that ive been up to.
Speaker:And, you know, if you ever want to just have some management
questions or just want to connect, just
Speaker:hit me up and shoot me an email. All right, sounds good. Well, thank you
Speaker:so much, Anthony. And ill also add there. So Anthony is being very,
very, hold on.
Speaker:Okay. Anthony's being very, very humble right now.
Speaker:He has a bomb. YouTube channel has
way more subscribers than I do. But if
Speaker:you check out about that wallet, his show is very entertaining and
Speaker:very fun. There's a whole drinking segment I tell everybody about that.
Anthony's like, why are you telling people this?
Speaker:But I think it's just so cool and how he has everything set up.
Speaker:It's like YouTube goals. So definitely check out his
channel about that wallet, and I'll make sure I have all of these links in
Speaker:the show notes as well. So thank you so much, anthony, for coming on the
Speaker:show today. Tiffany, thank you
so much for having me on. And, I mean, you're amazing, and I
Speaker:wish you the best in everything that you do. Thank you. I appreciate all y'all.
Speaker:McCrack no. All right, y'all have a good one. Bye.
Thank you for listening, joining and being a part of the Money Talk with TIFF
Speaker:podcast this week. You can check Tiff out every Thursday for a
Speaker:new Money talk podcast. But if you just can't wait until next week,
you can listen to previous podcast
Speaker:episodes@moneytalkwitht.com or
Speaker:follow TIFF on all social media platforms at
moneytalkwitht. Until next time, spend wise
Speaker:by spending less than you make. A word to the money wise is
Speaker:always sufficient.