The New Leader with Ian Daley: Recent Episodes
Ian Daley
Practical, actionable advice for first-time managers, and those who aspire to move into leadership roles.
"Think carefully about where you want to go. Make plans, but hold them lightly." - Dr. Sunil Raheja
Do you repeatedly get in the way of your own progress? Find it easier to blame others than to change yourself? If so, today's podcast episode is for you.
We'll hear from Dr. Sunil Raheja, a psychiatrist and executive coach, and dig into his book, "Dancing With Wisdom: A Sacred Quest to Restore Meaning, Purpose and Fun to Your Life and Work."
In this episode, you'll learn:
- Why the first step in moving forward is realizing that you need to make a change
- How Mindset, Motivation, and Methods all play a role in your progress
- The importance of re-connecting with your values
- Why shutting down the noise is critically important..and much, much more!
The beginning of wisdom
Wisdom begins with the realization that there are things you have no control over and things that are not in your grasp. But you have agency, more than what you give yourself credit for. You may not be able to change the weather, but you can always choose how you’re going to look at life. You can change your attitude and choose to look at the good rather than the bad.
Mindset is everything
I used to think that mindset was important. Now what I say is, “Mindset is everything.” The reason being is if your mindset is not right, no matter what you’re doing, you’re not going to be satisfied.
One advice you’d give young managers today
Think carefully about where you want to go. Make plans for your future but hold them lightly, and look at everything as a learning experience. There’s no such thing as failure. Pace your life for the long haul.
Links and Resources
Connect with Dr. Raheja: Website, Podcast, LinkedIn
Dancing With Wisdom by Dr. Sunil Raheja (book)
Jim Kwik
The Happiness Equation by Neil Pasricha (book)
7 Habits of Highly Effective People by Stephen Covey (book)
"Where you read information isn't where you need information." - Mark Herschberg
Do you ever find yourself consuming great content, but then struggling to find it later when you actually need it? If so, today's episode is for you!
MIT instructor Mark Herschberg makes a return visit to the show to discuss his innovative new platform, Brain Bump.
In this episode, you'll learn:
-
How powerful peer learning can be for your development
-
Why the content we all consume is rarely accessible in critical moments
-
How Brain Bump only sends the tips you want, when you request them; it never sends an unrequested notification
-
Bonus: you don't even have to open the app!
The challenge with traditional learning
When we think about most of our knowledge, it has just been direct information transfer, such as when you learn the quadratic formula. It is very black and white and you know exactly where to use it. But the skills that we use as leaders, from leading people to communication, negotiation, team building – these are not cut and dry. There’s no formula for leadership.
Peer learning’s edge over other learning styles
Peer learning is not about memorizing formulas. It’s about learning subtle skills that are often circumstantial. So by coming together as a group and having discussions, like I’m going to gain your perspective and you’re going to get mine… that’s how we learn.
Ineffective learning
The problem is two-fold. First, where you read information isn’t where you need information. And the second is that you read a book or listen to a podcast episode, and then you forget it. I wanted to address it.
Links and Resources
Connect with Mark: Website, LinkedIn, Twitter, Instagram, Facebook
The Career Toolkit by Mark Herschberg (book)
Brain Bump (app)
"Create the vision, and step back." - Karl Hebenstreit PhD
Are you intrigued by the Enneagram? A believer or a skeptic?
Today is the first episode of The New Leader Podcast for 2023, and my special guest is Karl Hebenstreit PhD. I was skeptical when approached about this topic, but glad I kept an open mind as we had a really interesting chat.
Karl is an executive coach, speaker, and organizational development consultant, and author of the book, "Taking Care of Business with The Enneagram."
In this episode, you'll learn:
- The 9 primary core motivators not covered in other personality tests
- How understanding this framework can help you create a better path forward in 2023, both personally & professionally
- The difference between the Golden Rule vs. Platinum Rule, and how to leverage this when leading for the first time.
The ‘Platinum Rule’
Most people are familiar with the golden rule ‘treat others the way you want to be treated’. And I was going along with that philosophy until I presented at a conference… and learned that it’s about invoking the ‘Platinum Rule’ of finding out how people wanted to be treated. That is going to be different than the way you’d want to be treated.
What sets apart the Enneagram
Any tool like the Myers-Briggs, DISC, Insights, or Hogan – these tools focus on the behaviors. They don’t focus on the purpose or the motivation or the reason behind these behaviors. And that’s where the Enneagram comes in.
It boils it down to the nine primary core motivators that we have in our lives. And each of us is going to be affiliating with one of them more than the other eight.
Breaking out of the box
Human beings are very fond of categorizing people. So how do you break out of the box that you’re put in? And so knowing which box you are put in is actually a release because now you know, “Oh great, I know what box I put myself in and what other people are probably putting me in. Now, how can I break out of that box?”
So [knowing your Enneagram] is really a way of breaking out of your box by identifying what box you’re already in.”
Links and Resources
Connect with Karl: Website, LinkedIn
Taking Care of Business with The Enneagram by Karl Hebenstreit PhD (book)
What Got You Here Won’t Get You There by Marshall Goldsmith (book)
"Now is the time to set yourself apart. Don't wait to be rescued or magically promoted - take back control." - Ian Daley
It's the final episode of The New Leader Podcast for 2022 - our 4th season! As we start to wind down another year in this crazy world, I want to share a special offer for my podcast listeners. I have something that can help you elevate your career in 2023 and beyond...at a significant discount ;)
It's my way of saying thank you for listening - all the posts, comments, and messages mean a lot. I appreciate you, and hope you have benefited from the sharp insights and teachings the show has provided over the years.
Curious? Hit that play button to learn more.
Wishing you all a wonderful holiday season!
Connect with Ian at ian@daley.company or on LinkedIn to learn more about this limited-time offer!
Links and Resources
Connect with Ian: LinkedIn, Email
"Many of us forget to be in service to the most important person in our lives - ourselves." - Earle G. Hall
Do you find vulnerability scary? Have you ever been told you need to become more self-aware? Then today's episode is for you!
My guest is Earle G. Hall, CEO of AXES.ai, a fintech company present in over 40 countries dedicated to the eradication of money laundering, addictive gambling, and illicit activities.
I took furious notes during this interview because when you've traveled to 108 countries like he has, you learn a few things ;)
Earle is Vice-Chairman of the International Gaming Standards Association and a Government Blockchain Association board member. He is a graduate of the Royal Military College of Canada and a Veteran Army Officer. He also holds a master's degree in Public Administration and has undertaken doctoral studies in Organizational Psychology.
He hails from my home province of Newfoundland, and in this episode you'll learn:
- Why one of the greatest qualities a new leader can cultivate is self-awareness, and how to crack that code early in your career
- The power of humanizing your colleagues in a world of lost connection (hint: it's easier than you think)
- A life-changing tip he received from General Romeo Dallaire, and how it can help elevate you, too...and more!
How Vulnerability Inspires Others
The more I showed them my real, authentic, and vulnerable self, the more engaged they became with me and the more productive they became. That’s when I learned that there’s something more to leadership than just giving direction, orders, and getting things done.
Overcoming your fears and insecurities
When you look out to the group and you’re trying to guess everything they’re judging about you, you’re just judging yourself.
So what you can do as a new leader is you can take note of everything you think people are judging you about, because all that is is chatter coming out of your brain. It’s doubt, lack of confidence, self-esteem, and these are the things that you need to overcome to sit inside yourself and just be authentic.
Making the most out of your new leader role
New leaders have a competitive edge. Because when you’re a new leader, you know almost nothing, and so you get to ask questions and learn many things. You get to listen actively and engage with people sincerely.
And when an employee sees a new leader that is interested, engage, and genuinely wanting to understand, that employee will open up their entire knowledge base and hand it over to you for free.
Links and Resources
Connect with Earl: LinkedIn
Richard Beckhard books
Trello
"There's no easy way to make hard decisions." - Jacques Lopez
Are you a leader who has to sell to/collaborate with leaders outside your organization? If so, the latest episode of The New Leader Podcast is for you!
My guest today is Jacques Lopez, Sr Director North American Channels at Veracode.
Jacques holds a BSc from Northeastern University and a MBA from Dalhousie University. And, we used to work as doormen at a campus bar way back when. It was a blast to trade a few stories back and forth, as well as hear Jacques' keen insight on how to work successfully with leaders outside your organization.
In this episode you'll learn:
- The importance of knowing exactly what you want (and how to create a partner profile)
- How to ensure you're working at the right level (where decision-making happens)
- The power of a "frame of reference" and how to create one that works effectively… and much more!
Getting on the right foot
If you have an idea of what’s the ideal partner profile or what the ideal relationship would look like, having that as a starting point is very helpful. Because if you don’t know what you want, you can spend a lot of time running circles around people that have interest but don’t have a good alignment with the company, or the value proposition you have for them just won’t land.
Choosing the right person to work with
Make sure you’re working with someone at the right level to accomplish the goals that you have. You can’t go too low or too high. If you go too low, somebody may not have the authority to try and get other people involved in the company, to help build out a better alignment. And if you go too high, you get connected to other people but, things aren’t necessarily happening at the tactical level when you’re dealing with a strategic CEO. So that’s something you need to be aware of as well.
One critical lesson in relationship building
Not everybody operates the way you operate. There are some people that are more relationship based, some are very detailed when it comes to numbers. You have to meet people where they’re at and help them be successful the way they do things.
Links and Resources
Connect with Jacques: LinkedIn, Email
The Exceptional Presenter Goes Virtual by Timothy J. Koegel (book)
The Productivity Game PDF Package
"Perfection equals disconnection." - Dr. Michelle K. Johnston
Are you a perfectionist? Do you struggle to connect with your team? Your boss? If so, the latest episode of The New Leader Podcast is for you!
My guest today is Dr. Michelle K. Johnston, author of The Seismic Shift in Leadership.
Michelle holds a PhD in Communications from Louisiana State University, is a member of the MG100 Coaches group, and serves as the Gaston Chair of Business at Loyola University New Orleans. An absolute class act, and we had such a fun and informative chat!
In this episode you'll learn:
- Why connection drives results
- How to determine if your people feel seen, heard, valued, respected and appreciated
- How to use the 5 elements of assessment to determine how connected you are with your team, and what to do next...and much more!
Be intentional about connecting
It takes intention to carve time in your meetings to ask about that person on a personal level, ask them how their kids are or about their travel plans or whatnot. That’s what drives results.
Connection drives results. Connection is the only way you can disrupt.
First steps to connecting to your team
The first thing you can do as a new leader is a self-assessment. Ask yourself or your people, do your people feel seen, heard, valued, respected, and appreciated? Because those are the five elements of how to meaningfully connect with your people.
Connection drives results
I had this realization that number one, command and control is no longer effective. Jerk bosses no longer allowed. Number two, that it was all about connection.
Only after I have conducted all my interviews did I realize how much connection drives results. So connection first and foremost drives well-being. Well-being then drives team collaboration and psychological safety, which then drives productivity, increased decision-making, which then drives innovation, and innovation drives financial performance.
Links and Resources
Connect with Michelle: Website, LinkedIn, Twitter
The Seismic Shift In Leadership by Dr. Michelle K. Johnston (book)
"Get up and meet people!" - Joe Kwon
The latest episode of The New Leader Podcast is here!
My guest today is Joe Kwon, who's also known as "The Connection Counselor."
He is a privacy attorney, coach, podcast host, and currently Associate Director, Global Quality & Risk Management at KPMG (US). And, he is a genuinely good human being!
Joe is also an author, and today we dig into his excellent book, "Unlock Your Executive Presence." In this episode you'll learn:
- The importance of 'blending' - what that is, and how to use it
- The six degrees of executive presence and how to leverage them to your advantage
- How to develop the ability to inspire confidence to lead...and much more!
How you grow as a leader
Whether it’s your manager, people from other departments, CEO, etc., if they know you, do they put their confidence in you? If they don’t know you, how are you being represented?
What is that thing that can make people confident in you? Once you discover that, blend it with what you already have – your skills, personality, et cetera. Because it’s not about just giving them what they want, it’s about bringing out the best version of yourself.
Executive Presence in a nutshell
Executive presence is the ability to inspire confidence that you can lead well in a given situation. That because of your presence and the way you are, people will want to put you in charge.
Key to Executive Presence
The key is to look at the presence, not the trappings of an executive – but what is the presence of an executive? When you’re in a room and there are five people, and one person clearly seems like the executive, why is that?
And I’ll tell you, it’s not the way they dress, it’s not the way they communicate and it’s not their gravitas. It’s their state of being in the situation.
Links and Resources
Connect with Joe: LinkedIn, Instagram, Website
Unlock Your Executive Presence by Joe Kwon (book)
Implicit Leadership Theory
Executive Presence and the Diversity Dilemma (Udemy course)
The latest episode of The New Leader Podcast is here!
My guest is the one and only, Tom Kolditz. I cannot recall an episode that included so many actionable pieces of advice. It was truly a pleasure to hear his perspective on what leadership skills are needed for the next generation. Grab a pen!
Tom's resume is stacked, but here's a snapshot:
- Highly experienced professional public speaker, and global expert in leading in crisis and in extreme circumstances
- Retired Army general officer
- Founder of 5 (!) successful leader development start-ups, including:
- West Point Leadership Center
- Leader Development Program at the Yale School of Management
- Doerr Institute for New Leaders at Rice University
We sat down to chat about critical skills that the next generation of leaders will need. You don't want to miss this one! A few example of what you will learn:
- What a leader's most important obligation is (this one may surprise you)
- How an outward focus on others can set you apart
- Why new leaders ask surface questions and successful leaders ask tactical questions
- And much, much more!
Ps. My favourite line? "Be kind to yourself. You will never get leadership exactly right."
Being influential
I think it’s important for leaders to understand that being a leader is not about them. Being a leader is about having influence and being effective at improving the performance of other people. So it doesn’t have to do with any particular quality you have as a person – doesn’t matter if you are an extrovert or an introvert – you should pretty much be yourself.
Success or failure is determined by your influence on others and by their actions, not by any personal qualities you have as a leader.
Be kind to yourself
I don’t care how long you’ve lead or how many people you’re in charge with, you will never get leadership exactly right. It’s too large. And the best leaders that I know make mistakes all the time.
So be kind to yourself; when something happens in your organization that you did not expect, just be kind to yourself because things like that will continue to happen throughout your entire career.
Things that should be done in private
In making corrections, always do it in private. If you have to call somebody out, do it in private because you don’t want that negativity poisoning the whole team. Because when they look at how you treat someone else, they’re going to assume that that’s how you’re going to treat them if they are in the same situation in the future. That also goes with firing people.
Links and Resources
Connect with Tom: Website, LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook
The Leadership Challenge by James Kouzes and Barry Posner (book)
Good to Great by Jim Collins (book)
Good to Great For the Social Sector by Jim Collins (book)
Jim Collins books
Simon Sinek books
Marshall Goldsmith books
"If you solve the problem on the whiteboard, you're only 10% of the way there." - Greg Rice
Sometimes I'm lucky to listen to a leader who walks the talk.
Someone who exemplifies leadership in all they do, and genuinely cares about treating people right. The type of leader you'd want to work with, and work for.
That person is today's guest, Co-President of Klick Health, Greg Rice. He shares valuable insights from his career journey, from his early days as a new pharmacist to being part of the leadership team at the world's largest independent health marketing agency. And we also chat about the famous Klick culture!
In this episode, you'll learn:
-
How leaders can create clarity and calm amidst the chaos
-
Why aligning your values to your work is critical to long-term success
-
The importance of amplifying the voice of junior staffers
-
What makes Klick's culture so special vs. other companies..and much more!
Don't miss it!
Hiring the best talents
When we go and pitch a large piece of business, sure the spec work that we showed them on that day is important, but we all know that spec work will never see the light of day. What they are buying into is the capability. And at that moment, we are also trying to build instant trust with them, and that comes down to the talent in the room.
So if it’s about talent, then from a leadership standpoint, we better try to find the best in the business and that’s what we really strive to do.
Delivering clarity as a leader
A leader’s job is to create calmness and clarity. And that level of clarity takes time and effort. And if you get stingy on that, it can bite you. It can result to this unsettled, exhausting atmosphere that lack of clarity creates within an organization.
So make sure you pause and communicate. And for any change that happens, get a feedback and continue to refine that overtime and you’ll be highly rewarded for that high amount of clarity that you delivered as a leader.
Training your replacement
Find and coach your replacement. What that means is scaling your capability to a point where you can have someone step in and you can focus your energies elsewhere, maybe into some new initiatives, new areas of interest or opportunities for you.
That inherently means you coaching and guiding someone else into your role. That kind of scale mindset may not be applicable to all leaders in different roles, but certainly it has been for me in scaling and growing a successful business.
Links and Resources
Connect with Greg: LinkedIn, Website (Klick)
Link by Author (book)
Conscious Business by Fred Kofman (book)
Todoist app
"Slow, fast, slow is how you grow."
You know those moments when you're chatting with someone, and it's so interesting that time just flies by? That's how I felt when speaking with Whitney Johnson!
In today's episode "Smart Growth: How Managers Can Grow Themselves, Their People, and Their Business" Whitney talks about her brand new book, Smart Growth, and how new managers can use it to create a breakthrough in 2022.
Whitney was named one of the top ten most influential management thinkers by Thinkers50 in 2021, and is CEO of Disruption Advisors, a tech-enabled talent development company. She is an award-winning author, a LinkedIn Top Voice (1.79M followers), and she frequently writes for both HBR and MIT Sloan Management Review.
In this episode, you'll learn:
- The framework known as the S Curve of Learning, and how to apply it meaningfully in your own development
- How to navigate through the three phases of growth (Launch Point, Sweet Spot, and Mastery)
- How to use the S Curve Insight Tool to develop and grow your people
- How this piano-playing music major ended up on Wall Street (cue Working Girl theme song)... and a lot more!
The S-Curve of Learning
Slow-fast-slow is how you grow. And when you understand the emotional arc of your growth, then you’ll be able to increase your learning and growing capacity as well. That’s what we call the S-Curve of learning.
The Influential Role of the Manager
The first thing that you want to really examine is do you actually want to be a manager?
I meet lots of people who say I’m good at motivating people and inspiring people, but I’m not good at the day to day of managing people, and that’s okay. You want to know that before you get into the job because you have a lot of influence on people, and so you want to make sure you’re up for that kind of job.
Managing People Who Have Mastered Their Job
People start becoming bored once they mastered something because they are no longer challenged. So for your people who are already very good at their job, what will make them grow is when you give them a new challenge.
