Speaking and Communicating Podcast

Speaker A: Welcome back to the speaking and communicating podcast. I am your host, Roberta Angela. If you are looking to improve your communication skills, both professionally and personally, this is the podcast you should be tuning into. Communication and soft skills, ah, are crucial for your career growth and leadership development. We are currently looking for professionals or entrepreneurs who would be willing to discuss their communication challenges on this show. All the details of booking a spot with me are found on the show notes and by the end of this episode, please log on to Apple and Spotify and leave us a rating and a review.

Tony Chapman is the CEO and founder of Tony Chapman Enterprises

Now let's get communicating.

>> Speaker B: My guest today is the CEO and founder of Tony Chatman Enterprises, where he focuses on enhancing engagement, embracing inclusion, and accelerating change for organizations. Tony's motto is, light up your culture. Those that I seen shine. And before I go any further, please help me welcome him to the show. Hi, Tony.

>> Speaker C: Hey, Roberta. Thanks for having me.

>> Speaker B: Thank you for being here.

I help workplaces create a healthy workplace culture with lighting up your culture

Welcome. Please introduce yourself.

>> Speaker C: Sure. So really what I do is I help workplaces create a healthy workplace culture. And so when we talk about lighting up your culture, the idea is that what employees really want, above all things, is to be seen. And when I mean seen, I mean they want to be valued, they want to be heard, they want to be seen for who they are. And the more that they are seen, the more that they shine. And by shine, that means that brings out the best in them, which then, by default, brings out the best in their culture. And so that's really what I do. I've been a professional speaker now for 17 years. I have a book, a TEDx talk, all those great things. But really my primary focus is on making the workplace a better environment.

>> Speaker B: Have you noticed that over, especially since the pandemic, that there's been a more people focused culture in organizations, not just, uh, do your job and go home?

>> Speaker C: In part, yes, I see that there's a greater focus on it, but I'm not convinced that executives are actually bought into the idea. It seems more like a fad and a great idea, but when it comes down to the actual dollars being spent, I see executives being a little more reticent to actually jump into that space the way that they make it seem that they are.

>> Speaker B: Mhm.

There's a difference between changing your mind and changing your behavior

And the ones that you work with, when you work with your clients, do you find that first of all, we always ask this question, when people are coached and trained, do they implement what they've been trained on or do they go back to other old ways once the coach leaves the building?

>> Speaker C: Oh, if you don't implement what I do, I leave it's not even a conversation. I'm not going to waste both of our time. It's great to collect the check from my clients. There's a lot of implementation and we do give it a period of time to make that happen. But part of it happens because we start off by making sure there's buy in from the top. So because there's buy in now, we're able to go in and really make a true change. Now, the truth is there's a difference between a person changing their mind and changing their behavior and then changing their habits. Right. And so a lot of what we hear is, wow, things happened and we worked with them, but then they went back to their old ways. Well, that's because a lot of times for people, they still have natural habits.

>> Speaker B: Right, right.

>> Speaker C: And so when they're not thinking. Here's a quick story. Oh, please.

>> Speaker B: Yes.

>> Speaker C: So my mom, years ago, stopped smoking. Both my parents smoked all of my life growing up. And then as we had our first son, my, uh, father had stopped smoking. And finally my mom stopped smoking. And she had tried a number of times before and just was not successful. It was just one of those things. She couldn't do it. And I remember asking her, what was the difference this time? And she said, I was more motivated. She goes, but one of the things I did is I kept a pin in my car. And I thought, okay, why would you do that? She goes, because what I realized is when I got in my car, I would naturally look for something to hold like this. And if I didn't have a pin to hold in, then I would reach for a cigarette. And so we have a lot of these default behaviors and habits that we don't even realize we do it, but they're literally what we do by default. So we have to then have repetition to be able to change those ideas into behaviors and behaviors into habits.

>> Speaker B: So acknowledge the behavior and then replace it with the better behavior with the better action, correct? Mhm.

>> Speaker C: Part of replacing it with the better behavior is showing that the previous behavior, although it may have been appropriate at some period of time, was no longer benefiting them. Because people won't let go to something they don't believe is bad, even if there's something better. So you have to convince them that what they're holding on to is bad, so that they're opening their hands up to grab onto something better.

>> Speaker B: That's a very big one. If it's not bad, why should I cut it? Right?

>> Speaker C: Because it's what you know.

>> Speaker B: Yes.

