Generational differences in the workplace have never been more important to understand. With five generations working side by side, leaders and professionals must navigate diverse communication styles, values, and expectations to foster strong, high-performing teams.
In this episode, you’ll learn more about how generational diversity can be a powerful asset when approached with empathy and strategy. Our host and CEO Porschia, alongside our guest, Taryn Abrahams, share insight on how to address generational stereotypes, reduce team conflict, and enhance collaboration across age groups.
They also explore how to build a more inclusive company culture that meets the shared needs of all employees, including respect, trust, and psychological safety, regardless of age. The conversation provides clear steps for leaders who want to lead with intention and improve team dynamics by embracing generational understanding.
Taryn Abrahams is a workplace behavior and human interaction expert, as well as the founder of Empower Behavioral Services. With a foundation in psychotherapy and years of experience in corporate training and coaching, Taryn specializes in emotional intelligence, leadership development, and strengthening workplace culture to drive meaningful business outcomes.
What you’ll learn:
- Why generational differences in the workplace matter and how they impact team performance
- The dangers of generational stereotypes and how to avoid them
- Common “sticking points” across generations—from communication to feedback to work ethic
- Core universal needs all generations share in the workplace
- The four approaches leaders often take with generational diversity—and which one works best
- Practical steps for creating a culture that supports all generations in today’s workforce
As a thank you for listening to this episode of the Career 101 Podcast, we are sharing our FREE master class – Career 911: Solving the Top 5 Challenges Executives and Professionals Have! It’s a training based on solving the common problems our clients have experienced to reach their goals. You can get access to the master class here!
Resources:
- Episode Transcript
Porschia: [00:00:00] Hello, I’m Portia Parker Griffin, and I wanna welcome you to the Career 1 0 1 Podcast, a place for ambitious professionals and seasoned executives who want an edge in their career. We’re talking about all of the things you were never taught or told when it comes to career growth, development, and change.
Now let’s get into it.
Today we are talking about generational differences in the workplace with Taryn. Abraham’s. Taryn Abrahams is a workplace behavior and human interaction expert who supports companies, teams, and individuals in implementing behavioral best practices to enhance self-leadership, emotional intelligence, and interpersonal relationships.
Her work aims to holistically strengthen workplace culture and leadership impact. Drawing on her background as [00:01:00] a psychotherapist, Taryn designs innovative training programs, professional coaching and consulting services that boost employee morale, enhance leadership effectiveness, and cultivate collaborative productive environments.
Hi Taryn. How are you today? I’m great, Portia. Thank you so much for having me. I’m delighted to be here. We are delighted to have you with us, us generational differences in the workplace. But first we wanna know a little more about you. So tell me about 7-year-old Taryn.
Taryn: Oh my. Oh gosh. Okay, so let’s think back here.
My entire life, even when I was seven and beyond, I’ve always been about helping others. So I just remember I. Always being that person that wanted to fix things, improve things, help people, empower people. My mother tells me all the time, she reminds me of this, I would bring people back to my house after school.
Specifically [00:02:00] people that were looking for a friendship, for guidance, for support, which kind of is no surprise how I ended up a coach.
Porschia: I love it. What did 7-year-old tn wanna be when she grew up?
Taryn: I, I knew I wanted to do something impactful. I don’t know if I really knew back then that I wanted to be a coach slash therapist, which is actually where my career began.
But I knew I wanted to do something in the helping field. And it wasn’t until my undergrad when I had an opportunity to study overseas in London and I had an amazing internship where I got to work side by side with a clinical team, psychiatrist. Psychotherapist that I started to really begin to realize, okay, this.
This feels right. I think this is where I wanna be. And so even though I’m no longer practicing, I do still very much have such an intense passion for helping people find their better selves and and bring their best self to [00:03:00] work. And one of the best compliments I get in my work is not only did you make me a better executive or make me a better leader, but you made me a better husband.
You made me a better wife, a better friend. Yeah, it’s life is a wild journey, but I certainly didn’t, I’m not surprised that I’m still helping people be their best.
Porschia: I love that, Taryn. And I think you make a great point that how people show up at work and some of the tools that they learn from you at work, it shows up in other areas of their life.
