Adam Mattis Welcome to the Safe Business Agility Podcast. This is the place to get advice, stories, perspectives and updates about safety and related topics to help you work differently and build the future. This week's episode is brought to you by Rally The only purpose built solution designed to scale agile and unite the enterprise to empower value stream management and digital transformation.
Adam Mattis Thanks for listening and be sure to subscribe to the show wherever you get your podcasts. All right. We have a different it's different here and this is different and we're going to have fun and people are going to have fun, but it's different because I've got to put improv big in the podcast title and I want to see what we get.
Erin Diehl So I'm here for that. Welcome everyone. If you press play, it's your lucky day.
Adam Mattis It is your lucky day because we're going to get your energy, which I just finished your book and I listen to it partially while running and partially while sick as a dog. And then I finish it on the airplane home and you carried me with your vibe air. And so I appreciate it.
Erin Diehl That means so much to me and the fact that you listen to it. I always feel like what I read when I hear somebody who spoke on Audible and then I talk to them, I feel like I just know them. So it's I don't know if that is the feeling, but I feel like I already know you. You're like an old soul to me.
Erin Diehl But thank you. I really appreciate that. And I'm glad it helped you because you were really sick. It's just funny now, you know, doing something I won't say is super personal. There are personal anecdotes in the book, and I do I do get vulnerable. But it's just everyone has a different thing they relate to in it, and it's really cool.
Erin Diehl It's been a really cool experience to hear people's feedback and to hear what resonates with them. And if somebody hates it, that's fine too. You're not going to please everybody. But you know.
Adam Mattis My grandma used to say, You can't be everybody's cup of tea.
Erin Diehl You can't. And I'm like, If I can't be your tea, I'm going to make a coffee, you know, like I'm going to go get a coffee.
Adam Mattis So now you take us from Colombia to Clemson to Chicago. Deep dish and pick us up in Charlotte or leave us off in Charlotte.
Erin Diehl Wait, what do you mean? Can I do that and drop it off for you?
Adam Mattis I mean, if you want to bring me a pizza, sure, but I'm just saying. What's your story, Erin?
Erin Diehl Well, I never my parents are living in Colombia. I've never lived in Colombia. I grew I was born in in a huge town in South Carolina called Greenwood. I went to middle school in another gigantic town in Tifton, Georgia. And then when I was in ninth grade, I moved to a suburb of Detroit for high school and was moved to.
Adam Mattis Share it with you.
Erin Diehl my God. People thought I was joking. I mean, I was from the sticks. Like I was like, Hey, y'all. I mean, you remember that? And then, you know, and I said, Yes, ma'am. And people laughed and I never said it again. And it was such a culture shock. And then I lived there for high school. And then I went to Clemson and after graduating, thought I was going to be Oprah Winfrey.
Erin Diehl So I moved to Chicago.
Adam Mattis Wait, hold on. You can't just leave it there because that's such a cool story.
Erin Diehl I really wanted to be Oprah for a really long time, and I wanted to be her because she the way that she makes people feel in her presence was something I really wanted in my life. And I wanted to bring joy to the world. I just wasn't sure how to do that. And so once I watched her show, I was determined to do this.
Erin Diehl And this was like, you know, I'm 40. So this was the early days where we really had to, like, work hard to get on the Internet. It was like having your, you know, two AOL chat rooms. And so I would go on and Google like, how did Oprah Winfrey become Oprah? And there weren't like a ton of digital courses there, wasn't there?
Erin Diehl There was broadcast journalism, but that was really the only path and none of all of that was going towards news. So I moved to Chicago and I thought, she lives there through osmosis. If I can get some of her good vibe and somehow become Oprah. And I thought, How did Oprah become Oprah? Well, I guess you got to know how to talk to people.
Erin Diehl So I started doing improv and creating my own version of Oprah through improv. I guess I'm like the Oprah of improv.
Adam Mattis You could almost say that you're the millennial Oprah, right? Because we are.
Erin Diehl In the area. And we are.
Adam Mattis Yeah, we are. We are that whether we like it or not.
