On Connection: Recent Episodes
Conversant
Hosted by a Millennial, Gen-Xer, & a Baby Boomer, On Connection takes on topics relating to organizational life, leadership, & how our quality of connection influences our ability to perform & feel personally fulfilled at work.
Human connection is still a largely underutilized asset in organizations, & yet we know it is a critical leverage point for achieving results. Improving our connections means honoring & valuing difference, so along with our generational differences we will be seeking out various perspectives on topics related to life at work so we can be smarter & stronger together.
Too often, vision and values work ends up as lofty statements that don’t translate into daily practice. But when it’s done well, it can transform how teams collaborate, make decisions, and connect to a shared purpose. In this episode of On Connection, we’re joined by Trisha Moslinfrom The Nature Conservancy’s Gift Planning team, who helped lead an effort to co-create a vision and values that went beyond words on a page. Together, we explore what made their approach successful, how leadership shaped the process, and why the results have endured—strengthening both team culture and their ability to advance TNC’s mission for the long term.
Guest Bio: Trisha MoslinTrisha Moslin is the Director of Strategy and Planning in the Gift Planning department at The Nature Conservancy. She ensures strategic alignment and continued focus on priorities, works to improve communication and cross-team integration, advises and supports the department lead and management team, and manages cross-functional projects. She led the collaborative creation of TNC Gift Planning’s Vision and Values and works to ensure they’re integrated into the department’s work. Before joining TNC in 2019, she spent 15 years in international development, including as a Peace Corps volunteer. She holds an MPH in Reproductive Health and Population Studies from Emory University Rollins School of Public Health and a BBA magna cum laude in Marketing with an International Business minor from Texas A&M University. She’s traveled to 26 countries and 30 U.S. states, plays a lot of tennis, and is always in the middle of several books.
In this episode, we’re joined by leaders from Vestas, a globally recognized wind energy solutions provider, to explore the profound impact empowering leaders to simply be present and connected with their teams can have on culture, performance, and safety in high-risk industries.
After a rise in safety incidents, they launched the “Be Present” program—an initiative to strengthen relationships between site managers and technicians. The program has led to measurable improvements in safety, trust, and teamreliability, offering insights that leaders across industries can learn from as they look to improve performance and trust in their own organizations.
Hear from AnneMarie Graves, Vice President of the Midwest Region, and Gary Lamont, a Vestas Site Manager based in Iowa, as they share how presence—showing up for people as much as priorities—has transformed their teams and operations.
Guest Bios
AnneMarie Graves
AnneMarie Graves is the Vice President, Midwest Region for Vestas, where she leads an operations team of 500 wind turbine technicians operating 10 GW of wind farms in the American heartland. From 2018-2021, AnneMarie lived and worked in Europe, leading 300 Vestas engineers supporting global deployment and operation of 100 GW of Vestas, GE, Gamesa, Nordex and Siemens wind turbine and wind plant technology.
As an early proponent of utility scale wind energy in the early 2000s, AnneMarie brings more than 20 years of engineering and management experience in wind energy. Prior to joining Vestas, she led a team at DNV GL specialized in assessing the performance and reliability of over 10 GW of operating wind projects, including predicting wind project production, analyzing and diagnosing performance, and modeling turbine life. AnneMarie started her career in 2003 with GE Wind Energy assessing the suitability of new wind project locations in North America.
AnneMarie has presented and chaired sessions at American Cleanpower’s conferences including AWEA WINDPOWER and Operations Maintenance & Safety Conference, Wind Energy Update’s O&M Summits and co-chaired conferences with Women of Renewable Industries and Sustainable Energy. AnneMarie holds degrees in Mechanical Engineering and Science and Technology Studies from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute.
Gary Lamont
Gary Lamont brings over 11 years of experience working with wind turbines at Vestas, where he has contributed to advancing renewable energy technologies and supporting the growth of clean energy initiatives. Beyond his passion for sustainable energy, Gary is a devoted family man and a music enthusiast, finding inspiration in both his work and personal life. This blend of professional dedication and personal passions shapes his unique perspective on life and work.
"Insights are only as valuable as the action they inspire"
For our final episode of the 10 Laws of High-Performance Collaboration series, we offer practical advice for translating any insights you may have gained into tangible value. Insights will only get you so far - you have to act your way into new ways of working. Our recommendations include...
- Pick ONE insight you found relevant to your work today and commit to taking on a new action aligned with that Law or principle
- Use the tools and resources provided in the show notes to practice principles of high-performance collaboration
- Inviting your team to follow the series and let it cause new conversations about what you may like to take on to upgrade the value of your collaborative work together
Most importantly... let us know what you try! We would love to hear about the work you're doing and the challenges you're taking on. Send your questions and stories to podcast@conversant.comWATCH this episode on YouTubeTools & Resources: Overview of the 10 Laws of High-Performance Collaboration: Use this as a cheat sheet as you follow along with the series or practice the principles with your team
Overview on Power: A quick reference on the relationship of power to valuable and wasteful expressions of leadershipFinding Intersection Overview of the Conversation Meter: An essential summary for quick reference on how to utilize the tool
Moving Up the Meter: A handout that guides focus if looking to increase the quality of your conversations and your listening Decision Criteria Chart: Use this chart to map out criteria that can help guide upcoming decision-making conversationsThe Conversation Prep Chart: Use this worksheet to reflect on what matters to you and to those you want to improve alignment with, and reveal an intersection of interest that can drive a new conversation that moves the relationship forwardThe Bioreactive Styles Assessment Point Easy: This graphic is a helpful tool and reference for illustrating the importance of having conversations as soon as we notice a gap in performance or expectations.The 7-Step Adjust Protocol: Use this guide to hosting an Adjust conversation with your team, or as a reflection tool for your own review of recent efforts, to identify key learnings that can be applied to your next phase of action.Our books: The Communication Catalyst: The fast (but not stupid) track to value for customers, investors, and employees The Vitality Imperative: How connected leaders and their teams achieve more with less time, money, and stress
WATCH this episode on YouTube
Learn more about Conversant at https://www.conversant.com/
Follow us on LinkedIn
Law #10: The Law of Appreciation - "Appreciation is the soul of high-performance, bringing meaning, resilience, and joy to the workplace"
In pursuit of high-performance, many of us have a tendency to focus on what there is left for us to improve. While it's important to be aware of where there's room to grow, it's just as important (if not more so) to celebrate the things people are doing well and we want to see more of.
In this episode, we talk about looking for what there is to appreciate as a practice, and why expressing that appreciation is critical to cultivating high performing teams.
We discuss:
- The cost of skipping over appreciation
- Why offering and receiving appreciation can be difficult, and what to do about it
- How a focus on strengths improves a team's ability to tackle challenges
Resources mentioned in the episode:
Overview of the 10 Laws of High-Performance Collaboration: Use this as a cheat sheet as you follow along with the series or practice the principles with your team
The 7-Step Adjust Protocol: Use this guide to hosting an Adjust conversation with your team, or as a reflection tool for your own review of recent efforts, to identify key learnings that can be applied to your next phase of action.
WATCH this episode on YouTube
Learn more about Conversant at https://www.conversant.com/
Follow us on LinkedIn
Law #9: The Law of Accountability - "Accountability is based on well-supported contribution, not obligation, consequences, and punishment"Driving accountability is commonly considered a core capability for effective leadership, and is still a perennial challenge that many leaders have yet to master. This often comes up in a few intertwined ways: holding others accountable without creating fear or resentment, and creating a culture of accountability rather than having to police individuals. In this episode we offer how to thoughtfully design the relationship between individual and team accountability, getting to commitment rather than settling for compliance, and why this design is foundational for high performing teams. We cover:
- Getting clear on what success looks like and how it will be assessed
- Making your implicit thinking and expectations explicit
- Addressing missteps and disappointments at "Point Easy"
- Connecting the contribution people uniquely have to give to the results the team is accountable for
Resources mentioned in the episode:
Overview of the 10 Laws of High-Performance Collaboration: Use this as a cheat sheet as you follow along with the series or practice the principles with your team
Point Easy: This graphic is a helpful tool and reference for illustrating the importance of having conversations as soon as we notice a gap in performance or expectations.