From that point on, growth may seem slower, but they’ll be able to unlock new levels in their professional journey.
Links and Resources
Connect with Whitney: LinkedIn, Twitter, Instagram, Website, Email, Disrupt Yourself Podcast
Smart Growth: How to Grow Your People to Grow Your Company by Whitney Johnson (book)
The Female Advantage by Sally Helgesen (book)
How Women Rise by Sally Helgesen (book)
Creativity, Inc. by Ed Catmull and Amy Wallace (book)
My guest today is Mark A. Herschberg, author of The Career Toolkit - Essential Skills For Success That No One Taught You. Mark received his BSc in Electrical Engineering and a MEng from MIT, and has been a MIT instructor for the last 20 years.
Have you ever encountered workplace skills you were told were important, yet no one helped you develop them? Mark's book helps you master these vital skills that can yield outsized returns for your career and your income.
In this episode you'll learn:
- The powerful effect of career planning, and how to construct an actionable career plan now
- How to effectively communicate with people from any background
- How ethics can guide you through common challenges you are sure to face at some point
- Mark's reflective lessons as a new manager....and more!
How to Get to Your Dream Role
For any role that you want in the future, dream role or anything else, you can’t just hope to wind up there. You have to recognize that it’s a step by step process. You’re going to have your plan, and it’s going to have checkpoints along the way.
So when you look at that dream role which is probably five/ten years out, to get there, ask yourself, what are the intermediate steps along the way and how can you achieve each one of those steps? Because you can’t just take that one giant leap - you need to plan it out step by step.
How to Combat Unethical Behavior
There are a few different things you can do, but the main ones are first, “keep records”, because having records will help avoid ‘he said, she said’ situations.
Second is to speak up. Don’t do so alone if you can have others come in, because if you have an issue, other people probably do as well.
Third, you want to shine the light. Making people more aware [about the problems within your company] is going to help ameliorate the problem or at least bring pressure for those who are involved in it to reconsider their actions.
Managing Introverts vs. Extroverts
One thing we need to be more cognizant of as managers is that we are extrovert-oriented in many of our in-person interactions. Extroverts tend to spring into action immediately while introverts like to think first before doing anything.
So we need to acknowledge that we have different styles of engaging and then create a channel for each person to bring their personal capabilities through their preferences.
Links and Resources
Connect with Mark: LinkedIn, Twitter, Instagram, Facebook
The Career Toolkit Socials: Facebook, Instagram, Twitter
Link by Author (book)
The Career Toolkit by Mark A. Herschberg (book)
The Career Toolkit App
"Your job is to learn and understand, not know everything." - Christopher Littlefield
Today my guest is Christopher Littlefield, international speaker, author, and founder of Beyond Thank You. Chris' company is a training and consulting firm specializing in employee appreciation, recognition, and workplace culture. He is a writing contributor to both HBR and Forbes, as well as being a genuinely good human! Today he sits down with us to discuss how you, as a leader, can level up your employee appreciation game.
In this episode you'll learn:
-Why employee appreciation matters (now more than ever)
-How to recognize teams and individuals in a remote/hybrid world
-Practical tips and tricks that you can start using right now, today
-And much more!
How to create a ‘safe space’ at work
People talk about psychological safety, but how do we create that? We create that by sending signals to people every single day that we value who they are and what they contribute, and what it takes to do their job each day.
Employee appreciation is also conflict prevention
When people feel valued at work, they will be able to relate to your feedback as a contribution and not as an attack. If you show your appreciation often, they’ll be able to take in your suggestions and not feel defensive about it.
What makes a good manager
It’s so easy as new managers to feel like you have to prove you’re worthy of your position. But what proves to people that you’re worthy is if they can feel that you understand them and that you’re willing to help them succeed.
And when you serve them to support their success, then they’re going to make you shine as well.
Links and Resources
Connect with Chris: LinkedIn, Website, Newsletter
75+Team Building Activities for Remote Teams by Christopher Littlefield (book)
The 15 Commitments of Conscious Leadership by Jim Dethmer (book)
`Conscious Business by Fred Kofman (book)
Managing Transitions by William Bridges (book)
"Don't be afraid to make a mistake." - Lisa Bowman
When employees experience toxic culture and harassment at work, it's often swept under the rug
Not today.
My special guest is Lisa Bowman, author of Harrasshole: A Cautionary Tale of My Time at America's Favorite Charity. Lisa bravely shares her story of being an award-winning Chief Marketing Officer in a highly dysfunctional workplace. It takes a lot of courage to call out this type of BS publicly, and Lisa is not afraid to lay it on the line.
I hope this episode may help others who are experiencing the same thing right now.
Thank you Lisa for reaching out and having this conversation.
Why people don’t speak up about workplace harassment
What I realized is that when you step up and make some noise about harassment in your workplace, you become the problem.
75% of people that report harassment in the workplace are also subjected to retaliation in the workplace. And that’s why people do not come forward, that’s why they don’t speak up.
Are women supporting other women in the workplace?
Women are talking about supporting women, but they are violating the code of sisterhood because they do not pay attention and they look the other way when something was happening.
And I guarantee you that these women are mentors, champions and sponsors of women’s advocacies and resource groups in the workplace. But when they are informed about a problem at an organization, they completely ignore it.
Why some people do not take up the cause and push it forward
There is still today a shortage of women and women of color in the C-Suite. So if one woman falls just because they spoke out about harassment, there’s a whole line of women behind them waiting to take that seat.
Because of self-preservation, women in higher positions are not willing to take that risk of losing their job to stand up for others, and for me, that’s the wrong thing to do.
Links and Resources
Connect with Lisa: LinkedIn, Twitter
Harasshole: A Cautionary Tale of My Time at America's Favorite Charity by Lisa Bowman (book)
Be Fierce: Stop Harassment and Take Your Power Back by Gretchen Carlson (book)
"If you solve the problem on the whiteboard, you're only 10% of the way there." - Greg Rice
Sometimes I'm lucky to listen to a leader who walks the talk.
Someone who exemplifies leadership in all they do, and genuinely cares about treating people right. The type of leader you'd want to work with, and work for.
That person is today's guest, Co-President of Klick Health, Greg Rice. He shares valuable insights from his career journey, from his early days as a new pharmacist to being part of the leadership team at the world's largest independent health marketing agency. And we also chat about the famous Klick culture!
In this episode, you'll learn:
-
How leaders can create clarity and calm amidst the chaos
-
Why aligning your values to your work is critical to long-term success
-
The importance of amplifying the voice of junior staffers
-
What makes Klick's culture so special vs. other companies..and much more!
Don't miss it!
Hiring the best talents
When we go and pitch a large piece of business, sure the spec work that we showed them on that day is important, but we all know that spec work will never see the light of day. What they are buying into is the capability. And at that moment, we are also trying to build instant trust with them, and that comes down to the talent in the room.
So if it’s about talent, then from a leadership standpoint, we better try to find the best in the business and that’s what we really strive to do.
Delivering clarity as a leader
A leader’s job is to create calmness and clarity. And that level of clarity takes time and effort. And if you get stingy on that, it can bite you. It can result to this unsettled, exhausting atmosphere that lack of clarity creates within an organization.
So make sure you pause and communicate. And for any change that happens, get a feedback and continue to refine that overtime and you’ll be highly rewarded for that high amount of clarity that you delivered as a leader.
Training your replacement
Find and coach your replacement. What that means is scaling your capability to a point where you can have someone step in and you can focus your energies elsewhere, maybe into some new initiatives, new areas of interest or opportunities for you.
That inherently means you coaching and guiding someone else into your role. That kind of scale mindset may not be applicable to all leaders in different roles, but certainly it has been for me in scaling and growing a successful business.
Links and Resources
Connect with Greg: LinkedIn, Website (Klick)
Link by Author (book)
Conscious Business by Fred Kofman (book)
Todoist app
"Your job is to learn and understand, not know everything." - Christopher Littlefield Today my guest is Christopher Littlefield, international speaker, author, and founder of Beyond Thank You. Chris' company is a training and consulting firm specializing in employee appreciation, recognition, and workplace culture. He is a writing contributor to both HBR and Forbes, as well as being a genuinely good human! Today he sits down with us to discuss how you, as a leader, can level up your employee appreciation game.
In this episode you'll learn:
-Why employee appreciation matters (now more than ever)
-How to recognize teams and individuals in a remote/hybrid world
-Practical tips and tricks that you can start using right now, today
-And much more!
How to create a ‘safe space’ at work
People talk about psychological safety, but how do we create that? We create that by sending signals to people every single day that we value who they are and what they contribute, and what it takes to do their job each day.
Employee appreciation is also conflict prevention
When people feel valued at work, they will be able to relate to your feedback as a contribution and not as an attack. If you show your appreciation often, they’ll be able to take in your suggestions and not feel defensive about it.
What makes a good manager
It’s so easy as new managers to feel like you have to prove you’re worthy of your position. But what proves to people that you’re worthy is if they can feel that you understand them and that you’re willing to help them succeed.
And when you serve them to support their success, then they’re going to make you shine as well.
Links and Resources
Connect with Chris: LinkedIn, Website, Newsletter
75+Team Building Activities for Remote Teams by Christopher Littlefield (book)
The 15 Commitments of Conscious Leadership by Jim Dethmer (book)
`Conscious Business by Fred Kofman (book)
Managing Transitions by William Bridges (book)
What does the future of work have in store for us? It's a question pondered by many. Lots of opinions, far less data.
Today my guest is Eric Termuende, whose company has quantified much of that chatter into tangible insights. As a well-known corporate keynote speaker (400+ speeches), he's observed the changes companies are experiencing, and can share what leading organizations are doing to chart a path forward.
Want to learn what you can do to help grow your team and deliver results, in an unpredictable world? This episode is for you!
The Best Quality of an Early Leader
The best quality that an early leader can have is the ability to think critically, but more importantly, listen – listen, digest, and then act. And I don’t just mean from clients, but from your people as well.
What the Future of Work Is
The future of work is less about space, place, perks, and benefits, and it’s more about how we feel when we’re doing the work that we do.
We often have this picture of ping pong tables, 4-day work weeks, and more flexible schedules when we talk about “the future of work”, and that’s partially true. But unless we work at a place where we feel like we can do our best work with people that we want to do great work with, we’re never going to stick around.
It’s About Connection And Purpose
The future of work is about deep connection. It’s about having a sense of impact, purpose, and making a difference, and it’s about doing incredible things with people that we trust.
Links and Resources
Connect with Eric: LinkedIn, Twitter, YouTube, Website
Exactly What to Say by Phil M. Jones (book)
Phil M. Jones (Website)
Small Giants by Bo Burlingham (book)
Predictably Irrational by Dan Ariely (book)
The Culture Code by Daniel Coyle (book)
If you haven't been living under a rock for the last few years, you've heard some version of the question, "Why do so many incompetent men get promoted?" It's a fascinating question. Mostly because we've all seen it in action.
If you'd like to hear a brutally honest assessment of lacklustre male CEOs, today's episode is for you. My guest is Denise Conroy, former SVP Marketing at HGTV, and former EVP, Marketing & Research at Outdoor Channel. Denise is currently CEO of Themy LLC, a professional coaching and training business and today you'll hear straight talk from a female executive's perspective.
I love guests that are willing to speak the hard truth. About their own traumas, work experiences, and how others can learn from their life's story. Denise covers all that ground and more - I hope you enjoy this conversation as much as I did.
Implementing change from the ground up
When I first go into an organization, the first thing I do is I look at systems. I want to know, can we do something great on top of the foundation that we already have here?
Asking people how they want to be communicated
Whenever I work with new people, I love to ask them how they want to be communicated to, because we all have different communication styles that we prefer. That way, I can speak to them how they want to be spoken to, it improves receptiveness, and it moves my day along.
Improve your self talk
When I was a new manager, I was 30 at that time and I haven’t received treatment for my anxiety yet. And my self-talk was very negative, telling myself I was not good enough, telling myself I should push harder, etc.
But what I learned from that is that your internal self talk has an effect on the people you work with. So if your self-talk is bad, that’s the place you’re coming from when you’re managing other people and working with them.
Links and Resources
Connect with Denise: LinkedIn, Twitter, Instagram, Website
Atomic Habits by James Clear (book)
3 Practical Ways to Be More Productive by Ian Daley (article)
When by Dan Pink (book)
"Have the courage to be wrong. And right!"
As a new leader, are you curious about what happens in the C-suite? Interested in learning astute lessons from someone who's been coaching executives at the highest level?
Today my guest is CB Bowman, who was named one of the Top 50 coaches in the world by Thinkers50. She is a keynote speaker and CEO of Courage Consultant. In this episode, CB will reveal the best lessons she curated from her time as an executive coach - and how new leaders can leverage this into their own world. Don't miss this one!
In this episode, you'll learn to:
- Harness the courage to ask for what you want
- Understand the role of mentors & sponsors, and why you should have both
- Shut up! And why that can be a powerful move as a new leader :)
And a lot more!
The way you communicate matters
What’s the preferred way to communicate, not from your perspective but from the perspective of the receiver? If you can adjust the way you deliver information so that it’s received well, then you’re starting to build that credibility. Because people will see that you communicate differently to different people, and they’ll perceive that as respectful.
Letting go of control
When I started to let go [of control], the organization started to grow. And it allowed me to focus on other things that I’m good at that people in the organization are not good at or things that they cannot handle.
Have the courage to ask
If you have the courage to say ‘I don’t know’, your credibility goes up. It does not go down like most people think, because people can respect the fact that you are willing to learn, you’re willing to hear another voice.
Links and Resources
Connect with CB: Email, LinkedIn, YouTube, Website
Association of Corporate Executive Coaches
Blue Ocean Strategy by Renée Mauborgne and W. Chan Kim (book)
As a leader, have you ever struggled to communicate your vision? Are you puzzled when others don't quite understand what you are trying to convey? Then this episode is for you! Today my guest is Todd Cherches, author of VisuaLeadership, and he'll help you leverage the power of visual thinking, not only in your leadership role but also in life.
Todd is the CEO and co-founder of BigBlueGumball LLC, an NYC-based management and leadership consulting, training, and executive coaching firm. He is also a two-time award-winning Adjunct Professor at the NYU School of Professional Studies, in their Division of Programs in Business, where he teaches the top-rated graduate course, “Leadership & Team Building” for their Human Capital Management master’s degree program.
In this episode, you'll learn how to:
- Change the way you think and communicate as a leader using your "mind's eye"
- Easily leverage the power of visual imagery, mental models, analogy, storytelling and humour to supercharge your communications skills
- Become a more innovative thinker, better presenter, and effective coach
And a lot more!
Identify the Resources and Roadblocks
I came up with the RnR method, which means Resources and Roadblocks. What are the resources you need to do your job and what are the roadblocks that stand in your way? It really helps to know this.
First of all, people appreciated being asked and that I cared enough to stop telling and to start listening. Second, if someone lacked resources to accomplish something, we’re able to brainstorm and find a solution for it.
VisuaLeadership
Everyone has a viewpoint based on your background, upbringing, culture, and life experiences, and you see certain things in a certain way because that’s who you are and that’s what you know.
But there are other perspectives that we may not be aware of what's outside our own experiences and background. And so VisuaLeadership allows us to start opening our eyes to other ways of looking at things.
Applying the concept of VisuaLeadership in the workplace
People are not mind-readers. So often, we say something and it’s so clear in our mind what we want and what we need, but we’re not able to communicate that effectively to others.
So we need to have a picture in our mind and think about how we can bring it to life so that people can see what we’re saying and deliver what we want and what we need.
Links and Resources
Connect with Todd: LinkedIn, Twitter, Website
How to Win Friends and Influence People by Dale Carnegie (book)
7 Habits of Highly Effective People by Stephen Covey (book)
VisuaLeadership by Todd Cherches (book)
"When you are a leader or a manager, you are on stage."
Are you leading in a startup environment? Then this episode of The New Leader Podcast is for you!
Today our special guest is Alisa Cohn, and we're chatting about her latest book, "From Start Up To Grown Up: Grow Your Leadership To Grow Your Business"
Alisa's clients include Venmo, Squarespace, Etsy, Novartis and more. She was named the #1 start up coach in the world at the 2019 Thinkers50 MG100 Coaches Award. Alisa regularly writes for Inc., Forbes, HBR, and has been featured in BBC, Bloomberg, NYTs and many other outlets. She has great energy and sharp insights!
In this episode, you'll learn:
- How to manage yourself using practical ways to control your self-doubt, and build upon your motivators
- How to manage your team by leveraging the power of delegation and positive feedback, to build the right culture
- How to manage the business by creating a vision for success, clear goals, and a dashboard for accountability. And much more!
Self-Awareness Matters
The first person you lead everyday is yourself, so you have to first deal with your person and be aware of your own strengths and weakness, when are you at your best or worst, et cetera. Having that awareness will help you develop what you need to develop to be a better leader.
Leading with authenticity
When I think about authenticity, I think people want it because they want to feel that connection with another person. The chinks in the armor, the vulnerability, is what helps people connect with you, relate with you, and therefore makes it easier for them to get behind your mission even when the chips are down.
Going back to basics
Everybody experiences some level of self-doubt, impostor syndrome, those kinds of things. So you need to think about the way you manage your own psychology. It’s true for all leaders and that’s also true for startup founders, because there’s a lot of ups and downs in a startup, so you got to think about how do I manage myself for the long-term?
That comes down to some of the basics: eating, sleeping, not drinking too much alcohol, fitness and stress relief, as well as giving yourself tools to combat impostor syndrome and negative self-talk.
Links and Resources
Connect with Alisa: LinkedIn, Twitter, Website
From Start Up To Grown Up: Grow Your Leadership To Grow Your Business by Alisa Cohn (book)
What Got You Here Won't Get You There by Marshall Goldsmith (book)
Leadership Challenge by James M. Kouzes and Barry Z. Posner (book)
"Slow, fast, slow is how you grow." You know those moments when you're chatting with someone, and it's so interesting that time just flies by? That's how I felt when speaking with Whitney Johnson!
In today's episode "Smart Growth: How Managers Can Grow Themselves, Their People, and Their Business" Whitney talks about her brand new book, Smart Growth, and how new managers can use it to create a breakthrough in 2022.
Whitney was named one of the top ten most influential management thinkers by Thinkers50 in 2021, and is CEO of Disruption Advisors, a tech-enabled talent development company. She is an award-winning author, a LinkedIn Top Voice (1.79M followers), and she frequently writes for both HBR and MIT Sloan Management Review.
