Matt & Crista Vance (Hosts): Welcome everyone for today’s episode on the culture profit. We’re going to be talking all about career strategy. How do you plan and realize the career path that you want? And how can people leaders promote this positive growth among team members? We’re excited to have Tim Toterhi. He’s gonna get me on this. I can tell you. Tim Toadoray, CHRO, coach and author to share his expert advice. So, thanks for being here with us, Tim.

 

Tim Toterhi (Guest): Oh, it’s my pleasure. The last name is an easy one. It’s Smith Jones toy. Just easy as pie, right?

 

Matt & Crista Vance (Hosts): Yeah. Do you know where that originates from?

 

Tim Toterhi (Guest): So, actually, it’s a crazy story.

 

Matt & Crista Vance (Hosts): To

 

Tim Toterhi (Guest): It is legit an Ellis Island story.
 

 

Tim Toterhi (Guest): So when my family came over from Italy, um the name got changed and that often happened at that time. And so we’re not sure what it used to be 100%.

 

Matt & Crista Vance (Hosts): Yeah.

 

Tim Toterhi (Guest): There’s some debate about that. But what it is now is unique because I’m the only, you know, toy on the planet if there’s other ones that are related to me. So I can’t do anything too terrible because I’m easily

 

Matt & Crista Vance (Hosts): Yeah.

 

Tim Toterhi (Guest): found.

 

Matt & Crista Vance (Hosts): Yep. It’ll get traced back. That is a cool story though.

 

Tim Toterhi (Guest): Exactly.

 

Matt & Crista Vance (Hosts): Yeah. Thanks for sharing that. Oh, that’s amazing. And a little bit about Tim. So, he’s not your typical CHRO. He’s an author, coach, and executive advisor who is passionate about slashing bureaucracy and rethinking old thinking. Tim has over 20 years of management experience in the Americas, Europe, and Asia with a focus on talent and performance management. He’s been quoted in publications such as Fast Company, Forbes, Fox Business News, and The Huff Post, as well as profiled in the book Magnificent Leadership.

 

Matt & Crista Vance (Hosts): Tim approaches his practice with a playful smile and an eyebrow up. I love that. Yeah. and we’re we want to hear more like what took you from you were a C chro and now you’re doing career coaching. What kind of has been your career

 

Tim Toterhi (Guest): Well, it’s kind of a a come home again story,

 

Matt & Crista Vance (Hosts): path?

 

Tim Toterhi (Guest): if you will. Um, because actually my career started in the most unusual of places. is I began as a fuel broker who had two really passionate side hustles. Uh during that time I was a karate instructor and I was a freelance writer and I loved both of those things. So when I first pivoted into HR I was really going into L & D because I wanted to spend more time doing what I loved, which was teaching and writing things. And so I always from an early age were using transferable skills. So when I started my career, I said, “Well, I have a little bit of sales knowledge. Never going to be the greatest salesperson,

 

Tim Toterhi (Guest): but I know a little bit about it.” So I came into L & D by selling training products and I was a teacher and so well I could become a corporate trainer and I was a writer and so I could start to write those training programs and over time it just was this it sounds now like a natural arc. It was a little bit haphazard at the time, but it sounds great telling it in reverse that you know over time you got into talent management and performance management and before you know it I was running a HR PMO. I was doing M&A and then ultimately I get to a place where I’m doing a couple stints as a CHRO and it’s funny you get to the end of what you think you want and it’s great but then you look around and go you know what maybe there’s something missing here too. And that’s what I found. I was like, “Yeah, I love it, but I still miss the things that I started with.” And so, you know, a few years ago, I made that pronounced shift to say, “You know what? Let me go back to doing a lot of what I started out to do and really love.” And that’s kind of the

 

Matt & Crista Vance (Hosts): Yeah, that’s so cool.

 

Tim Toterhi (Guest): trajectory.

