That’s a Wrap!

Transcript - That’s a Wrap!

Rich Rininsland: Hey there, team. It’s me, your old friend, Rich Rininsland, host of Team Building Saves the World, and today we’re doing something special. We are wrapping up an incredible season. A season packed with big ideas, brilliant guests, surprising stories, a few happy accidents, and more than enough empathy to power a small city.

So buckle up because this is our season finale highlight reel: part celebration, part reflection, part “wow! We really did that?” And all heart. Let’s get into it.

Mark DeCarlo: You know the CEO makes a lot more money than the guy putting packing peanuts in the boxes in the loading bay and shipping them out. But if the guy packing the peanut screws up, the product gets there and it’s broken and you get a whole chain of returns and BS that you don’t need. That person needs to feel as much a part of the endeavor and as important as everybody else. Because they are.

Rich Rininsland: This season wasn’t just about leadership or psychology or communication. It was all about people, how people think, how people feel, how people screw up, recover, connect, create, grow, and somehow still manage to work together.

We’ve explored trust, creativity, conflict, communication, purpose, belonging, burnout, psychological safety, you name it. And every single guest brought something so uniquely them. I think we need to give them all a moment in the spotlight.

Patrick Short: So the maiden skills are in communication and a lot of it is, I think, listening skills are difficult, and always have been difficult, but are even more difficult in today’s complex society than they ever were. And they’re far, far more important.

Rich Rininsland: Storytelling isn’t decorative. It’s how humans make sense of the world and each other.

Robert Mattson: People come in and they would tell me stories to get to know me. They’re like, great. And then they would go into their business spiel and there would be no stories, and I felt like I lost a connection with them.

And also it’s an encapsulation of information. Stories are 22 times more memorable than features, facts, and functions alone.

Rich Rininsland: Then Haley Grayless showed us why psychological safety is the heartbeat of high performing teams and why leaders who ignore it are basically driving with the parking brake on.

Haley Grayless: So for people who are listening who might not know what that is, psychological safety is a term coined by Dr. Amy Edmondson, where a team can feel like they can appear vulnerable, bring their full selves to work, take risks, be innovative, ask questions, be themselves, all of that without fear of retaliation, humiliation, and opportunities being taken from them.

Rich Rininsland: Josh Robinson brought the drums. Literally and reminded us that rhythm brings connection, healing, and joy, even in our hardest seasons.

Josh Robinson: Really into the concept of music for community and the way that there’s an exchange between the body and the voice and rhythm. And also that there really is rhythm to everything. There’s a rhythm to a conversation, there’s a rhythm to the way we walk. There’s a rhythm to our heart beating in its chest. There’s a rhythm to companies and communication. So I really kind of started to get the zoom out. And see, wow, this is a really powerful tool. It’s a platform and a vehicle.

Rich Rininsland: Scot Wirth showed us that building a community isn’t complicated. It’s curiosity, generosity, sometimes a tiny box full of books.

Scot Wirth: If you’re going to join the movement, if you’re going to join it, that’s the jump you do have to take. Right? Is is that like I’m putting these out there for people that need them. If somebody needs 40 books because I filled my library with 40 books, if somebody needs those 40 books, they probably need those 40 books for a good reason.

And if they’re going to give them to other people, maybe they’re taking them to the church and they’re going to give them to individuals who are homeless, you know, maybe they’re taking them to a school and they’re gonna give all the books to a school. Who knows?

Rich Rininsland: Angela Lewis reminded us that leadership isn’t in a job title. It’s influence wrapped in purpose.

Angela Lewis: There are a couple of things that I think are big. One, an aligned mission. Like we’re trying to win or we’re trying to win a championship. We’re trying to improve our field goal percentage. There has to be a goal that we’re all seeking. Okay. That’s part one. Part two is that as an individual, we all actually want to get better individually because we understand that if we improve, then the whole team improves.

And then the last part is trust. You can all want to win. You can all choose to decide you wanna be better, but if you don’t trust each other, you’re never gonna get to the goal and, and the team will break apart.

Tyler Hayden made us laugh, think, and question whether half the culture programs out there even matter if people don’t feel connected.

Tyler Hayden: It’s the little things that we do progressively along the way. Like I, when I coach and help managers to sharpen their saws, I’ll get them to put 10 pennies in one pocket. And I’ll say, you know, it’s about the little things that you do during the day for your teams and for every little thing you do to help to create a positive difference, move one of those pennies from your right hand pocket to your left hand pocket, and don’t stop until all 10 pennies are in your left hand pocket. And we’re that, that way that the manager’s starting to build a practice of, of being positively responsible for their teams. And then by doing that, we begin to adjust the culture. And that’s how we begin to improve the engagement.

Rich Rininsland: Melissa Richards, our self-proclaimed checklist guru, reminded us that great leadership comes down to three things, trust, credibility, and commitment.