Oh, nothing is siloed, right? As Oh, absolutely. To believe or compartmentalized. Yep. As some people like to think. Very true. So tell us about some highlights or pivotal moments in your career before you started your business.
Taryn: Yeah, so as I mentioned, I started off as a psychotherapist and I had a private practice in Philadelphia and absolutely loved my work.
I specialized in marital and family therapy. But interestingly enough, I had a couple of pivots in my personal journey. I found myself [00:04:00] going through a divorce. I ended up a single mom, which I’m sure the audience is listening, and that’s a pretty common story nowadays. And. I decided to take a break from practicing, mainly because divorce can be very disruptive in your personal life, and I felt like I had some sorting out to do before I helped people.
So I ended up, interestingly enough, going through a little bit of a career change and found myself in corporate America. I. Working for some very large medical device, pharmaceutical companies. And I did that for a bunch of years, really enjoying the flexibility of the work, working from home, being able to raise my daughter who, when I got separated, divorced, she was only one at the time.
I did that for a while. And like true Tarn fashion, I just felt like I wasn’t doing enough. I wasn’t helping people enough, even though I was improving patient care. I just felt like I wanted to. To do more direct work with people and more so in an emotional way, not necessarily a medical way.
I just started looking for [00:05:00] jobs that I wasn’t necessarily looking to go back into practicing because I felt like I wanted something different. I don’t know, I was looking for something maybe in, in the work environment, but. Offering my intellectual property, and I wasn’t finding anything.
I didn’t wanna be an HR specialist. I, and I just thought what can I do now with my intellectual property and my experience as a psychotherapist and now all of my experience in corporate, which I know what it feels like to work for some subpar leaders. I know what it’s like to work in a toxic environment, a culture.
So I just started creating content to help companies overcome the Me Too movement, which I thought was wonderful for victims, but caused a lot of cloudy, murky water in the workplace, caused a lot of conflict. More specifically, men were a little nervous to work with women, right? Yeah. So I started creating content, modern, fresh content, have a conversation around.
Harassment and how we can learn from this movement to maybe [00:06:00] help better understand how to set boundaries how to overcome the fear that had been created by that movement between men and women. I. And really it just morphed from there. I, I went in, I did some trainings.
Clients really liked the work I was doing, and then they started saying things like, why don’t you come back? Can you come back and help us be better communicators and can you help us? Bridge the multi-generational gap. We have a lot of conflict. So it just, really grew from there.
And I call myself a workplace behavioral specialist because I’m very big on. Taking a behavioral approach, a, an emotional intelligent approach or focusing on emotional intelligence, the soft skills, the interpersonal skills that many would argue are more important in a work environment than your iq.
And so fast forward many years, I’ve been now in business almost nine years. I’m really proud to say that I’m, I feel very gratified. From my work, and [00:07:00] even though I’m not practicing as a therapist anymore, I still very much think very systemically and clinically and it’s all still there.
Porschia: Yes. Yeah. Yeah.
You have a very interesting background and I love what you said about the Me Too movement, because I think you made a great point. As with any movement there’s, it’s created for a reason. Sure. And then there can be a lot of other implications and fallout from that movement that weren’t intended, that are still really important.
And it sounds like you were tapping into that. So thank you. For sure.
Taryn: You’re welcome. Thank you. Thank you for allowing me to share my story.
Porschia: Yes. Yes. We have talked about the multi-generational workplace on the podcast before, back in episode 1 0 1. But before we dig into generational differences, I wanna know why do you think understanding the multi-generational workplace is important?
Taryn: Yeah, that’s a great question. And of course when we talk about creating re inclusive, respectful work [00:08:00] environments, we often talk about things like race and gender, sexuality, but we don’t necessarily always talk about age. And I think when it comes to. Being able to lead people, we have to understand people, and there are so many distinct differences between the generations.
