068: Chantal Bechervaise: It was not something I expected

Chantal Bechervaise: It was not something I expected

 Intro: Welcome to the Fast Leader Podcast, where we explore convenient yet effective shortcuts that will help you get ahead and move forward faster by becoming a better leader. And now here’s your host, customer and employee engagement expert and certified emotional intelligence practitioner, Jim Rembach.

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Jim Rembach:     Okay Fast Leader Legion, I’m excited today because I have somebody who I’ve admired her work for a very long time, and hey! She’s on the show on the show. Chantal Bechervaise was born and raised in Montreal, Canada with her younger brother.  In 5th grade when on a field trip she was left behind and instead of freaking out, Chantal went to the white pages, use the payphone called the place that the next stop was and then they came back and got her. Ever since then Chantal’s family and friends always comment on how she is one of the strongest people that they know. 

She is a rock and perseveres, constantly looking for ways to learn and improve. Chantal says it’s all about attitude. She can always be found encouraging others to reach their goals. Chantal is bilingual speaking both English and French and works in the Canadian Federal Government. By night, she is a blogger and social media fiend and in her spare time likes to volunteer to help support organizations in her community. Chantal has a few core principles that she tries to live by. The first is her favorite from a quote from Maya Angelou: “I learned that people will forget what you said, will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel.” 

And the second is that it doesn’t cost anything to be kind to others but that kindness could mean the world to the other person. She says that you never know what others are going through and when being kind can make a difference in the life of someone else. Chantal provides herself in being a huge sci-fi geek and her goal is to create workplaces that don’t suck. Chantal currently resides in Ottawa with her husband Blair of 15 years with their 13-year-old daughter. Chantal Bechervaise are you ready to help us get over the hump?

Chantal Bechervaise:     Yes I am. Thank you so much for having me. 

Jim Rembach:     Thanks for being here. Now, I’ve given our listeners a little bit about you but can you tell us what your current passion is so that we get to know you even better? 

Chantal Bechervaise:     My current passion, which you touch on is creating workplaces that don’t suck, that’s my passion and that’s my goal. To create work environment where leaders thrive, where employees thrive and where it’s such a great place and a fun place to be. 

Jim Rembach:     We had the opportunity to chat a little bit before our time here together and you had mentioned something that I think can also contributes to that is that—talking about being a sci-fi geek, there’s some things that are in your office. You’re talking about trying to create a place of work that doesn’t suck, share with us how people respond to your workspace.

Chantal Bechervaise:     People response to my workspace they usually laugh when they see my office because I have a lot of sci-fi geek career around. I volunteer with comic    I’m going on my fourth year volunteering with Comic Con a lot. I’m going on my fourth year volunteering with them here in Ottawa, so I have a lot of pictures of me with various sci-fi actors, my favorite shows, the wallpaper on my computer is Dalek’s, I’m a huge Dr. Who fan, so, people usually laugh when they see my office.

Jim Rembach:     For me, I started thinking about the personalization and I had a lot of experience in contact center operations. We always have the dilemma on know how much can people have—that their workspace in regards to personal items and it really kind of a petty thing after a while. When you start thinking about creating a workplace that doesn’t suck, what is one thing somebody can do in order to make it not do that?

Chantal Bechervaise:     I think the one thing that most leaders or anybody in a workplace to help not make it suck is trust in the ability of their employees. You spend the time hiring someone, you went through all the steps of interviewing, screening them out, checking references and then a lot of times what happens is people get to work and then they’re sidelines, they’re given a job but they’re not give the why they’re doing or they’re not explained the full scope of a project. And that’s not fair for the employee or the leader so trust in your ability that you hired the right person and that they have the right skills to carry out job.

Jim Rembach:     I definitely see how that whole trust issue plays out in a lot of different ways even when I was talking about how we use to try to limit or tell people it really came down to trust issue.  And trust is one of those things that we often have to really kind of remind ourselves of certain things, and we use quotes in the show—you have mentioned quote that drives you, from Maya Angelou, that maybe the one you want to share with us. If you do, I would like to know really what it means to a depth, but if you have another quote that you can share with us, can you do that for us?

Chantal Bechervaise:     One of my favorite is the Maya Angelou, that’s the one I try and live by. For me it’s always been kind and nice to the other person. That doesn’t mean that your pushover or people walk all over you, but it is helping people achieve their goals. And I think as a leader, even if you’re not a leader whatever position you’re in, if you can help other employees or friends or family with what they need to get done, be there to encourage them, to support them, that is what they remember and that to me is what the heart of the quote mean. 