You need to get buy in from the people that you will coach in corporates

When you said to get buy in from the people that you will coach in corporates. Does that mean there's a process pre you coming to implement the training? Do you have any communication? Do you have anything that they need to start doing before the actual training days?

>> Speaker C: Oh, yeah, we have conversations before the training days. I know who the decision maker is, who is often not the person who actually hired me. Normally the person who hired me was someone delegated to do it. And so I start asking them very specific questions about why, who's bought in. I try to meet with executives, if possible, and one of the other things is, for example, I do a lot of work in the area of unconscious bias. So normally client says, hey, we're doing this dei work. And I'm very well known for my bias work, especially, um, amongst healthcare and in the government spaces, but in a lot of spaces. My first question is, how does this fit within your overall strategy? And if you can't answer that, then we have to back up and make sure that there is a strategy, which often there's not, and then that people are bought into the strategy. Because if this is just a one off and it's like, oh, we're going to do some diversity training because it's the end thing.

>> Speaker B: It's not going to stay or spend the budget before the year end.

>> Speaker C: All the time. All the time.

>> Speaker B: Not that we were complaining if we're in business, but it's better to have that long term. It connects with the strategy situation, because it's going to be effective, and they will call you in future when they realize that you do make a positive change.

>> Speaker C: And that's going give to me.

Tony Butterfield's first speaking gig was opening for Les Brown

My next point is there are some times where I take the job and it's not. I mean, yeah, the money is good, don't get me wrong, but I believe that once they actually see me at work and they see the benefit of the work, then they'll buy into it. And so that happens quite often.

>> Speaker B: And how did you get started on this? Is this something after you finished school? You're like, I'm going to be a speaker. I'm going to change organizational culture. Here I come.

>> Speaker C: Yo, I got a story for you.

>> Speaker B: Please. We love stories.

>> Speaker C: My undergraduate studies was in chemical engineering. So I'm a chemical engineer by trade. I did that for a number of years, got a patent, and then my wife and I, after getting married, we decided to work in faith based nonprofit for about a decade.

>> Speaker B: Right.

>> Speaker C: Um, and the only problem with nonprofit is it's nonprofit, right. You don't have any money. So, uh, we did that. Did a couple of other things after we came out. There's a lot of stories I'm leaving out. But one day I found myself working more as like a temp, mechanical engineer. And I was like, this is not what I wanted to do. So I pulled together what I would consider my personal advisory board. Some of my closest friends, they've known me for years. They're very influential. They're all these things. But we have a very special relationship. And it was really for the decisions or for the idea of help me figure out what I'm missing. I got to get on track. I'm not on track. And so we met at a friend's house. He asked me kind of the proverbial, if you could do anything in the world, what would it be? I was not thinking about speaking. I was thinking primarily about business development and some other work.

>> Speaker B: Uh hm.

>> Speaker C: But something in me said speaking before I thought. And so what I said was, man, if I get paid to do anything, I'd get paid to speak. But what I really am thinking. And before I could get what I'm really thinking out, he stopped me. The wheels started turning. And to make a long story short, three weeks later, I was in Bermuda opening for Les Brown. So it was just.

>> Speaker B: Your first gig was opening for the Les Brown?

>> Speaker C: Four of my first five gigs were opening for Les Brown. And let me mention, the first one was in Bermuda. The first two were in Bermuda, come to think of it. Yeah.

>> Speaker B: Not a story you hear very often.

>> Speaker C: Okay, so let me give you the filler, the part I skipped over in the story, right? When my friend, when I, when I mentioned the speaking thing, he stopped. Now, at the time, he was program director for three radio stations in. Okay. And he said, well, you know, Les Brown, um, does a radio show on my station every Sunday. Let me call him. Couldn't reach him. And he said, wow, if I had known earlier, I'm having an event in Bermuda with Les and three of his proteges, I would have loved to have had you there. But, you know, it's kind of late now. One of my other friends, Roger, checked him in. The moment he goes, really? You would have prove it. And so he stopped. He goes, I'll tell you what, I can't pay you, but if you can get there, I'll, uh, put you on the bill. So my friend Roger grabbed his computer, did a little typing. He asked me for information, which was very personal, but he and I exchanged that kind of information all the time. The kind of relationship we have. And he looked at me, says, I just bought your ticket. You have no excuse. And so once he did that, the other friend, Elroy, who was having the event, he goes, wait, you really bought his ticket? He goes, yeah. He goes, all right, I'll pay for the hotel. And it was done. So I went there, opened for Les Brown, was myself, three of his proteges, and him. Now, I had spent a year, over ten years, speaking, teaching ministers how to speak, training them, being a minister, all these other things. So I knew what I was doing. When the event was over, Butterfield bank, the main sponsor, said, we want to do another event. We want to make it a full weekend of motivation, but we just want less than Tony. And that's how it started.

