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Aligning With Your Strengths & Questions for Reflection with Stosh Walsh -01
Episode 126th July 2022 • THE GRIT SHOW • Shawna Rodrigues
00:00:00 00:29:55

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Stosh Walsh is an expert on Organizational Development, and his wisdom and experience delve much deeper. Join us in a conversation that starts with how organizations can best use the strengths of their employees, and quickly leads to how you can assure your work allows you to be the best version of yourself. With provoking questions and a few laughs, Stosh helps us look at the complicated topic of how to align our work and home life, find the work that fits our strengths, and make time to reflect on the important questions.

Get your copy of Stosh’s book- Along the Way: Leadership Stories from Everyday Life

constantod.com/getbook

or

Use this link to support local bookstores and this podcast: https://bookshop.org/

 

Connect with Stosh Walsh:

www.ConstantOD.com

https://www.linkedin.com/in/stoshdwalsh/ 

https://www.instagram.com/stoshdwalsh/ 

https://business.facebook.com/constantorganizationaldevelopment/

 He also has a podcast up that you can check out: https://constantod.com/podcast 

Here’s the book we mentioned- StrengthsFinder (purchasing through this link may result in supporting this podcast as it is an affiliate link):

https://amzn.to/3TGsK2H

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Follow us on Instagram: @The.Grit.Show or Shawna @ShawnaPodcasts

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You can also purchase the full-size gift worthy Color of Grit Adult Coloring Book here  bit.ly/TGSMermaid

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Transcripts

We feel it is important to make our podcast transcripts available for accessibility. We use quality artificial intelligence tools to make it possible for us to provide this resource to our audience. We do have human eyes reviewing this, but they will rarely be 100% accurate. We appreciate your patience with the occasional errors you will find in our transcriptions. If you find an error in our transcription, or if you would like to use a quote, or verify what was said, please feel free to reach out to us at connect@37by27.com.

Shawna Rodrigues 0:07

Welcome to The Grit Show. Growth on purpose. I'm glad you found us. I'm Shawna Rodrigues and I'm honored to be leading you on today's journey as part of community growing together as seekers and thrivers. We hope you stick around and share with us what you gain from today's conversation. Today, we have Stosh joining us. He's the Managing Principal at Constant Organizational Development. He has been working with various organizations for years, and does a great job of helping them move forward.

Shawna Rodrigues 0:34

So, tell us a little bit about the connectedness between all levels and organizations that really make it possible for them to thrive.

Stosh Walsh 0:41

First of all, thanks for having me. I'm excited to talk with you and talk with your audience as well. You know that I think that piece of work is critically important. Connecting the purpose, the meaning, the reason why we come to work every day, when people don't have that, then they start, there's a good research actually starts talking about how they, they start to exhibit physical symptoms. So it's actually, really kind of a bad, horrible thing if people don't have meaning, alignment in the work that they're doing if they can't come and be their best versions of themselves. And they don't feel like the work that they're doing is important to them, as well as important to somebody else, then, kind of all bets are off in terms of our health and how connected we are to the thing that we're doing.

Shawna Rodrigues 1:24

So the thing you notice, when everyone starts being sick and gone, a lot has to do with the health of the organization as well as the individual?

Stosh Walsh 1:31

Yeah, exactly. Like, hey, everybody's gone. Your organization's not healthy. Well, yeah, exactly.

Shawna Rodrigues 1:36

Yeah. And it gets harder on those that are still there when that happens, and it keeps getting worse, that's a hard thing to turn around. Is that something that you often come into organizations, when they're at that stage? When a lot of folks aren't showing up for legitimate reasons, because they're legitimately sick. Is that often when you show up and try to work through with an organization how they can get to a better place?

Stosh Walsh 1:56

You know, a lot of times it depends. But it often occurs where they think, how do we get more people aligned to what we're trying to accomplish? And seems like people are indifferent, or that they're just not bought in. And so there's this disconnect with engagement. And so if people are showing up, and they're still doing good work, don't get me wrong. But it seems like we could be getting more. Like, what's that extra 20% or whatever. And that's when organizations usually call somebody like me and say, hey, it feels like we're just not really firing on all cylinders here. And so what can we do to make a difference? And how can we be appealing to these bigger purpose, meeting things with folks to kind of get everybody pulling the same direction and really accomplish the goals that we've set out to achieve.