 

Matt & Crista Vance (Hosts): And I feel like every opportunity we have has a purpose, has a time and a place. and you’ve come full circle back to that teaching and working with people, working with individuals. I think that’s amazing. And for people listening, I think that’s also a a cool example of, you know, the journey of a career. You know, you don’t have to say I for sure am going to achieve this one thing at all costs because halfway there you may realize that you have a little bit different passion for something else or you get there and then you come back to something like I think it’s it’s really critical to have an open mind along the journey that things can change and develop and allow yourself self to have that space. So I think that’s honestly really inspirational how you went about that. Yeah. Careers don’t have to be linear,

 

Tim Toterhi (Guest): Yeah.

 

Matt & Crista Vance (Hosts): right? Go ahead,

 

Tim Toterhi (Guest): Exactly. And what you guys are saying is so important because you have to balance the career strategy of having a goal and focusing

 

Matt & Crista Vance (Hosts): Tim.

 

Tim Toterhi (Guest): on that goal, but also being open to opportunities when they arise, right? Because you never know what’s going to come out of left field and say, you know what, let me maybe try that. Maybe take a risk and so forth. And so, yeah, balancing those two things are are tremendously

 

Matt & Crista Vance (Hosts): Yeah. So,

 

Tim Toterhi (Guest): important.

 

Matt & Crista Vance (Hosts): tell us a little bit about your book and how that relates to the conversation.

 

Tim Toterhi (Guest): Yeah. So, I’ve always been a writer and so my latest book is called The Three Gifts. How do we overcome adversity, navigate change, and find success? And so, what I advise folks in the book is that there’re really three things that we all need to be successful in whatever we choose to have as our endeavor. And that’s perspective, persistence, and creativity. And believe it or not, sometimes perspective is the hardest one to master because each of us just has a backstory. We only know what we know. whether we’re a kid uh or we’re a seasoned executive.

 

Tim Toterhi (Guest): We walk on stage with our backstory in our series of circumstances. So, as an example, you know, years ago, I grew up I’m a Gen Xer and so I grew up in New York. We were joking about that before in my, you know, don’t sound like a soprano anymore accent that I got going on. U but you know, when I was a kid in that era, you know, this was latch key time. You know, if you were economically challenged, you’d be, you know, a government cheese kind of thing. And that that was the world that we lived in. And so in my neighborhood when we thought about careers, we actually used to joke about what we called the three C’s. Like when you think about what you saw out there in the world, you could be a construction worker, you could be a cop, or you could be a criminal. That’s it. There was no SVP of logistics in our neighborhood, right?

 

Matt & Crista Vance (Hosts): That’s

 

Tim Toterhi (Guest): There was nothing like that. And so, you know, it’s funny, but if you have that perspective,

 

Matt & Crista Vance (Hosts): right.

 

Tim Toterhi (Guest): you really need to take a step back and look at a wider angle and see what’s available to you. Now, it’s kind of a humorous anecdote, but it applies a little bit to the working world as well, because if you’re locked into one profession, one career, well, that’s okay. You can be very successful, but it’s helpful to take a step back and see what else is available. Maybe you’re an HR person for your whole career, but you know what? you want to take a risk and go into project management or finance or operations. Widening your lens gives you much more views of this. So that perspective is really important, right? So you think about that.

 

Matt & Crista Vance (Hosts): Yeah.

 

Tim Toterhi (Guest): You know the other thing that that we look at is you know frankly that persistence of the other tool that they say and that’s an easy one except it’s the hardest one, right? Because it’s hard work. You just have to bust your butt and go after what you want but you have to work in a really thoughtful way.

 

Tim Toterhi (Guest): And what people don’t realize sometimes is that it’s all about being ruthless with your time and focusing on the goal and delaying a little bit of gratification for that. So, you know, that hard work thing you can’t get away from. And then finally, just just kind of quickly is that flexibility and creativity piece because sometimes hard work doesn’t work. You can work as hard as you possibly want for something and you’re never going to be as good as somebody else or you just don’t have that skill set. So, how do you get flexible and creative to leverage something else that can really propel your career? And if you have all of those three and you’re willing to chase it, you can do pretty well for

 

Matt & Crista Vance (Hosts): And that I really like that framework, honestly.

 

Tim Toterhi (Guest): yourself.