But I also wanna say there’s a lot of commonalities too. So I don’t want this conversation to be divisive. Rather, it’s really just about understanding what drives people which many would argue comes from life experience. When you grow, when you live through something like nine 11 for instance it creates, impact on our personality in terms of how we show up interpersonally how we define hard work the need for life work balance. So I really do think when it comes to leading in today’s modern workplace, having generational understanding is critical for high creating, high engaging, high performing teams.
I’ve always said diversity is a huge asset. But it [00:09:00] could also come with conflict. And so I invite us as we talk about this today really to see the conflict from a different point of view, seeing it as an opportunity for better understanding. Rather than seeing it, that’s something that’s, a liability risk or a challenge.
It probably is a challenge, but I’ve always said we learn when we go through the harder stuff. So I do think it’s an important component of billing, building, or leadership toolbox is having that understanding and listening to people, what drives them, right? Because it’s very distinctly different amongst each generation.
Porschia: I completely agree. And you said a lot of great things there and one that I wanna circle back on, and I think we talked about this last year when we met up, but your point about age diversity, and so a lot of times people think about diversity in terms of other, characteristics of people and they forget age.
And there was a study [00:10:00] done. A few years ago where they looked at different aspects of decision making and when they pulled in age diversity, that was one of the elements that also helped leaders make better decisions, more informed decisions, thank you for highlighting that. Yeah.
To your point and many of our listeners know that there are stereotypes or generalizations made about members of each generation, which are not always true. In your opinion, what are some effects of generational stereotypes in the workplace?
Taryn: I wanna first start off by saying we all have biases, right?
We all, we are hardwired to have biases. And why is that? Because we get inundated with so much data throughout the day that our brain naturally looks to create shortcuts. And so when we meet someone of a generation, for instance, millennial generation, that’s one that comes up a lot. We are quick to make snap judgements.
And the downside, the pro of that is we create efficiency in the brain. The [00:11:00] downside of a bias is that we can we can mislabel, we can create connect the wrong dots, if you will. And so the harm, and the downside of that is, is that we we might generalize, we might, make the wrong assumptions. We might forget to lean in and listen to the individual in terms of what drives them. We might just make a blanket sort of as assess assessment based on our experience. And I think the key to that is really being co and especially I’m talking to leaders now. All this applies to everybody, but especially leaders.
’cause leaders have power. Influence. I think that we have to be aware of when those biases creep in. And so that becomes important to understand what are the conversations that we have in our minds about the people that we’re leading? And to be aware of that. And I have to tell you, that in itself is not easy work to do because 90% of our day is an autopilot.
So we’re making tons of [00:12:00] decisions. We’re making tons of snap judgements. Again, we do that to make shortcuts so that we can be efficient mentally, but it can run the risk of making a lot of mistakes. And I, the perfect example is, just. A generation is 10 year span. A younger millennial, for instance, may look and present very different from someone who is of an older millennial.
And there’s no set rule to this. I’ve met, I. Okay, so I’m just gonna say, one of the things I hear a lot is that millennials are entitled, right? That’s something I hear a lot from the older generation, right? But I have to tell you, there’s a tremendous amount of diversity in millennials, and not every millennial is entitled, in fact, so many of them.
If you really start to understand what drives them, what motivates them, you start to real understand their behavior better, and you may look at it differently on the outside, it may look entitled, but on the inside. It may look like they have different priorities. And why do they have different priorities?[00:13:00]
Because they wanna be a, be they don’t wanna be this high powered hard, working, impossible hours. They wanna be a good parent as well. They wanna be at their kids’ soccer games as well. So it’s really about understanding the why behind behavior, that I think is, becomes really important.
And it’s hard to do that when you have stereotypes. Because you’re making those shortcuts, those mental shortcuts. Yeah.
Porschia: Yeah. Very well said. And I appreciate you touching on that. It, I agree. It’s definitely about having awareness of the subconscious bias that we all have, just based on how we were raised, where we grew up, our life experience, our work experience.
And to your point about millennials, years ago I was doing a whole lot of speaking at national conferences and on this topic of the multi-generational workplace. And I [00:14:00] had a millennial come up to me and say. You know what, Portia, I don’t even tell my coworkers that I’m a millennial because the stereotypes are so bad.