Melissa Richards: One mistake that we’ve all made as leaders is we make assumptions about people and about situations. So that is just a great reminder for people to listen, to be curious about the other humans that you’re working with. Ask them how they feel. Ask them open-ended questions. Invite them to contribute their perspective and experiences that may not be so obvious in their job titles.

Rich Rininsland: Krystle Starr pushed us to step into courageous connections because teams thrive when people feel brave enough to show up as themselves.

Krystle Starr: How do I deal with coworkers that you just don’t wanna deal with that day? And I think it goes back to, even if you don’t like what that person is doing at the moment, I think you need to find some level of respect for them for whatever it is.

Think about the positives of that person and then also think about what that person’s life is like. Put yourself in that person’s shoes.

Rich Rininsland: Russell Harvey taught us that optimism isn’t naive. It’s a strategy.

Russell Harvey: We’re telling our people what to do and they do it, and now they’re answering back.

And actually I’ve understood that just telling them harder and more isn’t working. They, they actually want us to have a conversation with them and, “oh, am I equipped, you know, as a leader to have this conversation?” And actually I’ve got to adapt. So we keep talking about adaptability is a huge element of being resilient, right?

This is goes into the whole place of like when changes happen us around us that we didn’t instigate, we struggle with them or we can struggle with them.

Rich Rininsland: Then Meghan Grace dropped the truth about generational differences and why Gen Z isn’t the enemy, they’re the future.

Meghan Grace: Good managers focus on one, knowing their people regardless of generation and proactively blocking and tackling challenges.

So I, when I was managing a team, I always told them my number one goal is to identify needs and barriers in the way of your success. And then it’s my job to remove them. Okay? So I always thought of my life as, “okay, let’s anticipate a potential challenge and then let me block and tackle it for you so that you can do what we hired you to do. Which was your job.” I should not be making your life harder, right? I should be making your life easier.

Rich Rininsland: Mitesh Kapadia drew a line in the sand. Inclusion has to be practiced, not printed on a wall.

Mitesh Kapadia: Consider it this way. If you were to take two paths, you know the, the quick path where it was just painful. Like, you know, going up a mountain if you, you know, I live in the mountains here and if you go straight up, it’s the most painful way to get up to the top, but you get there in the shortest distance.

However, there’s a reason why there’s so many like these switch boxes and sometimes see a mountain roads is because they go back and forth, back and forth. It’s a longer distance, but it’s a much more easier and much more scenic route. And that’s the idea is that don’t see that one way of doing things or that one failure as a way that really is an obstacle.

But see it as an opportunity to see what are my other choices? What are my other paths that I can, I can create from this opportunity?

Rich Rininsland: Dr. Jessica Stern, close the season with science, heart, and humor, showing us why empathy isn’t soft. It’s powerful.

Jessica Stern: Your pattern of interacting with other people is like the lens through which you perceive other people’s communication with you.

So as an example. A securely attached person has a positive view of themself. You know, I’m basically a competent person and views other people positively as well, so other people are generally trustworthy. That’s my general worldview, and if I take that into a workplace situation, what the research shows is that securely attached people tend to be better communicators.

They also tend to be more trustworthy leaders, and they tend to value relationships more, which means they value teamwork a little bit more.

Rich Rininsland: When you hear all those voices back to back, it really hits you. This season wasn’t just conversations. It was a map. A map for how to trust, how to communicate, how to understand each other, how to show up as human beings in a world, a world that feels less human every day.

Every guest brought a piece of the puzzle, and together they built a season full of insight, laughter, vulnerability, creativity, and yeah, even a few happy accidents.

Markus Rüse: The experience in the game is quite similar to what they experience during their work time. What’s happening is often that departments work together very, very well, and department A says, “oh my God, the idiots from Department B, we are still waiting for their results”.

What’s not happening is that they share or offer help or, maybe just ask why the results are not already there.

Nancy Ho: I do not subscribe to this word “balance” because when you go to balance, that means it’s gotta get all areas like balance equal, equal, you know? And I don’t think that’s such a thing, but integrating them into one’s life. That is critical.

Steve Popper: And I think a lot of businesses realize that they have a responsibility not just to sell a, a widget, but how they’re also going to, you know, what kind of corporate stewardship they’re doing in the community.

Rich Rininsland: The real magic. It’s you, the listeners, the leaders, the facilitators, the teams, the humanity who shows up every day trying to make work a little more like community.

You’re the reason we do this. You’re the reason this podcast matters. You are the reason Team Building Saves the World. So from the bottom of my heart, thank you for joining us this season and stick around, more stories, more conversations, more laughter, and a whole lot more humanity is on the way.

Until next time, I’m Rich Rininsland, and this has been Team Building Saves the World.

And yes, the applause you’re hearing really is just the people I keep trapped under my desk. They’re fine. They’re fine.