Jim Rembach:     That’s one of the things that we really have found to be one of the differentiating factors for folks that really move forward and upward faster with regards to leading their selves and others is that they put more passion and emotion into it and sometimes we don’t always do that and we have humps that we have to get over and defined who we are, where we want to go and sometimes they draw connections that we didn’t necessarily realize things in ourselves. Is there a time where you had to get over a hump and how it changed your direction? Can you share it with us?

Chantal Bechervaise:     Yes. This happens a few year ago. I was working for an organization and I was in a management level position so I had staff reporting to me but I have senior directors above me. And unfortunately it was a toxic work environment so I had problem with the management level, I had no problem with the staff level but the senior management and above created a very toxic work environment. It wasn’t something I expected, I think everybody’s had a bad boss or boss that wasn’t their favorite but when you work in an environment where every day you’re put down or yelled at or people are talking about you behind your back, it changes you.

It was a huge obstacle for me because I’m the type of person that’s pretty positive and I persevere and I’m a rock. But when you’re dealing with the toxic environment, if you’re a rock the toxic environment suck the water and water eventually erodes rocks. So for me it was wearing me down and it came to a point where I was very apathetic, I was depressed, I don’t want to get up in the morning to even go to my job. And in know everybody has those days where your alarm goes off, you don’t want to go to work. But this was something that was constant it was affecting every part of my life where I just want to give up and didn’t care anymore and that was not like me at all. 

So that was my biggest work hurdle that I had to work through and I don’t there was a defining moment when I woke up and said, “That’s it I’m going to change” it kind of happen gradually, and this was a few years ago. When I was using social media but didn’t know how to use it and there was one day when I was on social media and I just started to discover other people that had the same passion and outlook of what a workplace should be as me. I came across this people, Megan (8:01 inaudible) Jean Asher and few others and I started to realize that it’s within my power to change how I felt about work and change my situation and that’s how I got involved in blogging and social media. 

Jim Rembach:     You definitely been very prolific and headed an impact on me and I’m always finding myself reading some of the contents that you have developed as well as shared. When you start thinking about where you are—with Blair and family and work and all these different things, what are some of your goals?

Chantal Bechervaise:     My goal is trudging ahead to doing what I’m doing. I want to make a difference in the workplace whether it’s through my blogging or talking to people like yourself or your audience, just reaching people to tell them that work doesn’t have to suck, there is a better option out there that you can change your destiny, your work environment. Whether it’s finding a new job, whether it’s going into your job and looking for different opportunities to change and create a better job and work environment, that it is possible. 

Jim Rembach:     One of the thing that I find very interesting is that many of the folks that are active on social media that are doing a lot of content development are folks that are consultants, authors. Speakers—you work for the Canadian Government?

Chantal Bechervaise:     Yes. Yes I do. That’s fairly new I start working for the government a couple of years ago but I do consulting and other work on the side, it’s just I’m the type of person that kind of takes on a lot and I like that. 

Jim Rembach:     When you start thinking about—at least here in the United States, when we start thinking about government work, we don’t necessarily think about workplaces that have a lot of focus on creating great environments, so what kind of connection, impact, effect, comments have you gotten in regards to the work that you’re doing there for the Canadian government with the other work that you’re doing in regards to creating workplace that don’t suck. 

Chantal Bechervaise:     I think that I that I’ve been able to combine the two in a way that is positive for myself. When people think of the government they think of big, large organizations with a lot of red tape and in a lot of cases that’s the truth but there are opportunities to make work better and to break down fallows and to break down some of the red tape. And I’ve come in here with ideas I’ve done once you learn where I’ve spoken about social networking, I have people that approach me on how to use social media, leaders are now becoming more and more involve in social media whether they’re government leaders, organizational leaders or everybody so I Google a lot of social media questions because a lot of people know that I’m very familiar with it. 

Jim Rembach:     That’s one reason why we have you on the show because—to me you’re a huge inspiration to a lot of folks because you haven’t allowed where you are to dictate who you are.

Chantal Bechervaise:     Thank you, I think that’s something that I learned later on in life, if I have known that early in my life I think things might be a little bit different than they are now. But it’s something that I’ve known that it doesn’t matter where you are you don’t have to be CEO, a leader to take charge of your career, of yourself and lead from where you are.