And she said, I’m not entitled. I’m not this, I’m not that. And sometimes those stereotypes. Can really affect people. So thank you for yeah. Touching on that too. And,
Taryn: and I think the biggest part to that is once we don’t see someone as an equal, we don’t realize it, but we shut them down, we cut them off.
We, we no longer listen And listening is the anecdote to understanding. If we wanna understand someone’s behavior, we must lean in and listen. And unfortunately, biases and stereotypes make that more difficult.
Porschia: I was a writer downer listening the anecdote to understanding. I love it. Love it. So Taryn, how do you think discussing generational differences is tied to [00:15:00] improved team performance and business outcomes?
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Taryn: Yeah. Another great question, and again, if you wanna engage your people, you need to understand your people. And, when we talk about, so I like to define the generational tensions in terms of sticking [00:16:00] points. There are typical common sticking points where generations tend to clash.
Just a couple to name a few. The way we choose to communicate, right? If you look at that, some people wanna text, some people want to email, some people prefer you to pick up the phone. Some people wanna face to face. That right there shows you the tremendous amount of diversity in how we communicate, how we make decisions, right?
The younger generations wanna be part of the decision. They want a seat at the table. They want it to be a collaborative effort. Boomer generation may say, you know what? The boss makes a decision. Right? Dress code, how we dress at work, right? How we give feedback, what it feels to receive feedback fun at work, right?
That, that’s in a sticking point, right? The younger generations require. Fun at work their work has to be meaningful and it’s gotta be tied to fun. And it’s interesting when you, that one in itself we can talk a lot about, so I’ll give you an example. The [00:17:00] older generation, the traditionalists, which they’re now I think above the age of 80, we don’t see a ton of them around.
I’ll relax once the work is done. Boomers, the work itself is fun. I. Gen Xers, I’ll work quick trying to make it something, try not to make something that it’s not. So don’t, fool me, right? We’re here to do the work. Millennials, I’ll get more done if we have fun. And Genzer is the youngest generation.
I require fun in order to get engaged and get work done. So when you talk about, leading a team. It’s important to have an understanding. Again, I can’t, I don’t wanna keep repeating myself, but really understanding the where the generational difference impacts the way they feel about work and what they need in order to feel engaged.
Another sticking point is meetings. How meetings are run, right? Who runs the meeting? Is it virtual? Is it in [00:18:00] person? Respect. Respect is so critical, I would imagine on all levels and all generations, but some generations, specifically, the younger ones de demand it or else there’s no loyalty. So how they’re spoken to the tone, how they’re led, how feedback is given is extremely important as opposed to maybe a, someone of a boomer generation may not like the fact that there’s lack of respect, but they’ll still stay loyal and keep doing their work because that was what they were taught.
So goes back to, one of the things that we could take away from that is if you wanna engage all generations, especially the youngest one, you really do need to have your finger on the pulse in terms of your culture. And what is culture? It’s how we speak to each other. It’s the vibe that your company has it, right?
It’s the feeling that people have working with each other. And so focusing on those soft skills, focusing on making sure you’re providing feedback in a way that feels good to the receiver. So they walk away feeling empowered, but also having [00:19:00] honest conversations. I’m, and I want the audience to know I’m all about accountability, but there’s many ways to hold people accountable, and it doesn’t have to be in the form of disrespect.
In fact, your younger generation will bail. They will walk away as they should because nobody wants to tolerate that anymore, right? And then work ethic. That some tends to be a sticking point as well. What does hard work look like? If you ask the older generation, hard work means, staying until you retire in the age of 65, 70, working on the weekends, working on the evenings.
The younger generation has learned from the boomer generation because they don’t wanna get midlife crisis and heart attacks, and they don’t wanna have hypertension. ’cause they learned from the older generations that, life work balance is not only important for morale, but for mental health.
So again, going back to your original question, I think it’s about understanding what drives people’s behavior, not be so quick to label it as they’re lazy, [00:20:00] they’re entitled. But rather understand the why and when you create a safe, a psychologically safe space, which that’s a word that’s important.
Getting people to be able to be honest with their leaders about what they need without fear of embarrassment or punishment or judgment. If you really lean and listen, they’ll tell you how they wanna be led. So yeah that, I hope that answers your question.