 

Matt & Crista Vance (Hosts): You know, I think about the creativity piece. That’s um I’ve said this before, but um one of my favorite quotes is creativity loves constraints, you know. So,

 

Tim Toterhi (Guest): Yeah.

 

Matt & Crista Vance (Hosts): if you have some constraints around your natural gifts and abilities, then you have to be creative.

 

Matt & Crista Vance (Hosts): Yeah. Thinking inside the box instead of outside the box, I think is kind of underrated because outside the box, you may be daydreaming about all these resources and things that aren’t actually realistic. But if you give yourself a box and say, “What can I accomplish with these constraints and maximize what I’m trying to do?” I think that’s where, you know, a lot can happen. But you have to, you know, as you said, have that perseverance to really persist. Yeah, that persistence. So, yeah. How does that apply in action? Like let’s say we’ve got someone listening who they’re, you know, maybe they’re underemployed or they’re just not happy with where they’re at. Um, how do they apply these three things to take them from I don’t I all I know is I’m unhappy. What should I do next? What do you say to that

 

Tim Toterhi (Guest): Yeah,

 

Matt & Crista Vance (Hosts): person?

 

Tim Toterhi (Guest): I think part of it is, you know, thinking about alternative options is everybody has a whole host of skills.

 

Tim Toterhi (Guest): that they can employ in different ways. So as an example, you know, I was a writer for the newspapers at the time, believe it or not. This is you even before the internet and they had multiple newspapers and you could make really good money doing that as a freelancer and then all of a sudden it goes away. The whole business went away. Well, does that mean that you can’t enjoy that passion anymore or do you reposition it into a different vehicle? And that vehicle could mean, okay, well, now you’re going to write products that are available on the internet. Maybe that’s not your thing. Okay. Well, that same skill set can be applied internally in corporate communications in an organization. So that the whole thing is to not get trapped into the blinder mentality like this is all I know. I can only do this. And so part of it is widening that perspective of it is huge. The other thing, you know, hard work is hard work.

 

Tim Toterhi (Guest): That’s part of it. But the other thing is to develop workarounds because sometimes, frankly, we don’t have the skills that we need to to leverage a certain area. Um that doesn’t mean we can’t do it. And I’ll give you a very very uh simple practical example and then we can bring it out. So when my daughter was young, she loved to cook and loves to bake, right? Well, sometimes she needs something from the top shelf. She can’t reach the top shelf. Does that mean she can’t bake? She can’t cook? No. Well, her work around at the time was to call dad or to get a step stool. Right? That’s a very simple thing. But other times in our work life, we have things that we’re not good at and we need to either work to get better at them or we develop creative workarounds to do that. So, somebody’s listening saying, “Well, I’m not really sure. I’m frustrated.” That’s where we need to think about it.

 

Tim Toterhi (Guest): I think we can also broaden the topic to make some decisions around when it’s time to change gears because there’s a formula to think around that as well. We could talk a little bit about it if you like.

 

Matt & Crista Vance (Hosts): Yeah. Yeah.

 

Tim Toterhi (Guest): Yeah. I mean, so it’s funny when people are thinking about making a change to their career.

 

Matt & Crista Vance (Hosts): Continue.

 

Tim Toterhi (Guest): Um, most career coaches will say, well, you know, if you’re not earning or you’re not learning, it’s time to scoot, right? And that sounds great. That’s a great sound bite, but we know that the world is a little bit more complicated than that. And so we have to dissect it a bit, right? So if I’m talking to a candidate and thinking about, well, where do you want to go or should you leave? The rule that I use for folks is that if you love what you do, but you’re frustrated with how, where, and when you do it, it’s probably time to change locations, right? You might want to change the the job,

 

Matt & Crista Vance (Hosts): Thank

 

Tim Toterhi (Guest): the circumstances. Maybe you have a a manager that you don’t get along with,

 

Matt & Crista Vance (Hosts): you.