Shawna Rodrigues 2:41

So a lot of times you have organizations have some level of awareness. And notice that they have these needs to be able to call someone like you in to support them.

Stosh Walsh 2:49

Yeah, yeah, for sure. And to be honest, I'm just not really a great fit for organizations that are like, yeah, hey, we're broken, come fix us. You know, look, that's not my job. That's your job. I'm gonna help you figure out how but you're the one who does the heavy lifting, right? So, it's like you hear people say all the time, like your personal trainer doesn't do your push ups for you.

Shawna Rodrigues 3:08

Wait, you mean, I have to do that work?

Stosh Walsh 3:10

Yeah, unfortunately, that's how it is for all of us, right?

Shawna Rodrigues 3:12

Oh. Maybe that's why I don't have a personal trainer. It is something that you're there for a long period of time to help support those changes?

Stosh Walsh 3:20

Yeah, sometimes I am. So I've worked with a lot of different kinds of clients, and probably the one I've been working with the longest now it's been three or four years. And what they really tried to do is align how they talk about their job descriptions, with people's innate talents. And so really thinking about, you know, if I show up, and I'm this kind of person, if I do these kinds of things naturally, then I'm going to be really good at my job. And if I want to do something else in the organization, then I have an opportunity to look at that and say, Oh, that's a good fit for who I am. Or here's where I need to develop in order to be able to do that kind of thing. Or gosh, I looked at that, and thought that's really not me at all, I don't think I want to travel down that path. And so I'll steer clear of that kind of an opportunity in the future. Because I don't feel like it would be life giving. It would be more like life stealing for me.

Shawna Rodrigues 4:11

That's amazing. It sounds like it's exciting, because you're helping organizations to recognize the need for alignment and the need for individuals to have purpose driven work and to be connected to their work, which is exciting that a lot about what we look at on this podcast. How does it work with the individuals though? Because I think part of the reason that this podcast came to be is that awareness that it's hard for us to note we want. We've been trained to think we're good at, training to think we want, to get to what we do want and what our purpose is and what we're driven to do. Is there some conflict to that extent or do you feel like once there's that autonomy given to employees to figure out, you have some room to have some say in this that they really rise to it and they find that connection?

Stosh Walsh 4:58

Yeah, I think the best companies in the world are all helping people figure out, A, what they're good at and B, how they can apply it here. So, the unfortunate reality though is, we get so good at things naturally that we tend to take them for granted. So we say one or two things, either doesn't everybody do that? Or I don't think that was all that special, right?

Shawna Rodrigues 5:17

Yeah.

Stosh Walsh 5:17

So for example, you've got people who are these, like color coded calendars, and they've got everything, all ducks in a row, everything's great, scheduled out, and they stick to their schedule, and they can get other people's sticking to the schedule, and the project manager and all that sort of stuff. That's amazing.

Shawna Rodrigues 5:35

Yeah.

Stosh Walsh 5:35

And the reason why I know that's amazing is because I can't do it. And so I appreciate people like that in my life, that the people who do it and this is true of every single innate talent in the world, the people who do it tend to just take it for granted like, well, that's just normal. That's just what everybody does. No, no, no, no, not, A, that's not what everybody does. And B, you do it better than a million other people that I could just line up at random, right? So the best organizations in the world are saying, Hey, you're like that. We have a use for that here. Do you want to do more of that? And when people say, Well, sure, yeah, I'm good at that. I like, you know, I, I've learned to be good. Like, I lose track of time when I do that. So there's clues that we can use to figure out what that's like for us. So we lose track of time, for example, you know, psychologists call it flow state, right? You lose track of time, or people give you compliments or they say, Wow, that's amazing. You're really excellent at that, right? And we, we tend to downplay compliments, we tend to say, Oh, well, you know, that's no big deal to sort of weird, false humility thing, instead of just embracing and being like, Yeah, I'm pretty awesome at that. And I should do that as much as possible, because I'm better at than anybody else.