Porschia: Yeah it does. I think you gave us a lot of great sticking points to consider.
I love how you call those sticking points and flush them out for us. I’ve seen all of those. And I think a few more too in the work that we do. Do you think employees in different generations want to be treated differently?
Taryn: Ooh, that’s a, there’s a couple of ways to take that.
But I go back to, I can’t [00:21:00] go, I can’t help but go back to the things that bond us together. No matter your age, no matter your gender, no matter your your cultural or ethnic background, we do all have the same core universal needs. That we all need from each other. And those needs are, we wanna feel respected.
I don’t care what age you are. We wanna be, we wanna feel safe and we wanna be respected. We wanna trust, we wanna be trusted, and we wanna be able to trust our leaders. We wanna be heard, right? We wanna be listened to. We need integrity. From each other, right? Integrity is admitting when you made a mistake, not BSing and, being authentic.
We need consistency, right? Which is very much tied to trust. We do, interestingly enough, regardless of our age, we all want constructive feedback. It’s just how it’s delivered. Is gonna be different. And I think with the younger generations, especially when I say younger, millennial and Gen [00:22:00] Zers it, it needs to be delivered in a way that feels safe, that feels respectful, but that’s also clear.
They wanna know if they’re doing well and they also wanna know if they can improve. But again, how it’s delivered is gonna be important. Interestingly enough, we all require empathy. And what is empathy? Having compassion for someone’s perspective, not necessarily agreeing on the perspective, but being able to put ourself in someone else’s shoes, which I personally feel.
The fix to bridging the generational gaps is generational empathy. I think if we had more generational empathy. Not trying to change each other, but rather learning to respect the perspectives. You will get people rowing in the same direction. Empathy is really powerful if you can deliver it in a way that feels good to the other person.
And a little tip on that, right? A lot of times we say things like, I’m so sorry you have been feeling this way. I see how stressed you [00:23:00] are. But if I can make a recommendation, empathy becomes more powerful when you create a pause. A lot of times we rush into the butt. I understand your perspective, but, and you’ve just negated the empathy, right?
I think as humans, we all can be better with this is just sharing empathy and staying there for a moment, letting it seep in for the other person. And then you can get into the feedback, and then you can get into the, but if you must, right? Self-expression, we all need self-expression, whether it’s, our sexuality, our personalities being able to come and eat our foods from our country without feeling picked on or judged.
And fairness. We all need fairness, fairness in terms of, who gets promoted who receives raises just, I think all of those needs that I just listed, I think we all require them. So I guess to go back to your original question, should we all be treated the same?
I [00:24:00] think when it comes to the universal needs, yes. But what, but. We need to better understand our, in our, the people that we lead so that we understand what’s most important to them. So we w we don’t wanna assume, but I would say if you were to take a moment and talk to each person on your team, you might realize what I just said was probably pretty, pretty correct.
Yeah. In terms of universal needs.
Porschia: I completely agree. And one of the trends that I’ve seen Taryn, and I’m not sure if you’ve seen it in the research too and in practice is that a lot of times people of all generations, they want very similar things, but how it’s communicated and how they go about getting what they want can be the difference.
Taryn: Yes. Great point. Great point. Yeah. And and don’t be so quick to label it as something that’s negative, right? Again, understanding helps create listening creates better understanding. So I agree with you on that. [00:25:00] Yeah.
Porschia: So what are some of the biggest mistakes you’ve seen leaders make when leading people in different generations?
Taryn: I always say there’s four approaches to bridging the generational differences. And I’m gonna go through each of them and I’m gonna also share what I feel to be the most effective mistake number one, or I should say approach number one, I just gave it away, but approach number one is ignore this.
If we just not look at it. We’ll just eventually just get every, get everybody on the same page, get everybody rowing in the same direction. And I, of course, this goes back to my clinical days, and even now as a coach, what happens when we avoid things? They get bigger. So I don’t know if that’s necessarily a good long-term strategy.
