Energetically Embracing the Enneagram with Beth Cannon
Beth Cannon of Stretch-n-Grow, an international children’s fitness franchise, joins me this week. Beth began her child care career over 20 years ago with Stretch-n-Grow and quickly became the most successful affiliate in the world. She has taken that knowledge and transformed it into a speaking, training, and coaching career for early learning leaders. Today we focus on strategies to stay positive with all the stressors that come our way in the industry and especially from the pandemic. We also talk about the importance of collaboration, knowing your why, self-awareness, and how to use tools like the Enneagram Test to identify your strengths.
Key Takeaways:
[2:59] Kris is committed to doing an in-person Child Care Success Summit in 2021.
[8:20] Beth talks about her experience with Stretch-n-Grow.
[9:30] Going into her 50th year, Beth was ready to make big expansions in her speaking engagements. Then COVID-19 hit and decimated her plan; so she took it digitally.
[13:01] Fun fact about Beth: She’s a fitness instructor, hot yoga teacher, and is very involved in women’s ministries. But she was a very wild teen that got sent to boarding school!
[16:15] A lot of Beth’s mindset for refocusing came from Simon Sinek’s Start With Why.
[17:33] Leaders with passion will funnel that down to their team and foster a positive culture.
[19:28] You have to find your own unique joy that spreads to your team, brand, and clients.
[22:25] All about the Enneagram Test, how knowing your number helps you focus on your strengths, and the numbers Beth sees most commonly in child care.
[26:40] Kris talks OFIs and Beth shares her techniques for evaluation such as ABC teams.
[31:10] The importance of empowering your team through collaboration.
[34:00] How to tackle the stress and burnout added to our plates due to the pandemic.
[37:20] We have to choose gratitude and need to identify fear in order to confront it and not let it control us.
[45:00] If Beth could put a message on a billboard, it would be “Just Breathe,” and “You’ll Never Regret Being Kind.”
Quotes:
- “Turning lemons into lemonade, here in 2020!”
- “Especially in this pandemic year, it’s been so exhausting and many, many people wanting to throw in the towel.”
- “You’ve got to remove the negativity. You’ve got to get back to your passion. You’ve got to spill the joy that you have for what you do onto your team because that’s the only way that you can lead them.”
- “Good culture does not happen unintentionally.”
- “Work on strengthening your strengths; don’t worry so much about trying to fill in the gaps of your weaknesses.”
- “There’s no rhyme or reason to the things that are happening right now.”
- “Can we choose gratitude over grumbling?”
Mentioned in This Episode:
The Child Care Success Company