>> Speaker B: Not something you hear very often, but more than anything, this proves that we always say, look at the people who surround you. Look at the best five people, and that's your friends.

>> Speaker C: Exactly. Especially if they believe in you and they know you. It changes the world.

>> Speaker B: It certainly changed yours. Surround yourself with those kinds of people.

So let's go back to unconscious bias. How do you walk into an organization and tackle those biases

So let's go back to unconscious bias. A lot of us have, if not all, we have it. Uh, sometimes we have this argument that it is fed by the news we watch what society has programmed us to think about certain people, et cetera. How do you walk into an organization and tackle those biases, knowing that, especially if you have a diverse culture. So each team member has something that they think of, another team member, if they're different from them.

>> Speaker C: So first of all, most of the cultures aren't that diverse if we're going to be honest. Right? Okay, so let's just put that there. I think the engineer in me really reverse engineered how I wanted to do these programs. And so what I don't do is go in and give them a list of biases and all the stuff. I walk them through this journey and we do some exercises and they seem like they're very disjointed until we get to a moment where I said, okay, now we're going to look at everything we just did.

>> Speaker B: Mhm.

>> Speaker C: Now we're going to redefine bias because people think, when they think of unconscious bias, they think of discrimination. Right, prejudice. I said, I want you to rethink it. What bias is. It's an algorithm for how we make decisions. Now, you may be thinking, okay, algorithm, that's complex. Here's a simple example of an algorithm. A recipe.

>> Speaker B: Mhm.

>> Speaker C: So for example, if you're going to make pound cake, you would take a pound of butter, a pound of flour, a pound of sugar and a pound of eggs and mix them together and get pound cake. Technically, that's the recipe. It's why it's called pound cake.

>> Speaker B: Pound cake. Mhm.

>> Speaker C: Right now, you can change the quantity of ingredients and still make a, uh, cake. You can add and subtract ingredients and still make a cake. But technically, for pound cake, that is the recipe. We have recipes for a lot of things. We have a recipe for what is good and what is bad. We have a recipe for who is good and who is bad. We have a recipe for what is someone who's qualified, what is not, what is threatening, what is safe, what is trustworthy, all of these things. And we don't realize that we are making decisions based on these algorithms that are running through the background. Now, when I started to explain it like that, it changes the way people look at it, because, number one, we start to take the stigma away from it. And it's not all judgment. In fact, we go really hard at, this is not a judgmental thing. We're not using bias as a barometer for morality.

>> Speaker B: Mhm.

>> Speaker C: But it also starts to answer other questions because people think, well, wait, I'm white and I have a black friend, so I'm not biased. No, you have a black friend who fits your current recipe. But what if they talk different? What if they look different? What if they became your boss? See, that's when things change. And it helps people to start to understand. Then the other part of it, for me, I back it up with a ton of data. We go through studies and metrics. Everything I say is backed up by studies. I give them a reference sheet to the point where it's like you just can't argue. So when you look at the narratives and the studies, you look at the facts, you look at the data, uh, and you look at the journey you take people on. By the end of the class, people say things to me like, I really didn't want to come here. I really didn't believe in this idea of bias. But now I believe everyone should understand this concept. I hear that weekly. Because people want to be good people. That's the fascinating part that I believe.

>> Speaker B: Yeah.

>> Speaker C: So when you start to, um, uncover these blind spots and you take away some of the discomfort, which, uh, I go back and forth on that part of it. When you take away some of the discomfort, it opens the door to be able to explore. And so that's really how we m tackle bias. And so my goal in doing an unconscious bias class is not to eliminate bias, it is to get the conversation started and to get people aware. Because you can retrain biases. That is incredibly important.

>> Speaker A: Right.

>> Speaker C: You may not get rid of all of your biases, but you can be more conscious of your biases. So you know when to say, wait a second, that gut reaction is not right. Let me be more logical.

>> Speaker B: Mhm. We all have it, and certainly it needs to be checked.

When we talk about improving engagement, we're really talking about improving culture

And then when you say, light up your culture, what is the one tip? Other than letting your employees shine, what's another tip? To light up an organizational culture?

>> Speaker C: So when we talk about lighting up your culture, we're really talking about improving engagement, right? You're trying to get your group more engaged. Now, let me ask you, how would.

