72: How to Talk to People on Their Birthdays, with Bonni Stachowiak
Coaching for Leaders
Dave Stachowiak
4.8 • 1.6K Ratings
🗓️ 21 January 2013
⏱️ 24 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Bonni Stachowiak: Teaching in Higher Ed
Bonni is the host of the Teaching in Higher Ed podcast, Dean of Teaching and Learning and Professor of Business and Management at Vanguard University, and my life partner. Prior to her academic career, she was a human resources consultant and executive officer for a publicly traded company. Bonni is the author of The Productive Online and Offline Professor: A Practical Guide*.
Where people go wrong on birthdays and other important occasions:
- Many of have defaulted to no more than “HBD” on Facebook or other social media
- Some people even send birthday cards and just sign their names (gasp!)
- We’ve lost the personal touch
- I ever get robocalls now on my birthday
How you can be better
- Have something to remind you (but not automated to send to the other party)
- Avoid the obligatory stuff you do because you feel like you have to
- Focus on the people who are close to you first and spend more time engaging with them on special days
- Instead of a “happy birthday,” how about sharing why you are grateful that that person showed up in your life
- I record a brief audio greeting for special people in my life to share why I’m grateful for them
- Whatever you do, make the personal connection…and do it sincerely
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Hi everyone this week we're going to be talking about how to talk to people on their |
| 0:04.3 | birthdays as well as a couple other random topics and also groundhogs. If you happen to |
| 0:10.4 | have an irrational fear of groundhogs you may want to hit the delete button now. |
| 0:13.8 | Otherwise stick around, you're listening to Coaching for Leaders, episode number 72. |
| 0:18.8 | Produced by Innovate Learning, Maximizing Human Potential. learning, maximizing human potential. |
| 0:24.0 | Greetings from Orange County, California. |
| 0:30.0 | This is coaching for leaders, and I'm your host Dave Stahopje. This is how to Dave Stahopje. |
| 0:34.0 | This is a weekly show for leaders who want to improve themselves |
| 0:38.0 | to better engage and develop others. |
| 0:40.0 | This week's topic is how to talk to people on their birthdays. |
| 0:45.0 | And Groundhog Day is coming up here in the United States. |
| 0:50.0 | If you've not been introduced to Groundhog Day before, you will learn a little bit on this episode. |
| 0:55.0 | And I am being joined by Bonnie Stahoviac, as I often am. |
| 1:01.0 | Thank you for coming in and being willing to listen to me talk about a Groundhog. |
| 1:04.1 | Thanks for having me here. Groundhog Day will never be the same to me ever, ever again, or ever |
| 1:10.9 | before. Um, should it always be special to me now? |
| 1:15.0 | Yes, and we'll talk about why. |
| 1:17.0 | And first of all, what is Groundhog Day, those of you especially listening abroad, |
| 1:20.0 | or those of you listening on the west coast of the United States might be wondering |
| 1:24.1 | what on earth are you talking about what does this have to do with birthdays. Groundhog's day is this strange |
| 1:30.4 | holiday we have in the United States that is on February 2nd and the way |
| 1:36.0 | this works is there's a number of groundhogs there's one official groundhog |
... |
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