 

Tim Toterhi (Guest): or maybe there’s processes in your company that don’t work. Something is there, but you still like it. The moment that you start to lose your why, that you don’t have that passion for it anymore, that’s where you might want to change professions or change disciplines because it’s not going to be fulfilling for you. But in either case, whatever you’re facing, a big change or a small change, it’s really important to move towards something, you know. So, Matt, you brought up the folks that are listening and saying, “I’m frustrated.” Now, frustration is great, but it can also be dangerous because when we’re really stuck and we’re struggling, sometimes we look for an escape hatch and we say, “I just got to get out of here. I got to do something different.” And that’s where we make career mistakes. So, sometimes it’s really powerful to slow down, right? and to think about, well, is this a small change I need or a big change I need?

 

Tim Toterhi (Guest): Let me move in the best right direction. And that’s kind of what I would let them know if that makes sense to

 

Matt & Crista Vance (Hosts): Okay. Yeah. Yeah. I think that man that is quite the framework.

 

Tim Toterhi (Guest): you.

 

Matt & Crista Vance (Hosts): It’s like the how, where, when, and why. Just going through that inventory with yourself helps you almost like a decision tree of should you be doing the same thing somewhere else or should you be considering something else completely differently. I did want to get your take on this. This wasn’t in the, you know, prescribed questions, but I’ve seen on LinkedIn, you know, someone posts, I just left this company because I just had to get out of there and now I’m open to work. So here I am. Everybody come pick me up. Like what do you say to that mentality of like I like should someone just stick it out for a little while or should they just get out of there

 

Tim Toterhi (Guest): Yeah, it’s an interesting question.

 

Tim Toterhi (Guest): So,

 

Matt & Crista Vance (Hosts): sometimes?

 

Tim Toterhi (Guest): You know, I think we’re more sensitive to mental health now than we’ve ever been in the work career. So, I would say that you have to take care of yourself first, right? And so,

 

Matt & Crista Vance (Hosts): Mhm.

 

Tim Toterhi (Guest): if things are legitimately that bad at a workplace where you’re uh becoming stressed out, you’re losing sleep, it’s affecting your health in a negative way, then in that situation that may trump the monetary issue that you need, right? And you might say, you know what, I need to get out, clear my head, and move on. And even if I need to put on a career band-aid, that’s okay because it’s so important. Most people’s situations aren’t that pronounced.

 

Matt & Crista Vance (Hosts): Mhm.

 

Tim Toterhi (Guest): If you’re dealing with an unfulfilling situation or something that you’re not growing, you want to move up and there’s no opportunity for you. What I would suggest is a little bit of being practical. And this just comes from the, you know, the fiscal PSC of, you know, growing up the way I did, right?

 

Tim Toterhi (Guest): is like you say, “Hey, look, you know, make sure you have a place to land and then jump to it so that you can make sure you’re looking before you leave.” Um, and that’s my practical tendency on that. Um, in either case, um, always be positive when you go. It makes you feel good if you, you know, bark on the way out or post something. You want to be thoughtful about, you know, being grateful even if you learned a tough lesson somewhere and then leveraging that. And frankly, be the manager that you wish you would have had and go forward in that

 

Matt & Crista Vance (Hosts): Yeah. And hopefully most people are before they’re getting to the really poor mental health health state

 

Tim Toterhi (Guest): Regards.

 

Matt & Crista Vance (Hosts): at an organization, hopefully they’re making those those thoughtful like what do I need to change here and and getting to that before they get to the really the hard part and then they can make that practical change and instead of jumping ship and hoping you have enough savings to carry through to the next opportunity.

 

Matt & Crista Vance (Hosts): But um I want to switch gears here a little bit and you know maybe there’s some listeners that we have who are happy with their job and their career um but they are recruiters or leaders and I’d love to get your take on the business side how you can help those candidates have like when you’re hiring somebody you want them to have those three things that you said the perspective the persistence and the creativity that’s those are great almost some tangible things that you’re looking for in a candidate that can align with your organization. So, what are some things that you use to determine if someone has

 

Tim Toterhi (Guest): Yeah,

 

Matt & Crista Vance (Hosts): that?

 

Tim Toterhi (Guest): It’s a really interesting question because it’s a tricky one, right? I think any no organization has really figured out how to deal with potential and that’s what

 

Matt & Crista Vance (Hosts): Yeah.