Shawna Rodrigues 6:38

That's awesome. And I want to believe that people downplay compliments. But I think that maybe it's just me. But I might have worked in some toxic work environments where I think people actually counter and push against some of your talents, and that people don't recognize and encourage them as much as they could. We might have some toxic managers out there that tend not to do that. So people don't get the encouragement that they need and get discouraged about, stop wasting time on color coding things. I need you over here doing that, instead of actually recognizing what those talents and skills are and how to capitalize on those.

Stosh Walsh 7:15

Yeah, yeah. So that's where the misalignment happens, right? If we get too focused on, what are we trying to achieve? What are we trying to achieve? What are we trying to achieve? And then thinking that any one will do. It's this philosophy that I hear all the time in organizations, they say, butts in seats, right? Like, we just need butts and seats, we just need to hire somebody to do this. No, you don't need to just hire anyone to do this, you need to hire someone who's good at this to do this. You need to hire someone who comes in and says, I want to do this with all of my time. Because it means that my eight or nine or 10, or 12 hour day will go by in a heartbeat. Because I lose track of time with this. Because if I could do this with every single moment of every single day at work, I would be happy. And they're going to produce a much better outcome than anybody else wouldn't. So the irony is, in our organizations, we keep saying, oh, let's just have anybody do that, or anybody can do that. And then we're surprised that the quality isn't good, or that the outcome isn't good. It's like, well, of course, the outcome isn't good. You're asking somebody who is no good at this, who doesn't want to do it to perform in that way, instead of taking your time deciding, oh, here's a person who really does this, well, let's let them do it as much as they possibly can.

Shawna Rodrigues 8:21

Yeah, so finding a way for that to work, I think I've also worked at places where, when people do have things they're good at, it's decided that we don't have time for those things. Like you're really good at connecting people and leading meetings and coming up with snacks or treats or setting up tables of stuff that create community, which is actually key for successful organizations. And people, we don't have the budget for that anymore. We don't have time for you to spend on planning these events, we don't have time for that. And those are the things that get cut away. And because we had to get down to the basics, when when that happens, you start losing those people, because that's the part of the job they liked, was doing those things instead of recognizing you're really good at this. So when you're in a position, for those listening, when you're in a position, and let's say you were that person that was really great at setting things up for meetings, and really good at bringing people together and facilitating things. And that gets cut, because we don't have time for these anymore. And we're not doing these meetings anymore. Do you recommend trying to talk to your organization to find space for those things? Or do you recommend looking for a new place to work that actually honors and sees your talents as they are as an asset to them?

Stosh Walsh 9:29

Yeah, I think both. So most organizations, they cut that sort of stuff first and then they regret it. So I think make the case for sure and say listen, here's what I do well. Here's the value that brings, here's the way that it's helping us to achieve the goals that we want to achieve and make the case for sure. But if that's fallen on deaf ears, then yeah, I would definitely encourage people to say that, where can I go where my talents are going to be valued? Because one of my favorite phrases of all time is, I'm not for everyone. And that includes organizations. And so we've all been in situations where we found ourselves where it's just not a great fit because of the environment of the organization or because of people that we're working with, or the job we're being asked to do, or any of the above. And so it's 100%, okay, to say, No, I'm not for this organization, this organization isn't for me. And if they're not going to value things that I value highly, then it's probably time to start looking for something else to do.

Shawna Rodrigues:

Yes, I like that. I definitely like that. And I feel like during the pandemic, over the last few years that people have started to have that shift. We've had this migration and shift and employment as people have realized what is important, if anything, this time, as much as it's been challenging in so many ways, that extra room, it seems, has given people time to realize what is important to them, and what they're good at, to some extent and where they want to put their time and focus, which is part of what's disrupting some of the markets, I feel like, have you seen that with your work at all with disruptions in organizations and filling positions and such?