The 7-Step Adjust Protocol: Use this guide to hosting an Adjust conversation with your team, or as a reflection tool for your own review of recent efforts, to identify key learnings that can be applied to your next phase of action.
WATCH this episode on YouTube
Learn more about Conversant at https://www.conversant.com/
Follow us on LinkedIn
Law #8: The Law of Learning - "Learning does not come from experience, it comes from reflecting on experience"
High-performing teams and their leaders aren't just great at execution, they're great at knowing when it's time to pause, reflect on what has happened and been done to-date, and gather insights that can refine execution moving forward.
Most "after action reviews" (or "Adjust Conversations", as we call them) can feel like a box to check or an occasion to place blame where things have gone wrong. In this episode, we talk about adjustment as an opportunity to appreciate where things are going well, learn from where expectations were not met, and get curious about what opportunities for improvement the experience offers. Making these conversations a habit instills a spirit of learning that energizes future collaboration.
It's time to adjust when:
- Results are better or worse than expected
- New team members or partners are added or are lost
- Circumstances change significantly
Resources mentioned in the episode:
Overview of the 10 Laws of High-Performance Collaboration: Use this as a cheat sheet as you follow along with the series or practice the principles with your team
The 7-Step Adjust Protocol: Use this guide to hosting an Adjust conversation with your team, or as a reflection tool for your own review of recent efforts, to identify key learnings that can be applied to your next phase of action.
WATCH this episode on YouTube
Learn more about Conversant at https://www.conversant.com/
Follow us on LinkedIn
Law #7: The Law of Resistance - "Where you feel resistance, do research"Influencing and generating alignment with others takes getting curious about their purposes, concerns, and circumstances. All human beings have things they care about, things they worry about, and circumstances they are facing that shape how they show up to a given situation. When we perceive someone is unaware of or opposed to the things we care about, we tend to resist them and their point of view. If someone is resisting you, it's time to (1) refresh your understanding of what matters to them and to you, and (2) get accurate about the stories we are telling ourselves and others. In this episode, we walk through the practical steps that can move a relationship that feels stuck and full of friction to one of understanding, alignment, and mutual respect. Insights from the episode:
- Resistance is infectious - doubling down on your view is not a helpful strategy for moving the relationship toward alignment
- Get curious: What are you for? What are they for? What feels like a threat to those things?
- Separate facts (things that are mutually observed and all parties would agree on) from explanations (the stories we tell to make sense of our experience)
Resources mentioned in the episode:
Overview of the 10 Laws of High-Performance Collaboration: Use this as a cheat sheet as you follow along with the series or practice the principles with your team
The Conversation Prep Chart: Use this worksheet to reflect on what matters to you and to those you want to improve alignment with, and reveal an intersection of interest that can drive a new conversation that moves the relationship forward
Overview of the Conversation Meter: An essential summary for quick reference on how to utilize the tool
The Bioreactive Styles Assessment
WATCH this episode on YouTube
Learn more about Conversant at https://www.conversant.com/
Follow us on LinkedIn
Law #6: Inclusion - "Differences + Trust = Brilliance"Inclusion isn't a side initiative - it's a leadership skill that drives performance Collaboration requires not only navigating differences across a team but leveraging them in ways that drive valuable results and fuel future successes. Leaders often express fatigue around inclusion efforts that feel bureaucratic or disconnected from business outcomes, and those that occur as performative (e.g. asking for input without real power-sharing) rather than generative (e.g. co-creating strategy, surfacing dissent, integrating frontline insight into decision-making). Teams that can engage multiple lenses, lived experiences, and cognitive styles make better decisions, faster. This inclusion of various perspectives is especially important when navigating ambiguity or complexity. Harnessing the value of difference requires stewarding an environment of trust, unlocking the full intelligence of a system. Insights from the episode:
- Over-inclusion and under-inclusion both erode clarity, speed, and trust
- Valuable inclusion requires clarity of purpose and a high-quality of listening and conversation
- Leaders who include wisely unlock creativity, commitment, and shared ownership
Resources mentioned in the episode:
Overview of the 10 Laws of High-Performance Collaboration: Use this as a cheat sheet as you follow along with the series or practice the principles with your team
Decision Criteria Chart: Use this chart to map out criteria that can help guide upcoming decision-making conversations
WATCH this episode on YouTube
Learn more about Conversant at https://www.conversant.com/
Follow us on LinkedIn
Presence - All improvement begins with what is present
Leadership Under Pressure Starts With Presence
Leaders who can attune to their own cognitive, emotional, and physical experience in real-time - without judgement - are better equipped to handle complexity, defuse conflict, and show up with emotional intelligence when it counts most. In this episode, we explore why cultivating presence is foundational to collaboration, resilience, and trust in fast-moving environments.
Insights from the episode:
- Practicing presence unlocks emotional intelligence
- Nonjudgmental awareness of the current moment fuels clearer decisions, and alignment
- Today's challenges - urgency, hybrid and virtual collaboration, dynamic circumstances - call for an unprecedented quality of leadership presence and emotional agility
Resources mentioned in the episode:
Overview of the 10 Laws of High-Performance Collaboration: Use this as a cheat sheet as you follow along with the series or practice the principles with your team
Overview of the Conversation Meter: An essential summary for quick reference on how to utilize the tool
The Bioreactive Styles Assessment
WATCH this episode on YouTube
Learn more about Conversant at https://www.conversant.com/
Follow us on LinkedIn
Law #4: Authenticity - "Pivot to purpose in the face of fear, threat & disappointment"Life, and life at work, bring plenty of opportunities for disruption, especially in the context of our relationships with others. A collaborative effort is bound to surface misalignments, differences of opinion, and competing priorities. Circumstances themselves may knock our plans off course, sending a team into a space of anxiety, fear, and protection. Having a skillset for recovering a sense of purpose and generating focus and alignment where it's missing, even in challenging times, is a critically important leadership skill. In this episode we discuss the 4th Law of Authenticity. Authenticity - an art of listening for shared purpose and cultivating connection - is foundational to high-performance collaboration.Insights from the episode:
- Emotional agility is a core skill for successful leaders, collaborators, and high-performers
- Connection is an art of correction, not perfectionThe measure of your honor is the rate of your recovery
- "The secret to all success is constancy of purpose" - Benjamin DisraeliResources mentioned in the episode:
Overview of the 10 Laws of High-Performance Collaboration: Use this as a cheat sheet as you follow along with the series or practice the principles with your team
Overview of the Conversation Meter: An essential summary for quick reference on how to utilize the tool The Bioreactive Styles AssessmentWATCH this episode on YouTube
Learn more about Conversant at https://www.conversant.com/
Follow us on LinkedIn
Law #3: The Law of Connection - "The conversations are the work."In today’s complex, fast-moving organizations, leaders are under constant pressure to drive results, manage competing priorities, and keep teams aligned—often across functions, locations, and time zones.This episode of The 10 Laws of High-Performance Collaboration introduces The Law of Connection, and core principles of leadership that are often overlooked: The quality of your team’s conversations determines the quality of your collaboration—and the results you’re able to achieve.We discuss:
- Why connection and conversation have a direct impact on efficiency, effectiveness, and supervision costs
- How to care for the quality of our conversations (hint: this has more to do with how well you listen than what you say)
- How to care for the timing of your conversations - "What conversation is it time for now?"