In this episode, you'll learn:
- The framework known as the S Curve of Learning, and how to apply it meaningfully in your own development
- How to navigate through the three phases of growth (Launch Point, Sweet Spot, and Mastery)
- How to use the S Curve Insight Tool to develop and grow your people
- How this piano-playing music major ended up on Wall Street (cue Working Girl theme song)... and a lot more!
The S-Curve of Learning
Slow-fast-slow is how you grow. And when you understand the emotional arc of your growth, then you’ll be able to increase your learning and growing capacity as well. That’s what we call the S-Curve of learning.
The Influential Role of the Manager
The first thing that you want to really examine is do you actually want to be a manager?
I meet lots of people who say I’m good at motivating people and inspiring people, but I’m not good at the day to day of managing people, and that’s okay. You want to know that before you get into the job because you have a lot of influence on people, and so you want to make sure you’re up for that kind of job.
Managing People Who Have Mastered Their Job
People start becoming bored once they mastered something because they are no longer challenged. So for your people who are already very good at their job, what will make them grow is when you give them a new challenge.
From that point on, growth may seem slower, but they’ll be able to unlock new levels in their professional journey.
Links and Resources
Connect with Whitney: LinkedIn, Twitter, Instagram, Website, Email, Disrupt Yourself Podcast
Smart Growth: How to Grow Your People to Grow Your Company by Whitney Johnson (book)
The Female Advantage by Sally Helgesen (book)
How Women Rise by Sally Helgesen (book)
Creativity, Inc. by Ed Catmull and Amy Wallace (book)
"Do not let other people dictate your path."
What do astronauts, Olympic champions, and Nobel laureates do differently that allows them to achieve at such a high level? My guest today is Dr. Ruth Gotian, and she will reveal the four attributes common to all high achievers - and how you can build this into your life!
It was clear from the minute I met Ruth that she was passionate and committed to studying excellence, and helping others benefit from it. Ruth is the Chief Learning Officer and Assistant Professor of Education in Anesthesiology at Weill Cornell Medicine, and shares some fascinating insights.
In this episode we chat about her new book, The Success Factor, and you'll learn:
- How passion and purpose serve high performance (and why it matters)
- Why perseverance is a hallmark of high achievers worldwide
- The power of a strong foundation and what it means for YOU (don't miss this one!)
- How informal, continuous learning creates a huge advantage
- And a lot more!
High Achievers Learn Continuously
The last thing that all high achievers do – the astronauts, Nobel prize winners, CEOs, et cetera – is they’re continuously learning, and they’re learning through informal means. They’re not sitting in a classroom.
We’ve all heard that billionaires like Warren Buffet and Bill Gates read three to eight hours a day. That’s fabulous, but it’s not reading that made them billionaires. It’s opening their mind to new knowledge. And the high achievers, what they’re able to do is take ideas from different industries and re-imagine them and use them in their own industries.
High Achievers Have Rest Days, Too
The other thing that surprised me is how much these high achievers protect their down time. It was very important to them because they realized later on in their career that their rest days are as important as the work days. That in order for the work days to be productive, you must have the rest days.
Success as Defined By Dr. Ruth
The definition of success changes based on who you ask and based on rank and gender as well. That’s something to consider. But for me, there are certain markers that we can look at to determine whether the person is “successful”.
First is they would have made a fundamental paradigm shift through their work. Their work is so extraordinary that it lead other people to change the way they do things and perhaps, how they think about things.
Two, as they were moving up through the ranks, they lift other people up with them so it’s not just about them.
Links and Resources
Connect with Mark: LinkedIn, Twitter, Instagram, Website
The Success Factor by Dr. Ruth Gotian (book)
The Power of Pressure by Dane Jensen (book)
A Higher Standard by by Ann Dunwoody (book)
My guest today is Mark A. Herschberg, author of The Career Toolkit - Essential Skills For Success That No One Taught You. Mark received his BSc in Electrical Engineering and a MEng from MIT, and has been a MIT instructor for the last 20 years.
Have you ever encountered workplace skills you were told were important, yet no one helped you develop them? Mark's book helps you master these vital skills that can yield outsized returns for your career and your income.
In this episode you'll learn:
- The powerful effect of career planning, and how to construct an actionable career plan now
- How to effectively communicate with people from any background
- How ethics can guide you through common challenges you are sure to face at some point
- Mark's reflective lessons as a new manager....and more!
How to Get to Your Dream Role
For any role that you want in the future, dream role or anything else, you can’t just hope to wind up there. You have to recognize that it’s a step by step process. You’re going to have your plan, and it’s going to have checkpoints along the way.
So when you look at that dream role which is probably five/ten years out, to get there, ask yourself, what are the intermediate steps along the way and how can you achieve each one of those steps? Because you can’t just take that one giant leap - you need to plan it out step by step.
How to Combat Unethical Behavior
There are a few different things you can do, but the main ones are first, “keep records”, because having records will help avoid ‘he said, she said’ situations.
Second is to speak up. Don’t do so alone if you can have others come in, because if you have an issue, other people probably do as well.
Third, you want to shine the light. Making people more aware [about the problems within your company] is going to help ameliorate the problem or at least bring pressure for those who are involved in it to reconsider their actions.
Managing Introverts vs. Extroverts
One thing we need to be more cognizant of as managers is that we are extrovert-oriented in many of our in-person interactions. Extroverts tend to spring into action immediately while introverts like to think first before doing anything.
So we need to acknowledge that we have different styles of engaging and then create a channel for each person to bring their personal capabilities through their preferences.
Links and Resources
Connect with Mark: LinkedIn, Twitter, Instagram, Facebook
The Career Toolkit Socials: Facebook, Instagram, Twitter
Link by Author (book)
The Career Toolkit by Mark A. Herschberg (book)
The Career Toolkit App
My guest today is Paul Preston, CEO of TechNL, an organization that represents NL's advanced tech sector, where local companies are punching well above their weight globally. Paul is a former director at the Conference Board of Canada, and holds a BComm and MBA from Memorial University. He is passionate about the east coast tech scene and it shows!
In this episode you'll learn:
- What's happening in NLs hot tech sector and what's ahead in the future
- How new leaders (and non-tech folks) can tap into the career potential of the tech sector
- What companies are changing the game
- Paul's biggest lesson as a new manager....and more!
Setting Up Clear Expectations and Accountabilities
If you become too friendly without giving your team members or employees a clear picture of what the goals are, what you expect from them, and what their responsibilities are, things can become complicated later. And it will be frustrating for you as a leader and for everyone else you’re leading because you did not make the expectations and accountabilities clear to them in the beginning.
Getting Into The Tech Industry
As much as we call it the tech sector, half the jobs are not actually tech jobs. There’s marketing, accounting, sales, customer success, business development, et cetera.
That’s one thing we want to demystify to people is that you don’t need to have a software development or coding background to get into the tech industry. There are other roles that are needed in this industry that people outside of this industry can definitely get into.
The Slow Path to Success
As a young person, you want to achieve so much especially in your career, but sometimes you just have to stick somewhere and learn, build a base of knowledge and gain an experience set.
Links and Resources
Connect with Paul: LinkedIn, Website, Twitter, TechNL Twitter
Malcolm Gladwell books
Elon Musk: Tesla, SpaceX, and the Quest for a Fantastic Future by Ashlee Vance (book)
Atomic Habits by James Clear (book)
Speed of Trust by Stephen Covey (book)
The Long Game by Dorie Clark (book)
"How we navigate our highest-pressure moments has a huge impact on the overall trajectory of our lives, both in terms of how successful we are and how much we enjoy the journey along the way."
My guest today is Dane Jensen, author and CEO of Third Factor, a company that helps people become better coaches, more resilient performers, and more collaborative teammates. Dane has deep expertise in navigating pressure, having worked with high performers in elite sport, academia, business, and government.
He is also a keynote speaker, instructor at Smith School of Business, Queen's University as well as an affiliate faculty member at UNC. In today's episode, we explore Dane's excellent new book, The Power of Pressure: Why Pressure Isn't the Problem, It's the Solution.
You'll learn to:
- Understand the “pressure equation” of importance, uncertainty and volume
- Escape the traps of pressure with effective tools and tactics
- Be ambidextrous so that you can handle pressure both in peak pressure moments and over the long haul
- Utilize the most important preparation tip I've ever heard, and more!
What Makes Us Feel Pressured
Pressure is really a function of three things: importance, uncertainty, and volume. The first thing that has to be there for us to experience pressure is importance.
The importance that we have assigned to the outcome is directly correlated to the pressure that we feel in a situation. If you don’t care about the outcome, it’s not going to create pressure.
Dealing With Everyday Pressures
We need to be able to connect with importance to be able to push through the daily grind. I need to have a really good answer to the question ‘why am I doing this’? Why is this important to me? Why am I putting in the time, effort, and energy for this?
The answer to those questions will be a very crucial source of energy in the long haul.
A More Effective Tool Than Willpower
People sometimes feel like all they need to do is to will themselves to focus and say ‘no’ to distractions, but that’s not realistic. It’s a losing battle if you’re only relying on willpower to say ‘no’.
It’s more effective to remind yourself of your principles, act on them, and create a structure that allows you to make decisions without relying on willpower.
Links and Resources
Connect with Dane: LinkedIn, Website, Twitter
The Power of Pressure by Dane Jensen (book)
The Courage to Be Disliked by Fumitake Koga and Ichiro Kishimi (book)
My special guest is Bonnie Cochrane, Managing Director & GM, Huron Consulting Group Canada. In her current role, Bonnie focuses on supporting North American healthcare organizations in creating and sustaining health system outcomes.
She started her career as a critical care nurse, before moving into progessive leadership roles with Merck, CNIB, and the NL Centre for Health Information. Bonnie holds a MSc in Community Medicine & Population Health from Memorial University, and hails from my hometown of Mt. Pearl, Newfoundland!
In today's episode, you'll learn:
- How to find "fuel for the positive", so your passion and enthusiasm stay alive
- Why understanding your own values as a leader helps you become more purposeful
- When facing difficult conversations, why it pays to employ a mindset of "we are here to get this right, not to be right"
- The power of walking everyday, and more!
Love What You Do
We spend all our lives at work so I always held true to the 80/20 rule - if I can love my work 80% of the time and realize that 20% of the time, I just have to suck it up and do it, then I can be a very happy camper. And I am purposeful about recognizing that.
Aiming For Organizational Success
As leaders, we want to be high performers and do well with our teams, but at the end of the day, it is our task to help our organization reach its highest potential. If you come into that job with the mindset of moving towards organizational goals, I can almost guarantee you that you can find yourself moving forward as well. You’ll have far greater growth and more opportunities if you look at leadership with organizational success as your goal.
Dealing With Complex and Emotional Conversations
When I’m in a situation where I’ll be facing complex, highly emotional, and high-risk conversations, I plan endlessly. I script, I re-script, I roleplay in my mind, I recite my script out loud so that I can hear myself saying these very important keywords. I think through all the what if’s and in doing so, I avoid getting off into unnecessary land mines of sensitive issues, et cetera.
Links and Resources
Connect with Bonnie: LinkedIn, Website, Twitter, Email
Leaders Go First by Bonnie Cochrane (research article)
Hardwiring Excellence by Quint Studer (book)
Leaders Eat Last by Simon Sinek (book)
Aaand we're back in session! Our new episode with Dorie Clark is now available, "How to Be a Long-Term Thinker in a Short-Term World."
Dorie is a Columbia and Duke university business professor, an HBR author, one of the Top 50 business thinkers in the world (Thinkers50), and is rated the #1 Communication Coach in the world (Marshall Goldsmith Leading Global Coaches Award). Today's episode is not one to miss!
Dorie's latest book, "The Long Game: How to Be a Long-Term Thinker in a Short-Term World" launched this week, and we get the inside track on how you can make a life-changing breakthrough. We also chat about Dorie's own career as a people leader, and the lessons she learned along the way.
In today's episode, you'll learn:
- How being seriously open to learning can change your trajectory
- Why "thinking in waves" makes sense in a fast-paced world
- How to create and protect your time, so you can take your career and life to the next level (hat tip to Dave Crenshaw and Paul Graham!)
- Dorie's biggest lesson as a first-time leader, and more!
If you find this episode valuable, please rate us on Apple Podcasts!
Playing The Long Game
I think there’s something really admirable about people who play the long game. True respect is owed to people who are willing to make the sacrifice of doing the work and putting in the effort even when there’s no instant gratification. You can actually make a significant gap between you and your competitors when you do this, but only very few are willing to make that journey.
It’s Okay To Not Know Everything
So often as adults, we get used to being really proficient at things. It becomes very rare, as you get older, to be bad at something that we think of as important to who we are.
For any of us who are in the professional life, if you’re trying to move up the ladder, you don’t really want to say, “I don’t know how to be a leader,” or, “I’m not so good at communicating.” But the truth is there is still a lot to learn.
So I think that being open to that fact and accepting that it’s okay to continue learning is powerful and will help you in the long run.
The Value of Long-Term Thinking
We need to be setting long-term goals because whether or not we end up with those goals, you want to be directionally correct in your course. So you’d want to be aiming towards something because that process of orienting yourself to it will lead you closer to what you want and in a better place than you would’ve been if you had totally left it to chance in a jellyfish fashion.
Links and Resources
Connect with Dorie: LinkedIn, Website, Instagram, Twitter, Facebook
The Long Game by Dorie Clark (book)
’The Long Game’ Strategic Thinking Self-Assessment
My growth and my development is at its highest point when I’m being pushed beyond where I think I could go. – Tristan Cammaert
Hi everyone! Welcome to today’s show. Today we talk about the value of continuous learning and staying curious in your life and career with Tristan Cammaert. Tristan is a seasoned leader who has held various executive-level roles at RBC, currently at Earnst and Young.
We also discuss:
- The importance of team diversity, building trust and being aligned to one strategic vision
- Getting out of our comfort zone
- Supporting the next generation of leaders
- Finding your why
- Servant leadership
- Having a vision, and a lot more.
Click that play button to listen! Don’t forget to subscribe and rate us on Apple Podcasts!
Getting out of your comfort zone I do have the voice in my head that’s telling me “Stay where you are” on occasion, but I also will pause and take a step back and say, “Where do I know that I’d truly been at my best? Where have I been the happiest and most fulfilled in terms of my work?”
It has always been when I am pushed and when I’m outside of my comfort zone.
Find Your WHY Most companies and individuals are able to talk about the ‘what’ and sometimes they get to the ‘how’, but they’re very rarely actually able to articulate the ‘why’ – why are we doing what we’re doing.
Servant Leadership As a leader, you’re not supposed to be bossing people around. You’re supposed to be in service of the team that you have. Your job is to actually really help bring your team together, but you are in service to them, as opposed to being directive.
Tristan’s Advice to New Leaders Make sure you hire and grow and manage from a diversity perspective – diversity of thought, not just in terms of gender, race or age.
100% - don’t stop learning. Make sure that you remain curious. There’s a whole bunch of ways you can do that – consuming videos, podcasts, books, etc.
Don’t try and boil the ocean – stick with one or two things that worked for you.
Links and Resources
Connect with Tristan: LinkedIn
Start With Why by Simon Sinek
Leaders Eat Last by Simon Sinek
Ten Percent Happier by Dan Harris
A lot of people say, “I’m comfortable with investing in people and paying them market rates and all this kind of crap” – I think that’s bullshit. A lot of people tell themselves that, but in practice they don’t, and they really don’t do it unless they have funding. – Ross Andrew Paquette
Hi everyone! Today we talk about making tough calls to grow your business with Ross Andrew Paquette. Ross is the Founder, Chairman and CEO of Maropost. The company was founded in 2011 and has grown to become a fully unified customer engagement platform designed to provide a single solution for all areas of business—across marketing, commerce, service, and more.
We also discuss:
- How he grew his company without raising funding,
- Going against the status quo,
- Creating a framework around your growth,
- Investing in the right people early on, and more.
Click that play button to listen! Don’t forget to subscribe and rate us on Apple Podcasts!
Going Against the Status Quo In the early stages of the company, I did a lot of things on my own, which I’m always very happy that I did. Being a company that didn’t take any funding, we didn’t have the ability to hire a VP of Sales, VP of HR – every VP-of-everything wasn’t an option.
By having to get involved in all those areas, I gained an understanding of not only what it takes to build and grow a business but an appreciation for what’s required to accomplish those roles, and an understanding of how things operate.
I don’t have a finance or marketing background, but I very much understand those roles. I had to go out and generate leads as a marketer; I had to go manage our customer billing from a finance perspective. I had to do a lot of those tasks at a time when we were actually quite large – we had six people in the organization doing about 7 or 8 million in revenue.
I believe a big part of us being able to get there was taking the time to really learn all those areas, as opposed to saying, “We’ll just go hire somebody for that and I’m just the overseer of everything that’s happening today.”
Pay what you can afford, or pay for quality? I don’t think I really appreciated the fact that if I invested maybe $10,000, $20,000, $30,000 a year or more, I would get a significant increase in the quality of the individual. It was more like, “This person just needs to do this job, what’s the least amount of money I can pay to get that job done?”
But then I never considered, “I paid that person $60,000, but if I paid $90,000, I wouldn’t have to deal with issues 1-10.” I’m paying on one side or the other.
A lot of people say, “I’m comfortable with investing in people and paying them market rates and all this kind of crap” – I think that’s bullshit. A lot of people tell themselves that, but in practice they don’t, and they really don’t do it unless they have funding.
Being Held Hostage Where I see a lot of organizations get into trouble is they make these decisions – pandering or as I would call it, “being held hostage”, which is a more dramatic version of that. They bring in people under a certain pretense, and I think most organizations are very transparent about that.
This is what you’re going to get for benefits, this is our office, these are the perks, the package – all of those things are quite clear. But then people come in and it’s like, “OK, well why don’t we have bean bag chairs? Why don’t we have Starbucks coffee? Why don’t we have these office upgrades? Why don’t we have standing desks? Why don’t I have a wide-screen monitor?”
The list goes on. And I feel like organizations sort of get into this circular approach of pandering or being held hostage by everybody where they feel like, “OK, we have to do this.” But what if you really can’t do that?
There’s a cost to all of these things. If you can’t afford to do that today, but you end up having to do it because you’re worried about people leaving or acquiring new talent and such, what is that going to mean for the future of your business?
Links and Resources
Connect with Ross: LinkedIn Instagram
https://www.maropost.com/
Simplify: How the Best Businesses in the World Succeed by Richard Koch and Greg Lockwood
Asana
Quickbooks
Salesforce
Office 365
Hey everyone! Welcome to the show. The topic we’re going to dig into right now is Why Coaching is the #1 Leadership Skill Today. I have a special guest with me, who, in my opinion, is the best person on the planet right now to talk about this particular topic – Michael Bungay Stanier.