Stosh Walsh:

Yeah, I think it's definitely been the case. And what's interesting is that this pandemic has been the stimulus for people to all of a sudden have more space to think about those kinds of things. Because we all get in those spaces where we just put our heads down and just do the work. And we don't really realize how it's affecting us or how we feel about it, because we've never really taken the time to pause and think about that, and get in touch with how we feel about it and see how that's affecting us physically, or mentally or spiritually even, right? And so this notion that, all of a sudden, we're eliminating commutes. So instead of having, you know, an hour and a half in a car every day, 45 minutes each way, or whatever, at least where I live, that's now time that I don't have to do that thing anymore. I'm not listening to the radio, or I'm not listening to somebody's podcast, or whatever, I'm actually, I actually have time to be alone with my thoughts and sit down and have a cup of coffee or talk with my spouse or whatever. And so I think the byproduct of "not going to work", you know, at least not going to an office to work has been, there's this margin and the people who have taken advantage of that margin and start to examine it a little bit, many of them, obviously, at this point are saying, hey, you know what, I realized that I need to make some different choices or have some different priorities, or I'm not really very aligned, or I don't feel like I'm connected to purpose here. And so I'm going to try and find something different to do, because that's going to be more fulfilling to me. And that's going to be more life giving to me. And I think that's a lot of what we've seen.

Shawna Rodrigues:

Yes, I wonder about how much we distract ourselves to some extent. How much our time outside of work when we had our freedom to go to restaurants and bars and spend time with friends and do all the other activities that it balances work to some extent, but it also helps distract us from our work and how much our work took our time. And when people were at home, working those 40 to 60. Because I do know people that once you're at home and never leave your office, so to speak of those hours bled and bled into more and more hours, that it became the only thing and then recognizing that it wasn't the right thing when it was such a big thing. And there wasn't the other things to offset and distract from it. So yeah, so it's, it's an interesting time for people to kind of figure things out and think things through. Do you think there's good questions you can ask yourself when you're trying to find alignment about where you belong and the work you're doing?

Stosh Walsh:

Yeah, I think there's a lot of great questions. I mean, the first one that I'd recommend to the point that you're just making about going to a restaurant or you know, getting out with friends or anything like that, you know, am I trying to distract myself from work? Because if the answer to that question is yes, then you've got to dig in a little further to what's going on at work, right? Another question, a different way to say maybe is, you know, am I escaping from work or to work? So there's an opportunity there to think like, what am I leaving? And what am I going to, right? And I think that's true of our home lives as well. I mean, there are a lot of people who escaped their home lives at work. And so that, that's a two way street in some ways, right? But what we really want is for those streets to be aligned together and we want them to feel like they're like, I like to turn the work life integration as opposed to work life balance, because work life balance pits work versus life against one another. And in an ideal world, we're doing those things integrated with one another. We're doing those things because they each bring joy, each aspect of those things brings joy. Each one of those things brings purpose, they bring meaning. They bring fulfillment, right? And so, the asking yourself to like, when was the last time I felt fulfilled at work? When was the last time I lost track of time at work? What do I enjoy doing the most at work? What do I really hate about work? Right? Like any of those questions can get you started down the path of evaluating what aspects of this I want to retain in which ones I want to try to avoid if possible, and if there's too many of those that start ticking the negative box then obviously it's time to start thinking about something different.

Shawna Rodrigues:

Yes. And I know that in my journey and this led me eventually to doing this work, that when I had my last physician, I started doing a gratitude practice was my way of kind of checking what things were, I didn't realize it at the time, but checking what things really were important to me and connected to me. And it was so funny to recognize that I was more grateful for the days that I didn't stay at work two hours later, to finish the projects, I was more grateful for the days they left them at home.

Stosh Walsh:

Yeah,

Shawna Rodrigues:

and that surprised me because I was always the overachiever, perfectionist, got everything to the office. And I thought that my, my greatest sense of accomplishment came from being the person that did everything at work and got everything done and was constantly on top of my game. And I really thought that that's what I'd be more grateful for. But I wasn't, I was more grateful for taking care of me and, and connecting with friends and doing what I needed to do for me outside of work, versus continuing the thing that I've always done and always been known for, by always accomplishing and always going above and beyond at work. And so it's interesting that gratitude is how I finally figured that out, because I wouldn't have, I thought I'd like being the person that worked way too much. And that, that was my accomplishment. And that was what defined me and it wasn't apparently so I was glad I got that out.