- The importance of developing the ability to notice when things are off track, and the skills that help you restore alignment and trust
Resources mentioned in the episode:
Overview of the 10 Laws of High-Performance Collaboration: Use this as a cheat sheet as you follow along with the series or practice the principles with your team
Overview of the Conversation Meter: An essential summary for quick reference on how to utilize the tool
Moving Up the Meter: A handout that guides focus if looking to increase the quality of your conversations and your listening
WATCH this episode on YouTube
Learn more about Conversant at https://www.conversant.com/
Follow us on LinkedIn
Law #2: The Law of Listening - "The test for listening is learning."
In today’s fast-paced, high-stakes environments, leaders are expected to drive results while fostering alignment, trust, and engagement. But one of the most underleveraged tools in that effort is also one of the most human: listening.
This episode introduces the second Law of High-Performance Collaboration: Listening. When leaders listen to learn, they create space for contribution and build the credibility and trust that enables teams to perform at their best. In the episode we discuss:
- The difference between listening to learn and listening to respond or defend
- Why leaders who listen well cultivate trust and psychological safety
- Why learning from others is a powerful act of leadership
For any leader navigating complexity, change, or growth, this conversation offers practical insight into how a commitment to listening transforms not just communication, but culture.
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Resources mentioned in the episode: Overview of the 10 Laws of High-Performance Collaboration: Use this as a cheat sheet as you follow along with the series or practice the principles with your team
WATCH this episode on YouTube
Learn more about Conversant at https://www.conversant.com/
Follow us on LinkedIn
Episode 1: The Law of Teamwork — "The Source of Teamwork is a Common Future"What makes a group of people into a team?Not just shared tasks—but a shared future.In this opening episode of The 10 Laws of High-Performance Collaboration, we explore what it takes to cultivate a team that's grounded in shared purpose, common values, and commitments to measurable goals. We also discuss three factors contributing to the strength of your team and their ability to collaborate effectively and efficiently - community, contribution, and choice. Caring for these elements set the foundation for addressing challenges relating to:
- Generating shared understanding of goals
- Building trust and psychological safety
- Clear roles, communication, and conflict norms
- Accountability and commitment
Questions to explore with your team:🔹 Given our shared future, where do we need to collaborate? Where don't we have to collaborate?🔹 What is or could be important to each of us personally if we achieve our goals?🔹 With whom must each of us interact to make that happen?🔹 Who benefits if we succeed?🔔 Subscribe to stay in the loop as new episodes drop📤 Share this video with fellow leaders or your team🎧 Tune in weekly for practical insights that will shift the way you leadResources mentioned in the episode: Overview of the 10 Laws of High-Performance Collaboration: Use this as a cheat sheet as you follow along with the series or practice the principles with your team
Finding Intersection WATCH this episode on YouTube: LINKLearn more about Conversant at https://www.conversant.com/ Follow us on LinkedIn
The most powerful tool a leader has? The next conversation.
Welcome to the first episode of our new series, The 10 Laws of High-Performance Collaboration—a series designed for leaders at all levels who want to unlock better communication, alignment, and performance in their teams.
In this opening episode, we explore what makes collaboration valuable (and what makes it wasteful), the hidden power dynamics in team interactions, and why rethinking how we coordinate might be the key to getting better results—with less friction.
Whether you lead a team of five or five hundred, this series is your guide to the human side of leadership, and the universal principles that lead to breakthroughs in collaboration.
Resources mentioned in the episode:
Overview of the 10 Laws of High-Performance Collaboration: Use this as a cheat sheet as you follow along with the series or practice the principles with your team
Overview on Power: A quick reference on the relationship of power to valuable and wasteful expressions of leadership WATCH this episode on YouTube
Learn more about Conversant at https://www.conversant.com/
Follow us on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/conversant
Leaders across industries and geographies are having to learn what it takes to drive progress in dynamic and unpredictable times. In this episode of On Connection, we engage with Ryo Penna, an entrepreneur, facilitator, and "practical philosopher", to explore how conscious leadership can drive systemic prosperity.
Drawing from his global experiences and recent research at University College London, Ryo delves into the importance of interpersonal skills, conscious collaboration, and effective listening in fostering systemic change. Learn how these principles can empower leaders to navigate today's complex and dynamic environments. Join us for an insightful discussion on leadership and the transformative power of connection.
About Ryo Penna
Ryo is a combination of entrepreneur and practical philosopher, especially fond of Socrates and Rumi. As challenging as it may sound, he is passionate about illuminating love, compassion, and empathy as skills that are core to any successful business. He likes to design good questions as a powerful tool of transformation. You can watch his TEDx Talk about “The Wisdom of Questions” (English subtitles) on YouTube.
Ryo has worked across geographies with corporations such as Unilever, DHL, Motorola, billion-dollar startups, and Amazon Rainforest communities. He co-founded and served as CEO of Grupo Anga&Din4mo, a holding of remote and self-managed companies that vary from consultancies to investing firms. He has spent most of his time working as CEO of Tribo, a consulting firm for organizational culture and conscious leadership. Grupo Anga&Din4mo is also the official publisher of MIT Sloan Review Brazil. Ryo also serves as advisor at Brasil Júnior (Brazil’s biggest university entrepreneurs network, where he also served as president back in college, leading more than 20k students) and Conscious Capitalism Brazil.
Ryo's website
Connect with Ryo on LinkedIn
University of College London Institute for Global Prosperity
In this episode of On Connection, we sit down with Lenya Quinn-Davidson, Fire Network Director at the University of California Agriculture and Natural Resources. Lenya shares her insights on the critical role of love and connection in leadership, especially in the context of fire management and community resilience. Her work on beneficial fire practices, community engagement, and her leadership in the Women in Fire Training Exchange program offer valuable lessons on how purpose-driven leadership can address complex challenges.
You can learn more about Lenya and her work below:
- Essay: The Fires California Grieves - And Needs
- WTREX Program Website
- University of California Agriculture and Natural Resources Fire Network
- California Prescribed Burn Associations
- Contact Lenya
Lenya Quinn-Davidson Bio
Lenya Quinn-Davidson is the Fire Network Director for the University of California Agriculture and Natural Resources, where she leads a statewide team working on various facets of community and landscape resiliency. Over the last 15 years, Lenya’s work has focused in large part on the human connection with fire, building capacity and support for beneficial fire. Lenya has worked at various scales, including locally with private landowners and community members; at the state level, where she collaborates on policy, research, and training; and nationally/internationally, through her leadership on the Women-in-Fire Training Exchange (WTREX) Program.
Balancing work and well-being is a constant challenge for many, particularly for leaders who are managing both people and organizational commitments. Well-being easily slips down the priority list when pressing accountabilities come up, and it can feel like a “nice-to-have” rather than a necessity. However, well-being is a critical foundation for productivity, engagement, collaboration, and leadership, and research increasingly shows that when this foundation is lacking, it affects the overall health of the business.
In today’s episode, Emma Rose is joined by Conversant consultant and partner Kell Delaney and guest Eleanor Allen. Eleanor is CEO of Catapult for Change, focusing on empowering other leaders and organizations to overcome challenges and ignite innovative ideas that enable success. Having worked across the corporate and nonprofit sectors she brings a practical but whole-hearted perspective to the question of what it takes for businesses and people to thrive. She has recently been working to bring science-based tools to organizations that support workplace experience and peak performance.
You can connect with Eleanor and learn more about her workbelow.
Eleanor Allen is a visionary catalyst for positive change, dedicated to enhancing the quality of life for both people and the planet. As a humanist, environmentalist, and versatile force in corporate and nonprofit sectors, she brings a wealth of experience as a CEO, business leader, board member, technical expert, consultant, and professional engineer. Eleanor's impressive career includes leadership roles in various organizations such as CEO of B Lab Global and Water For People, Global Water Leader at Arcadis, and Latin America Water Leader at CH2M (now Jacobs). Her contributions to the engineering profession led to her induction into the National Academy of Engineering in 2020.