Michael is the founder of Box of Crayons, a learning and development company focused on coaching. He’s the author of The Coaching Habit – my personal favorite business book – and he has another one coming out on February 29th called The Advice Trap. I’ve already preordered my copy – make sure you preorder yours too (link at the bottom of the show notes).
In this episode, we dive into:
- What it takes to be a good manager,
- 5 Reasons why people resist being more coach-like,
- Michael’s definition of coaching,
- How coaching drives impact and engagement,
- Coaching conversations, and a whole lot more.
Click that play button to listen! Don’t forget to subscribe and rate us on Apple Podcasts!
What is coaching? This is my definition. It’s a behavior, and the behavior is this: can you stay curious a little bit longer? Can you rush to action and advice-giving a little bit more slowly?
It’s simple, but it’s difficult.
Impact, Engagement and Coaching. In essence, the two key drivers in an organization are impact, which is productivity, and meaning, which is engagement. Coaching is one of the key skills – I know it is, because research tells us – to drive both impact and engagement.
What do you want? That is a great question to crack open a conversation, just to accelerate it into a “Let’s get down to brass tax here”. It’s an easy question to ask and hard to answer, because people often don’t know what they want, but it’s really powerful to hold them in that space. Because once you know what you want, it grounds you. When you’re grounded – that’s the basis for action and movement.
Another thing I really love about that question is to ask it of yourself, particularly when you’re feeling annoyed, discombobulated, knocked off balance, when things have been hard for you and you’re struggling with a particular relationship. Just go, “What do I want?”
Often we hesitate around difficult conversations, not because we’re scared of the scary conversations; we’re just not clear on what we want.
Michael’s advice for new leaders Be skeptical about advice, because often, they don’t know what they’re talking about. They’re projecting all sorts of things. It’s the same as feedback. Feedback often tells you more about the person giving you the feedback than it is actually useful for you at that moment.
Links and Resources Connect with Michael: LinkedIn
https://www.mbs.works/
Box of Crayons
The Advice Trap: Be Humble, Stay Curious & Change the Way You Lead Forever by Michael Bungay Stanier (will be released on February 29, 2020)
The Coaching Habit: Say Less, Ask More & Change the Way You Lead Forever by Michael Bungay Stanier
Tiny Habits: The Small Changes That Change Everything by BJ Fogg Ph.D
Playing to Win: How Strategy Really Works by A.G. Lafley and Roger L. Martin
Give and Take: Why Helping Others Drives Our Success by Adam Grant
Do More Great Work: Stop the Busywork. Start the Work That Matters by Michael Bungay Stanier
Bullet Journal
#MyBestQuestion on LinkedIn
Get to the point where you actually are confident enough in your team, in your decision-making prowess, in your ability to consider failure, to think totally differently about the problem and see if there is a better way to attack it. – Matt Confer
Hi everyone! Welcome to today’s show. Today we talk about the Effective Decision Making For New Leaders with Matthew Confer. Matt is the VP of Strategy & Business Development for Abilitie, a leadership development company based in beautiful Austin, Texas.
We also discuss:
- The importance of developing relationships
- Trusting and leaning on your team and allowing them to fail,
- Preparing for worst-case scenarios,
- Testing your comfortable limits,
- Thinking differently, and more.
Click that play button to listen! Don’t forget to subscribe and rate us on Apple Podcasts!
Good relationships contribute to project success
If you don’t invest early on in developing a relationship with those that you manage, it’s going to be very hard when you get into the thick of a project and you have to really push your comfortable limits about what is possible to deliver.
If you just jump right into the pure, active managing and delegating and never build any sort of a substantial relationships, it just makes things all the more difficult especially when you’re talking about thousands of miles between you and doing all of your work virtually.
Identify the problem, and simplify it
When we throw a problem at leaders in our simulation, the initial instinct that everybody has is, “Ooh – a problem. I’m going to jump in and I’m going to solve it.”
The problem is, most teams don’t take the one to two minutes to say what actually is the problem that we’re embarking on. They get so excited by the chance to solve something, that they never take a step back and identify what the problem is.
The first step should be to identify it, and then simplify it. That should come before ever trying to embark on solving it.
Pivot, Pivot, Pivot
I almost never see a team in our simulation that ends up winning or ends up as one of the teams near the top that had one strategy, completely, effectively delivered that strategy, and never had to change course.
You have to be comfortable with the fact that you need to adjust to changing dynamics – either changing dynamics at your company, changing dynamics in your industry.
Matt’s Leadership Advice
Don’t assume that the people on your team want to be managed the same way you would want to be managed.
Links and Resources
Connect with Matt: LinkedIn Twitter
Abilitie
Freakonomics: A Rogue Economist Explores the Hidden Side of Everything by Steven D. Levitt & Stephen J. Dubner
Productivity Tip: Time Blocking and Reminders App
"Debate with data and facts, not just opinions and passion." - Jacqueline Rideout
Today my special guest is Jacqueline Rideout, Team Lead for Learning & Development at Verafin, the industry leader in financial crime management solutions.
Based in St. John's, NL, Verafin's rapid growth has become a Canadian tech success story. In November 2020, Verafin was acquired by NASDAQ in a deal worth $2.75B US. We'll chat with Jac about her fast-paced leadership journey over the last eight years, and how you can leverage the lessons she's learned working in a world class company.
In today's episode, you'll learn:
- How you can love what you do by finding "red threads" at work (no, really!)
- Why mapping strengths can open new career doors for you
- Why culture is critical to organizational success (hint: words on a wall don't cut it)
- What has surprised Jac the most, and much more!
If you find this episode valuable, please rate us on Apple Podcasts!
How to Fight Burnout
Marcus Buckingham talks about the ‘red threads’; it’s about finding those activities that bring you joy and energy, and then incorporating more of that into your day. Because that gives you a little bit more control even if you’re in the most regimented type of job.
Mapping your strengths
A strength isn’t necessarily something that you’re good at, or a weakness something that you’re bad at. For me, your strengths are those tasks or skills that give you energy while weaknesses are the things that drain you. And it’s not the same for everyone
What It Takes To Be A Good Leader
Before, I actually thought that being a ‘good’ leader means that you must know everything and that you have answers for everything. But that kind of mindset just made me a bad coach.
Later on, I realized that being a good leader is not about just always having the right answers at hand; it’s more about listening to the other person and asking the right questions so that you can truly understand the problem that you’re trying to solve.
Links and Resources
Connect with Jacqueline: LinkedIn
The Leadership Challenge by Barry Posner and James Kouzes (book)
Everyday People, Extraordinary Leadership by Barry Posner and James Kouzes (book)
Death by Meeting by Patrick Lencioni (book)
"You are not granted a position of influence. You have to earn it." - Iain Boomer
Today my guest is Iain Boomer, Head of Learning at AbbVie Canada, a research-driven biopharmaceutical company. In 2018, I spent time on a panel with Iain during a Chief Learning Officer (CLO) event, and found his viewpoint unique and interesting. Prior to his Canadian position, Iain spent time as Sr. Global Product Training Manager with AbbVie in Heidelberg, Germany. He is also the President of PMCQ (Pharma Marketing Club of Quebec), a non-profit organization. Iain has studied at both the University of Guelph and McGill University, and currently resides in "la belle province."
In today's episode, you'll learn:
- Why you're the catalyst for discovering your own growth opportunities (hint: don't wait for formal assessments!)
- How international roles create opportunities to seek and embrace change
- What Iain's mentor taught him about the "weight of leadership"
- Why professional coaching is a hallmark of high performance, and much more!
If you find this episode valuable, please rate us on Apple Podcasts!
How to Start a Mentor-Mentee Relationship
A mentor starts with the mentee wanting to be absolutely transparent with that individual. If we think about it, we often gear towards that family member or someone who has known us for years because we already have that existing relationship. And you can easily create it with individuals along your leadership journey as long as you have that agreement at the start.
How Coaching Helps In Your Leadership Journey
One of the things that really impacted my leadership journey was coaching. Your coach will help you along in your journey to be able to talk out your ideas, to align you and focus you on the development aspect that you need, because there’s a lot. We never stop learning in this leadership journey.
Accept That You’ll Make Mistakes As A Leader
It doesn’t always have to be negative, overarching mistakes; it could be in hiring, or perhaps in the decisions that you make.
Because sometimes, we’re put in this leadership position without having learned all the skills and capabilities of having that 20 to 30-year journey, so don’t be too hard on yourself. You’re a new leader – accept that you’ll make these mistakes.
Links and Resources
Connect with Iain: LinkedIn
Influence Redefined: Be the Leader You Were Meant to Be, Monday to Monday by Stacey Hanke (book)
"In order to effectively lead others in increasing complexity, leaders must first learn to lead themselves." - Rebecca Zucker
Today my guest is Rebecca Zucker, founding partner at Next Step Partners, a leadership development firm with offices in San Francisco, New York, and LA. We discuss her recent HBR article that outlines six strategies for improving a leader's ability to learn, develop and navigate our increasingly complex world.
Prior to founding Next Step, Rebecca worked as an investment banker for Goldman Sachs, and spent time as VP, Learning & Development at Robertson Stephens. She holds a degree in International Business from NYU, as well a MBA from Stanford.
In today's episode, we cover:
- How to embrace discomfort as a normal part of navigating choppy waters
- The important difference between complicated and complex
- Why resisting oversimplification can lead to better decision making
- Why high achievers need to let go of perfectionism, and much more!
If you find this episode valuable, please rate us on Apple Podcasts!
The Difference Between Complicated VS. Complex Problems
Complicated problems are figure out-able. There could be someone who has an expertise that can be applied where an answer can more or less be determined.
With complex challenges, there is no one right answer. An example of this would be trying to solve climate change. There’s not a clear single answer.
Leadership and Humility
You take people in the hospitality business or travel business, they were much more adversely affected [by COVID-19]. So how do you address that or mitigate the losses you incurred? Those things are really challenging.
Different businesses and different people were certainly affected differently, but I think dealing with those challenges also requires some humility – that we don’t have all the answers and that we need to work together to find the best solution.
Why You Get Overwhelmed With Challenges
Part of what makes these challenges overwhelming for leaders is because they feel isolated, and they feel pressured to come up with a solution and to be the ‘savior’. And they don’t need to do this.
This is everyone’s challenge together. It would be good for leaders to reach out to other team members who may have good ideas and reach out to people on the front line as well who may see things that you don’t see.
Links and Resources
Connect with Rebecca: LinkedIn, Twitter and Email
"You don't need everything to come to you immediately. Learn the business. Gain the trust and respect of the people around you, and you'll be very surprised how quickly those career goals will materialize." – Mike Abbott
Today my guest is Mike Abbott, VP Labour Relations at Air Canada. We discuss the most impactful lessons Mike has learned as chief spokesperson in over 50 rounds of collective bargaining with large, multinational unions across many countries. This episode is full of sharp insights for new leaders.
Prior to Air Canada, Mike held senior roles in Operations and HR at Brinks Canada and McCain Foods. He holds a BA/MA in Political Science & Business from Memorial University, as well as a Masters in Industrial Relations from London School of Economics.
In today's episode, we cover:
- The importance of learning the business. Understanding the realities of not only your own function, but other business units in your organization is critical in developing your business acumen (and your credibility with senior leaders)
- How self-awareness links to great leadership. Knowing what drives you, how that changes over time, and being able to self-reflect are simple actions that any leader can take right now.
- Who wins the title of greatest guitar player of all time...and much more!
If you find this episode valuable, please rate us on Apple Podcasts!
If you want to be a successful manager, learn your business
Especially when you’re new to the industry, you really need to take time to learn your business, to learn the inputs and the outputs that run your business; like what are the factors that drive profitability, customer satisfaction, and what helps you keep employees and keep them motivated.
You can’t do that unless you know your business.
Good managers see the bigger picture
Try to see the big picture, like what the vision of the company is and where the company is going, and where your particular department falls in, but also try to see what drives the people you’re managing. Because not everyone is driven by the same things that you’re driven by.
Labor relations: looking at overarching themes
If a union has 20 proposals, try to find out the commonalities. Try to figure out the general constructs that they’re looking for, and likewise with the operation, too.
Look for overarching themes. Keep that in the back of your mind when you’re negotiating. A chief negotiator needs to be able to see through that and look at the common pieces you need to put together so that both sides are satisfied.
Links and Resources
Connect with Mike: LinkedIn
Getting to ‘Yes’ by Roger Fisher & William Ury (book)
Any book by Peter Drucker
Ali: A Life by Jonathan Eig (book)
"Ask questions first. Be curious, with positive intent." – Vasundhara Sawhney
Today my guest is Vasundhara Sawhney, Senior Editor at Harvard Business Review. We talk about why it's ok to disagree with your boss and co-workers, and how to do that effectively. I really enjoyed her stories and practical advice. Especially what to do when you have great friends at work - and then become their manager :)
In today's episode, we cover:
- How to oppose the idea, but not the person
- Why you should pick your battles wisely
- Why speaking up often leads to better ideas… and much more!
If you find this episode valuable, please rate us on Apple Podcasts!
Why It’s Important to Disagree With Your Boss
Speaking up is important even in your first job. When you disagree with something, it’s important to speak up and let the other person know, and I’m talking about the good fights where you respectfully disagree for a better outcome; it’s a two-way street.
It’s not to say that ‘your opinion is bad’ or ‘you have a crappy idea’, but it’s really about honoring those differing opinions. And they’re good because you might end up with the most fabulous idea ever.
Enable More Effective Communication Through Disagreement
When you’re starting out, it is important to understand that disagreements are, A, inevitable. B, they’re normal. And C, they’re a healthy part of relating to somebody else, and that’s when great relationships are formed.
And if you go in with the thought that you and the other person possess different points of view, or you have different data to argue on, that’s a good thing. You manifest a conversation from a place of curiosity, not disagreement.
How to Disagree With Your Co-Workers
First, pick your battles wisely – disagreeing with everything can be seen as being argumentative. If you have an opinion and you strongly disagree, you should present it as support instead of opposition.
For example, instead of saying, “I don’t think this will work,” you could say, “I think that’s a great idea, but how about we try ‘x’?”. So if you present your ideas as support, it’s more likely the other person will also be agreeable to listening to you and picking up on your idea.
Links and Resources
Connect with Vasundhara: LinkedIn, Website
No Hard Feelings by Liz Fosslien (book)
"Believe in yourself, sooner." – Tammy Heermann
Today my guest is Tammy Heermann, a keynote speaker who's passionate about advancing women and high potential talent. I had the pleasure of seeing Tammy in action five years ago at a corporate offsite, and I appreciated her commitment and message.
Currently residing in Toronto, Tammy holds a BComm from the University of Saskatchewan and a MSc from the London School of Economics. Before founding her own company in 2018, she was SVP of Leadership Transformation at Lee Hecht Harrison.
In today's episode, we cover:
-The importance of new leaders owning the entire experience. Management is difficult and rewarding, and new leaders must embrace both the good and the bad aspects of their role.
-Prove possible. Building confidence becomes easier when you prove to yourself that it can be done. What have you attempted that you once thought was impossible? Regardless of outcome, you made it feel possible.
-Reframe your story. Catch yourself when you start to say, "I can’t, shouldn’t..." etc. Reflect on why you automatically default to this way of thinking. Reframe and think about what is needed for you to say "I can, I will, I may, I am.." instead.
-And much more!
If you find this episode valuable, please rate us on Apple Podcasts!
Women Empowerment and Why It Matters
The experiment’s hypothesis was that women would reduce their career aspirations if they were told that they weren’t good at something.
So at the beginning of the test, women had set higher expectations than the men in the study. And when the women were told that they performed equally well for this fake test as the men, they kept their career aspirations. But when they were told that they did worse than the men, they significantly reduced their career aspirations.
Misconceptions About Working Women
The common assumption is that women are less ambitious especially when they’re in their family planning years. But what large studies have shown is that women actually seek balance and will make it work when their organizations are seen as investing in them and giving them opportunities and acknowledging their work.
The Importance Of Speaking Up
Some women think it’s safer to not say anything. And I’m here to argue that it’s actually not safer because then people think that you have nothing to add to the conversation, or that you don’t know anything, or that you’re too lightweight to operate on high-level responsibilities.
And so the risk of not speaking up, I believe, outweighs the risks of speaking up. By not saying anything, you’re actually putting yourself in a worse position.
Links and Resources
Connect with Tammy: LinkedIn, Website
Reframe Your Story by Tammy Heermann (book, COMING SOON)
The Coaching Habit by Michael Bungay Stanier (book)
Burnout by Emily Nagoski Ph.D. and Amelia Nagoski DMA (book)
"Always be friendly, but, you are not always their friend." – Brian Bachand
Is the term intuitive leadership leaving you intrigued? Puzzled? Annoyed? You're in the right place! Today we dig into a topic not often covered on the show, with someone who walks the walk.
My guest is Brian Bachand, founder of Evolution Evolution, a global coaching company. Brian has an interesting story, having started his career as a priest, before moving into senior roles in executive recruitment, and corporate development with organizations like NYU Langone Health, American Cancer Society, and University of Toronto. He is a Boston-native who now calls Toronto home, but still has love for the Red Sox.
In today's episode, we cover:
-What intuitive leadership is, and why it should play a role in your life
-Concrete examples of how it's used with new CEOs and senior leaders
-Lessons from Brian's time working in a religious institution
-How he over delivered on fundraising during the height of the 2008 crash
-And much more!
If you find this episode valuable, please rate us on Apple Podcasts!
How Our Intuition Helps In Decision-Making
Every single human being has intuition. Every single business leader is using their intuition whether they know it or not. And our intuition is always gathering information; it’s whether or not we’re being open to it and how to assess and look at that information.
Our intuition is always guiding us and helping us to make decisions, and it can be very helpful especially if you’re someone who’s looking to grow a pipeline, and with relationships.
Growing Your Confidence in Your Own Intuition
When you have one of those moments of just being intuitively nudged, pay attention if what you acted on comes to reality or what it leads to. The more you pay attention to your intuition and see the results of trusting that intuition, the more you will be confident in following it when it happens.
“The Greatest Failure” As A Leader
One of the biggest issues that I have seen from leaders that are younger, that are aspiring to grow is that they often compromise who they are because of what they think they need to be like to get ahead. And that is the greatest failure you can have as a leader
Links and Resources
Connect with Brian: LinkedIn, Website, Email
The Monk Who Sold His Ferrari by Robin Sharma (book)
“Some things are worth fighting for.” – Liane Davey
Conflict is not always a bad thing! Do you struggle creating the kind of productive conflict your team needs to excel?
