S3 E101: A Bold Book Writing Journey

In this premiere episode of Season 3 of the For Love of Team podcast, host Winston Faircloth reintroduces the podcast after a three-year hiatus. Winston shares personal and professional updates since the last season, including his transformation into an avid writer and his 'Reunion Tour' exploring personal spirituality. 

Winston recounts his extensive career in leadership roles, primarily in the United Way and nonprofit sectors. He unveils a bold new experiment for this season: writing a book called 'Team Love,' based on a successful blog series from the past. Each episode will feature an audio first draft of a chapter from the book, inviting listeners to provide feedback and help shape the final version. This innovative journey aims to engage visionary leaders and anyone interested in fostering a loving team culture. 

 00:00 Welcome to Season Three 

00:51 Personal and Professional Growth 

02:07 Career Journey and Leadership Lessons 

05:02 Introducing the Team Love Book 

07:26 Join the Book Writing Journey 

08:03 Conclusion and Next Steps 

#TeamLOVE Book. Join the bold book writing journey as we write and share our first draft chapters from our upcoming book - Team Love: 28 Ways to Demonstrate Caring at Work here in season 3 of the For Love of Team podcast.

Be notified each week about a new episode and follow our journey at TeamLoveBook.com

Transcript

Episode 101: A Bold Book Writing Experiment

[00:00:00] 

Judith: Welcome to the premiere of season three of the For Love of Team podcast. This season, we are taking you behind the curtain as Winston Faircloth writes his new book, Team Love, 28 Ways to Demonstrate Caring at Work. [pause] Each week, we will share excerpts from a new chapter, sharing the key concepts and takeaways to help you support your team as a visionary leader.[pause] Now here is your host, Winston Faircloth. 

Welcome to episode 101 of the For Love of Team podcast, a bold book writing experiment. So welcome to season three. I'm your host, Winston Faircloth, founder of For Love of Team. Well, it's been a very extended break since season two and three of this podcast. It was [00:01:00] nearly three years ago we wrapped up Season 2 and Episode 100 with my friend Mark Ross, interviewing us on the lessons learned over the prior three years of our journey.

And now today, almost three years to the day, we're bringing back the podcast for a bold experiment in book writing, one we're going to share with you every step of the way. Now, since that last podcast, In 2021 October, much has changed for me personally and professionally. I've become a avid writer. I've published nearly 900 photos and poems related to my personal spiritual journey on social media, on my personal Facebook page and my personal Instagram page, Winston Faircloth.

And I dubbed this journey, My Reunion Tour. which chronicles my reflections on returning to the person God [00:02:00] created me to be and to more importantly shed identities mostly associated with work and achievement. While fulfilling my purpose is still very important to me, I'd lost sight of what really matters and I'd wandered too far into work equaling worth.

Let me say that again, work equaling worth. And because I identified so much with my role at work, And now that I had some distance from that, this helped me see negative patterns of leadership that ultimately hurt my team and the work that we did together. So for some of you who I've not yet met, let me give you a little background.

For 40 years, over 40 years now, I have been an executive, and leader mostly in and around United Ways and the not for profit and technology communities. The first season [00:03:00] of my career in life, I served as the executive as an executive in three different local United Ways, as a vice president and responsible for fundraising in Louisville, Kentucky, as a CEO in Hampton, Newport News, Virginia, back to my hometown, Area of coastal Virginia.

And then back to Lexington, Kentucky, where I finished out my United Way careers, the CEO of the United Way of the Bluegrass. The second season of my career, I was an accidental techie. I had during my time in Lexington, I had begun to outsource a number of our back office activities to. Another sister United Way.

And you can see some of that in season two, you can learn more about some of that progression in season two of the podcast, but here I became the founding CEO of a nonprofit technology organization that that served the United Way network, it was this experience [00:04:00] of going from a germ of an idea to a nationwide tech company that shapes much of what I share today.

What I did both right to innovate. And also how badly I handled the culture of our team later. The third season of my career, I did that for 15 years. The third season of my career, I've been primarily a consultant and a coach focusing on the United Way and non profit networks. Also with a brief stint as an officer of a privately held CSR company serving Fortune 100.

organizations. And I would say this third season in my career as a consultant and coach has been probably one of the most humbling and faith formative stages of my life. And now, entering the fourth season, I'm turning 65 next year. I'm not retiring per se. Instead, I'm becoming more selective about the purpose [00:05:00] based projects that I'm taking on, some of which still serve that United Way community that I'm so familiar with.

So in addition to continuing to help United Ways align technology and mission as a consultant, I'm devoting more of my time going forward to writing projects, some deeply personal like my reunion tour and others focused on visionary leaders in your teams. And this is what I'm most excited about sharing with you as we go into Season 3 of the podcast.

A while ago, we published a series of short blog posts during Valentine's Month about the various ways leaders show love to their teams. And when we published it, it was a big hit at the time, with lots of comments and feedbacks using the hashtag TeamLove. And so for season three of this podcast, we're going to invite you to come along with us on the [00:06:00] journey of writing a book that we're titling Team Love, which is loosely based upon those original blog posts.

Each week in season three of the podcast, we're going to share with you an audio first draft. chapter of the team love book on this podcast, along with summary notes on our blog. In essence, we're giving away the first draft to you, our loyal listeners. It's a bold experiment in writing a book, giving it away for free, giving all the content away for free, albeit in a rough draft form as we are writing it in real time, as we are producing the content.

We believe by sharing it publicly, you'll hold us accountable. And provide valuable feedback, helping us all together make this better and more relevant for the audiences we seek to serve. [00:07:00] Now you may say, who are the audiences Team Lookbook is here to serve? Well, here in the beginning we are imagining that we're going to serve visionary leaders.

People already in the role of being a visionary leader for their organization and anyone who wants to lead their teams with love. And in the book, I will share some of the hard leadership lessons I've learned over 40 years of being an executive and leader in various different roles, as well as ideas that are shared by and with our nonprofit clients that help us all together, build a better team culture.

Now this book is designed to be short and to the point. Most of the audio podcast chapters you'll notice is going to be between five and seven minutes. We're going to focus on a single concept that you can try with your teams. I hope you'll enjoy this new season we're calling Team Love [00:08:00] and I invite you to make sure to share this podcast with your friends and invite them along this book writing journey that we're taking together.

To sign up for weekly email updates when we publish a new chapter, which is going to happen once a week, make sure to visit our podcast page:

Winston Faircloth: w w w dot for love of team dot com backslash team love. That's w w w dot for love of team dot com backslash team love.

friends, we're going to give this a try. I love experimentation and innovation. This is something we're going to do together. I hope you really enjoy coming along with us on this journey.

Thanks for listening. And I hope to see you next week as we share introductory chapter of team love the book. Take care friends. We'll see you next time.