Through her executive coaching and consulting business, Catapult For Change, Eleanor now focuses on empowering other leaders and organizations to overcome challenges and ignite innovative ideas that enable success. As a Certified Coach and registered Professional Engineer with global experience in over 50 countries, Eleanor is passionate about championing workplace well-being, organizational flourishing, and justice, equity, diversity, and inclusion (JEDI) principles.
In this episode of On Connection, host Robin Anselmi interviews Pedro Zannoni, CEO of Lacoste Latin America. With a rich background in the sporting and fashion goods industries, Pedro has successfully grown global brands in new regions and tackled various leadership challenges. As an ambassador for Diversity and Inclusion at Lacoste, Pedro shares valuable insights on elevating women's leadership and why it matters to have a truly authentic approach to the work of inclusion.
Learn more about Pedro through his bio and the links included below:
An executive with over 23 years of experience in multinational companies in the sports and fashion industries, Pedro has expertise in sales and brand building. He takes pride in forming and leading high-performance teams and has held leadership positions at companies such as Wilson, PUMA, adidas, Reebok, ASICS, and is currently the CEO of Lacoste Latin America. In this role, he is responsible for leading the strategic direction and operations of one of the most iconic and prestigious brands in the world.
Before starting his corporate career, Pedro was a professional tennis player and coach. During this time, he won several national and international titles in various categories, including South American and World Champion titles in 1993, and competed in Grand Slam tournaments at Roland Garros and Wimbledon.
He holds a degree in Law, a postgraduate degree in Business Administration, a specialization in General Management from Wharton - University of Pennsylvania, and certification as a Corporate Governance Board Member from IBGC.
Follow Pedro on LinkedIn and Instagram
More on Pedro's work and career
Follow Lacoste on LinkedIn and Instagram
Organizations rely on leaders to effectively direct action and inspire collaborative work even when they don't have direct authority over everyone they need to influence. Often, these are leaders a few rungs below senior leadership that are responsible for driving strategic priorities forward, influencing across a matrix, and doing so without relying on title or reporting structure.
There are effective strategies for inspiring authentic commitment and engagement even when you can't demand compliance, and it's worthwhile for any leader to learn how to leverage this skillset.
In this episode, Robin and Emma Rose are joined by Conversant consultant Roger Henderson to offer practical areas of focus to become an effective and purposeful leader, with or without authority.
Now enrolling: The Purposeful Leader program, January 2025
Read: Standing in Purpose to Lead & Collaborate Without Authority
Strategic planning and budget setting are core responsibilities for organizational leaders, yet they often come with unique challenges. These processes rely on a series of crucial conversations that directly impact not only how challenging that process feels, but also the quality of the resulting plans and commitments, ultimately guiding successful execution.
In this episode, Robin and Mickey share insights from their experience supporting leadership teams across various industries, as well as from their own leadership journeys. They explore how to design conversations that help answer the essential question: What are we focusing on, and why? Tune in to learn how to make your strategic planning discussions more focused, valuable, and productive.
Additional Resources:
Power & it's impact on leadership, inclusion & value
Challenges of Leadership: Enterprise Leadership
A critical first chapter in a leader's growth comes when they are no longer just accountable for their own performance, but for that of others. Whether managing a team for the first time or taking on more leadership in collaborative work, this leap requires new mindsets and skills to guide collective rather than individual success.
Challenges for this population include:
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Setting expectations & generating alignment (both with those they lead and their managers)
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Generating trust in working relationships
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Clarifying accountabilities & getting commitment from others
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Giving and receiving feedback for continuous improvement
In this episode, Mickey, Robin and Emma Rose share what they see are key developmental focus areas for Emerging Leaders and what they can do to set a foundation for valuable leadership that lasts through their career.
The Emerging Leaders Program - Enrolling Now!
Bringing a team together - whether that be for meetings, offsites, retreats, kickoffs, happy hours, or other forms of gathering - is an important part of cultivating team culture, generating alignment, and building connection. Many will report that their teams don't meet often enough, or meet too much. At the heart of both critiques is a question - when we do meet, how do we ensure it's a valuable and worthwhile investment of time and resources?
Many are currently considering plans for team gatherings at the end of this year or the start of 2025, and we wanted to offer our insight and expertise around how to ensure that when you gather, you do it well.
Are you clear on why you need to come together? What outcomes would make that use of time and resources worth it? To design your gathering well, all decisions about virtual or in-person, agenda, team building activities, and more should be intentional, clearly serving what you're out to do together and why it matters.
In this episode, Mickey, Emma Rose, and their colleague Patrick Kennedy share what they've learned from advising clients on this very challenge, and how you can design your upcoming gatherings to serve the needs of your team and your business.
Resources:
The Five Sense Solution
Blog: That Email Could Have Been a Meeting
Blog: Do This One Thing to Run Your Meetings More Effectively
Of the challenges unique to senior roles, "Enterprise Leadership" is a common point of focus in our work with clients today. Enterprise Leadership is a distinction that refers to both a role and a mindset: taking responsibility for the health of the whole enterprise, and for the promises it makes to its stakeholders and citizens.
Leaders can have great capability and expertise in leading their function or a specific set of accountabilities, but at the most senior levels, organizations need people that extend their care not just vertically but across the organization. Leaders that generate the connection and alignment that allows the system to achieve strategic and cultural goals while navigating dynamic challenges.
In this episode, Robin and Mickey offer how an enterprise leader thinks and acts, how that might shift their picture of success, and the key challenges those taking on this charge often have to navigate.
Resources:
Challenges of Leadership: Practicing Emotional Leadership
Tool: Connected Leader Review
Imagine if all use of your time, energy and attention at work led to real value. How much would you get done? How would you feel? Now imagine if all use of time and resources across your organization caused value - no meeting, task or project was a waste.
Every organization has waste in its system, but the real problem is that we either don't notice it, or we don't feel empowered to do anything about it. Every individual in an organization has power to make the shift from waste to value, improving the vitality of that individual and the system as a whole.
In this episode, Robin, Mickey and Emma Rose share their advice for catching signs of waste in your work, and practical steps you can take to improve the value-to-waste ratio, improving your experience at work and the results you're able to produce.
Resources:
The 7 Signs of Waste
Organizational Vitality Quick Scan
Mike Tetreault, Chief People Officer of The Nature Conservancy, joins Robin Anselmi to talk about the value of Radical Partnership, and why it's a necessary focus for leaders navigating dynamic and complex challenges.
Mike leads the team focused on enabling a healthy, strategic and agile organizational culture that is dedicated to creating a world where people and nature can thrive. He believes in a human-focused approach to leadership, one that prioritizes empathy, integrity and collaboration in its pursuit of strategic goals.
You can learn more about Mike Tetreault and The Nature Conservancy's mission at www.nature.org.
Change and uncertainty are unavoidable challenges for organizations and leaders to lean into today. Whether those changes and shifting circumstances are externally driven or strategic choices, they can be disruptive and dislocating. They also offer powerful opportunities for generating connection, resilience, and value-producing cultures.
Mickey and Robin join Emma Rose to share what they've observed can help or hurt your ability to navigate timesof change and uncertainty, including practical and proactive focuses for your leadership.
When we find ourselves in disagreement with another person, it's easy to put our energy into winning the argument. How do I get my point across? How do I get them to see it my way? How do I prove that I'm right?
If we treat conversations and conflict like a win-or-lose game, we all lose. If we practice conversational accuracy, we create an opportunity for both sides to learn from the other.
In this episode, Mickey, Robin, and Emma Rose share the essential shift to focus on if you want to turn those differences into an opportunity to build something together. It starts with how you listen, and what you're listening for.