Today's guest is Liane Davey, founder of 3COze, psychologist, keynote speaker, and author. She also loves a good old fashioned factory tour - I mean, who doesn't ? :) Having been to the Fender guitar factory myself in Corona, CA, I can understand her fascination!
Liane's latest book, The Good Fight, focuses on how to create the kind of conflict teams and organizations need to get along - and get stuff done
In today's episode, you'll learn:
-
3 unique ways to create productive conflict that teams actually embrace
-
Why conflict should be viewed as "flossing," and not a root canal
-
The power of ritual and how it creates calm & control
-
And much more!
If you find this episode valuable, please rate us on Apple Podcasts!
How to deal with wrong mindsets about conflict I think one of the reasons that people aren’t using the new skills that they’re learning is that they’ve been taught that conflict is impolite, unprofessional, not lady-like, etc.
So the first thing I did is changing people’s mindset about conflict. And to do that, you have to look at what shaped that mindset, and also, make a business case as to why conflict is necessary and important in organizations.
Why conflict is necessary Conflict is a feature, not a bug, on teams. It’s the purpose of having teams - to present different perspectives and create tension. Otherwise, if one person can do it all by themselves, then they should just go do it themselves.
So to handle conflicts better, we need to identify the different roles on the team and answer some questions. What’s the unique value or superpower of this role? Who are the shareholders of this role?
Simple steps to conflict resolution Say something that makes the person feel heard or understood, ask a question to let them expose their emotions and values, then speak their truth, and then you are in the right to add your truth and to turn it into a conversation. There’s supposed to be tension but not friction.
Links and Resources
Connect with Liane: LinkedIn, Website
The Good Fight by Liane Davey (book)
The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People by Stephen Covey (book)
The Five Dysfunctions of a Team by Patrick Lecioni (book)
Made to Stick: Why Some Ideas Survive and Others Die by Chip Heath & Dan Heath
“As a leader, make sure you are clear about your employee's duties and responsibilities.” – Liz Kislik
A few months ago, I read a highly relevant and specific article in HBR about managing underperformers. One of the best I've read in a long time. So, I had to find the author and invite her on the show to discuss it! Fortunately, Liz Kislik agreed, and we had a revealing conversation about a tricky scenario that many leaders have encountered.
Liz is a management consultant and executive coach who helps leaders move their companies and careers forward. She's written for HBR, Forbes, Entrepreneur and has also graced the stage as a TEDx speaker. She holds a BA from Yale and a MBA from NYU; I'm sure I could've spoken to her for hours about my fondness for New York City!
In today's episode you'll learn:
-What causes an underperformer and their manager to view things so differently
-How to spot a pattern of subpar performance with an objective lens
-How to address this type of scenario skillfully, for both the organization and employee
-And much more!
If you find this episode valuable, please subscribe and rate us on Apple Podcasts!
#management #leadership
Why It’s Important to Set Your Expectations
The leader is always responsible. Although your team certainly needs to be responsible for themselves, you are still responsible. So the first job is to make sure that they understand what their duties are. You should also let them know how they’re expected to perform, and what your standards are for their performance.
It’s on you to make sure that they actually understand what you’re expecting from them and how you evaluate them. Because it’s unfair to hold them responsible for not meeting your expectations if your expectations haven't been explicit and concrete.
How to Manage an Underperformer
But the nuance with somebody who thinks they’re fine is they don’t think they need to change anything. And the longer they repeat that mistake or undesirable behavior because no one calls them out for it, the more they think it must be okay. And that ends up doing all kinds of damage. Other people may start modelling their behavior after this person because they seem to be doing fine or they may go on to make new or even more dangerous mistakes. You have to catch these things when it’s still small.
Setting Expectations For Performance
Some people - whether it’s pride, lack of understanding, or actually having been damaged in prior work relationships - they have trouble letting you in and hearing what you’re really saying, or they get oppositional about it.
So whether it is their refusal to do what you ask or their inability to understand, at some point, if somebody isn’t delivering on performance, you have to go through whatever your company’s process is and consult with your HR, to figure out either how to change their job responsibilities so they’re not in a position to damage the rest of the group, or to actually say this person does not belong in this job because they’re not delivering. And then you do the corrective action or do whatever the steps are to move them out.
Links and Resources
Connect with Liz: LinkedIn, Website
Managing an Underperformer Who Thinks They’re Doing Great by Liz Kislik (article)
How to Retain and Engage Your B Players by Liz Kislik (article)
The Art of Possibility by Benjamin Zander and Rosamund Stone Zander (book)
“A mentor of mine pulled out his business card and wrote on the back of it: never forget when you were a sales representative.” – George Frangos
Anyone in the sales profession knows the challenges that both sales reps and managers have faced over the last 12 months. In this episode, we hear firsthand about the experience of a pharmaceutical sales leader and how their team has forged ahead amidst the storm of COVID-19. My guest today is George Frangos, Director of National Sales, HIV at Gilead Canada.
George has held progressive roles in sales, analytics, marketing, training and sales leadership over the last 16 years. And he was also part of the panel that hired me into my first head office role at GSK over 10 years ago!
In today's episode, we discuss:
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The biggest challenge faced over the last 12 months, and how teams can push through it
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How sales reps can successfully adapt during a crisis by focusing on themselves first
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The power of employee development, and how it brings value to an organization
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Smashing Pumpkins, Radiohead and much more!
If you find this episode valuable, please subscribe and rate us on Apple Podcasts!
How Sales Reps Can Stay Productive During Lockdown
Business continuity is critical whether we have a pandemic or not, especially with chronic conditions such as HIV, which is the space we work in. I challenged my team to come up with a plan to be productive even during the pandemic, and we called it the “Work From Home” plan. So we developed a week by week schedule which allowed us to work on our individual development plans, and also team development plans.
Leadership Struggles During the Pandemic
It’s tough to convince your team or to assure them that they have nothing to worry about. We’re all high performing individuals and we make sure that we deliver hard results for our organization. But it’s tough to have frank discussions when the pandemic is something that we haven’t experienced before.
Remember Your Humble Beginnings
Most sales leaders have been a sales representative at some point in their life and in whatever industry they are in. And it’s important to remember those days because you’ll be able to empathize with your teammates and understand exactly what they are going through. It will help you make decisions, create empathy, and to listen and understand their needs as individuals and as professionals.
Links and Resources
Connect with George: LinkedIn
Leaders Eat Last by Simon Sinek (book)
“Take care of the little things and the big things will take care of themselves. I've never forgotten those wise words a mentor once shared.” – Norma Beauchamp
I recently sat down with a wonderful and inspiring human being, one of those people who has seemingly overcome every hurdle life has thrown her way. And with a smile to boot! That person is today's guest - former president and CEO of Cystic Fibrosis Canada, Norma Beauchamp.
Norma currently serves on the boards of Extendicare, Dialogue, Aurora Cannabis, The Ontario Caregiver Organization, ALS Canada, and is a Council Member of the National Research Council of Canada. She also serves as a regional ambassador for Women Get On Board.
In today's episode, Norma shares her hard-earned wisdom and some wonderful lessons that many of us need to hear right now. From building an impressive corporate career and raising a family, to facing down cancer twice - and winning.
You'll learn how to:
-Avoid making problems worse by dealing with them faster
-Leverage a positive attitude when the chips are down
-Always stay in control by owning your response to challenges
-And much more!
If you find this episode valuable, please subscribe and rate us on Apple Podcasts!
Breadth Vs. Depth of Experience
This was during the Sanofi time: I moved every two to three years into different roles. I moved into Training and Development, and into Marketing, Business Development, to being the Director of Sales, and then running the Business Unit. And I think the message here is to be open to learning. Learn as much as you can. And even if they’re lateral moves, the thing is it gives you much more breadth and prepares you for much more opportunities as your career progresses.
On Being Adaptable, Especially in the Midst of COVID
Learning is key but being adaptable is more valuable. Look at what we’re living through right now with COVID-19. We have to be agile, we have to be adaptable; we need to pivot and we need to change. So many industries have pivoted this year and the speed of change has been incredible. So learning and growing brings a lot of value to any person who is developing their career forward and has high aspirations for themselves.
How to Deal With Roadblocks In Your Career
I have lived in a time when roads were blocked for me because of my gender, and I had to figure out how to navigate my path forward. And this is my advice for people who are currently facing roadblocks in their career path: you just have to be firm about knowing where you want to go and know that there are other ways to get there. Be creative in trying to go around that roadblock.
Links and Resources
Connect with Norma: LinkedIn
Hersey and Blanchard Situational Leadership Model
Situational Leadership by Dr. Paul Hershey (book)
The One Minute Manager by Kenneth Blanchard Ph.D. and Spencer Johnson M.D. (book)
Seven Habits of Highly Effective People by Stephen Covey (book)
Dare to Lead by Brené Brown (book)
“If you can, as much as you can, turn that camera on because your strategy is to connect.”– Gina London
My guest today is Emmy-award winning CNN correspondent, Gina London. She is an internationally recognized communications expert, and has consulted with such organizations as Deloitte, SAP, Heineken, and the US Dept of State.
Gina has lived and/or worked in more than a dozen countries, so her insights come from deep experience, along with a track record of 10+yrs in TV, radio, print, and digital.
In this episode you'll learn:
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Why strategy, structure, and delivery underpin all great presentations, and how to embed that in your everyday work
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How to avoid letting team members hide off camera (don't "facilitate their fade away!")
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The "AIM" methodology that ensures your virtual presence is like a media pro.
If you find this episode valuable, please subscribe and rate us on Apple Podcasts!
Strategy
Why are we doing virtual? We know it’s because of the pandemic, but what is our goal in a virtual setting, when we still want to connect with that human being on the other end?
If you are getting fatigued with the number of your Zoom meetings and your inclination is to turn that camera off, be in your sweats all day, I’m here to urge you to turn that camera back on. You don’t have to be dressed in a suit and tie, but wear something a little sharper because it’s going to help you focus better and engage better with others when you’re on camera.
If you can, as much as you can, turn that camera on because your strategy is to connect.
The AIM Strategy (Audience, Intent, Message)
Your Audience needs to come first because you care about them the most. What are their hopes, dreams, and fears? What are they thinking about? How can you make your message – whatever it is – even if it’s just a short “Let’s talk about this new project that we need to get off the ground, and we’re excited about it,” well, why would the audience be excited about it first? Lead with that.
I’ve had clients write their whole agenda for a meeting and I say, “OK, what is the team thinking of?”
Thrash your agenda, make the agenda from the point of view of the audience, lead with that and these small tweaks can make really powerful differences.
Intent is simply, “What do we want to accomplish with this meeting?” Too often they’re often too broad or not defined at all. Once you decide collectively, or on your own, what is that intent, make sure you articulate it (your Message). Don’t leave your audience guessing what they’re supposed to do with whatever it is you’re blathering about. You’ve got to have a clear, memorable, hopefully positively emotional message that will inspire people to action. And those are the fundamentals of strategy.
Structure Play with the structure. Everything that you deliver or that you message around, or if you’re going be talking about that project, it doesn’t have to be always chronological.
If there’s something interesting or visionary, lead with that. Get people excited, start with a cool story.
Links and Resources
Connect with Gina: LinkedIn | Twitter
https://languageofleadership.org/
We are kicking off a new season with special guest, David Burkus. David is an author, professor, and keynote speaker who has been ranked as one of the world's top business thought leaders by Thinkers50. Today I'm excited to share relevant and practical insights from his brand new book, Leading From Anywhere. You can purchase a copy here.
In this episode, you'll learn:
- why different personalities aren't the secret to great remote teams, and how to leverage culture to spur performance,
- 3 ways to create remote meetings that actually hit the mark (hint: being funny doesn't always translate),
- forward thinking hiring practices for the future,
- why cutting yourself some slack right now is important; leading remotely is a skill, and takes time to build
If you find this episode valuable, please subscribe and rate us on Apple Podcasts!
Important Elements of a Team Culture
What I think was interesting was the elements of culture that mattered. When we talk about culture and when we think about a place like Google, we actually think about what Edgar Schein would call “artifacts of culture.” We think about the things that we can see, the rituals, the free food, the crazy office layouts…and we think that’s culture.
It turns out, Project Aristotle not only showed that it wasn’t just culture, it was these specific elements of culture like whether or not people had a sense of impact and meaning in their job, whether or not they felt like they were a part of a team and that team was doing good, impactful work for the world, but especially for the company, whether or not there were clear expectations and whether or not people knew what to expect of each other on a team.
The biggest one, and this was a surprise for an organization like Google, the predominant element of a thriving team culture was a sense of psychological safety, whether or not people felt free to express themselves fully, bring their whole selves to work, speak up when they have an idea that goes against the grain but could be valuable, and whether or not that team had interactions that were marked by a sense of trust and a sense of respect.
Presence does not equal productivity.
I think a lot of those calls stem from a misconception in the mind of too many leaders that presence equals productivity. When you’re managing a remote team, you don’t get the ability to see what time they come to the office, how late do they stay, how long are their lunch breaks and all these little things that actually have nothing to do with outcomes, but we use as a proxy – it’s never been that good of a proxy, but it’s easier to measure so we do it. And then when you flip to remote work, you trade presence for responsiveness.
Google, Facebook, and other tech companies, right after Yahoo! started building these elaborate playgrounds of offices, the hidden agenda behind those was always to get people to get people [to come to the workplace] as much as possible on the assumption that they would not work more productively.
And yet, distributing companies, companies that are marked by trust and autonomy have been outperforming them precisely because they’re focused on outcomes and not necessarily activity and how much of it is being done on campus.
Virtual Meetings and How You Can Make Them Better 1. Host the meeting, but another person should handle the tech side of things. One, a lot of tech stuff is going to go wrong. When people are trying to figure out why they’re on mute when their computer is telling them they ‘re not on mute and all that stuff, you don’t need that to derail what you’re doing. Second reason is you can have that other person watch you, your demeanor, the way you’re interacting, what you say and how you say things so you’ll learn how to have more respectful communication that resonates with your team. 2. Allow for socialization before and after the meeting.
Links and Resources
Connect with David: LinkedIn | Twitter
https://davidburkus.com/
Leading from Anywhere: The Essential Guide to Leading Remote Teams by David Burkus
Books by Peter F. Drucker
Welcome to Management: How to Grow From Top Performer to Excellent Leader by Ryan Hawk
The First 90 Days: Proven Strategies for Getting Up to Speed Faster and Smarter, Updated and Expanded by Michael D. Watkins
The Opposable Mind: How Successful Leaders Win Through Integrative Thinking by Roger L. Martin
“Own your own attention. Own your own energy. Put some boundaries up.” – Catherine Harrison
In today's episode I speak with entrepreneur, recovering corporate leader, musician and author Catherine Harrison. Her first book, "Three Colors, 12 Notes" just launched, and we'll delve into what brought the book to life and how it can help you navigate a turbulent year.
Catherine's background as both a creative artist and corporate leader makes for an interesting conversation! She's a great example of someone who brings their whole self to work.
In this episode, we cover:
- How to own your attention in a distracted world vs. technology owning you
- Catherine's biggest leadership blunder and how you can learn from it
- The concept of human-centered leadership and what that really means in practice
- Her favorite books for new leaders, and a whole lot more!
If you find this episode valuable, please subscribe and rate us on Apple Podcasts!
Don’t let your ego drive the bus
One that comes to mind that I immediately consider a real gaffe on my part, one I’m still embarrassed about, was when I let my frustration get the better of me, and I let my ego drive the bus.
You lead different human beings with different personalities and tendencies and preferences and things that really irritate you.
I remember a specific instance when I was getting really tired of an individual who had a grandstanding personality. For whatever reason, it showed up in different ways that were irritating to me. I’m human; everybody’s human. I chose, on one occasion, to let my frustration get the better of me and put him in his place.
I felt awful afterwards. I still do. Even in my body right now, the reflection of that, makes me feel really uncomfortable. To me, I look back and I go, “Wow, what a young and stupid, ego-driven, unempathetic, non-human-centered leadership choice that was. Shame on you.”
Be a human-centric leader
I believe so vehemently that a good leader recognizes how important it is to uncover, discover and celebrate the different aspects of yourself, to bring your best self into the workplace where you’re investing your energy, and how are you investing the time to get to know yourself – your positives, negatives, ignored points, what you can really bring, where you should actually delegate.
When you get to know yourself better, and you start to reconnect to your humanness, you become a more human-centric leader. That enables you to pull out the potential of these people that you’re hiring.
A human-centric leader who gets things done In so many ways, we are living in a culture, even a global culture, of binary thinking – you either are this human-centered, touchy-feely leader or you’re a very strategic, results-oriented leader that gets things done. And I completely disagree with the binary nature of that.
I believe so passionately that a good leader has to be all of those things and more. You can, in fact, be very clear, firm, strategic, focused on results, give clear feedback, be a disciplinarian, be very results-oriented, and also be an empathetic, open-minded, curious leader who’s willing to be courageous enough to go, “My bad, poor decision” or “We’re really dropping the ball all over the place, help me understand how I am contributing to that.”
I think that leaders who embrace all of that stuff are the ones who not only get things done, but they get things done in a way that there isn’t a trail of bodies behind them.
Links and Resources
Connect with Catherine: LinkedIn
https://purplevoodoo.ca
Three Colors, Twelve Notes: The Alchemy of Curiosity, Creativity and Human-Centered Leadership by Catherine Harrison
Deep Work: Rules for Focused Success in a Distracted World by Cal Newport
Digital Minimalism: Choosing a Focused Life in a Noisy World by Cal Newport
The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People: Powerful Lessons in Personal Change by Stephen R. Covey
Dare to Lead: Brave Work. Tough Conversations. Whole Hearts. By Brené Brown
The 15 Commitments of Conscious Leadership: A New Paradigm for Sustainable Success by Jim Dethmer, Diana Chapman and Kaley Klemp
Catherine’s tip: Figure out when your best energy is. Turn off your devices.
“I had to step back and learn that my job is to help others shine. It was all about communication, motivation, vision, and lifting up others. I would say that was the first real key lesson in leadership that I had to learn the hard way.” – Dennis Geelen
Recently I sat down with Dennis Geelen to learn more about his new book, The Zero In Formula. Dennis is the founder of Zero In, a consulting company that works with small to medium sized businesses, to help them implement creative strategies to be more customer centric and innovative.
In this episode, we cover:
- The hardest management truth Dennis ever learned, and how you can leverage self-awareness to elevate your game
- Why innovation doesn't necessarily equate to technology, and how small changes can create big results
- How customer-centricity is often missed, and how to ensure you get it right
- The simple 3 step formula to drive customer-centric innovation throughout your organization
- and more!