 

Tim Toterhi (Guest): We’re talking about a little bit, right? So, we think about things like um internal folks nine boxes and how you would run that. That’s where companies get tripped up if they understand performance but they really can’t define potential.

 

Tim Toterhi (Guest): So they’ll say we want somebody with executive presence and you ask 12 people and they got 13 different answers on what that looks like and so it’s hard to define. Well, when you’re looking at perspective, persistence and creativity that’s in that bucket, right? So, you know, when we think about it from a candidate perspective, it becomes uh as just as hard because it’s really really difficult to assess someone’s potential in a certain area. There’s no magic formula. I mean, when you think about some of the and there’s really good products out there, but even some organizations that assess uh candidates coming in, um they’re the first ones to tell you you can’t make a hiring decision based on that because even if it’s a validated model, it’s not a go no-go decision. is to be informed with everything else. So anyway, long winded way of saying it’s a difficult thing, but the way that I approach it is through what I call power listening, right? You actually have to have the conversation with people and listen for very specific things when you’re working with a candidate because let’s think about it.

 

Tim Toterhi (Guest): You maybe have two, three, max four, 45 minute conversations and then you’re going to have a financial decision that is huge for an organization. You got to get it right. So when you think about it, if you’re sitting down with with me for an interview, by the time you get there, we know you can do the job. You have the skills, the qualifications, you’ve been screened. Uh but the reality is so so can everybody else. there’s a lot of other folks who can do the job. So when in a in a world where knowledge and experience is a commodity to a certain extent, I’m not interested so much in what you know. I’m interested in how you think and how you apply it. So the way that I look at it is you you ask for um things like your uh career history, right? Some kind of simple question as that. That’s either the laziest question in the world or the best question in the world.

 

Matt & Crista Vance (Hosts): Mhm.

 

Tim Toterhi (Guest): Depends upon what you’re thinking.

 

Tim Toterhi (Guest): So, imagine yourself in an interview and someone says, “Okay, hey, can you walk me through your career history?” Right? That’s either because I just picked up your resume two seconds ago, didn’t bother to read it, and I want you to do my job. Right? or it’s because I’ve actually thought about it before and I’m listening to a bunch of things. What do you say? What do you not say? What do you say first? What do you say with passion? Right? And can you articulate a story that gives me a viewpoint as to why you made your transitions? Did you think through things as you went through them? Good, bad, tough times, hard times, right? You know, positive things. Can you tell that story that gives me clues to it? So the answer to the question is how do you define this stuff? When you’re looking at your interview process, are they giving you experiences and stories that illustrate their ability to widen their perspective on things to be persistent despite challenges and to be creative when things go sideways?
 

 

Tim Toterhi (Guest): And that’s what I’m looking for. And you know what’s funny? If they don’t tell me it’s not a math test that they’re going to get 2 plus two is wrong. I’m going to say I’m actually looking for this. Can you give me an example of then you find it but you can’t find what you don’t you you know you’re not looking for and they don’t know what you what they’re what they’re

 

Matt & Crista Vance (Hosts): Yeah, man. And not everyone may have this perspective on hiring and it’s fantastic.

 

Tim Toterhi (Guest): offering

 

Matt & Crista Vance (Hosts): But for people who are listening who are making that career change, this is a great interviewing tip as well to center your interview around stories and experiences that can relate to the job that you’re applying for. Yeah. And I think it’s about alignment on both sides. You know, the hiring manager and the employee or the potential employee, they both want to thrive. They both want to achieve things that are positive because neither side wants to be three, six months in and be frustrated because it’s not good for anyone.
 

 

Matt & Crista Vance (Hosts): So being honest and truthful on both sides, describing the job and describing yourself is to everyone’s ultimate benefit. Even if you’re nine months into unemployment and you’re just screaming, “Give me any job, I’ll do anything.” You know, you still are going to benefit from being honest and transparent. I I would

 

Tim Toterhi (Guest): Yeah, you’re so right. I mean, what sometimes candidates forget because it’s so busy and it’s gotten so noisy and it’s really hard to get into that even

 

Matt & Crista Vance (Hosts): think

 

Tim Toterhi (Guest): the initial interview is that you forget sometimes that we’re rooting for you. We want you to be the answer to our problem, to our issue, right? There’s nothing better than to have somebody who’s a rockstar and walks in and you identify them. So, what we’ll say sometimes is that we’re looking for specific things. So, I want to hear about the times you took risks and did it pay off and why. I want to understand when you had a failure in your job and what you did from it.