Erin Diehl But okay, I'm going to take that. I will receive that. Okay. I'm going to say that every morning. That's my new mantra. I'm the millennial bull.
Adam Mattis Run your own thing, right? I mean, you've you know, you've created your own business. You're focused on helping people. Your hope is you're focused on bringing out the good energy. Right? You're you're focused on helping people connect to others and I mean, that's kind of like the 2024 version of sitting on TV at 4 p.m. with a microphone with a Stedman, right?
Erin Diehl I mean, okay. And a Gayle. I'm so here for that. Wow. Adam, you've changed your life today. You changed a life truly. that is so awesome.
Adam Mattis All right, so you're in Chicago. You are working for another firm and starting your own thing as well.
Erin Diehl Yes.
Adam Mattis Which is super cool and super hard. I mean, I I've been there, done that, and I know a lot of other people listening right now have either done that or in the process of doing that. So we can all feel like what that's like in that chaos.
Erin Diehl Yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean, everyone listening, you know, you have to have a lot of passion for it and you have to want to do it. And a lot of people ask me like, Well, why did you do it? And I just knew it was this idea that was given to me. That was my born. It used all the gifts that I've been given and it would have been the biggest regret of my life to not do it.
Erin Diehl And it has taken me in so many crazy directions and all of them have been incredibly awesome. Yet it's hard learning experiences and I am grateful for them all. And I know I started it in my thirties when I was 30 and now I'm in this new decade and it feels there's this whole new chapter coming. And so literally and figuratively, I wrote a book, but it is, it is the most aligned, most alignment I've ever felt with my assignment here on Earth than I've ever felt.
Adam Mattis You know, it's, I think the timing is is really important. Right? So I think, you know, having read your book and understanding your journey, I mean, everything happens for a reason. It happens on its intended timeline and everything brings us to where we're at today. And if you look at where business is now in the pace of business, you know, in our space, we always talked about how the world is changing fast.
Adam Mattis And if you don't learn to adapt, you're going to get left behind. And COVID was a good kind of proving ground for that because the world had to pivot in a quarter. But at the same time, that was also just a proving ground because for as fast as the world changed, then it's changing even faster now. And if you look at all the the advent of things around general AI and the other technologies, you know, how we work is becoming less of a thing, right?
Adam Mattis I mean, the structures are in place for learning how to work faster or learning how to use the tools at our disposal to be more efficient, to be more productive. And when you look at the biggest challenge facing business today, it's not learning. Learning new skills is very important. Making sure that you can do that and focus on deep technical work.
Adam Mattis But the biggest barriers of really communication, it's our inability to talk, to just talk to each other. And I think that's where what you bring to the table is so important.
Erin Diehl Thank you. Yeah, I agree with all of that. It's I mean, communication, especially the way we do it now, is a blessing. And it could be a curse. I think. I don't have a child in middle school, but I'll go by the bus stops in the morning in my neighborhood, and all the kids are standing there on their phones, literally not talking to each other.
Erin Diehl And I remember going out to a restaurant last weekend and my husband and I were on a date and we were sitting at the bar having a drink. And I looked around and I counted. There was seven people sitting at a bar on the phone, and I was like, What is this? So I think what my what improv as a teaching tool does is it connects people in real time, in a real way, and it does it magically.
Erin Diehl I think it's such an experiential thing to use as a teaching tool. It's fun, it's positive, it brings laughter in joy, but it also, through experience, teaches you and how we use it is it sounds mean, but we must trick you into learning because you're laughing and having a great time. And then after we debrief the activity that we've done, I call it the ah ha ha ha moment.
Erin Diehl It's like the light bulb goes off, but you're laughing at the same time. So you're not even witnessing the epiphany that you just had. So I think why we are why we came back with a vengeance in 2022, because 2020 to 2022 was like a whole other story about why we came back in such a strong way and had the best year ever in 2022 was because businesses realized communication is hard in a virtual world.
Erin Diehl And if we don't do something about it now, I don't know what we're going to do. It's just going to continue to grow. Like you said.
Adam Mattis Sure. And I think just the basic muscle of improv is is such a foundational shift in how professionals think.