Resources:
The 10 Laws of Collaboration Summary (2004)
The Conversation Meter
TEDx Boulder: Rediscovering Connection & Belonging | Mickey & Emma Rose Connolly
Conflict resolution and the valuable management of differences are leadership skills that continue to be identified as critical areas of development across organizations and industries. While conflict is something we all tend to avoid or leave unresolved, the way we choose to engage with it can either hurt our goals and working relationships or increase our access to trust and new insights.
In this episode, Emma Rose, Mickey, and Robin share practical ways you can engage with conflict to reveal new opportunities for connection and collaboration.
Resources:
Gartner Future of Work Trends 2024
TEDx Talk: Rediscovering Connection & Belonging | Mickey & Emma Rose Connolly
Bioreactive Styles Assessment
Leading others has its challenges, and for the most senior leaders of organizations there are some challenges that weigh heavily.
What gets elevated to senior leadership isn't the easy stuff. It's often the complex, messy, challenging things that couldn't be resolved by others. Those leaders, however, are just human beings - people that have personal lives and responsibilities that draw on their emotional bandwidth. Because they have powerful influence, this means they have to be conscious of how their own emotional quality impacts those they lead. Practicing emotional leadership, however, is a tough charge - and an uncommon one.
In this episode, Mickey and Robin join Emma Rose to share what they've learned from working with senior executives around the world (and from leading organizations themselves) about why it matters to develop emotional leadership, and how to do it.
A new year brings opportunities for reflecting on our hopes and intentions for the year ahead, both personally and professionally. In organizational life, we set strategic plans and priorities, schedule milestones and deadlines, and put together development plans for ourselves and others. Most know that no matter how great the plan, we often get derailed as circumstances inevitably shift.
So how can we align our intentions with reality? And how can we care for that alignment throughout the year so that our efforts lead to successes worth celebrating? Whether you have goals for yourselves or for those you lead, we have some uncommon advice to help you launch a year of valuable achievement.
We know that influence is not limited to those with tenure, title, or hierarchy. Every member of an organization has the capacity to influence those around them, the quality of work, the collective understanding of challenges, and much more.
Choosing to develop influence as a skill is a worthwhile investment not only for senior leaders but also for leaders and contributors of all levels. We recently released an episode devoted to that topic, and this one expands on that conversation with a focus on non-executive audiences.
Conversant consultants Katie Mingo and Patrick Kennedy join Emma Rose to share what they've learned from their personal experiences and those with other leaders about developing influence and growing your impact without tenure or role-related authority.
On Connection: Leadership Influence
A leader’s ability to influence others, the quality and trajectory of work, performance, and results is integral to organizational success, and an indicator of the value that leader provides. What things are made better by their contribution? What do they uniquely contribute that people can count on them for?
We are all influencing all the time, whether we’re aware of it or not. Becoming conscious of that influence is the first step in becoming more reliable for influencing purposefully and valuably.
Robin and Mickey join Emma Rose to share essential principles for developing influence that impacts personal and organizational success. The Connected Leader Program: Credibility, Influence & Impact
The Art of Conducting, Beshara Magazine
A challenging part of work (and life) is addressing the disappointments and challenges that come up in our relationships with others. It could be performance or collaboration issues, delivering disappointing news or feedback, or anything else that's difficult or uncomfortable to bring into conversation.
Being able to step into these conversations emotionally grounded, with a firm sense of purpose, and an openness to listening to and learning from the other person is a highly valuable skillset, and one worth cultivating.
Mickey and Robin join Emma Rose to share what makes this so hard, and the key principles that can reliably help you engage with these challenges in ways that lead to stronger relationships and surprising results.
Belonging is the B in DEIJB, one of the initials less understood or talked about, though not any less important. In fact, some consider belonging to be the outcome or indicator that diversity, equity, and inclusion are being addressed successfully.
What has us feel like we belong? What value does that experience afford us? As individuals and as a collective. Why should leaders and organizations care about belonging, and how does it help the bottom line?
Emma Rose is joined by Robin Anselmi and Michelle Wonsley totalk about belonging – what it means, what it looks like, and how we get there.
Performance reviews and feedback can be some of the most valuable tools in growth and career development, though they can also be some of the most dreaded employee experiences. As of 2022, 95% of managers are dissatisfied with their organization’s review system – a statistic that shows not only is there room for improvement, but managers would likely welcome a change.
What makes a feedback conversation valuable and supportive? What makes it so painful? Robin and Mickey join Emma Rose to share their ideas for improving the performance review process that any manager could start practicing today.
Show Notes:
The Performance Review Problem, HR Magazine 2023
Project Oxygen
There are times we all feel stuck, held back, or inhibited and often we aren’t clear or confident about what we can do to change it. Not only is this a source of frustration, but over time it can devolve from decreasing engagement and motivation to hopelessness, resentment, or despair.
How people engage with this experience and what they’re looking for is what leads to stuckness becoming a dead end or an opportunity for new insight and action.
Mickey and Robin join Emma Rose to talk about what they've seen are common characteristics and causes of “stuckness” and to share some best practices for turning those experiences into an opportunity to generate value.
Show notes:
7 Signs of Waste
Our ability to influence people and the course of events starts with the level of credibility we have. It is a foundational leadership skill, one that we've found is generated, not granted.
It’s especially common for us to see credibility as a point of development focus for those looking to elevate their presence and influence within an organization. Over years of working with senior executives from around the world, we've learned what helps and hinders our capacity to gain credibility, and we've found it has more to do with how you listen than what you have to say.
In this episode, Emma Rose is joined by Robin Anselmi and Roger Henderson. Both have a long history with our Credibility, Influence, and Impact program, and of engaging with the art and science of credibility.
Practicing Inclusive Leadership - leadership that inspires inclusivity and causes an experience of belonging - is not just soft and emotional work. It is a rigorous commitment that will naturally result in confronts, difficult conversations, and hard decisions. Inclusive Leadership is a call to cause both belonging and disruption, and doing so valuably requires understanding what it means to use power purposefully.
In this episode, Robin and Michelle join Emma Rose in our third conversation digging into power and power dynamics in leadership and organizational life.
Emma Rose is joined by guest Lisa Horwitz, who plays a critical role in the digital transformation of a large national healthcare company. Over the past few years, her background in user experience design has helped her support the adoption of new technology across their clinics nationwide, and she’s approached it as a research project with a focus on how to successfully guide behavior change.
Lisa's experience is full of lessons for leaders at all levels looking to influence and support successful change initiatives. Her story highlights the importance of curiosity and a commitment to listening, staying connected to the people who are necessary to the execution and sustainability of the new behaviors and processes you want to see.
Growth and development are key parts of our lives at work, and for leaders, this is both a personal undertaking and something to sponsor in others. What best supports successful development? How can we design for growth towards our goals, our vision for ourselves and for our work, and fulfillment that enriches our working experience and contribution?
Carolyn French and Krista Spence join Emma Rose to share what they've learned from coaching leaders and teams, and designing for development.
Show Notes
- Atomic Habits by James Clear
- The Talent Code by Daniel Coyle
- The Four Tendencies by Gretchen Rubin & The Four Tendencies quiz
For the second in our series on Power, we do a deeper dive into what we mean when we talk about power. Michelle and Robin share the different "types" of power (as defined by the American Psychological Association) and how they can help us further investigate our own relationship to power - as leaders, employees, teammates, and as people.
Power, Part 1
APA Types of Power
The Cycle of Value
Essentiality is a powerful skill that helps you be clear, with yourself and with others, about what is most important. When you practice getting down to the very essence of what you need others to hear from you, or what others need you to hear, that is an act of valuable communication and an act of care.
Communication - the quality of conversation we hold ourselves to and our sense of timing - is an absolutely critical piece of leading andworking in a way that drives value and vitality. Getting clear on what is most important to bring to a conversation and what is most important to listen for helps improve efficiency, yes, but also builds trust, connection, and accountability.