>> Speaker B: You define engagement, feeling included before decision is made?

>> Speaker C: So I would say that's more inclusion and belonging, right?

>> Speaker B: Uh, or the back and forth of ideas. If I say, okay, I have this innovative idea on how we're going to lead this project, here's the reason I.

>> Speaker C: Did that, and I apologize. I didn't mean to really throw in the spot like that.

>> Speaker B: Right.

>> Speaker C: But, uh, across the board, we talk about engagement, but we can't define it. We can describe it. We know what it looks like, but it's hard to define. So I'm going to define it to you in the simplest terms, okay?

>> Speaker B: Please. Yes.

>> Speaker C: Engagement is how much someone cares. And because they care, it's what they do. So if I'm an employee and I care, I work harder, I take ownership, I go the extra mile, right? I'm engaged. If I don't care, you might hear me say something like, well, that ain't on my job description, right?

>> Speaker B: Or is it 430? I'm leaving. Right?

>> Speaker C: It's 430. I'm leaving. Because what happens is work is transactional, right? Effort, uh, is personal.

>> Speaker B: Oh, please say that again.

>> Speaker C: Work is transactional. Effort is personal. So what we're trying to get from people m within our organization is not just work. You want effort, m. And effort is a function of how much they care. And so then that makes things a lot more simple, because now a boss or a company or a CEO, they just need to ask, why would my employees care? That answers a lot of questions, doesn't it? So they know I pay them. That's a transaction. They'll work. Why should they care? Figure that out and you figure out engagement.

>> Speaker B: I have never heard of it being described like that. Defined like that.

>> Speaker C: That's because I'm the one who did it. I literally made it. I've been digging through this engagement thing and looking at all these words and rational commitment and emotional commitment, and it just hit me. I'm like, all we're doing is talking about how much somebody cares. That's it. Because I've worked with so many employees and organizations, I've seen so many people who didn't care that I could recognize it because the organization beats the care out of them.

>> Speaker B: What I said earlier, a lot of the time we throw around these terms, we don't really have a concept of how they work in real life on a day to day.

Tony Chatman is the CEO and founder of Tony Chatman Enterprises

Right, Tony, any last words of wisdom before you go?

>> Speaker C: I would just say for everyone, whether you are a CEO, a manager, an employee, a parent, a spouse, community member, or whatever, you have to figure out how to be your best self. Uh, because if you can make you your best self and be in your best emotional state, your best, uh, condition, then you have the ability to make other people around you better.

>> Speaker B: Exactly. You let your light shine. Words of wisdom from Tony Chapman, the, uh, CEO and founder of Tony Chatman Enterprises, whose mission is to light up organizational culture. Thank you so much for being here today. We really appreciate you bringing new insights to concepts we talk about all the time. Absolutely.

>> Speaker C: It's great being here.

>> Speaker B: Roberta, thank you for being here, Tony, it was my pleasure. And before you go, where can we find you so we learn so much more about the stuff?

>> Speaker C: Easiest way is my website, tonychatman.com. Um, Chatman. There you have links to everything. Social media, YouTube. Uh, I will tell you, the website will look completely different in less than a month. We're totally revamping it, and we're really going, like, all out on YouTube right now. We'll have online courses. So there's a lot of stuff coming in the future, but, uh, if you google Tony Chatman and spell it right, you'll find me.

>> Speaker B: Tony Chatman Enterprises. Thank you so much. This has been absolutely fantastic. And, uh, one last thing. So, other than the website, if we're going to revamp it, is there any other socials like the LinkedIn and things like that?

>> Speaker C: Yeah, I'm everywhere. LinkedIn, TikTok. So if you go to LinkedIn, Facebook, or Twitter is Tony Chatman. And if you go to Instagram and TikTok is Tony Chapman speaks, because Tony Chatman was.

>> Speaker B: Oh, okay. Tony Chatman, thank you. This has been such a pleasure. I appreciate you being here today.

>> Speaker C: Great. It was great being here.

>> Speaker B: Thanks.

Speaking and communicating podcast welcomes you to join us this month

>> Speaker A: Thank you for joining the speaking and communicating podcast once again. If you are willing to be on the show to discuss your communication challenges and see how we can help. Please book a slot on my calendly, and the details, uh, are on the show notes. We are so glad that you've joined us. We have more special guests who will be sharing more leadership tips and strategies on this show in this month of February, in addition to our first couple interview, who will be discussing the role that communication has played in their marriage. So stay tuned for more episodes to come