It might feel good in the moment. It might feel like a good short-term strategy. But being that millennials make up the majority, a big portion of our workforce and this [00:26:00] upcoming generation, the silent generation, they’re calling it the Gen Zers. I think that and when I say silent generation I’m talking in terms of.
This was an interesting thing that I read recently that majority of Gen Zers struggle with some kind of anxiety or depression. I. So we need to invest in leadership training. We need to invest in the soft skills that are needed to engage and to motivate and to empower. Because I think if we keep trying to lead the same way, the playbook that worked 15 years ago is not working now.
And we’re gonna have, and I think that’s one of the signs of a great leader, is someone that’s agile. Open always investing in their leadership journey, right? Because the playbook is changing, the second one is to fix them, right? Which almost indicates that they’re broken. Which they’re not.
So it’s really trying to get them to see the way things. Trying to get them to follow suit [00:27:00] right again, might be a good short term strategy. But when it comes to creating loyal, engaging workforces, that might be a turnoff for many people. Nobody wants to be made like they’re not that, that they’re broken, right?
Or that their perspective isn’t correct. Then the third one is cutting a deal with them, right? If you do this for me, then I’ll let you do this. Now that might be a good short term strategy, especially if you’ve got a small team. But the problem is that could snowball very quickly because you have to remember the deals that you’ve given.
If you don’t offer people the same deals, you create a culture of unfairness, which a member of one of the core needs that we have is fairness. And so that can really become a slippery slope for teams and for organizations. It could create a lot of animosity and that could also be a big reason why people leave.
You gave this person this, but why didn’t you give this to me? And people, people talk word we word will get around. And then the [00:28:00] fourth one is to lead them, right? Leaders love their people. If we love people, we don’t try to change them. If we lead them, we might quit trying to change them.
And if we can’t if we, if we appreciate them, we’ll learn to understand them. Leadership is, starts with understanding which is the word I’ve mentioned a few times now, but it really is so important. Once we understand others, we realize that, we have been born. They were born at a time and their experiences really shaped who they are.
And then we also start to realize that there’s commonalities. Too, right? We’ve talked a lot about differences today, but if you lean in and you start to understand your people, you start to realize that we’re all very much driven by very similar values. And you start to realize, we do think a lot alike in a lot of ways, right?
And I think leading them is really the best [00:29:00] approach, which requires. Investment, which requires training, right? Because if you don’t know what you don’t know. And we’ve never been here before, we have five generations working side by side. We’ve never been here.
And as I mentioned, there’s really no playbook for this. We’re building it as we speak. And so it creates a wonderful opportunity for leaders to invest in their own development. And I do wanna preface by saying that through disruption comes opportunity. This might feel disruptive, right?
The playbook might not be working as well, but that’s where the growth happens, right? So I can tell you that the, I’ve seen companies take those sticking points and turn them into a huge asset because when you start to understand each other. That’s where connections get deeper. That’s when people engage more.
That’s when people work better with each other, and that’s what creates fierce, powerful teams.
Porschia: Wow. Very well [00:30:00] said. I love the four approaches to handling the multi-generational environment that we’re in today and your thoughts on those. Another topic that we discussed on the show in episode 71 was company culture and you.
Mention culture a little bit ago. What are your thoughts on how a company’s culture can impact employees of different generations?
Taryn: Oh yeah. Again, that’s a big buzzword, right? Culture. We can define it in a lot of different ways, but very simply put, it’s the vibe. It’s the energy that you feel when you’re walk working with each other.
And I can tell you culture. Has always been important, but I don’t think we ever really talked about it until in recent years. And there are so many studies out there to, to show the connection between working and improving your culture and employee output. Employee engagement. And I think that this particular [00:31:00] piece is the secret sauce to performance.
To protecting increasing your bottom line. It’s hard to quantify. It’s hard to quantify, although there are studies out there that, that are doing a good job of putting a number to this. But I can tell you when it comes to getting people to create more loyal workforces, I know that’s a big thing that I hear of today.
As people just are not as loyal as they were. My mom, my parents, Sam they went to a job and that was it. They stayed there until they retired. That was just the way it was. It’s not like that anymore. Now, in order for you to get someone to stay and I don’t even think it’s even realistic to expect stay until retirement.