Roger Henderson joins Mickey and Emma Rose to discuss why essentiality matters and how to practice it.
Our current working definition of Power is "the capacity or ability to direct or influence others or the course of events." Power impacts the way organizations are behaving, making decisions, and the conversations they're having. It's also something we aren't often talking about explicitly, and beginning to engage with it consciously can reveal a new understanding of how we cultivate or diminish value, inclusion, and belonging.
How is power used or abused in organizational life? How do we each, as leaders and employees, understand our relationship to power? Are we being curious about how our use of power impacts the lived experience of others?
Show Notes:
Love & Leadership Virtual Event
Conversant on LinkedIn
On Connection: Love & Leadership
On Connection: DEIJB: What does it mean?
On Connection: Inclusive Leadership Design
According to Gallup, there has been a steady decline in employee engagement over the last few years, with only 32% of employees in the U.S. falling in the "engaged" category and 18% "actively disengaged." Of the factors contributing to those statistics, most are not new concepts or surprising ideas. So, why is it that organizations still don't know how to address the engagement challenge?
In this episode, Robin, Mickey and Emma Rose talk about what there is to learn from the story this new data tells, and what opportunities there are for inspiring greater employee engagement for the future.
Show notes:
U.S. Employee Engagement Needs a Rebound in 2023 – Gallup
What Is Employee Engagement and How Do You Improve It? – Gallup
How the successful workplace of the future will rely on employee engagement – CEO Magazine
Collaborating through Stress, Uncertainty & Complex Challenges – On Connection
Expectations, Accountability & Trust – On Connection
On this event preview, we consider what place love has at work and why we think it matters. Love isn’t a passive cultural feature; some would argue it’s a powerful business strategy. Join us as we start a conversation on love and leadership.
Learn more & register for the virtual event: https://lnkd.in/g2gSB4wg
Most simply, choice means “an act of selecting or making a decision when faced with two or more possibilities.” In an organizational context, however, there’s a lot more to it than that. The opportunity and capacity to make a decision for oneself is an act of agency and autonomy, one that sustains a commitment to contribute to a shared purpose. We believe this opportunity to choose to commit to something is powerful, and an important ingredient in organizational vitality and employee engagement.
Robin Anselmi and Kell Delaney join Emma Rose Connolly to talk about why “choice” is an important characteristic of cultures that sustain organizational performance and employee well-being.
Show notes:
· The Vitality Imperative: How Connected Leaders & Their Teams Achieve More with Less Time, Money & Stress
· Autonomy Ain’t Anarchy by Mickey Connolly
· What Inspires Engagement for Younger Generations by Emma Rose Connolly
· On Connection - Community: Why it Matters & How to Build It
Decision making is a critical part of moving projects forward and leading success for any team or organization. While there are numerous frameworks, processes, and methods to pick from, the best method is the one that gets you to have the conversations you need to have. The conversations ARE the work of decision making, and it's through those conversations you generate alignment, increase shared understanding, create clarity around roles and contributions, and ultimately build cultures of trust and belonging.
In this episode, Robin Anselmi and Patrick Kennedy join Emma Rose to share what they've learned from leading, participating in, and supporting the work of decision making.
Time is something we all struggle with, and many battling stress and overwhelm feel like there just aren’t enough hours in the day. We tend to hunt for productivity hacks, time management techniques, and methods of working that will solve the problem, but there is no one-size-fits all solution.
For any method to be effective, it must be designed to clearly serve a purpose and set of targeted results. Designing our time works the same way. What purpose would a different use of time serve? What would a successful method cause in your work and life?
Kell Delaney and Patrick Kennedy join Emma Rose for a conversation about designing our relationship with time, the distinction between efficiency and effectiveness, and how to manage improvement at an individual and team level.
Show notes:
Design Your Time: More Space, Less Burnout, Stress & Overwhelm
Why the Four-Day Workweek Isn’t the Answer to Stress & Burnout by Kell Delaney
MIT Sloan: This New Year, Resolve Workaholism
BBC: How widespread could the four-day workweek really be?
Dr. Debra Clary began passionately researching curiosity a few years ago after being asked if she thought it was something that can be learned. Since then, she has become a thought leader on the connection between leadership and curiosity and has shared her expertise with over 10,000 people. She has discovered that curiosity is not only able to be learned but is a contagious state and a predictor of achievement.
Curiosity is key to evolution, innovation, and growth. It’s an innate human tendency and one that, when encouraged and tapped into, can generate new ideas, authentic connection, and engagement.
In this conversation we ask:
- What are the behaviors of a curious leader?
- What kills a culture of curiosity?
- How do we become and develop curious leaders when it feels like we have no time?
- What does curiosity have to do with building cultures of inclusion and belonging?
Learn more about Dr. Debra and her research:
Curiosity: A Superpower (article written by Dr. Debra Clary, shared via The Disruption Lab)
Website: http://debraclary.com/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/dr-debra-clary-55936994/
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/drdebraclary/
Show Notes: The Conversation Meter * Love & Leadership on On Connection*
As leaders and businesses prepare for 2023, "recession" is on everyone's minds. It's a responsibility of leadership to consider what pressures and challenges may be on the road ahead. Holding the reality of uncertainty along with a hopeful vision for the future is a skill, and one that can be compromised if we allow fear to dominate.
Fear has a tendency to cause retraction – tightening of budgets, cuts of staff, yes, but also more generally in the human experience we do tend to pull away from others. Whether economic pressures worsen next year or not, what if the more imminent threat to our organizations is actually a recession of connection?
Talking about love in the context of leadership, organizational development, and strategy execution is not common, but we’ve decided it’s a worthy area of research. We have found that it is a uniquely human superpower, in a time when the human side of work is increasingly an area of strategic focus for business success.
How would your approach to leadership change if you led with love? What experiences have you had at work, with leaders and peers throughout your career, that were acts of care for your development and you as a human being? How did those experiences impact your growth and your relationship with work? Robin Anselmi and Michelle Wonsley join Emma Rose for this conversation – the first of a renewed exploration we’ll be sharing with you over the year to come.
Show Notes:
The Art of Adjustment
Disrupt HR: Love, the Next Leadership Skill
McKinsey Future of Work research
The Vitality Imperative
Our Anniversary episode!! The first year of this podcast has been a great experiment and success, and we are so grateful to the community of people that makes it possible. Thank you to all that have listened, joined as a guest, shared an episode with a friend, or sent us a note about how the show impacted you. It wouldn't be a success without you!
Even when things are going well, occasions and mile markers such as anniversaries are a great opportunity to pause, reflect, and see what there is to learn from the experiment to-date. For any project, taking that pause is really hard to do, especially when we’re all running a mile a minute managing so many other things. But taking a moment to REVIEW what has happened and RENEW your commitments, intentions, and strategies means you move forward in a much smarter, more agile way.
Emma Rose is joined by Robin and Mickey once again to talk about why adjustment matters, when it’s the right time to adjust, and how to leverage those moments to cause even greater impact for your investments of time, money, and energy.
The Cycle of Value
7-step Adjust Protocol
Books: The Communication Catalyst and The Vitality Imperative
Most organizations in the world are experiencing dynamic change and facing uncertain futures. At the same time, their people are stressed, overwhelmed, and facing dynamic change and uncertainty themselves. Businesses face challenges of increasing complexity, which require high degrees of connection and collaboration to successfully navigate.
Stress and uncertainty generally make human beings contract and pull away from connection, which can compromise collaborative efforts. In this episode, Kell Delaney joins Robin and Emma Rose to discuss the ways teams and leaders can move through these challenges and make progress on their important goals, leaning into connection and community for greater resilience and collective intelligence.