Erin Diehl And yeah.
Adam Mattis I don't know why people do this. I don't know. What about a professional context makes us so darn competitive with one another, right? We're all in the same organization working towards the same goals. So I got to beat you in a persistent headspace where when we're talking, we follow the pattern of, Yeah, but yeah, I hear you. But and every communication is seemingly trying to put the other person down or prove the other person wrong.
Adam Mattis When our goal is to be moving forward, we're moving backwards. So the basic just improv muscle of Yes. And like we're seeking to build upon instead of take away from, I mean, just that little thing, building that into how we communicate, it's so important.
Erin Diehl Okay, That class with Jordan taught you a lot. Okay, That was you nailed it. That's like improv. Like boiled down into four sentences and Z and I really genuinely believe that if everybody could take an improv class, the world would be such a better place. I really believe that. And I know it sounds super cliché, but what happens and and I witnessed this.
Erin Diehl I mean, we've done upwards of like a thousand workshops at this point. Okay? I have witnessed it time and time again where people walk in 20 different people, they walk out a cohesive group of 20. They're laughing, they're joking. It's like they've been at a party together and they were all in on the inside joke. Like it's it's amazing to watch and that clients will say to us, we've had this amazing experience.
Erin Diehl How do I continue this? Like, how do I keep this momentum going? And so we created some post work at the end of our workshops that helps people continue the conversation. But we always say like we are a conversation starter, we are going to come in, we're going to make you laugh, we're going to have fun, we're going to teach you a lot of things, but you have to continue this.
Erin Diehl And that's what happens in the day to day. People get so caught up, I mean, myself included, I'm not sitting here saying I'm perfect. I was screaming at my computer earlier this morning because something wouldn't work, you know, But it's it's the day to day that takes us out of this collaborative environment because we have so many distractions.
Erin Diehl I truly believe that's why we're distracted at every angle. And so when you actually put people in a room, it's like a reality show. When you put them in a room and you take away their technology and all they have to do is communicate, it can be really great or really bad, and improv makes it really great.
Adam Mattis And then you're giving them something that many people probably haven't had since college, which is a bonding experience. I mean, if you think back to the friends that you made when you were younger, it wasn't necessarily because you were the right personality. MASH Right. You did something together. You went to that party that one time and that one thing happened.
Adam Mattis Now you're friends for life. Totally. And as adults, we don't get that often. And so when you go through something that's a positive experience, like what you're talking about, that brings people together, when you are with people and you laugh, you bond. And having that to always default to or to go back to. I think it's really helpful when the hard conversations do come up because you have that common thing that was so positive and so good that you're not really going to go much, you're not going to fall much further.
Adam Mattis So there's a lot of good that comes from that sort of an experience totally.
Erin Diehl I think that is so funny that you're, you know, you equate it to college. I would say become such a nerd. I was in leadership camp in high school. No one likes a bragger, but I went to leadership camp and then I loved it so much that I became a junior camp counselor for the middle school camp. And then I loved it so much that once I had the chance to go back and be a counselor, this was free.
Erin Diehl This was not like I was getting paid. Like I. I spent money basically to go and do this and be a camp counselor. I loved it so much. Like I still talk to people from it was called MASC, Michigan Association, Student Council. I still on Facebook. We'll hear from people from MASC and it's like we just it's I would come home and cry.
Erin Diehl I would be got warm fuzzies. It was like the best experience of my life. And that's what improv workshops there, warm, fuzzy leadership camp moments. I just really sold it. But I mean, I'm just saying the people I bonded with at this camp, I will have this special bond with for Life. I'm such a nerd, but I loved it.
Erin Diehl It was it's all team building. And I and I knew even then that was my calling. Like I knew it because I, I love making people feel good and I love helping people find the highest version of themselves. And I just happened to find the teaching tool that helps me do that in a really fun, engaging way.
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Adam Mattis Safe co-fund. Get it go fund anyway, dive into safe co-fund and more easily determine value stream funding collaboratively safe co-fund is participatory budgeting simplified explore safe co-fund now in safe studio at safe dot, Scott adds Welcome now back to the show. So I want to kind of pivot away from the improv piece a little bit because there is a lot of other really cool things in your book that I think can help people just grinding away in corporate America.