Stosh Walsh:

Yeah, no, that's such a great point. And gosh, the executive coach of music, like wants to dive right into that and start asking you a bunch of questions. No, I do think, though, that there's an element of that, that's about identity. Because if we identify as this -achieving, or whatever it is, and then our actions are going to follow whatever our conceptions are about ourselves. And so that, anyway, I hear a lot of people talking about mindset and why it's so important, and all that sort of stuff like and whether you buy into that or not, your actions are going to follow your beliefs.

Shawna Rodrigues:

Yeah.

Stosh Walsh:

And so whatever you have set yourself up to believe your actions are going to follow otherwise, you have significant dissonance, right? So I think that notion of like, taking a couple of steps back and even saying, What do, you ask the question about what what kinds of questions can people ask? Another one is, what do I believe about myself?

Shawna Rodrigues:

Yes.

Stosh Walsh:

Right? And so you know, that can get us into a space to where we have to think about and evaluate, is work reinforcing that or is it working against that?

Shawna Rodrigues:

Yes. Yeah, exactly. No, I love that. Those are great questions. I think that's wonderful thing that we're getting out of this. So thank you. Stosh and I actually met, because of working with a boot camp with Amy Porterfield, who, if you haven't heard of Amy Porterfield, she is amazing. She does a lot with businesses to help them succeed in online marketing and whatnot. She's great. In our initial conversations, we actually learned that we both had backgrounds that kind of connected to education in some degree. And so it's been fascinating to me lately, too, as I look at purpose, that to me, one of the important things about purpose is it's beyond just a vocation, or a specific career path that is actually bigger than that. And so I've really enjoyed lately, I've heard different people who started in education, because their purpose was connected to what education does and what it's meant to do. And that has led them on to these other paths as they followed purpose versus being told I should be a teacher, or being told I should be on education. They've gone on to these other journeys. So I would love to hear a little bit about your journey of finding your purpose and how it led you through these different phases a little bit. Could you share a little bit about that?

Stosh Walsh:

Yeah, for sure. So I started my career in traditional education settings. I was a classroom teacher for a few years, and realized pretty quickly because of what I mentioned earlier about the color coded planning and all of that, that I'm a terrible planner. And that planning is required for educators. Like, I had a senior administrator asked me for an entire semester of lesson plans for a class. And I was like, I teach this class three times a day. And it's going to be different every time based on how the students walk in the room. So there's zero chance I'm ever going to be able to give you an entire semesters where the lesson plan is like, I can do it, but it just won't be true, right? And so I realized pretty quickly, like that was not going to be for me. At the time, I was also coaching soccer. And so I just made a transition into coaching soccer, because I realized that what I really wanted out of education was the connection and the ability to mentor or advise or come alongside and build trust and relationships with my students. And so the vehicle for that was the subject matter, the subject matter wasn't the end. And I think too often in education, we make the subject matter at the end, well, you've got to be a master of this, this, this and this in order to be able to progress to the next grade or to graduate or whatever. And I know those things are necessary, but that wasn't why I got into it. I don't think most educators get into it for that.

Shawna Rodrigues:

Yeah.

Stosh Walsh:

And so I did the same thing with soccer but then I had the mentality of, what I'm really doing here is trying to build into people who are going to be high functioning members of their communities and great spouses and great friends and all those sorts of things at formative times in their lives, when they need people who have been a couple of steps further down the road, then they have to sort of step in and say, Hey, here's how you do it, right?

Shawna Rodrigues:

Yeah.

