“Good things happen when people connect”. Purpose has to be actualized in every day to day work.“

Erica Keswin is a workplace strategist who has worked for the past twenty years with some of the most iconic brands in the world as a consultant, speaker, author, and professional dot-connector. Her bestselling book, Bring Your Human to Work: Ten Sure-Fire Ways to Design a Workplace That’s Good for People, Great for Business, and Just Might Change the World, was published by McGraw-Hill in the fall of 2018. Her second book, Rituals Roadmap: The Human Way to Transform Everyday Routines Into Workplace Magic (McGraw-Hill), was published in January 2021 and made the Wall Street Journal, Publishers Weekly and USA Today best seller lists.

Erica’s work and insights can be seen in various media outlets, including Harvard Business Review, NY Post, Forbes, Huffington Post, O Magazine, Entrepreneur, Business Insider, Mogul, Conscious Company, Quartz, and Fast Company.

Recent keynotes, workshops, and webinars (virtual and IRL) include the American Red Cross, SXSW, TIAA, IBM, New York Times, HighTower Associates, AllianceBernstein, Standard Industries, Banfield Pet Hospital, and Radio Flyer. Erica was named one of Marshall Goldsmith’s Top 100 Coaches in 2020, as well as one of Business Insider’s most innovative coaches of 2020.

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Connect with Erica:

Website | Instagram | Facebook | LinkedIn | Twitter

Download Audio:

Stream the audio here

Books by Erica:

• Rituals Roadmap: The Human Way to Transform Everyday Routines Into Workplace Magic
• Bring Your Human to Work: Ten Sure-Fire Ways to Design a Workplace That’s Good for People, Great for Business, and Just Might Change the World

Resources I read in the interview preparation:

• Staying Human While Working From Home with Three Teenagers is NOT an Oxymoron
• This Year Don’t Leave Magic on the Table: Bookend Your Life with Rituals
• Got A Mountain To Climb? Create A Ritual

People Mentioned:

• Alisa Cohn
• Marshall Goldsmith
• Warren Buffet

Show Notes:

• You are a professional dot connector – can you elaborate on what do you mean by dot connector?
• While growing up, did you see anyone in your family who is, or was, a dot connector as well?
• When your parents got divorced, when you were 10, how did you deal with that situation emotionally?
• What are your morning rituals or routines?
• What is the difference between ‘routine and ritual’ and ‘habit and routine’?
• What are your rituals with your children?
• I found one of your articles on thrive global where you described your family rituals around your husband, around your daughter, where you set up a meeting time with your family about what we have to do in that week or the next week and planning chores. Do you remember that article?
• I want to go back to your coffee thing. Do you go to the same Starbucks all the time or you change locations?
• What are your activities when you wake up in morning?
• Can you elaborate more on your yoga experience? 
• Where do you go on these retreats?
• What are the parameters to consider to go for a good retreat?
• When you plan your retreats in the beginning of every year usually, what kind of questions do you tend to ask yourself in terms of intention setting for the retreat and how do you usually come up with those answers of discussions?
• Sharing a story from the book rituals roadmap. 
• Do you have other grounding, spiritual grounding practices in your everyday lives including your retreats that you take every year? 
• Have you tried meditation before or do you practice now?
•  When you work with top executives and leaders, what kind of questions do you ask them?
• What do you do in your life that makes you feel most like you?
• Does my calendar reflect my values?
• You have had two decades of working with executives and leaders. What are the successful key ingredients that you have seen among those people?
• When you feel challenged or in any challenging situation in your personal life and during COVID times, how do you approach challenging times? Do you have any support system, any community that you approach?
• What do you think makes a great friendship work and what could be the foundations of creating one?
• How do you help others to open up when let’s say when you’re in any conversation and you feel that another person is not willing to be vulnerable? Or share their feelings and emotions. So how do you help navigate that conversation so that they can open up and you can create a psychological safety in that conversation?
• When you think about purpose in your own life, what comes to your mind? 
• When you work with different leaders from different organizations, what kind of a struggle do you see that all the leaders are going through and have gone through. Is there any common struggle that every leader goes through?
• Do you have any recommendation that we should look in the process of hiring?
• What are your values in professional world and in your personal life?
•  Is there any tool that you would have developed recently, any new ritual that comes to mind?

• And, much more

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