Erica Keswin on Intentional Connection

Erica Keswin is a workplace strategist who has worked for the past 20 years with some of the most iconic brands in the world as a consultant, speaker, author, and professional dot-connector. You’re going to hear her reference some of the conversations she’s had with some brands that you are definitely going to recognize. Her best-selling book, Bring Your Human to Work: 10 Surefire Ways to Design a Workplace That’s Good for People, Great for Business, and Just Might Change the World, was published in the Fall of 2018, and we certainly bring that book into today’s conversation. Her second book, Rituals Roadmap: The Human Way to Transform Everyday Routines into Workplace Magic, was published in January of 2021, and that book is also referenced in today’s conversation. Erica will make clear the distinction between routine and ritual, which I think you’re going to appreciate. She’s also going to talk about some of the things that happened during the pandemic while she was getting ready to publish that book. That book made the Wall Street Journal, Publisher’s Weekly, and USA Today bestseller lists. Erica’s work and insights can be seen in various media outlets, including The Harvard Business Review, The New York Post, Forbes, Huffington Post, O Magazine, Entrepreneur, Business Insider, and many other outlets that you would recognize. She’s a keynote speaker; she does webinars, workshops, she’s worked with American Red Cross, she’s spoken at South by Southwest, she’s worked at TIAA, IBM, The New York Times, I could go on and on. She has quite an impressive resume. And inn this conversation, she’s going to get quite vulnerable and share some of her personal background and some of the things that she’s seen and gone through as well.

 

Erica had a number of amazing insights during our conversation. Some of them include:

“When I think about me and what’s important in my life, it’s building relationships” (6:20).

“Honoring relationships is about being present in that moment” (7:15).

“The fundamentals of building relationships are constant and haven’t really changed in terms of being present and investing time and making a time and a place for them” (9:30).

“You don’t know what’s always going on behind the curtain” (22:10).

“Tell people what you need” (22:30).

“My definition of a ritual has 3 component parts: A ritual is something to which we assign a certain amount of meaning and intention, there’s a cadence, and a ritual is something that goes beyond its practical purpose” (30:45).

“Rituals give us a sense of psychological safety” (31:50).

“Rituals give you an opportunity to connect to purpose and to meaning” (32:15).

“When you have connection to other people, there is a physiological change in your body. Your oxytocin goes up, that feel good hormone, and your stress goes down” (32:30).

“We have to figure out ways to curate connection, and rituals are a tool that all of us can use” (33:00).

“We need to be even more intentional to curate those connections” (37:20).

“Let’s define who we are and what we stand for and what is most important” (49:35).

“Covid accelerated many things in the workplace that were changing already” (57:10).

“Start as you mean to belong” (1:00:25).

“Being a leader, being a manager today, is really hard” (1:13:00).

 

Additionally, you can find Erica’s website here and connect with her on LinkedIn as well.

Thank you so much to Erica for coming on the podcast!

I wrote a book called “Shift Your Mind” that was released in October of 2020, and you can order it on Amazon and Barnes and Noble. Additionally, I have launched a company called Strong Skills, and I encourage you to check out our new website https://www.strongskills.co/. If you liked this episode and/or any others, please follow me on Twitter: @brianlevenson or Instagram: @Intentional_Performers.

Thanks for listening.