Stosh Walsh:

And so we did that with college soccer for several years. And then I read a bunch of Gallups books. And because a mentor gave me one. And so the first one was Now, Discover Your Strengths, which is this book that has the StrengthsFinder assessment in it, and I took the StrengthsFinder assessment. This was probably 2002, or something like that. And I read this book, and I took the assessment, I looked at the results. And I was like, how did this computer know me? It was just the weirdest thing I've ever experienced. And so then I got super interested in what Gallup was doing, started reading their other books. And then I had this moment, I remember like it was yesterday, even though it was almost 20 years ago, I put my finger in the book, I set it down on the table, I looked over at my wife, and I said, I need to work with these people. And so I'm a college soccer coach at this point. And she's, to her eternal credit, she was like, well, then you should. And so I literally applied online for an associate consultant position that day, and six months later, I had a different career. And so, and ever since then, I've been in organizational development, and executive coaching, and all that other sort of stuff. So the thread that runs through all of that is wanting to help people, like I say, all the time, one of my favorite things in the world to do is get underneath something or someone and stand up.

Shawna Rodrigues:

That's awesome. I love that, yes, we're gonna have to link because I've also done the StrengthsFinder as part of a fellowship I did in DC and found it was really wonderful. So we'll put a link to that in the show notes as well, because that really is a great tool for people to reinforce. Because there's that piece to that we need some reinforcement of our strength at time. I love your story. And I love the support of your spouse, I have a really supportive partner as well.

Stosh Walsh:

Yeah, I am eternally grateful for a million reasons for my spouse.

Shawna Rodrigues:

That's amazing. That's wonderful. We are actually getting closer to the end of our time together. So we're gonna touch on self care, and then wrap around to the real world application, which I think we have some, some good stuff we got out of this. This is a question we ask all of our guests. What do you do to take care of yourself?

Stosh Walsh:

Well, not enough. So,

Shawna Rodrigues:

like honesty,

Stosh Walsh:

yeah, I'm one of those people who, my body is kind of the backseat driver. I'm constantly telling, it's just like, No, just do, you know, do what I say just be quiet. I'm not interested in your warnings. Or whatever else. But when I'm at my best though, I get out and exercise, I ride a bike, I run, and I listen to things when I'm doing that, that are life giving to me, that are energizing for me, right? So whether that's podcasts, or just music or whatever, those are some things that I do to take care of myself, for sure. I also make time to create community around things that I enjoy. So for example, I host a whiskey tasting in my house every month, and we have a community that comes around that. And that's when I realized how important it was to me and to a lot of the other people who do it when we stopped doing it because of COVID.

Shawna Rodrigues:

Yes,

Stosh Walsh:

and how many of the people who attend said, Oh, man, I really missed this. And so it was less about the whiskey we are trying and more about just the relationships that had developed over that period of time. And so that's a way that I feel like I can care not only for myself, but also for others. And I think one of the best ways to care for yourself is to think about how you do that with other people.

Shawna Rodrigues:

Oh, I love that. I love that. I love creating that community. That is awesome. So one of the things that we have here is we've actually created a series of coloring books we've just started, called The Color of Grit. And so for all of our guests, we actually offer you a free coloring book. So you get to choose it. And you're welcome to gift it if that's not your thing, because we want everyone to do their self care their own way. But we have a Vintage Mermaid and Magnificent Ocean one. And You've Got This, which is funny and inspirational quotes, or do either those resonate with you as when we can send you a copy of?

Stosh Walsh:

I'm going for the Mermaid Ocean one.

Shawna Rodrigues:

I love it. Yeah, that seems to be the popular one. I like that. Yeah, we'll have to send you a copy of that so that you can have options and share if you'd like as well.

Stosh Walsh:

That's great. Great.

Shawna Rodrigues:

Then as we wrap up, what is something our guests can walk away with and start doing tomorrow to apply what we've talked about? I think maybe circling back to some of the questions to see about their alignments, possibly with their current work and what they're doing in their organization. What do you think?