Don't forget to subscribe and rate us on Apple Podcasts if you find this episode valuable!
A key lesson in leadership
The biggest lesson I think I had was, “OK, now that you’re in a leadership role, things need to change.” I didn’t realize that in the beginning. I kept wanting to be that go-to guy, keep being very involved in the operations, keep being very hands-on. And I quickly had to learn, now that I’m in a leadership position, it’s not about me anymore.
I had to step back and learn that my job is to help others shine. It was all about communication, motivation, vision, and lifting up others. I would say that was the first real key lesson in leadership that I had to learn the hard way.
Create a customer-centric foundation
There’s so much noise out there. You need to market yourself, you need to brand yourself, you need a good sales funnel, and there’s so much information coming at us.
Sure, some of those other things are good, but not if you don’t have a good foundation. Right?
You have great marketing and sales, but at the end of the day, if you’re not creating a good experience for those customers once they land with you, if there’s nothing different or innovative about you, they’re not going to stay.
Intentional innovation The key here for me is “intentional”. You are intentional about being customer-centric, and you are intentional about being innovative.
What does that look like on the innovation side?
I like to give different principles that I believe need to be followed in order to be an innovative company. One, you’ve got practices in place that are designed to create new ideas. Do you have practices in place? Do you have regular brainstorming meetings? Do you have ways of gathering ideas from your employees? That’s one way of being intentional.
Are those ideas coming from a diverse group of people? You want to have perspectives from all areas of your company – people from sales, operations, marketing, leadership, they all see it differently. Get those perspectives and make each of those people feel included, like their idea and their perspective matters just as much as the next person.
Links and Resources
Connect with Dennis: LinkedIn
http://zero-in.ca/
THE ZERO IN FORMULA: The Definitive Guide to Building a Disruptive and Sustainable Business through Customer-Centric Innovation by Dennis Geelen
The Five Dysfunctions of a Team by Patrick M. Lencioni
Never Split the Difference: Negotiating As If Your Life Depended On It by Chris Voss
Dennis’ Productivity Tip: Organize and prioritize your day
“Stop thinking that you have to be all powerful and mighty because you have the word “leader” in your title. Be relatable, champion their cause…just be a human. Be a human being – that is the best way in which to lead.” – Dan Pontefract
Recently I sat down with Dan Pontefract to learn more about his new book Lead, Care, Win. With the state of the world as it is, Dan's latest book couldn't have come at a better time. It's a playbook for leading in the 21st century, shattering old notions of management and highlighting examples of those who lead with heart - and how that translates to better relationships and results.
Dan is the founder and CEO of The Pontefract Group, a firm that aims to improve the state of leadership and organizational culture. He's the author of three books (Flat Army, The Purpose Effect, Open To Think), and is the former Chief Learning Officer at Telus. Dan also writes for both Forbes and HBR.
In this episode, you'll learn:
- How the rat race impairs your leadership ability and what to do about it
- Nine leadership lessons to improve your ability to lead both yourself and others
- What the 1993 Stanley Cup playoffs can teach us about ego and purpose
- What you can do right now, today, to start becoming a more caring leader
My only regret in this episode is that we didn't have time to discuss the genius of Eddie Van Halen!
Enjoy this episode and be sure to grab a copy of Lead, Care, Win! If you find this episode valuable, please subscribe and rate us on Apple Podcasts!
Be a Relatable Leader
I believe wholeheartedly that respect, empathy, being personable, i.e. human, admitting to your mistakes, apologizing when you’ve made a mistake, and even asking for help and feedback and not pretending you know everything are fundamentally the keys to being relatable.
If leaders would just do one of those six sub-behaviors, like saying sorry, they were an arse in a meeting, or they forgot to send the email, or they were promising an introduction to a client or a partner or a VP and they failed to do so…just say sorry. Relatability is admitting that you’re fallible, and that makes you human, and thus more humane.
When you’re relatable, it’s not just the whole “putting yourself in the shoes of others” – it’s not as simple as that. It’s about thinking, feeling, and then doing. And if you can sort that three-pronged approach to empathy out, you’re a relatable leader.
Seek out and share knowledge
I think there’s a bit of a pretense that leaders tend to have.
- When you’re the smartest person in the room, I argue you’re in the wrong room.
- When you believe that your stuff is far more worthy to be held by your own and not to be shared, you’re unworthy of the title “leader.”
- If you think that you shouldn’t be offering up your experiences and expertise to the team, to colleagues, to peers, being a mentor, sharing your knowledge, again, you’re unworthy of the title “leader.”
You have a responsibility to actually seek out knowledge and competence and intellect. You can’t be meek.
Marinate in the Moment When you think about your “stay present” quotient, you believe that things are happening so fast that there’s just no time to plan. You’re addicted to back-to-back-to-back-to-back-to-back meetings, you don’t know how to build in “me time” into your calendars so you that you can process the data, the information, the intel and the need to get stuff done.
But equally important as a leader, when you're not staying present, you’re not there for your people. Meaning, in a one-on-one meeting, how often does that leader get distracted because the phone buzzes and they think that that call is more important than that meeting they’re in?
My urging and yearning of leaders is to remember how important it is to be there, marinating in the moment, with either the team member or the team meeting itself, and that being “on” all the time is a ludicrous strategy.
Links and Resources
Connect with Dan: LinkedIn
https://www.danpontefract.com/
http://leadcarewin.com/
Lead. Care. Win.: How to Become a Leader Who Matters by Dan Pontefract
Flat Army: Creating a Connected and Engaged Organization by Dan Pontefract
The Purpose Effect: Building Meaning In Yourself, Your role, and Your Organization by Dan Pontefract
Open to Think: Slow Down, Think Creatively and Make Better Decisions by Dan Pontefract
“Looking back at it now, there’s a time and place to be aggressive, but it often makes sense to slow down a little bit.” – Doug Hart
Today my guest is Douglas Hart, Vice President International at Terminix and President, ServiceMaster Canada. I enjoyed Doug's straight-shooting approach and practical nature. No leadership platitudes here, just real-world advice from a leader in the trenches.
Doug and I go back many moons, having competed in various tennis tournaments as kids. Was great to hear about his career and catch up after 25+ years. The power of podcasting!
In this episode, you'll learn:
- How slowing down can help you accelerate your long-term performance as a new leader,
- Why changing your leadership style may not be the right move in a crisis,
- What approach worked effectively for Doug this year, and how you can leverage it,
- What surprised him most about 2020 so far...
- and a lot more!
If you find this episode valuable, please subscribe and rate us on Apple Podcasts!
Move towards the same vision
I went from being a marketer to hiring 14 people from different disciplines. It was my first experience in leading teams. I didn’t have a ton of experience in some of their functional areas, but I definitely discovered early on that you have to trust people in their ability to do their functional position, provided I’m guiding and coaching, but to get everybody aligned to the same objective and the same vision – I think that’s critical. That’s probably the first real lesson I learned in leadership.
Slow down a little bit
When you’re a young and ambitious leader and you’re highly motivated, you want results, one of the things you can do is sometimes not include people the way that you should.
I had opportunities to leverage more functional expertise and peple with more experience than me, and in fear of slowing me down in terms of trying to find consensus, I potentially at times did not seek that alignment and just went forward.
Looking back at it now, there’s a time and place to be aggressive, but it often makes sense to slow down a little bit. You’ll still get there, you’ll still be highly successful, but bring in all those resources and get alignment – you’ll be much better off for it in the long run.
A New Hybrid I’m of the feeling that I think there’s been learnings here that not everybody needs to go to the office every day, for full business hours. I think that’s not a necessity any longer. We are likely going to move to a hybrid solution where we will actually move to a smaller office footprint and figure out how that looks like. We will also give people flexibility to work from home.
I don’t think my leadership style has really changed, but I do enjoy and I do miss having at least some degree of working together in person. Some of these water cooler conversations, or just bantering around the office – those build relationships.
Post-pandemic, we’re going to have a new hybrid. It’s going to be somewhere in between the old and the new.
Links and Resources
Connect with Doug: LinkedIn
The Culture Map: Breaking Through the Invisible Boundaries of Global Business by Erin Meyer
Doug’s Productivity Tip: Keep your schedule structured and do some physical activity 3-4x per week.
“One of my taglines is human-focused business strategy because I truly believe that humans are the core of every business, and we have to remember that.” – Céline Williams
As a leader in 2020, you were hit with the pandemic gut punch in April. And depending upon where you are in the world right now, the second wave of Covid is already underway or expected.
In today's episode we talk with Culture Strategist and Executive Coach Céline Williams about leading through the rest of 2020. Celine is the founder of Revisionary, a consulting firm focused on leadership, culture, and strategy.
In this episode you'll learn:
- What has worked effectively this year when leading remotely
- What hasn't worked about remote leadership (and why)
- 4 simple ways leaders can re-adjust their approach for the second wave of Covid (and how to make those changes stick)
- Why productivity tools and apps aren't all they're cracked up to be...and more!
If you find this episode valuable, please subscribe and rate us on Apple Podcasts!
Talk about your (second wave) remote work plan NOW
There’s a lot of really temporary, band-aid solutions that are happening that are not sustainable, especially if we don’t know how long the second wave is and especially if you care about your people being happy and healthy and having a good employee experience, team experience, culture experience.
The first thing I would say is, everyone needs to be taking a look at how cobbled together their remote plan is. For a lot of companies, and for a lot of teams inside certain companies, this remote work plan is not a plan. It was a “We are all working from home starting Monday” – full stop.
That’s not a remote work plan. When you are actually implementing a remote work plan, it’s a 6-12 month plan to get everything lined up from technology to hardware, to ways of working, the new rules around meetings, to how we communicate. All of that stuff, in an ideal situation, is 6-12 months of planning. People had less than a week. It’s crazy!
I want to acknowledge that I recognize that everyone is doing their best inside these circumstances, and that is phenomenal, and people are doing as well as they can.
If you are leading a team that was thrown into remote work without that plan, and is still either fully, half, partly doing that, the more planning you can do for the second wave, the more you can start to have conversations around what people really need, what their experiences have been, what has or hasn’t worked for them.
The earlier you can start to have that [conversation], i.e., now, the more successful the second wave of remote work is going to look for your team and your company.
Be open to other people’s remote work experiences
I think the thing that as worked well consistently when people have done it is really not assuming that your experience is everyone’s experience, and asking questions and being very open to other people’s experiences.
I have seen lots of leaders who have made assumptions that because they are having a specific experience – their kids are older, or they don’t have kids, they have a home office that’s set up separately – they assume that “This working from home is easy! This is great! I don’t have to commute!”
That is not the experience of all of your people, and when we assume that, you are doing them a disservice because you are not acknowledging their experience and you are not creating a safe environment for them to share their experience.
Is that meeting really necessary? One of the things that has not worked well is, people have not changed the type or number or quality of their meetings and just moved them on to Zoom. That is a massive failure.
When we are working remotely, we have to change the type of meetings we’re having, we have to put a different structure around them. I know executives who literally spent 8 straight hours a day on Zoom meetings for the first part of this pandemic, because that’s just what their schedule had.
I think the starting point for all of it is evaluating the types of meetings that people are having – are these the best use of our time right now?
Links and Resources
Connect with Céline: LinkedIn
celine@revisionary.ca
http://revisionary.ca/
Death by Meeting: A Leadership Fable...About Solving the Most Painful Problem in Business by Patrick Lencioni
The 360 Degree Leader: Developing Your Influence from Anywhere in the Organization by John C. Maxwell
The 21 Irrefutable Laws of Leadership: Follow Them and People Will Follow You by John C. Maxwell
Productivity TIP: Find the type of music that, when you’re working, doesn’t draw your attention away from the work that you’re doing.
“Don’t take yourself too seriously. Have fun. If it ain’t fun, don’t do it.” – Dean MacDonald
My guest on The New Leader Podcast today is St. John's-based Dean MacDonald, a seasoned business executive, entrepreneur, investor and all-around great guy. He had me laughing pretty well the entire time – I wish I could've recorded a few more hours with him (keep an ear for his awesome 90s era Blue Jays tale). Dean has an incredible life story and I was taking copious notes between questions.
He was President of a cable company at 25, held several high-profile roles as COO (Rogers), CEO (Persona Communications, Clearstream Energy), and was chair of the BoD for NL Hydro. Did I mention he also owns the Newfoundland Growlers hockey club (2019 ECHL champs)? He knows a thing or two..
In this episode you'll learn:
- Why hiring is a critical skill for all business leaders, how much time you should spend on it, and how to get it right (hint: it's not about the interview guide)
- What mistakes young leaders typically make and how to avoid them
- Why culture is king and how to build it effectively
- How unusual and awkward stories can make you memorable, and more!
Special shout out to fellow Newfoundlander Ryan Hurley for making this episode happen ;)
Don’t forget to subscribe and rate us on Apple Podcasts!
Listen and Learn I think I matured as a manager by being a better listener – using my ears instead of my mouth. My early mistakes were ones of either thinking I knew it all, or thinking I needed to know it all because I was the boss – and that’s just a classic mistake.
Hiring the right people
I spent an inordinate amount of time on hiring and ended up with absolutely fantastic people who were a part of my leadership teams through the various companies – many of them I’ve worked in many different companies together. Also hiring the right people who were super smart.
At the end of the day, I’d like to say that in the companies I worked with, it didn’t matter where the best idea came from. We had an environment where an idea can come from anywhere and we can act on it, and everyone took pride in it.
Lots of debate, lots of discussion and lots of discourse, but that always led to a better answer.
What do you look for when you’re hiring a leader? This may sound odd, but I don’t tend to get too worked up about whether they went to Harvard or they went to a much lesser-known University, because a lot of that sometimes is based on privilege and other things.
If they’ve got the basics, they’ve done their education that’s helpful, I like to look at the non-standard stuff. Were they a team captain in sports? Were they a leader in their school choir, or cub scouts? All that stuff that tells you who that person is. What were their summer jobs? What’s their background?
I love getting people who play sports, because they’ve won, they’ve lost, they’ve learned how to deal with both. Team sports is a great builder of character, goal-setting, etc. So I tend to move a little more in that direction, because that’s something I know more and I’m comfortable with.
I also see it in people who have an interest in the arts. I love hiring people out of the Humanities, because they have a very interesting problem-solving ability than someone who’s very binary.
Links and Resources
Connect with Dean: Twitter
Good to Great: Why Some Companies Make the Leap and Others Don't by Jim Collins
“The single biggest problem with communication is the illusion that it has taken place.” – George Bernard Shaw
My guest on The New Leader Podcast today is Dr. JP Pawliw-Fry. He’s the co-founder of the Institute for Health and Human Potential and a New York Times best-selling author of Performing Under Pressure. JP is also the host of his own podcast called the Last 8% Morning where he talks about a routine which integrates movement, mindfulness and mental training to help you start your day and be at your best.
He is an advisor to the US Army and Navy, Fortune 500 companies such as IBM, Mercedes Benz, and Goldman Sachs, and performance coach to NFL, NBA teams, and Olympic medal-winning athletes.
In this episode you'll learn:
- What the Last 8% is and why we struggle with it,
- What we can do to get over that last 8%,
- The BBIIGG structure,
- The benefits of Movement, Mindfulness and Mental Training,
- How to perform better under pressure, and much more..
Don’t forget to subscribe and rate us on Apple Podcasts!
The Last 8% We’re pretty good at covering 75-80-85-90-92% of what we want to say, but when we get to the last 8%, that more difficult part of the conversation, we struggle.
Say, you and I are having a conversation. I’m giving you feedback, and when I get to the last 8% of the feedback, what’s interesting is that as I get to that last 8%, you start to get a sense of where it’s going. You realize that there’s consequences attached to what I’m going to say to you. Now you start to get a bit triggered and emotional, and now you infect me with your emotion.
Here’s the interesting part – I get infected with your emotion and without even realizing it, as opposed to approaching that last 8%, I avoid it.
This is what we found that’s consistent – it’s a pattern. I avoid that last 8% and we both leave that conversation and you think we had a conversation. I think we had a conversation, but of course I conveniently left out that last 8%.
A month later, I’m looking at you and I’m saying, “Ian, what’s going on? I thought we had a conversation? Why are you still doing that?” You’re looking at me, saying, “JP, I thought we were on track. Why are you being so passive-aggressive?”
The problem is we never had the last 8% of the conversation.
How to get over that last 8% It’s not just the last 8% of conversations that we struggle with; it’s also the last 8% decisions. We fall into what we call a predictable default behavior of either avoiding or making a mess.
What I want you to walk away with is, what’s the last 8% situation you’re struggling with? What’s your pattern? What’s your predictable default behavior? If you know that, then you can do something about it.
Movement, Mindfulness and Mental Training
Movement
We now know that there’s an internal pharmacy in our body. When we move, our quads spit out - more than any other muscle – myokines. When we exercise, myokines go into our bloodstream and can cross the blood-brain barrier. Now we know it has three specific effects:
- They move into our brain and they make us more stress-resilient.
- They help us enjoy pleasure more.
- We feel more trusting of others so we can collaborate more effectively.
Just by doing 15-20 minutes of moderate exercise, like going for a walk, will turn on these three effects.
To learn more about Mindfulness and Mental Training, listen to the podcast here or by clicking the play button above.
Links and Resources
Connect with JP: LinkedIn
Performing Under Pressure: The Science of Doing Your Best When It Matters Most by Hendrie Weisinger and J.P. Pawliw-Fry
http://ihhp.com/
The Last 8% Morning
The Last 8% Project Facebook Group
“You gotta go to grow.” – Amber Reimer
My guest on The New Leader Podcast today is Amber Reimer, a seasoned leader with a background in executive coaching, change leadership, and building workplace cultures. She is currently Director, Learning & Organizational Development at WestJet Airlines based in Calgary, Alberta. You can check out the episode in the comments section below, or wherever you listen to podcasts.
Amber holds an MSc in Organizational Development from Pepperdine University and has been a part of the WestJet family for over 10 years; she walks the talk. WestJet's world famous "culture of care" has paved the way for employees since the late 90s, and will be the foundation of their future - especially in an industry that's been turned upside down with COVID-19.
In this episode you'll learn:
- Why new managers need to meet people where they are; not where they think they should be
- Why humility matters - take your job seriously, not yourself!
- How to grow your career by finding a "truth teller"
- How to create a promising onboarding experience that employees will love
- The power of grittiness, and much more..
Don’t forget to subscribe and rate us on Apple Podcasts!