Jim Rembach:     Thanks so much for sharing that and being such an inspiration. Okay, so you talked about doing some consulting and doing some work on the side, what kind of organizations are you finding yourself working with?

Chantal Bechervaise:     I do a variety of things. I volunteer, so a lot of my time on the side is spent volunteering because I feel that I should give back to my community, I’m very passionate about that. No matter what’s going on in my life that I’m very blessed and very happy with results I’ve achieved, so I feel that I need to give back. So, I volunteer with a couple of organizations and give back that way. I help them with their social media, I help them with reaching out to companies and doing sponsorship for them. I work with the local library and done social media classes for them as well. Other than that I do some social media and blogging campaigns with various companies. I’ve worked with Sony and Gorilla and Google and there are few other companies I’m hoping to work with in the upcoming months. And sometimes it’s just one on one I have people that approach me through work after working with them, there’s self-publish fathers that we’ll approach me and ask me to teach them how to use social media. So a lot of my time in consulting and spent teaching others how to use social media. 

Jim Rembach:     And the Fast Leader Legion wishes you the very best. Now before we move on let’s get a quick word from our sponsor. 

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Jim Rembach:     Alright Fast Leader listeners, now it’s time for Hump Day Hoedown. Okay, Chantal, then the Hump Day Hoedown is the part of our show where you give us good insights fast. So, I’m going to ask you several questions and your job is to give us robust yet rapid responses that are going to help us move onward and upward faster.  Chantal Bechervaise are you ready to hoedown?

Chantal Bechervaise:     I’m ready to hoedown. 

Jim Rembach:     Alright. What do you think is holding you back from being an even better leader today?

Chantal Bechervaise:     Myself. The only person I can blame is me, nobody else. So it’s the little voice in the back of the head that’s sometimes comes up and says, “You can’t do this” I’m going to send that voice back. 

Jim Rembach:     What is the best leadership advice you have received?

Chantal Bechervaise:     The best I think I’ve ever received was when I was told it’s not about you, it’s about them. So when you’re leading no matter what you’re doing you have to take your ego out of the position, it’s not you, focus on them. 

Jim Rembach:     What is one of your secrets that you believe contributes to your success? 

Chantal Bechervaise:     My attitude. I think it’s my approach. Even if something is negative or goes wrong or doesn’t turn out the way I want, I turn it into a positive learning experience.

Jim Rembach:     What do feel is one of your best tools that helps you lead in business or in life?

Chantal Bechervaise:     That’s easy, it’s my community and network, friends, family and people that I’ve met on social media.

Jim Rembach:     What would be one book from any genre that you’d recommend to our listeners?

Chantal Bechervaise:     Oh, that’s so hard, I love so many books but one book that stands out is, The Go-Giver by Bob Burg. I think it just embodies everything that I believe about giving to others, about kindness, about putting others first. 

Jim Rembach:     Okay Fast Leader listeners, you can find links to that and other bonus information from today show by going to fastleader.net/ Chantal Bechervaise. Okay, Chantal this is my last Hump Day Hoedown question:  Imagine you were given the opportunity to go back to the age of 25 and you have been given the opportunity to take the knowledge and skills that you have now back with you but you can’t take everything you can only choose one, what skill or piece of knowledge would you take back with you and why? 

Chantal Bechervaise:     So much I’d like to take back. If I could pick one I think I would pick that you control your destiny and outcome. There’s so many times in my early career when I was relying on other people to make me successful and to help me with my career when it should have been me taking charge of the situation. 

Jim Rembach:     Chantal it was an honor spend time with you today, can you please share with the fast leader legion how they can connect with you?

Chantal Bechervaise:     Sure they can reach me on Twitter @cbechervaise, you can look for the spelling of my name on the show because it is a hard name to spell. They can connect with me on my blog, takeitpersonelly.com or they just click on the Fast Leader show and reach out to me that way. 

Jim Rembach:     Chantal Bechervaise, thank you for sharing your knowledge and wisdom, the Fast Leader legion honors you and thanks you for helping us get over the hump. 

Thank you for joining me on the Fast Leader show today. For recaps, links from every show, special offers and access to download and subscribe, if you haven’t already, head on over the fastleader.net so we can help you move onward and upward faster. 

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