Stosh Walsh:

I think asking yourself questions is great. The big thing about that, though, is carving out that time. So one of the things I've talked about a lot in coaching is this idea of, what time are you scheduling into your calendar that's for you? So we tend to let our calendars run our lives. And we don't often take control of our calendars in ways that say, even if it's only for 15 minutes a day, put something in, that's non negotiable, right? Whether that's the 15 minutes before, you're going to have lunch, if you get a lunch, right? And if you don't, then start getting one, right, because that's the thing. So in that time, and maybe it has to start out with during your commute, or maybe that has to start out with even just as you're pulling into the driveway, you know, after you do your grocery shopping, or whatever it is, just stay in the car for 10 minutes, right? So figure out, get creative, but carve out the time to sit and ask yourself, Okay, how am I feeling? What am I thinking about whatever the situation is? Am I getting to use the best parts of myself in these different areas of my life that are important to me? Work, home, parenting, community involvement, whatever it is, and then start to sit with the answers to some of those questions, right? Is that consistent with the way that I see myself? Am I hearing feedback from others that would reinforce that, right? All of those kinds of things, as we're getting into some of those specific questions, like we talked about earlier, I think those questions are great, but they're useless if we don't get intentional time around it. And so I think if there's one thing that your listeners could do, it's to really say, I'm going to get some time. And I'm going to protect that time, so that I can do something that's going to help me be introspective enough to make some decisions if I need to make decisions or reinforce and feel good about the decisions that I've already made. And then figure out which ones am I going to make next that are going to help me to have that purpose and that alignment that everybody needs in order to be fulfilled and to be whole.

Shawna Rodrigues:

Yes, so put down that cell phone. Stop scrolling TikTok or Instagram or Facebook or whatever else is your favorite distraction. I have like five minutes roll, install a game and then be like, what am I doing? I just distracted myself. So put that away for that time and find that time to actually just be in dialogue with yourself. I love that. I think that's a great takeaway, and something people can institute and has some great questions to think about when they're doing that. That is wonderful. So Stosh, you have a book that is called Along the Way: Leadership Stories from Everyday Life, which I love that title. So that can be found on Amazon. But you also have it on your website, can you tell us more about how to find you and connect with you?

Stosh Walsh:

Yeah, so I wrote that book a number of years ago, and my kids were pretty small. And I basically just started it as a blog. I believe that you can learn about leadership from everyday situations, all you have to do is looking for them, right? And so I started actually writing the stories down, and eventually just compiled into enough of these that I just, the ones that I liked the best and turn them into a book, and then put questions at the end of each one of the little anecdotes to really shift the readers mind to thinking about leadership and the other situations in which they might be leading. So it's mostly stories about my kids and about my family. But then there's this sort of broader application questions for leadership in general. But I have that book on my website, as you mentioned, so ConstantOD.com, and then /getbook, and you just enter in your email address, and it will give you an e-copy of the book. And if you want a hardcopy, then you can get on Amazon.

Stosh Walsh:

That's great. It's ConstantOD for Constant Organizational Development. And we will have that in the show notes as well. Is it easy to find you on Instagram or Facebook? Are you active on LinkedIn or somewhere is a good place to find you as well?

Stosh Walsh:

Yeah, all three. And I'm the only Stosh Walsh in the world pretty much. So if you Google me, I'm awfully easy to find. You'll get a bunch of links to talks that I've done and TEDx and blah, blah, blah.

Shawna Rodrigues:

Is that your real name? Is this like your stage name so that people can find you easily?

Stosh Walsh:

I represent my real name. Yeah. 100%.

Shawna Rodrigues:

Stosh, got it. He got a name that is easy to find. Love it. Wonderful. Well, you have been amazing. So thank you so much for being here today. And I hope that folks can find you and learn more about what you're doing. I know that you've definitely shared a lot today. That's been very valuable.

Stosh Walsh:

Thanks.

Shawna Rodrigues:

Yes, yes, it's been great. So for those of you listening, if you head over to www.thegritshow.com, you can find the show notes. And you will also find this week's wisdom where you can find a place to take notes about what we've gotten from today. And you find my notes about what I got out of this conversation as well. If you take a screenshot of that, or of today's episode on your phone, or just a picture of you watching this is great, too. We'll take that. You can tag us on Instagram, @The.Grit.Show. You'll be entered in one of our monthly drawings. You can also DM us topics that are important to you so we can make sure we get them. And you can also get samples of our coloring pages at our website, thegritshow.com So, thank you for joining us, thank you for being here, Stosh.

Stosh Walsh:

Thank you.

Shawna Rodrigues:

And take care. Seriously, take care of you. You're the only one of you that the world has got and that means something.

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