Michelle Wonsley joins us for our second episode on Inclusive Leadership Design. This time we ask, what do we mean when we say the words "Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, Justice & Belonging"? They are so often used now, but are we on the same page about how we define them? And if we don't have a common definition, how can we know we're making meaningful progress in any of those domains?
These are complex areas of study, discipline, and reflection, and simplifying them to an acronym does not reduce their complexity, or the need to clarify what meaning we step into with others when we commit to their cause. In this episode, we don't come to specific definitions but offer some wisdom on how to approach your own community with a respect for everyone's diverse views.
For many reasons, sponsoring an “ownership mindset” is a popular topic for organizational leaders. Increasingly, leaders want (and need) teams that can be self-supervising and take independent action in service of strategic goals. Given that distributed and hybrid work are here to stay, and belt-tightening across industries means fewer hands for the same amount of work, increased efficiency and trust in people’s ability to make decisions without hand holding is imperative to business success.
There are leadership behaviors that can help or hurt autonomy and ownership, which is what Mickey, Robin, and Emma Rose spend the majority of this conversation focused on. A common theme: leaders that drive connection and high-quality communication while making expectations explicit will be most successful at sponsoring responsible autonomy.
Links:
Autonomy Ain’t Anarchy
6 Disciplines of Leadership That Inspires Ownership (Inc.)
How True Leaders Take Ownership (Newsweek)
3 signs your team doesn’t have an ownership mindset and what to do about it(Atlassian)
Ownership is Leadership: Three Steps to Owning Your Outcomes and Being A Better Leader(Forbes)
It’s not uncommon today for leaders and employees to place significant importance on workplace culture. Culture and work environment is a major deciding factor for job hunters, hiring managers are tasked with assessing “culture fit” when hunting for talent, and increasingly caring for culture is considered a strategic imperative for business success. This word gets used so often and is weighted so heavily in the working world today, we thought it wise to take a pause and ask… what is culture? Robin and Conversant colleague Katie Mingo join Emma Rose for that conversation, having worked with many leaders and organizations on projects relating to culture and culture change, and the role of leadership in cultivating workplace culture.
Diversity, Equity & Inclusion has made its way into the priorities and public commitments of countless organizations across the US and globally, with more and more companies creating jobs and initiatives dedicated to the challenge. While this may show up as progress on paper, the reality is that most of those efforts have failed to make a meaningful impact.
As the world continues to learn what works and what doesn’t with regard to DEIJ, Conversant is evolving into its own perspective and approach, which we are calling Inclusive Leadership Design. The word “evolve” is purposeful, as this is an ongoing process that we are engaging our own organization in. For this episode, we invite you into that conversation – what is Inclusive Leadership Design? How can we make DEI efforts more impactful? Who do we need to be, as leaders, to cause the change we want to see?
For any working professional there are times engagement and motivation are down, and calling it quits sounds like a good idea. Before we start editing our resumes and looking for greener grass, we think it’s smart to try a few things that just might get us re-enchanted with our work.
If you’re in the leadership or HR world it isn’t new news that plenty of studies show a sense of purpose and meaning improves engagement, productivity, innovation, and more. As a result, clarifying purpose, at the level of self and at the organizational level, has become hot in our working culture. And while we may cognitively recognize it’s important, there are day-to-day leadership behaviors we can all be doing to make work more meaningful (for ourselves and those we lead).
Mentioned in the episode:
MIT Sloan: Why We Don’t Talk About Meaning at Work
We are living through a time of massive disruption, and one of the symptoms is what many are calling an “epidemic of burnout.” The term burnout has been used increasingly over the last few years, along with other concerns around stress, overwhelm, and mental health. So much so that 4 in 5 organizations globally have reported that mental health and well-being is a top priority. There are lots of explanations and theories as to why it’s become such a ubiquitous problem, but so far effective solutions seem out of reach.
While cultures of overwork and stress are worth addressing, we also have to look to the role we play as individuals. We are the guardians of our time, energy, presence, and what we choose to contribute. How we design our time impacts not only our performance and well-being but also the patterns of behavior in our organizations.
Kell Delaney and Katie Mingo join Emma Rose for this episode to talk about what we’ve learned and observed about these trends, and some practical steps we’ve seen work to design more space into work, allowing for increased engagement, productivity, collaboration, creativity, and overall vitality.
The work of linguists, sociologists, and psychologists reveals just how complex the science of language can be, but to be essential: it matters. It’s a powerful thing that we tend to take for granted. How we speak, what words we choose, and how we listen and interpret are all important parts of human interaction, and no less important at work.
At the heart of truly valuable communication is an awareness of and mutual respect for how we as humans make sense of the world. We have to be able to engage with one another’s stories, listen for what matters and get curious about better understanding another’s world. We have to ask great questions, and give honest answers. That all happens through language, and through presence.
Katie Mingo, Associate Consultant at Conversant, joins Mickey and Emma Rose for this episode about the power (and responsibility) of language.
Love may be a many-splendored thing, but it isn’t something we often talk about at work. Love falls into that category of soft, personal things we’ve traditionally shoved in a box and left at the door in order to be “professionals.” We think that when we leave love at the door, we’re leaving a whole lot of other valuable things with it. So, should we talk about love at work?
Our guest on today's episode is Sara Heppner, a graphic recorder and facilitator with a passion for creative communication. Through visual and creative processes, she works with individuals and groups to cultivate awareness, nurture connection and create a world where all can flourish. Her new book, I Choose Love, was published earlier this year. By focusing on love, Sara believes that together, we can make the world a better place.
We hear from leaders and executives all the time that they want to increase accountability on their teams and across their organizations. Building cultures of accountability sounds like the right strategy for lowered supervision costs and increased efficiency and performance... but what does it mean to build a culture of accountability?
Accountability is deeply tied with trust, and we’ve found through our work and research that most breakdowns in trust come from unmet expectations. There are ways to create an environment where accountability and trust develop with very little resistance, but it takes recognizing that we can’t assume other people understand our unspoken expectations. It’s through conversation that we can most reliably create cultures of accountability.
It’s not uncommon, both at work and in the rest of life, for people to feel like they aren’t being heard. We’ve all experienced that frustration, where you feel like you’ve said something as many times and as many ways as you can think of, and this other person just isn’t getting it. Whether it’s your manager, your direct report, or your spouse, there are plenty of reasons for that kind of disconnect, and while it may feel impossible to get through to them, we think there are some basic principles of conversation and connection worth trying before you give up entirely.
In today’s episode, Mickey and Robin join Emma Rose to share what they've learned we can all do to improve the quality of our connections and conversations with others, including making it more likely that others will hear and learn from what we have to say.
Gen Z, which is usually defined as those born between 1997 and 2012, is expected to make up 27% of the workforce by 2025. And they’re coming into organizations led by people from older generations who already have well-formed biases and expectations about them (including Millennials).
In this episode, we focus on the younger perspective. While Millennials have been represented on this podcast, we wanted to invite in voices that are closer to the Gen Z age range. What motivates them? What expectations do they have for the future? What expectations do they have for leadership, employers, and organizations? Though earlier in their career, the youngest members of our organizations bring a different view of work and the world, one we can get value from if we listen with an intent to learn.
One of the hardest parts of human connection is managing disagreements. It’s easy to assume that a lack of disagreement or argument is proof of a strong and healthy connection, but that isn’t necessarily true. Disagreements are inevitable, at work and in the rest of life, and while it makes perfect sense that we tend to avoid and fear conflict, it can be really valuable.
In today’s episode, Mickey and Robin join Emma Rose to share what they consider to be the design of valuable disagreement, along with some practical steps for implementing it.
Alignment is a term that gets thrown around a lot in leadership and org management, but how is alignment different than agreement? We think there’s an important difference, and hosting conversations designed for alignment not only increases value but will reduce disappointments, costs, and pain down the road.