Adam Mattis And you had this concept of a day that you suggested, whether it's monthly or quarterly or whatever it is that I thought was was such a cool thing. And what I like about the few tips that you gave in your book was the need to share, right? So it's not just enough that you take a day and go do something that brings you joy in that relight your fire.
Adam Mattis But then you have to come back and you share those photos and those stories with the other people in your team so they can then share in that. I mean, can you kind of take us through some of those tools that you talk through?
Erin Diehl Well, here's what I also love that you said the drug that I'm on right now because I always tell everybody the name of this day is not a drug, although it sounds like a drug. It is called my LSD day or your LSD day. And it stands for Life Saver Day and how I got to this name. And it's interesting because even after the book was published, things have shifted and my my internal company and I'll share that in a minute.
Erin Diehl But here's what happened in my thirties as a business owner. I know a lot of people listening to this will attest to this, maybe yourself included. I would just run myself into the ground so hard I would say yes to everything overcommit. And then I would do what my husband calls burn the candle and he would just go burn the candy and I would just come home.
Erin Diehl And I did improv at night too. So I lived two lives, like I worked 9 to 5 improv three nights a week, built the business any free time that I had. So I would literally face plant like nose to mattress, sometimes fully clothed. Right? And it would take me sometimes 2 to 3 days to recover and I would just have this really bad like life hangover.
Erin Diehl It's not from drinking, it was just from doing too much. And so I started to realize through my healing journey there has to be a better way to do this preventative care. So once a month I instilled with my internal team we all take an LSD day, which is something that fills your cup. It's not taking care of somebody else.
Erin Diehl So even if your kid is at daycare, like you leave your kid at daycare and you do something for you and that could be roaming the shelves at HomeGoods, it could be going thrift store shopping. But you take a picture of it and you share it. And we have this internal Slack channel. We have all different types of Slack channels, but one specifically for LSD Day.
Erin Diehl And you have to tell everybody, like, I'm doing my LSD, I'll send you a picture, you know, And if you don't want to share, you don't have to. But we encourage it because the encouragement is what shows other people. Always my LSD day on the calendar next month. Should I make sure I put that in there? Well, here's what's happened since the book was published.
Erin Diehl Just a quick sidebar. I actually had a concussion for like four and a half months, and it was I had post-concussion syndrome, which is basically like all the symptoms of a concussion. You just walk around like a zombie. Erin.
Adam Mattis How are we this a light.
Erin Diehl Weight for real?
Adam Mattis So I was actually I was in the military for a lot of years and not a lot of years. I was for a few years and I was in a lot of explosions. And I still my brain scan looks like a career linebacker.
Erin Diehl my.
Adam Mattis God. All of those. So let me just say I feel you. And if you need any tips about managing your memory, I got you.
Erin Diehl my God. Okay. This. So brain health like, is fascinating to me.
Adam Mattis And I only if you think about, like, when we were kids. I don't know about you, but, like, if I ride my bike and had a concussion, my mom would wake me up twice in the night, make sure I still woke up, and then. Yeah, nobody ever thought about it. I mean, baseballs, all the things.
Erin Diehl No helmets, No helmets. Yes.
Adam Mattis Big deal.
Erin Diehl After I had that injury, I will tell you that. Here's the deal, though. I didn't even know I had a concussion for like three weeks. I was just walking or I had an accident. I did something dumb. I jumped up a 40 foot cliff in Costa Rica on my friend's 40th birthday and hit the water. But I hit the water and came out of the water.
Erin Diehl I hit my water. My we're supposed to do like a pencil jump. I hit it with my butt. My head went back. I whiplash came up out of the water and my contact had popped off my eye and I just felt really awful. But I wasn't sure. My vision started to go out of.
Adam Mattis Consciousness, so I didn't think about it.
Erin Diehl Yep. And then a few weeks later, a couple scans later, yep, she's concussed. And my vision was so weird for months and I had headaches and I just everything was hard. And so I say all of this to how you that I actually did away with LSD days for my team because we went to a four day workweek and my internal team is not big.
