Today we’d like to introduce you to Tom Schin.

Hi Tom, we’d love for you to start by introducing yourself.
I think like most people, my life has been a series of twists and turns. The short version is that I’ve had two major threads to my career – one in educational content, and the other in HR/Recruiting. Throughout those working years, I saw all levels of leadership – the proverbial good, bad and the ugly. I was inspired and motivated to share what I’ve learned, as well as guide others in improving their skills, to get better at leading and engaging people. Along that journey, Build Better Culture was born. In part, the name described what I was trying to help other organizations do – to build BETTER culture – not geared around perfection, but around improvement.

Employers are facing talent shortages these days, and it’s not going away. There are fewer people to do more work, so we need to get creative and find ways to train the people we do have – developing them.

My focus is on helping supervisors, managers, and directors become better leaders. Why? Because strong leaders create workplaces where people want to stay, instead of jumping ship for greener pastures.

Think about it: Organizations are already juggling a lot – creating, selling, and servicing their products or services. They do a great job teaching new hires how to do the technical parts of their jobs, but what happens when those high-performers want more? What happens when they want to get promoted to management? Suddenly, the learning curve drops off. That’s where I come in.

I spend a great deal of time helping managers open up, talk about where they’re strong, as well as where they have room to grow – largely that helps them bridge things like accountability, employee engagement, and building relationships with their teams. Whether it’s one-on-one, or in small groups of leaders, I guide them and help develop those muscles through discovery, conversation, and some trial and error. At the end of that street, they become a little more vulnerable and transparent with their employees, and start to look at employees in a more balanced manner – meaning, not as numbers, but as people who are all looking for that career family and home. Employees deserve to have a good place to work, with colleagues and bosses who make them feel valued and energized. Employers essentially want the same thing – to have employees who WANT to be there. I’m here to help make that connection.

Alright, so let’s dig a little deeper into the story – has it been an easy path overall and if not, what were the challenges you’ve had to overcome?
Like most small business startups (especially those of the solo-preneur), there are stub your toe moments. Some of those are glancing blows to the outside of your foot, while some feel like you just tore your left pinky off your foot.

As I got started on my own, I found that balancing the marketing, sales, production, and the service end of ME was hard. Everyone has self doubt. Anyone who says they don’t, isn’t being honest with themselves. It enters the picture, so you have to have good people to bounce ideas off of, and bring you back to a place where you can be productive. Another way to look at it is that as a small business owner, you have to have confidence (sometimes overly so) to go out and perform, but when the dollars aren’t rolling in at the rate you planned on, it’s frustrating; so you need a good support system to keep you centered and on target for the bigger, long term goal.

“Patience is a virtue.” It certainly has been a test of patience, but one I’m excited about as more and more conversations are turning into client opportunities where I can provide input, and build long lasting client and partner relationships.

Alright, so let’s switch gears a bit and talk business. What should we know?
Build Better Culture was formed to help organizations fortify their identity, and create workplaces people (talent) were clamoring to get into, and also turn down the calls to entertain other jobs because they love what they do and who they work with. Having spent nearly 20 years helping organizations find great employees, I know what it feels like to lose them – losing productivity, morale, institutional knowledge, colleagues, friends.

My goal is to help leaders who aren’t as strong in leveraging employee engagement strategies into their workflow. It’s not an overnight fix. It’s a long game that requires effort and consistency in building stronger relationships with colleagues and employees.

The primary things I help people with include:
– Providing Leadership Development training through individual and group coaching, as well as full leadership development programs. Helping people learn how to better lead people is sometimes very clear, and sometimes the opposite. We all know the adage about great performers getting promoted, but not knowing how to lead. I’m here to help them learn how to truly lead – with vision, strategy, transparency AND with a thriving team of employees.

That includes;
– Identifying your company culture. Who are you? Who do your people think you are? What do your (organizations leadership) actions say about you to your employees.and customers?
– Build and strengthen Employee Engagement initiatives. How do your people connect to your culture and values? What is it that matters to them as it relates to your business? Are they passionate about your industry? Your customers? Their team? What you do? It could be a mix of all of those things. Helping organizations make these connections across the board (not just in words, but in action and across all units) is what makes a culture sticky and entices people to NOT take that random recruiter call.

So many companies look externally for reasons why people leave their organization. The alternative I provide is focusing on what organizations and individual managers can do proactively. My offering addresses that – helping them to not only create a better culture and workplace than they had yesterday, but to continue to add to that moving forward. Think of it this way, if you ever had an amazing boss, how hard was it to consider leaving that organization? Let’s make your managers even more amazing so people don’t want to leave.

Can you talk to us a bit about the role of luck?
Luck has a part in everyone’s lives. It’s like rolling dice – in a pair, the most common result is 7. Sometimes it rolls in your favor, sometimes its the robber and you lose stuff (#IYKYK). You have to continue to do the work, roling the dice, be in the right place at the right time, and surround yourself with the right clients, networking partners, and support structure for that luck to have a chance at helping you out.

We all still have to do our part, regardless of the “luck” factor. To me, that means understanding my customers, learning more about them, their challenges, and what’s going on in the learning and development space, as well as what employers and employees are challenged with.

Some people say they make their own luck. I try to live my life and my business so I don’t have to rely on it. If I get lucky – great! If I don’t, I’m not going to worry about it because I have plenty of other eggs in my proverbial basket to keep moving forward. I’m doing the work so that I’m in the right conversation and situation. I don’t rely on the luck factor.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.buildbetterculture.com
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/bbetterculture
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/104808357751277
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/schinnn
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UChSvqs_phm4xwitTVo8o04Q
• Other: https://linktr.ee/buildbetterculture