I think we also have to change the expectation of that now. What does the life cycle look like now for an employee? And it’s a lot shorter now, but that doesn’t mean that you can’t get the best out of them. And culture, I think is a bit very big foundational piece to that. In fact, I’ll take it a step further.
When millennials [00:32:00] and Gen Zers especially are looking for a job, they’re not necessarily looking at the pay at the beginning. They’re looking at the values of the organization. They’re looking@glassdoor.com to see what the reviews are. And bad news travels fast, especially in this digital era, and so that has a lot of weight.
A lot of weight. In fact, they will even be willing to take a little bit of a less pay for a better culture. And and it’s not just enough to have values. You’ve gotta be living by the values. You’ve gotta cultivate an environment where your leaders are leading by the values, right? So I know a lot of companies are, they have a mission statement, they have values.
That’s a great start, right? But are we living by ’em? And I can tell you the younger generation sees through that stuff. They really do. And so yeah, so I think culture is important and it’s probably one of the most important components to [00:33:00] engaging a multi-generational workforce especially the younger generation.
Yeah, I could keep going on that, but,
Porschia: I completely agree with what you said. And to your point, I think that. Culture is overwhelming to people because it seems big and scary and abstract. And yeah. And that’s why organizations need to bring in firms like yours and ours to help with that culture.
So tell us more about your business, Taryn.
Taryn: Yeah, thank you. So my business is Empower Behavioral Services. I offer co professional coaching. I offer customized training programs. Just as in terms of what we just talked about, improving leadership impact, improving culture. Leaders set the tone for the culture of an organization.
They hold tremendous power and many leaders have never had formal training, even on the basic fundamentals of leadership. But even if you were to take a course 20 years [00:34:00] ago, 15 years ago. It’s a, it’s very different now in terms of, effective leadership focusing on those core universal needs.
And just having a, an understanding of how to engage a diverse team. And I also offer speaking opportunities on these topics. I do a lot of different trainings around emotional intelligence, teaching soft skills, how to improve communication. And I work I work very collaboratively with my clients.
It’s a part, I consider it a partnership. We roll up our sleeves, but not in a scary way. As you mentioned, like this whole big culture thing can be, seems very big. Grandiose, but I wanna let your audience know that some of the smallest incremental changes can have huge impact. As long as we’re moving the needle in, in, in a forward direction, it’s, it’s a journey.
It’s a journey, right? And you can’t just wave a magic wand and have it all be, but small changes make a big impact. Even I even consult companies that are, even starting to think about [00:35:00] how do we, di dip our toe in the water? And so yeah, so I, I help my clients with that.
And so it’s really gratifying work.
Porschia: We’ll be providing a link to your website and other social channels in our show notes so people can find you online. Now, Taryn, I wanna ask you our last question that we ask all of our guests. How do you think executives or professionals can get a positive edge if their career?
Taryn: Oh, that’s an easy one. Invest in yourself. Invest in yourself, professional development, have a business coach, a life coach have somebody to help you stay accountable to your own growth. And I’m a big believer. The more we invest in ourselves, the better we understand ourselves, the better we can understand others and leading others.
And I also wanna preface by saying that great leadership is not about being perfect. It’s what you do when you become imperfect. So learning how to handle mistakes, learning [00:36:00] how to create a growth mindset, being agile, being open to other ways of knowing, being open to feedback. That’s where the growth is, because we all wanna say we’re perfect, but we’re all imperfect by design.
Porschia: Absolutely true. You’ve shared a lot of wisdom with us today and I’m sure that our listeners can use it to be more confident with their teams and in their careers. We appreciate you being with us. Thank you for having me.
This episode was brought to you by the Brave Bird Career Alliance, the go-to membership designed for seasoned executives and ambitious professionals with everything you need for career planning, strategy, training, and support. Thank you again for listening to the Career 1 0 1 podcast. I hope you have at least one [00:37:00] key takeaway that you.
Can use in your own career. If you enjoyed hanging out with us, please rate, subscribe, and share this podcast. Until next time, here’s to your success.