Erin Diehl There's three of us there full time. There's four additional part timers. And so they're not working full days anyway. They're doing their part time hours. And so it's really just three of us that are now four day work week people. Friday is our day that we collectively share off. But what it really means is you I'm always doing something work related.
Erin Diehl On a Friday, we do check email at 11 and for a respected time and get back to clients if we need to. But I'm doing that from the beach. I'm doing that while running errands. It's like my Get my life together day and then I have Saturday and Sunday to be a mom. And then I go back and I'm back in the full thing.
Erin Diehl But it is changed. That injury changed my life and it also changed the importance of my priorities in a different way. And that that will be a book to Adam Kazak.
Adam Mattis No.
Erin Diehl That's a hundred.
Adam Mattis Percent. And I think she that might be the most important point from this whole conversation, because I think a lot of the times I mean, I've been 30 year old Erin. I'm still a little bit 30 year old Erin, where I mean, I run myself into the ground way too hard. And I do it because I carry this guilt of I have nine friends that didn't make it back from overseas.
Adam Mattis So I feel like I'm living this life in, you know, to to fill the gap that they left. And then I tell myself I'm doing it for the team when when in reality, I just don't know what else to do. And I think there's a lot of people that just don't know how to turn it off. And it's not until you have things like that.
Adam Mattis Like last year I had a pretty significant health scare. That was my version of your concussion. And it's a shame that it takes things like that. And I wish it didn't take things like that for people to realize that you've got to take care of yourself. And like you talk about a lot in your book as well. If you're not taking care of yourself, you can't care for others, right?
Adam Mattis You can't serve your team. You can't serve your clients if you're not taking care of yourself. And I spent a lot of years as a travel consultant and, you know, it's below 40. So 40. So you're working 80 hours baseline and that's just what it is. And for those years I didn't have relationships. I didn't start a family.
Adam Mattis I was I was running. I mean, for largely the same reasons you were running because that was my escape and I was probably running away from things instead of dealing with things. And there's a lot of people in corporate America that are doing that. They think they have to be the first to respond to Slack, the first to respond to email, because otherwise something bad is going to happen.
Erin Diehl Yes.
Adam Mattis And I think the big takeaway is if you continue to do those things, something bad is going to happen. You've got to take care of yourself. Because if you don't like you said in your book, your body's going to force you to slow down and do something for yourself.
Erin Diehl Yeah, I mean, so well said. And I think as leaders, like, we are definitely leading people, but we're really managing energy and managing.
Adam Mattis Our own energy.
Erin Diehl Is is really.
Adam Mattis Key thing to being a leader.
Erin Diehl Yes. And I mean, as you said, I had a rough morning, Adam. I'm not I'm not always like butterflies and rainbows the majority of time. I like to live in that phase. But like, listen, your girl was having a morning and I was just frustrated with technology. Just things weren't going my way. And let me tell you what I had to do.
Erin Diehl I literally had to stop what I was doing, get up and go lay down and meditate. And that is truly what changed my whole morning. I was I was just in it, man. I was so frustrated in that moment of mindfulness, like that 10 minutes, I gave myself, literally gave me new breath, gave me new like new energy, gave me a refund sense of the day.
Erin Diehl And I have had a much better day since to let me tell you what old Aaron would have done. Should have kept plowing. She would have been angry. She would have just kept that energy, would have lasted all day long. no. I had to learn how to do that for myself. It's like, you know, even thinking about being a parent like all your child wants is to feel safe and loved.
Erin Diehl But how many times do we go throughout the day and not give ourselves that safety or love?
Adam Mattis Absolutely. And I think having that reset, whatever it is for you. Right. So and so for you, you said it's just laying down and meditating. I know Jenn Gottlieb, who I don't know if you've seen her book or not, you know, for her, she goes on a walk.
Erin Diehl Yeah. For for.