In this episode, Mickey and Robin join Emma Rose to talk about this distinction and share what they’ve learned about alignment from years of working with leaders and organizations, including what gets in the way and what kind of leadership behavior makes a difference.
Shownotes: https://bit.ly/3Jy3rIp
A leader’s ability to make a meaningful difference rises and falls with the quality of their presence. Presence dictates how much of our mental, emotional, and physical talents are available to us at a given moment. By presence, we do not mean charisma; we mean awareness. This awareness improves insight and action, but a lack of awareness assures that you are not fully connected to yourself, to reality, or to others—dangerous territory for a leader.
In this episode, Emma Rose is joined by Richard McDonald and Roger Henderson, two of Conversant’s resident “presence gurus.” They talk about why presence matters, practical ways to support greater presence in your professional and personal lives, and why it’s a critical ingredient to healthy relationships, both at the office and at home.
Show notes & resources: https://bit.ly/3Lf4Yoy
Change is a near-constant part of life, leadership, and organizational management today. There are endless books, articles, frameworks, and best practices on the subject, and yet change is still one of the things organizations struggle to manage the most. We’ve found that it isn’t actually enough to simply change. Instead, we think a mindset focused on evolution is more valuable.
So, why evolution rather than change? What’s the difference, and why does it matter? In this episode, Emma Rose is joined by Anne Murray Allen and Krista Spence, both Senior Consultants with experience leading, managing, and studying change. They talk about this distinction and what it means to adopt an evolution mindset.
The Great Resignation is just one of the COVID-era phenomena many people, especially organizational leaders, are concerned with right now. Everyone wants to know—why is this happening? And why don’t we know by now, when it’s been nearly a year since we started noticing the trend? Most of the articles you can read and podcasts you can listen to have tried to analyze what exactly is contributing and what’s to blame. There is a long list of possible explanations that have been given, but no single clear cause.
On this podcast we’re not going to be analyzing the why – you can find plenty of that elsewhere. What we’re most interested in is, how do leaders make decisions in the midst of so much pressure and uncertainty? We have a principle we think is helpful across challenges of all kinds and scales: separating facts from explanations. This is particularly valuable when it’s hard to find anything factual to anchor to and we’re swimming in a sea of explanations. That’s the case for most leaders as they face today’s “war for talent.”
Shownotes: https://bit.ly/3HEpRH3
“Flow state” has been a popular area of interest since it was studied by positive psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi over 40 years ago. To experience flow is to be fully immersed in an activity, engaged to the point of hyper focus—being “in the zone.” Whether you’re in the business world, an artist, or an athlete, that level of productivity is something we’d all love to get the secret recipe for. While primarily studied in individuals, we started wondering—can you achieve interpersonal flow? Can a team be in flow? What can leaders do to make it more accessible for those they lead?
Emma Rose is joined by her Conversant colleagues Kell Delaney and Roger Henderson to share from their experience what we can do to encourage interpersonal and team flow.
Find show notes for this episode here: https://bit.ly/3EOxfyG
Community is an important part of building vitality in organizations, or for any group of people that wants to achieve something together. We define vitality as “the capacity to live, grow, or develop; the presence of intellectual and physical vigor; energy.” For organizations, we say that whoever masters vitality as a source of performance has an extraordinary competitive edge and provides a deeply satisfying life for themselves and the people they lead. In this episode, we focus on why community matters and how to build the kind of community that lends to personal and collective vitality.
Link to show notes: https://bit.ly/3kH2YK3
At Conversant, we believe that conversation and connection are underutilized yet critical leverage points for achieving results. Whether it’s meetings, one-on-one check-ins, emails, or chat, studies show that leaders spend the majority of their workdays communicating. What if each of those conversations was truly valuable?
There is a design to conversations that drive value, and we can be students of that design, developing our conversational skills the same way an athlete works to get better at their sport. With practice, this skillset drives more results with less time, money, and stress. That’s why we say “the conversations are the work.” In this episode, we dive into that phrase, sharing why conversation is a worthwhile focus not just for leaders, but for anyone who wants their working and personal relationships to be a source of value and fulfillment rather than waste and stress.
You can find show notes for this episode here: https://bit.ly/3GN3uj3
At Conversant we often say “joy belongs at work.” Not only do we believe work can be joyful, we believe joy belongs at work. These two words, however, feel counter to one another more often than not. How many of us describe our workdays as "joyful"?
Juan Mobili, leadership development consultant, executive coach, and long-time friend of Conversant, has recently reflected on joy in his poetry. Juan joined Robin and Emma Rose to explore this concept of joy a bit more: How is joy different from being happy? What is work without joy? How does joy relate to authentic leadership? How does joy contribute to organizational success?
In this episode we tackle those questions and more, and get to hear some of Juan’s poetry which we hope will inspire similar reflections in all of you.
You can find show notes and learn more about Juan here: https://bit.ly/3na45lT
Should we be remote? In an office? Is hybrid the answer? These questions have been dominating business news and keeping senior leaders up at night for months. There’s no clear answer or one-size-fits-all solution, but we can learn from the leaders that are managing workplace policy decisions today.
This is the unedited version of our interview with Sté Crispino. The edited episode features clips of our interviews with two other leaders that have also been navigating the office debate challenge. You can find that version by the title, "Leading Through the Great Office Debate: In-Office, Hybrid, or Remote?"
Should we be remote? In an office? Is hybrid the answer? These questions have been dominating business news and keeping senior leaders up at night for months. There’s no clear answer or one-size-fits-all solution, but we can learn from the leaders that are managing workplace policy decisions today.
This is the unedited version of our interview with Kevin Hanes. The edited episode features clips of our interviews with two other leaders that have also been navigating the office debate challenge. You can find that version by the title, "Leading Through the Great Office Debate: In-Office, Hybrid, or Remote?"
Should we be remote? In an office? Is hybrid the answer? These questions have been dominating business news and keeping senior leaders up at night for months. There’s no clear answer or one-size-fits-all solution, but we can learn from the leaders that are managing workplace policy decisions today.
This is the unedited version of our interview with Chris Hanslik. The edited episode features clips of our interviews with two other leaders that have also been navigating the office debate challenge. You can find that version by the title, "Leading Through the Great Office Debate: In-Office, Hybrid, or Remote?"
Should we be remote? In an office? Is hybrid the answer? These questions have been dominating business news and keeping senior leaders up at night for months. There’s no clear answer or one-size-fits-all solution, but we can learn from the leaders that are managing workplace policy decisions today.
The latest episode of On Connection features three executives that have led very different approaches to this challenge: Chris Hanslik led an early return to the office for BoyarMiller, a Houston-based law firm. Kevin Hanes has been managing what a hybrid solution looks like for the cybersecurity platform Cybrary. And Sté Crispino leads Tribo, a Sao Paolo-based consulting firm that has always been remote, and she has a few things to say about building a strong culture in a virtual world.
View the show notes for this episode, along with bios for our guests, here: https://bit.ly/3BjKHbR
In our first episode, we focus on why getting a multigenerational perspective on topics relating to work and organizational life matters, and the things we can be smarter together about if we allow each generation to mentor the rest of us in the ways they are uniquely able to contribute. We talk about how growing up in different times gave us different models for leadership and conflict resolution, and the silent biases we might each have about things like being in an office vs. remote work, hierarchical structures and power dynamics, mental health, and more.
Hosted by a Millennial, a Gen-Xer, and a Baby Boomer, On Connection takes on topics relating to organizational life, leadership, and how our quality of connection influences our ability to perform and feel personally fulfilled at work.
While topics around human connection have become more mainstream in the business world in recent years, it’s still a largely underutilized asset in organizations, and yet we know it is a critical leverage point for achieving results. A key part of improving our connections means honoring and valuing difference. We believe differences + trust = brilliance, so along with our generational differences, we will be seeking out various perspectives on topics related to life at work so that we can all be smarter and stronger together.