Meeting people where they are I assumed that everyone else had the same career desires as myself. That might have been one of my biggest learnings about how to meet people where they are at. As a leader, that’s one of the most important things we can do.
I look back on my relationship with my team and I projected all of my own stuff and ambitions on to them, and was frustrated that they didn’t want the same things as me or didn’t have the same level of efficiency.
Looking back, I lost out on activating what was possible in them, rather than just tying to drag them through what my own ambition was at the time.
I’m grateful that I learned that early and I’m grateful that some of those people are still my friends and we made it through.
As leaders, it’s important we don’t project our own story onto those folks, because what they offer a team is so valuable, and we can’t overlook it.
A Culture of Care If you’re looking for certainty, you probably signed up for the wrong job. As a leader, you are responsible to build the aircraft as you're flying it – to use our own metaphor – and you’re not going to have all the answers. The step by step roadmap isn’t just going to appear for you.
What you will always have is your values – what you stand for, the experiences that can inform the future. You apply that to the never-been-done-before, and that allows us to navigate unprecedented events.
Going back to our culture of care, we want to show up that way to our people, our guests, the marketplace, and staying authentic to that is going to be critical. It’s what made us successful in the past, and it’s what’s going to be critical to our culture.
Amber’s advice for New Leaders Get to know yourself. Know what matters to you. Understand your values – what motivates you? What are your vulnerabilities?
I think people who have that sense of clarity and purpose, they show up humbly, they show up of service to people, to their organizations, to the people around them, and that’s really quite instrumental.
The balance to that as well is find a truth-teller who also knows you – a handful of them – so they can affirm your strengths, your values, how you’re showing up.
They’re that reflection you could trust when they say, “You’re not really showing up how I’d known you to be” or “I know you’ve got more in you.” They can push you from the sidelines and they will be your true partners in your success.
Links and Resources
Connect with Amber: LinkedIn
Grit: The Power of Passion and Perseverance by Angela Duckworth
The Kanban Board
“The idea that ‘I know it all’ does not exist. Instead, I’m always hungry and thirsty for learning. I want to be a ‘learn-it-all.’”
Magdy Karam
My guest on The New Leader podcast today is Magdy Karam, a passionate leader who has been a part of the Microsoft family for over 20 years. He’s currently the Chief Learning Officer of Microsoft Canada based in Mississauga, Ontario.
I first met him at the Learning and Development Masterclass 2020 in Toronto, as were both speaking at the event back in March.
His talk was really interesting, especially for leaders looking to better understand the importance of a learning culture and why it matters - and how to start building one in their own organizations, which is exactly what we will talk about today.
In this episode you'll learn:
- Why you should not stay in one role for too long
- How to create a learning culture in your organization
- How a growth mindset connects to learning culture
- Four ways leaders can role model a growth mindset
- The challenges of creating culture change, and much more..
Don’t forget to subscribe and rate us on Apple Podcasts!
Moving from one role to another – with intention. Don’t stay in one role for too long. Take your time moving from one job to the other and make these moves intentional.
I’m not saying haphazardly move between the roles, but every time you land on a job, learn it well. And then start thinking,
“How can I move again?”
“Where to?”
“What is complementing my set of skills?”
And make that move intentional. Make your learning continuous and purposeful.
Creating a Learning Culture I’m trying to create this insatiable desire for learning. At Microsoft, we call it creating fans, and what I’m trying to create is Learning Fans.
If I can get to a point where people go, “I want to be doing that. I want to be learning continuously. I want to be as efficient, as valuable, as marketable” and they become a learning fan, then my job is done.
My vision is to get to a point where people love to learn, and this is something that becomes part of who they are. There’s no cajoling or trying or pushing or anything like that; people just want to do it for their own benefit. That’s the vision.
Your Role in Creating a Learning Culture/Growth Mindset
The leadership has a key role to play here. We expect them to role model a growth mindset in four ways.
In their daily behaviors, patterns and habits. For instance, leading from the front and be the first to consume their own training and talk about what they learned.
Things like in the systems and processes they put in place. For instance, their governance and review meetings should be much more focused on learning as opposed to inspection, that people will get used to that and have an understanding that it’s okay to come to a meeting and learn, as opposed to them fearing the meeting because of the “inspection.”
We also expect them to show it through the symbols, the things they highlight and focus on. For instance, what gets highlighted and rewarded? If you’re encouraging curiosity and giving rewards for people who have learned something, then again it sends a strong message around the learning culture.
Finally, we talk about storytelling. This is basically how you talk every day in your meetings, in your email, online. The language must change. The questions they ask must change.
Things like, “What have you learned?” or “If you can do it all over again, what would you change? How are you going to share this information with others?” These are the types of messages and questions and language that we expect our leaders to continually say again and again.
And they have to be consistent. Otherwise, people will get skeptical that this is just a fad and it will go away.
Links and Resources
Connect with Magdy: LinkedIn
Range: Why Generalists Triumph in a Specialized World by David Epstein
The Coaching Habit: Say Less, Ask More & Change the Way You Lead Forever by Michael Bungay Stanier
Start with Why: How Great Leaders Inspire Everyone to Take Action by Simon Sinek
The Sticky Note
“Work on yourself harder than you work on your job. All leadership development starts and ends with personal development; you cannot separate the two out, so find ways to grow and improve yourself.” – Alain Hunkins
Welcome back to the show, everyone! Thanks for being here.
My guest today is Alain Hunkins, TEDx Speaker and author of the new book, Cracking the Leadership Code. Over the last 20 years, Alain has trained tens of thousands of leaders across 25 countries, helping them shorten their leadership curve and accelerate growth. He also serves on the faculty of Duke Corporate Education.
Today’s topic is Old School Leaders in a New School World.
We also talk a bit about:
- How to build your focus and communication,
- The 3 secrets to building strong leaders,
- The 4 fundamental needs that need to be satisfied for people to perform at their best,
- Why the old school leader flounders in today’s current environment,
- What led us to that point today, and
- What they can do to remain relevant and effective.
Don’t forget to subscribe and rate us on Apple Podcasts!
Building your focus and communication Some of the things I learned early on through failure is that whether it’s kids or adults, people need really clear instructions on what to do. If people don’t have clarity, it’s a mess.
Give people an understanding of why we’re doing what we’re doing, and that ‘why’ needs to relate to something for them. What’s in it for them to listen?
You, as a leader, have an agenda, and so do the people you’re leading. If you want, you can take a piece of paper and put a line down the middle. On the left side, build your agenda. On the right side of that line, put down their agenda. “What’s in it for me to listen?” “Why should I be engaged?” “If I do well, what happens?” “If I don’t do well, what happens?”
And then as you’re building out your communication, just forget the left side. Just build it from the right side. Build it out of their agenda. Because the fact is, leaders, we need to frame our focus and our communication from the point of view of those who we want to lead.
Honest, Open, Candid Feedback If you know that you want to get better, the first thing I would do is reach out and ask for feedback from people around you. Honest, open, candid feedback.
“I want to get better. What do you suggest I do?”
You can use a formal 360 instrument, or you can just go over and have an honest conversation. If you make the introduction and open the door to people, you’d be surprised at what people would give you.
We say 23% of leaders lead well. If I had a room of 100 leaders, I doubt only 23 of them will raise their hand when I say, “Are you an effective leader?” We all like to think we are, but we’re blind to our own blindness. People feel safe when they’re doing these anonymous surveys about how are your leaders, but if there’s no repercussions, they’ll speak up.
The first secret to building strong leaders
The first place I would start is connection. The fact is, leadership isn’t really a job title or a position; leadership is a relationship between two human beings – the person who leads, and the person who chooses to follow.
Connection starts with listening – listening with empathy and purpose. Beyond anything that you have in terms of your intelligence or your technical functional skills, people want to know that you care about them. Leaders who listen with purpose and empathy outperform their colleagues by 40%.
Links and Resources
Connect with Alain: LinkedIn | Twitter
https://www.alainhunkins.com/
https://crackingtheleadershipcode.com
Cracking the Leadership Code: Three Secrets to Building Strong Leaders by Alain Hunkins
The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People: Powerful Lessons in Personal Change by Stephen R. Covey
Project Aristotle
Productivity Tools: Freedom App, Focusmate
Hi everyone! Welcome back to the show. Today’s topic is How Learning and Development is Adapting to the New World of Work.
My special guest today is Tom Edgar, Learning Visionary at Roche Pharmaceuticals. He’s someone whom I’ve known for many years as we crisscrossed paths in the pharmaceutical world.
In this episode, we also talk about:
- The future of work,
- Why learning needs to change,
- Shifting the accountability to the learner,
- Learning from your network,
- Diversity of thought, and a whole lot more.
Don’t forget to subscribe and rate us on Apple Podcasts!
Give people fish, or teach them to fish? Probably the biggest failure is when you’re under the crunch, it’s so much faster to give that advice as opposed to actually stopping and asking the right questions and allowing it to bring that out.
I can honestly say that there are times, even today, that you really have to stop yourself from falling into – I know you interviewed Michael Bungay Stanier not too long ago around that – “advice trap”.
But if you take that to the learning side of things – and I think this is probably where I have developed, it is really from that learning state – is it actually to, to use the old adage, give people fish or teach them to fish?
The quick way might be to just give them the fish, but in the long run you’re really not doing them any favors. So from the long-run perspective, it’s better to take the time to ask those questions and to really draw out and let those individuals learn because it’s going to benefit them more in the long run.
Becoming self-directed learners I think we need to see a shift in accountability to the learner. We talk about adult education and how it differs from educating kids, and I think we really need to take that to heart, not just as learning and development practitioners, but also as employees and as people who are going to have to become continuous, self-directed learners.
I think it was Wayne Gretzky who said, “Great hockey players go not where the puck is, but where it’s going,” and I think you really need to take accountability and say to yourself, “What is it that I want? What is it that I need from a knowledge perspective to be able to go to where the puck is going?”
The content – that’s another big piece of this. Again, you look at how fast information is changing around us. The old way of doing things, learning and development, curating content, is not going to be fast enough. We can’t create courses, we can’t create materials fast enough o be able to me the needs of learners, so learners have to be the ones to curate the content as well.
Diversity of thought
The old way is there’s a tried, true and tested way of doing things, so that was the hierarchical approach to business – this is just the way we do things. In old business, that makes a lot of sense.
In today’s world, things are moving so fast. In order to be agile, we need to be more open to different ideas. Your way of doing something might be a right way, but is it the best way? Is it the fastest way? Is it the most cost-effective way? Is there a way we could do it better? Because that’s going to give everybody a competitive advantage.
To be honest with you, that diversity of thought comes from a learning perspective. It really is, “Are you curious about doing things differently?” Learning is going to evolve from this idea of, “I’m going to go to a course and I’m going to learn something and I’m going to implement it in my job.”
Learning happens every single day on the job, and the companies that are going to succeed are the ones that can literally harness the power that comes out of learning every day and learning to do things better, faster. That comes through diversity of thought.
If I’m not open to Sally’s way of doing things because this is just the way we do it, I’m not going to innovate, I’m not going to get better and we’re not going to find ways to do things better.
Links and Resources
Connect with Tom: LinkedIn | Twitter
The Fifth Discipline: The Art & Practice of The Learning Organization by Peter M. Senge
Trello
Agile
Kanban Board
The Coaching Habit: Say Less, Ask More & Change the Way You Lead Forever by Michael Bungay Stanier
Reinventing Organizations: A Guide to Creating Organizations Inspired by the Next Stage in Human Consciousness by Frederic Laloux
If you just live a life of ease, then you fashion a mind that can only handle ease.
Hi everyone, welcome to the show! Today’s episode is all about Management with Ryan Hawk. Ryan’s a keynote speaker, author, advisor and host of the wildly popular podcast, The Learning Leader Show. He has millions of listeners in over 150 countries so he’s a great person to talk to today about your first endeavor into management.
He’s been a professional quarterback in the football world, a VP of sales at a multibillion-dollar company and currently heads Brixey & Meyer’s Leadership Advisory practice.
We also dive into:
- His experience in sales,
- Developing self-awareness,
- Leading yourself,
- Creating your personal board of advisors,
- How to build and lead your team,
- Developing self and spatial awareness, and a whole lot more.
Don’t forget to subscribe and rate us on Apple Podcasts!
Why Welcome to Management is a great book for new leaders The specific topic I wrote about in Welcome to Management is really personal to me because I vividly remember when I got promoted at a young age, from an individual sales professional to leading a team of 16 people, and how ill-prepared I was. I thought I was fully prepared because I had been a leader on the football field as a quarterback. I had some success, and I thought that would transition into the business world.
While some of those experiences and actions were helpful, for the most part not much transitioned into the business world and so I had so much to learn.
Unfortunately, I learned the hard way by making many mistakes over years before I became an average manager. So I thought there wasn’t really the manual or playbook out there to help somebody in my position when I was making that leap, so I wanted to solve that problem and write that book.
Have your own Personal Board of Advisors One of the keys when you become a person in a leadership role is you have to get very clear on creating your personal board of advisors. Who are those people that you’re going to surround yourself with, that you can go to when you have questions, problems, issues?
Who are those few people that you can go to to say, “Wow, I had no idea this was going to happen. This was really surprising. How would you handle this?”
You need to be intentional about creating that board of advisors – just a handful of people who are there for you, care about you and willing to be honest with you. That’s something that I would get set and get clear on right away as you’re working to get promoted or you’ve been promoted. You’re going to need those people, so get it set up properly from the beginning.
Find the right people for your team Be very intentional about first identifying what excellence looks like, what are the qualities you really want, what are the types of behaviors of people that you really want – getting really crystal-clear on that – then creating a system before identifying if the people you are interviewing possess those behaviors and qualities.
That’s something I was not very good at when I was a new manager. I just had a list of questions forwarded to me by another manager who had been in the job for a few years, that had been forwarded to them, and there was no real rhyme or reason for the questions we were asking in the interview. We didn’t even fully know what we were looking for. I would just ask questions and then use my gut instinct to make a call.
When you're talking about the building of your team and the people, they’re going to make or break you as a leader.
Links and Resources
Connect with Ryan: Twitter | LinkedIn
https://learningleader.com/
Welcome to Management: How to Grow From Top Performer to Excellent Leader by Ryan Hawk
Ryan’s Productivity Tools: Calendar, Google Suite, Google Keep, Kindle, Evernote
Hi everyone! Welcome back to today’s episode: How Leaders Can Uncover Their Blind Spots. We’ve all seen leaders who are fully aware of those blind spots, and we’ve seen leaders who are not aware of those blind spots and the impact that can have on their people and their organization.
My guest is Jason Treu. He’s an executive coach and best-selling author of Social Wealth, a how-to guide on building extraordinary business relationships. He’s been a TEDx Speaker, where he debuted his team-building game, Cards Against Mundanity, and he himself is the host of the Executive Breakthroughs Podcast where CEOs, entrepreneurs and experts share their breakthroughs and breakdowns.
In this episode, we also talk about:
- The importance of making time to build relationships,
- Psychological safety
- Asking for feedback
- Understanding the fundamental patterns sabotaging your success, and a whole lot more.
Don’t forget to subscribe and rate us on Apple Podcasts!
Make Time to Build Team and Client Relationships I had to get everyone to buy-in on the team by getting to know them. Just trying to show a great plan or getting some results wasn’t enough to motivate people. I really have to understand and learn a lot about them.
The same thing happened on the client side. I had to build a lot of relationships with people, and then I had to fundamentally understand their business from top to bottom, so I not only could give them marketing advice, but also business advice.
Patterns that sabotage your success In life, what happens is that you start learning as a kid and over time, you become an adult. Some of the things you learned as a child, no one tells you to stop learning over time. Your parents might tell you, “Don’t talk to strangers” when you were ten because they don’t want you to get into trouble and get abducted or something. But what they don’t tell you when you’re 18 and going off to college is you have to do that to meet people.
What ends up happening is a lot of the things that end up helping you or keeping you safe are now sabotaging your success.
One simple example is, let’s say there’s someone who’s a poor listener and they’re having problems. People around them are telling them they’re not good listeners, they don’t seem engaged, they don’t care about them. When I go back to their childhood, they’ve lived with very large families. They grew up with quite a few siblings and they had to yell over their siblings to get their parents’ attention.
I was working with someone and they wanted to go to a school function back when they were in fifth grade. I was like, “What did you do?” and they were like, “Well, I elbowed my sister and brother really hard, simultaneously…and they fell off their chairs. And then I yelled across the table at my Mom and Dad and told them I needed them to go to some school function. And they said, “Yes.”
Then I asked them, “Could you have gotten them to go any other way?” And they were like, “Probably not, because I wasn’t that loud or overbearing, so it was really hard to get their attention with everyone around, so I was really worried I couldn’t.”
They learned at that point that listening wasn’t helpful, and it would not have gotten them what they wanted. Well, they carried that trait through their entire career, and now it’s killing their success and the people around them are frustrated and won’t talk to them.
Look Inward to Find Your Blind Spots Change and great things start inside of you, not out. I always say that that’s the place you ultimately have to start from to learn, and that helps you learn about other people. If you don’t, these blind spots will end up crushing you because you’ll unable to see them but everyone around you will.
Links and Resources
Connect with Jason: LinkedIn
https://jasontreu.com
Social Wealth: How to Build Extraordinary Relationships By Transforming the Way We Live, Love, Lead and Network by Jason Treu
Cards Against Mundanity
Insight: The Surprising Truth About How Others See Us, How We See Ourselves, and Why the Answers Matter More Than We Think by Tasha Eurich
Project Aristotle
The Fearless Organization: Creating Psychological Safety in the Workplace for Learning, Innovation, and Growth by Amy Edmondson
The Happiness Advantage: The Seven Principles of Positive Psychology That Fuel Success and Performance at Work by Shawn Achor
The Making of a Manager: What to Do When Everyone Looks to You by Julie Zhuo
Progress, not perfection.
Welcome back, everybody! I hope you’re having a fantastic day, wherever you are right now. Today’s episode is all about you and your health – Gaining an Edge: Physical Fitness for Leaders. Anybody who’s been in a leadership role will know it’s a critical element to your success. You’re navigating a lot of uncertainty, a lot of the stresses that come with that – the overwhelm, the people, etc.
Carolynne Simons is the Director at Stay Fit Plans, Inc., a triathlete, and an ambassador for Multisport Canada. She is extremely passionate about health and performance – she lives and breathes it, which is why she’s sharing her expertise with us today.
In this episode, we dive into:
- The physical and mental aspects of health,
- Strategies on how to find what works for you and your schedule,
- The benefits of using tools, devices and/or software
- Where and how to start, and a lot more.