Adam Mattis Me. Right. Her energy's off the charts too. But so for me, we have a puppy and just 5 minutes with her. Like, for me, there's nothing wrong with the world after she's like my face and I've thrown the ball 20 times in five. So I think we all need to find that thing, because contrary to what 30 year old Aaron and I don't know, still dealing with it, Adam might think you can't just plow through it.
Adam Mattis You're not doing anybody any favors. Every time you bring that energy to a new interaction, you're transferring that energy to that person, right? There's no interaction that we have where we don't transfer something. And you want to be delivered about making sure the thing that you transfer is positive and not negative.
Erin Diehl 1,000%, 1,000%. And you know, it's hilarious. Adam, This is how aligned we are today. I'm not sure if your people can see video, but my dog was just as you were talking about, your dog literally scratching my door to my little studio. And this is big deal.
Adam Mattis I love it. Spelled, of course, DHL.
Erin Diehl Exactly. Yeah. But he he like knew you called them in. I'm telling you, the universe is really just pulling things together for us today. Like, that was, like, perfect timing. That was crazy.
Adam Mattis So this has been a great convo, and I just like you bring so much value to people and there's so many things that I think, you know, your book and your content can do to help people in our broader scaled, agile community. And you know, I mean, to recap, we talked about, you know, the the improv aspects, which is a lot of what your consulting firm is based around bringing that conversation, that team building skill to people all around the world, all kinds of different corporations.
Adam Mattis And I think there's a lot of other really valuable tidbits in your book that people should pick up on. There's a lot of great resources plugged in that book. They can download the PDF and check out for themselves. See, I'm a guitar to it anyway.
Erin Diehl So that.
Adam Mattis I think there's a lot of good stuff. And I, I appreciate that your team reached out because this is the kind of content that we want to start bringing to our community. It's different than the nerdy technical stuff that we usually bring in. Sometimes it's the atypical that's the most valuable. And I definitely think I mean, we've touched on I mean, got everything under the sun in this conversation.
Adam Mattis We've touched on all aspects of life and I think everybody's gonna get something out of this. So to wrap it up, can you plug you where can they go to learn more about you and your business and also your book? Because we haven't even really given it a solid plug yet.
Erin Diehl my gosh. Well, first of all, your fabulous host, everybody give him five stars immediately.
Adam Mattis And you haven't thrown notifications yet.
Erin Diehl Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. But literally, you can just go to its Aaron deal DHL ecom. And there you'll find the link to the book called ICU A Leader's Guide to Energizing Your Team Through Radical Empathy. That's the full title. It's literally just called ICU. And you'll find out by Instagram, LinkedIn, all the stuff there. But please come say hello.
Erin Diehl And I'm really grateful to my own community. The Improve It podcast. We'll have to get you on my show. Adam. We'll have to get you over there. Okay.
Adam Mattis Aaron I don't know that I can do it.
Erin Diehl I know. I think I think this would be hard for you, but we truly, like I call my community the Improve-it people for reason behind that, but blew me away with the book. Like every we sold out on the Amazon on the day it launched. It was incredible. It was so nice and I feel like, Are your people over?
Erin Diehl I'll bring you over and people are beautiful. Have a party.
Adam Mattis Just the way that people will lift you up. It's really a beautiful thing and I think it's so cool that your community put you on their shoulders. They're just beautiful. When you put good vibes into the world, the world gives it back. So I know that's how you continue to feel.
Erin Diehl It was insane. And I'm so grateful I got to meet you. I'm so grateful my team reached out to and I'm so grateful. Big deal. Got to meet you. My dog is here. Everyone, if you're not watching and I'm just. I'm so here and and grateful for this conversation. Thank you for bringing up that parts of your life that are vulnerable but I think so helpful for other people.
Erin Diehl And you should feel really great in that courage.
Adam Mattis Aaron Diehl, thank you so much.
Erin Diehl Thank you.
Adam Mattis We hope you enjoyed today's episode. The entire team at Skilled Agile is focused on helping you and your enterprise work differently and build a future. If you find this content valuable, please tell your colleagues and friends and subscribe to the show wherever you get your podcasts to share your suggestions for the show. Just drop us a line, a podcast at Scaled Agile Dotcom.
Adam Mattis I'm out of meds. See you next time.