 

 
Tim Toterhi (Guest): Like that shows me that more than you work hard, you work hard with intent in mind, right? That goes to that persistence aspect. You know, it’s funny. I had somebody um share things around um workarounds, right? So there’s two things when you get to discussions around um your ability to to score a job and you know there’s things we all can’t do. So I like the power of yet, right? So um I can’t do this yet. I don’t do this well enough yet, but I’m learning it. So sometimes you’ll find HR people say this, well I’m not a finance person. I don’t buy that. You’re not a finance person yet. I don’t understand AI yet. Great. Okay, that’s one. um somebody says that I light up because they’re somebody who’s learning. The other thing is if they overcome something that is a challenge, right? So you have folks that will, you know, they’re world class presenters, but they’re dyslexic.

 

Tim Toterhi (Guest): They could never read a teleprompter, but they do it because they learn to adjust their process and tell stories. Fantastic. What else are you going to fix without me having to think about? There’s, you know, really good ways to demonstrate excellence if you just you’re opening to to listen to it and share

 

Matt & Crista Vance (Hosts): Wow. Yeah. Very powerful. This this is such a small example of that,

 

Tim Toterhi (Guest): it.

 

Matt & Crista Vance (Hosts): but sometimes my kids will say to me, “I’m thirsty.” And it’s like one of my biggest pet peeves because I’m like, “Okay, what are you going to do about it?” And I’m like, “Okay, you need to tell me what the solution is. Mom, hand me can you hand me my drink or can you hand me a drink of water or something or can you get me a cup down or something?” But instead of being the one who’s sharing the problem, let’s be problem solvers. Do you have any final advice here, Tim, that you’d like to share with people
 
  
Tim Toterhi (Guest): You know, it’s funny. I think that when you when you look at career change,

 

Matt & Crista Vance (Hosts): listening?

 

Tim Toterhi (Guest): everyone gets freaked out about it. And there’s one thing that I love to debunk. Um it’s that notion that people fear change. We hear this all the time. Um and I don’t buy it. Uh because if you think about just the arc of anyone’s life, right, we run towards change all the time. We go to school, we get married, we have kids, we get, you know, jobs and change and move locations and all this stuff. I think a more accurate statement is that we resist change that we don’t understand or we fundamentally disagree with. And so when you’re thinking about your career and you’re trying to, you know, find your true north, right? If you’re hesitant, it’s probably not because you’re fearful. It’s probably because you need more information. And then if you get that information, then you can make a decision on what’s most right for you.

Tim Toterhi (Guest): And you’re the only one that’ll ever be able to tell you what that is.

 

Matt & Crista Vance (Hosts): ch change is the only constant and I love the way you phrase that and obviously you’re pulling from tons of experience and amazing wisdom here. So, thank you for sharing all of your tidbits today and such great advice for those on the end of career change and also on the side of the business and hiring. Um, anything else? Yeah, I would just say to everyone listening, go go check out Tim’s book, connect with him on LinkedIn. We’ll include links on both of those with this episode. And uh, thank you again, Tim, for sharing your words of wisdom today.

 

Tim Toterhi (Guest): Hey, my pleasure. Love the

 

Matt & Crista Vance (Hosts): Thanks, Tim. Yep. We’ll see you guys.

 

Tim Toterhi (Guest): conversation.

 

Matt & Crista Vance (Hosts): Bye. Okay, I’ll stop the recording here. That was really good, Tim. Yeah,

 

Tim Toterhi (Guest): It was fun.

 

Matt & Crista Vance (Hosts): that was awesome.

 

Tim Toterhi (Guest): You guys make it easy. It’s an easy conversation.