The Impact of Encouraging Employees to Keep Dreaming Big with Tyler Holland, Dream Manager at Great Plains Transport

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This is Lead With Culture. I'm Kate Vollman, and on this episode we're talking to another one of our fabulous dream managers. Tyler Holland is the Chief Culture Officer and Dream Manager at Great Plains Transport.

He is responsible for cultivating a positive work environment and fostering strong relationships among team members. We chatted about his experience going through Dream Manager Certification, implementing the program,

and some of the benefits they're seeing so far. We hope you enjoy the conversation.

Tyler, thank you so much for joining us today. I'm so excited for our conversation.

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Employee wellness, different activities in the community, and then any retention efforts?

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I know. Every time someone comes, get certified. I said, you have the best title in the world now . Dream manager. I love that you were able to experience multiple roles in your organization before taking on this role especially because you're tasked with culture and it's important to understand the people that are part of your team, and what better way to do that than by getting a little bit of a glimpse into all those different pieces that you got to, experience and, work with people on.

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And so, you know, we all need to do our part and reminding them that it takes each and every one of us to be successful and to fulfill that goal that we have.

it's a beautiful thing that you are the chief Culture Officer because, Matthew Kelly talks about in the culture solution, the importance of having someone, just, someone needs to be the leader. of that culture. And while everyone in the organization plays a role in creating a dynamic culture, everyone can be a culture advocate.

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When you're making decisions based on what are the programs that you're actually going to try and do, what is your criteria? What do you look for? How do you make that decision?

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As long as that we got the ability to interact with each other and I can provide the material, then we're able to go through this together.

So let's talk about your Dream Manager experience a little bit. we always love hearing everyone's stories about how they found dream. Manager, did they read the book? Did they hear Matthew speak somewhere? so tell us about your journey. How did you first, find out about Dream Manager?

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And it's something that I would want to start to push into our own company. And I saw that there was this opportunity to provide this, program, and this opportunity for individuals to be able to find their essential purpose, like it says in the book. And I knew that I would be able to do this, whether it was.

With teammates in the office or outside of the office. And so, after reading the success with that and realizing what we can do, we pushed the agenda and then in October I went to the training down in Jupiter, Florida, which was just a wonderful experience, learning hands on how to implement and then, grow with my classmates.

I also went through that and then I spent the month of December creating the strategic plan and doing some dream storming sessions with the company to just create awareness about what this was all about. And then I had my first cohort, in January with 10 individuals.

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experience. what surprised you the most going through the training?

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And really, they just walk you right through of what you need to do. And, left feeling confident and more excited about it.

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Yeah, I think that was one of the things that took me back, I was like, well, when can we get started? You and Jennifer were just like, you guys can get started on Monday if you want to, when you fly back to town, and, you really could if that's the angle that you wanted to take with it.

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You have everything you need. That's what we always say. and I love that that was your takeaway because it was very intentional on Matthew's part to create the curriculum the way that he did. With simplicity in mind. We live in such a world where we just glamorize over complicating instead of keeping it really simple.

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I think there's a reason that people call them dreams is they think that it's something that's unattainable. And so when you put these action plans together well, what's one thing that you can do? We just keep doing one thing. Well. Pretty soon we're gonna be a little bit closer to it.

And so to see people excited to come to my desk or to gimme a call on the phone and be like, Tyler, I did this. I work towards this action, step towards this dream of mine. And so, to see that enthusiasm with it. And then for my own self, given the industry that, you know, I'm in with the transportation industry.

Right away. My first cohort, I had seven office staff and three drivers.

I knew that they would participate and they would be able to create some buying with everybody else.

And the thing that just blew me away was in my second cohort. Was I had seven drivers and three office staff, and I thought it would take much longer to create some buy-in with that. But people are starting to see, this is what the Dream Manager program is and this is how I can benefit from it.

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just need a little bit of encouragement and support and caring, it's funny that you said, That's ridiculous. What is this dream manager thing? Because when is the last time somebody asked most people, what's your dream or what's one of your dreams?

they do actually have dreams because people have stopped dreaming and partly because of what you said, which is we think that these dreams. Are only those things that are unattainable like dreams have to be, I'm gonna live on a 5 million, home on the water.

And, and that's fine if that's what you want, but the dreams that people have, it's in all different categories of life. And we see that the most common dreams are people that wanna get out of debt, they wanna buy their first home, they wanna lose weight, they wanna have better relationships with their significant other, and those.

are dreams, but people don't usually call them dreams. And so I love that, you're helping your team members shine the light on. Those are the dreams that you have for your life.

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And, I think sometimes our society makes it that it's not okay to do that. And so it's just, going against what is the norm and allowing people to dream because everybody's got it inside of them.

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another really cool one is somebody is working towards getting their, single engine pilot license. And so they took their first online course and they had been talking about it forever. And then after our first session between session one and two, they were able to get that program started for themselves.

And then I think just, A lot of people have started to put together a real budget for themselves and started to, work towards some of those financial aspects of their dreams because a lot of dreams, have that tied to it. And so to getting people to be comfortable addressing their budget and where they're at and what it's gonna take to get to where they need to go.

what I love about one of the first ones that you shared was, they're bringing their. child into it. First of all, like what a lesson to teach our kids. Well, our kids already dream, right? Like they don't have any issues dreaming. But what I love is that it's a year plan in this world where we live in this, we want it now, now, now, we can't wait.

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all right, so someone that's listening, a leader that's listening, saying, all right, that's fine. And all well and good and people are dreaming and dream again. But what about my business? these are my team members, these are my employees.

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some of the impact that you've seen now as far as the, culture in your organization, what have you noticed, not just kind of on an individual level, but on a team level?

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And so you're starting to just see some of that excitement and that buy-in and people are starting to see that, if Kate can achieve her dreams, why can't I? And so people are starting to now explore how they can be them best selves too.

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because that's why we got into that place in the first place. And so it's reminding them, we got these action steps. We can do that right now. And so it's just that, continued encouragement with them.

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They feel like nobody really cares about them. They never get recognized for any of the work that they do. And, having programs like this, it just tells people, Hey, I care about you. That's what it's doing. And you have to have somebody that leads that charge. Like Tyler, that cares about people.

It's just, caring about the individuals and the people because we're all here for the same goal at the end of the day, and so let's make the most of it with each other.

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He's very eager and willing to listen to whatever you need to talk about and is going to provide some advice and send you in the right direction with that. And so it's just this encouragement they're seeing what the benefit is for themselves.

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They're going to meet with Tyler for an hour, so now I'm paying for two hours worth of work time and what are these individuals talking about? And so, the other challenge is for me to be able to get that out there about what benefits this is having for the company too. So not only are we just seeing an increase maybe in positive energy, but what is that actually doing for the company and that tangible result that they can see.

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Obviously is gonna help them become better at the role that they're in no matter what they're doing. Even that individual who's planning that Disney trip, that's helping them think through, in my role, what do I need to be looking at six months and a year from now?

And those are skills that are incredibly important that they're learning not only for themselves personally, but also professionally. Again, we've gotta figure out how we're gonna measure that roi, but don't disregard all of those intangible benefits that they're getting simply by becoming a more engaged individual overall that cares,

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And just organically see that r o I increase for them.

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Whatever's going on at home, right? To know that you have somebody, that you can really trust and that is going to encourage you, that's huge.

we can get caught up in the. balance sheets and the line items and all of that, which again, important of course, but also

Your people drive the organization. We've gotta care about the people that are coming into work and fulfilling the mission of their role and the organization as a whole.

Well, Tyler, we're so grateful for you and everything that you're doing, to help your people grow and to just spread the word about Dream Manager. We're so excited to see the impact that it continues to have and the organization and with your people. We're excited to hear all the dreams that are being achieved over the next couple years, and, if there's any way that we can support you, obviously, you know that the Floyd team is here to support and help and do whatever we can do to make sure that you're continuing to be successful.

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Thank you so much. If you haven't yet written a review, we would be. Incredibly grateful. If you would head over to iTunes and share one thing that you really enjoy about the show and hey, why you keep listening. It really does help us spread the message, so thank you so much for taking some time. Thanks again for listening.

Until next time, lead with culture.