Don’t forget to subscribe and rate us on Apple Podcasts!
The Benefits of Physical Fitness for Leaders At Novo Nordisk, we’re seeing physical education becoming a part of the culture. I get to be part of facilitating the journey of personal development.
Where we can see some success there is when leaders finish up a workout, they just start nailing problem-solving, personal conflicts, strategy meetings, go better, generating ideas, and being flexible on outcomes.
Find what works for you Because the industry is really shifting the way we exercise, using something to help you automate behavior is really great. Exercise is a 365-day thing – it’s hard work, it’s persistence, it’s pain, failure, rejection, late nights. It’s everything, depending on the level you take it to.
“I need to be habit-forming now and get in my exercise for 20-30 mins, 3x/week, I’m going to start using something that’s going to be able to give me that cue.” I find that really important. It has to be something that you like, and you also have to decide if you want this broadcasted or not.
Getting it in during the workday is really important, I believe, if you have the flexibility to do that. But again, exercise, when it comes to the execution, is also knowing how to pull on your systems.
Whether you know how to weight-train, go for a run, go to the gym and jump in the pool, I’m really and firmly rooted in being able to teach a variety of things so that person can pull on that system to make it work for their lifestyle. If you have that variety in your systems, and you know you’re heading into an 8 o’clock work meeting, it’s going to be a busy day – pull that 20-minute yoga practice right in there and get that to be the kickstart of your day.
The importance of tools Looking at the metrics, I find showing it over time is critical, but I really am keen and enthusiastic when we actually show where the individual client’s stress in the workout is comparably different when they started, especially if they’re having difficulty understanding if they’re making any progress.
The software also sparks a little bit of intellect in the client, and it allows them to understand, “Wow, I’m taking this away from all my training? And now, I actually know exactly why my workout is paced like this in two days, why she’s got me recovering in a day or two, and where we need to be hitting more breakthrough workouts.”
The tools that we use are very much a collaborative approach, but I’m extremely keen on making sure that the client knows exactly where we’re going.
Links and Resources
Connect with Carolynne: LinkedIn
https://stayfitplans.com/
The Tipping Point: How Little Things Can Make a Big Difference by Malcolm Gladwell
Tribe of Mentors: Short Life Advice from the Best in the World by Tim Ferriss
The number one reason people leave their managers is they say they’re not listened to. They’re ignored. – Oscar Trimboli
Hey everyone! Welcome back to the show. Today’s topic is all about Deep Listening: Is Poor Listening Costing You? This topic comes up in virtually every episode I’ve ever done, and yet it’s difficult to get a clear answer on how to do it effectively.
So my guest today will tell us exactly that and more. Oscar Trimboli is an executive coach and author of two books – Breakthroughs and Deep Listening. He’s a mentor and speaker to companies and leaders such as Google, Cisco, Microsoft, PayPal and others. He’s based in beautiful Sydney, Australia.
In this episode, we also dive into:
- Growing up in a multicultural environment,
- Listening beyond words,
- How to develop your leadership muscle faster,
- The various (and tragic) consequences of not listening,
- How listening well can help you in your leadership career,
- Giving attention and removing distractions, and a lot more.
Don’t forget to subscribe and rate us on Apple Podcasts!
Lead Your Team, Not Just the Individuals. For a first time leader, they should always lead a team that they’ve never been a part of. You will develop your leadership muscle much faster.
The mistake I made and what I wasn’t set up for success is, despite the fact that I was promoted, I still wanted everybody to like me. I still wanted everybody to be my friend. I still treated everybody like a peer.
The relationship changes when you’re leading a team. One of the things I did really badly as a first-time leader is I didn’t lead the team; I led individuals. I never got the full power of the team working together and learning from each other, because I thought my role as a leader was to make each individual better, which is true, but that’s not your only job.
Know that you’re leading a system and you need to lead a team and you need to make sure that everybody knows and plays their position. You might need to change both the positions and the players on the team and you need to be OK with that.
But because I was too busy wanting to be liked, I didn’t make tough calls. I didn’t have the hard conversations; I didn’t have the courage to ask the group to do more than they had done in the past. I didn’t have the courage to look at what worked in the past may not be what’s going to work in the future.
Learn how to listen well Not listening can cost lives, but for most of us every day at work, listening is not going to cost lives. Listening is going to create confusion. Listening, or the lack of it, is going to create conflict and chaos in the workplace, and later, unprofitable work.
It’s going to lead to lost customers. It’s going to lead to regulators inspecting the business. It’s going to lead to media writing adverse stories about you.
We spent the 20th century learning how to speak with influence, power and conviction. The leadership pack of the 21st century, and the leadership pack that would differentiate you, is the ability to listen.
Developing this muscle will give you a career differentiator. In a world that increasingly is dealing with more complex work, that requires more and more listening and a little less speaking.
Give attention If you want to double your listening productivity straight away, switch off your cellphone. Switch off your laptop. Switch off any iPad tablet, any device that buzzes or beeps.
If you really want to listen, the most potent thing you can do is to give somebody your attention.
Links and Resources
Connect with Oscar: LinkedIn
https://www.oscartrimboli.com/
Deep Listening: Impact Beyond Words by Oscar Trimboli
Breakthroughs: How to confront assumptions by Oscar Trimboli
http://listeningmyths.com/
Truth is the chiropractor of the mind.
Hey everyone! Welcome back to the show. Today’s topic is a really important one that either impacts you listening directly or indirectly, and those around you – Mental Health. In particular, redefining anxiety and what it means to be shy.
Mark Metry knows about that firsthand. He’s a TEDx speaker and host of the wildly popular Humans 2.0 podcast, a global top 100 podcast. He’s been featured in Forbes, Inc, HuffPost, Amazon Prime, and he’s been a guest on over 100 radio and podcast shows.
In this episode, we take a deep dive into:
- Shyness, Introversion and Social Anxiety,
- Success culture,
- Building your mental health on a biological foundation,
- Cognitive bias, and a whole lot more.
Don’t forget to subscribe and rate us on Apple Podcasts!
Shy vs Introverted vs Socially Anxious All my life, whether it was a teacher or my parents, they would just say, “Mark is just a shy kid. He’s just a quiet kid.” I can’t tell you how many times I hear this when I go to a school or speak at a university. People are so used to the same language.
Some people are just introverted; some people are just quiet. However, for the portion that actually have pretty severe social anxiety and they have so many boundaries on their life that they can’t just live it due to neurological, mental health issues – those people are being heavily disserviced by these labels.
How do you know that the kid who’s sitting alone at lunch, or sitting alone at the library, is doing that because he’s an introvert and he chooses so? Maybe they just have social anxiety and they don’t know how to make friends.
Cognitive Bias The brain is such a complex meta organ that has been created and evolved through thousands of years through learning shortcuts and various biases to help us survive.
Our brain has this mechanism called cognitive biases. If you look at science, they say that there are anywhere from 60 to over 300 cognitive biases.
Of course, these shortcuts are good because they help us process information faster and make judgments much quicker and take action. From a survival standpoint, it’s great.
However, a lot of these cognitive biases can be wrong. A lot of them can almost certainly create illusions in our mind and the way that we think.
Dealing with cognitive bias One of our cognitive biases has to do with perceiving other people. In terms of this comparison culture of seeing someone at the foot of a Ferrari or something and me comparing myself and being like, “Wow, I don’t have a Ferrari. Maybe that guy is my same age. What’s wrong with me. I suck.”
People with social anxiety and those who have a low sense of self-esteem do that same thing all the time.
I remember sitting in the classroom, and seeing the kid next to me who had brand new Air Jordans, designer jeans, an American Eagle sweatshirt. I would think to myself, “Wow, this person sitting next to me has everything that they want. They’re successful; they look better, they seem cool and have everything figured out.”
And that kid, the one with the Air Jordans, he could be looking at me and thinking, “Man, Mark is so smart. He gets better grades than me. He’s able to focus more than me. He has a lot of time to work on different things.”
We can compare ourselves, but the person we’re comparing ourselves to, for all you know, they could be comparing themselves to you in a different way, or a different angle, whatever they perceive as success.
You know the totality of your problems, but you don’t really see the problems of other people. You can really get caught up in this trick that our brain is trying to play with each other when you compare yourselves online, and even in person.
Links and Resources
Connect with Mark: LinkedIn | Twitter
https://www.markmetry.com/
Humans 2.0 Podcast
Screw Being Shy by Mark Metry
The End of Mental Illness by Dr. Daniel G. Amen
Can’t Hurt Me by David Goggins
Game Changers: What Leaders, Innovators, and Mavericks Do to Win at Life by Dave Asprey
Don’t play small. Give yourself permission to play bigger. You can do it. Recognize what your zone of genius is; figure out what you don’t know; find someone who has done it well before you and go learn from them. – Denise Liebetrau
Hey everyone! If you are looking to be inspired or want to rekindle your passion for your work, then you’re in for a treat today.
My guest is Denise Liebetrau, the Founder and CEO of Prosper Consulting, an HR & Compensation Consulting Firm based in Denver, Colorado. Today our topic is How to Effectively Link Rewards to Performance Indicators. I know many of you who are listening have probably seen this done incorrectly in the corporate world. I certainly have, so I’m really excited to talk to someone who knows how to do that effectively and the right way.
In this episode, we dive into:
- Defining your priorities,
- Being intentional in building relationships,
- Consistency in giving out rewards,
- The importance of considering ‘how’ things get done, instead of just focusing on the ‘what’,
- Building habits,
- Knowing your worth, and a whole lot more.
Denise shared a lot of golden nuggets in this episode, so click that play button to listen! Don’t forget to subscribe and rate us on Apple Podcasts!
Defining your priorities I have worked in many corporate environments where you have so much workload and so many things on your plate. If you don’t prioritize that tremendous list into the top two to three things you need to focus on in the next month, 6 months and year, you can get so scattered that you don’t really make big progress on anything.
So be really clear about what those top two or three things are, and then the rest, you can park them. You can’t do everything.
Be Consistent One of the things that I’ve seen happen over and over again is having too many metrics, and then the people’s focus become diluted and they go, “What’s important, then? Everything seems important, so what am I supposed to work on?”
Or they will say one thing, “We’re going to reward this” but in reality they actually reward other things.
It takes discipline from a senior leadership to stay consistent, so you need to think about what you’re going to reward and how you’re going to embed that in the DNA and culture of the company.
Consider how goals are accomplished When I look at performance, I look at it in four categories. There’s the financial metrics, customer metrics, process or operations, and learning and growth. But it’s not just about what you accomplish in those categories, it’s how you accomplish them.
So many times I see people tie rewards to what’s being accomplished, but they don’t talk about how it’s being done. You can have a strong salesperson who’s bringing in some large customers, but they’re leaving a bloodbath in their wake in terms of how they’re treating their colleagues. They run over people in their effort to close a sale or get resources in order for them to have a little bit of an edge so they can get ahead.
So you have to be very conscientious as leaders to make sure you’re not just rewarding what is being done, but how it’s being done.
Links and Resources
Connect with Denise: LinkedIn
https://prosperconsultingllc.com/
Atomic Habits: An Easy & Proven Way to Build Good Habits & Break Bad Ones by James Clear
Deep Work: Rules for Focused Success in a Distracted World by Cal Newport
A complete list of Denise’ book recommendations
Coaching
Often we hesitate around difficult conversations, not because we’re scared of the scary conversations; we’re just not clear on what we want. – Michael Bungay Stanier
Hey everyone! Welcome to the show. The topic we’re going to dig into right now is Why Coaching is the #1 Leadership Skill Today. I have a special guest with me, who, in my opinion, is the best person on the planet right now to talk about this particular topic – Michael Bungay Stanier.
Michael is the founder of Box of Crayons, a learning and development company focused on coaching. He’s the author of The Coaching Habit – my personal favorite business book – and he has another one coming out on February 29th called The Advice Trap. I’ve already preordered my copy – make sure you preorder yours too (link at the bottom of the show notes).
In this episode, we dive into:
- What it takes to be a good manager,
- 5 Reasons why people resist being more coach-like,
- Michael’s definition of coaching,
- How coaching drives impact and engagement,
- Coaching conversations, and a whole lot more.
Click that play button to listen! Don’t forget to subscribe and rate us on Apple Podcasts!
What is coaching? This is my definition. It’s a behavior, and the behavior is this: can you stay curious a little bit longer? Can you rush to action and advice-giving a little bit more slowly?
It’s simple, but it’s difficult.
Impact, Engagement and Coaching. In essence, the two key drivers in an organization are impact, which is productivity, and meaning, which is engagement. Coaching is one of the key skills – I know it is, because research tells us – to drive both impact and engagement.
What do you want? That is a great question to crack open a conversation, just to accelerate it into a “Let’s get down to brass tax here”. It’s an easy question to ask and hard to answer, because people often don’t know what they want, but it’s really powerful to hold them in that space. Because once you know what you want, it grounds you. When you’re grounded – that’s the basis for action and movement.
Another thing I really love about that question is to ask it of yourself, particularly when you’re feeling annoyed, discombobulated, knocked off balance, when things have been hard for you and you’re struggling with a particular relationship. Just go, “What do I want?”
Often we hesitate around difficult conversations, not because we’re scared of the scary conversations; we’re just not clear on what we want.
Michael’s advice for new leaders Be skeptical about advice, because often, they don’t know what they’re talking about. They’re projecting all sorts of things. It’s the same as feedback. Feedback often tells you more about the person giving you the feedback than it is actually useful for you at that moment.
Links and Resources
Connect with Michael: LinkedIn
https://www.mbs.works/
Box of Crayons
The Advice Trap: Be Humble, Stay Curious & Change the Way You Lead Forever by Michael Bungay Stanier (will be released on February 29, 2020)
The Coaching Habit: Say Less, Ask More & Change the Way You Lead Forever by Michael Bungay Stanier
Tiny Habits: The Small Changes That Change Everything by BJ Fogg Ph.D
Playing to Win: How Strategy Really Works by A.G. Lafley and Roger L. Martin
Give and Take: Why Helping Others Drives Our Success by Adam Grant
Do More Great Work: Stop the Busywork. Start the Work That Matters by Michael Bungay Stanier
Bullet Journal
#MyBestQuestion on LinkedIn
Surround yourself with super competent, smart women.
Be yourself, because everyone else is taken. – Chris Tabish
Hey everyone! Welcome to the very first episode of 2020. Today’s guest is Chris Tabish and we talk abut how comedy can help you become more effective in business.
Chris is the co-founder of Venture West Consulting and is the author of Comediology. He is a passionate, transformational growth leader with over 20 years of experience successfully leading and delivering all aspects of complex implementations at the Fortune 500 Level including strategy, program management, technology, change leadership and process improvement.
In this episode, we also discuss:
- Key takeaways from his book, Comediology,
- Finding your voice,
- How finding your why can make you more effective in business,
- Practical tips on how to speak in front of an audience,
- Having a Creative 401k
- Staying in the present, and more.
Click that play button to listen! Don’t forget to subscribe and rate us on Apple Podcasts!
Your Voice is Important
I was so caught into being a “stormtrooper”, just following the pack, that I didn’t realize that I needed my own voice to succeed in business.
But being in comedy, you have to have an opinion. That’s what you do. Whatever it is, you have to have an opinion. That’s the starting point for comedy.
So getting in touch and finding your voice is absolutely critical. You can’t get up there and say, “Well, what Jerry, the guy before me, said…”. You have to bring it yourself.
Find that in comedy and then translate that into business.
Bringing that voice is paramount. You see the people that are successful in business, that’s what they have. They have something of themselves that they’re putting out there.
Overcoming stage fright
It’s weird – being on podcasts or being written up in certain publications. It is a weird, bizarre experience. It feels very vain and unnatural. Even at work, when I'm giving a message or giving a meeting – until I think about the value that it’s providing to other people, then all of a sudden, it’s not about me.
I want to help people have joy and laughter and fulfillment in what they’re doing. It’s the same thing on stage: I want people to laugh; I want people to enjoy themselves. Same thing at work: I want this business to improve.
It’s not about me. Once I can get past that, then it’s magic. Then it’s like, “What can I do to help?”
Stay in the present
When you’re on-stage, likewise in business, you can’t really be thinking about the last joke that didn’t go so well. Or maybe it did go well, but you can’t be thinking about that. You can’t be thinking about your next joke; you have to be right there with the audience.
The same thing in business, when we get caught up, we’re thinking about other things, but you can’t correct anything outside of the present moment. You can’t enhance anything outside of the present moment.
Links and Resources
Connect with Chris: LinkedIn
https://comediology.com/
Comediology by Chris S. Tabish
The Power of Now by Eckhart Tolle
Welcome to the show, everybody! Today we talk about how to supercharge your management skills with the co-founder of Fellow.app, Aydin Mirzaee. Aydin is a tech-loving entrepreneur with a passion for building great products, leadership and people.
We also discuss:
- How Fellow.app started out,
- Learning how to trust and delegate tasks,
- What makes a great manager,
- What Fellow.app can do for managers,
- How managers can help a team produce 10x more without their involvement, and more.
Click that play button to listen! Don’t forget to subscribe and rate us on Apple Podcasts!
A great leader trusts and delegates
My perception of what a home run is in leadership changed over the course of time. When I was a lot younger, it was very results-focused. If the results are produced, who cares how the results were achieved? And if it meant that I was doing a lot of heavy lifting and didn’t trust other people to do their parts – no matter how it got done, if the result was achieved, that’s all that matters. That was my view, which was obviously very wrong and short-sighted.
My view on what a home run is today is much more people-centric.
Over the course of time, I clued in that I’m actually not really great at everything, and that other people can be a lot better than I am at most things. So it obviously makes sense to make sure that your team can pick up tasks and responsibilities. It will take them some time, but your job as a manager is to be there to give them feedback, so that they can improve very quickly, and eventually they will be better than you.
Now, for me, a home run is when I'm not even involved in any team or project.
What makes Follow.app such a great tool
One of the things that a lot of people tend to ask us is, “Hey, you have this thing called Fellow and you’re basically building it for managers. What management philosophy do you subscribe to? What makes a good manager? Are you following some McKinsey methodology, or is this based on some HBR study?”
That’s an important thing when people ask that question because they’re like, “Well, if we’re going to get people within our org to start using this thing, we probably should agree with what methodology you're proposing.”
The thing is, Fellow is none of that. Fellow approaches all this stuff from a completely different approach. Our view on this was we wanted to build this tool that was super lightweight and all it did was it gave people the ability to do all the workflows that we think are best practices that most people should do. It just makes it super easy for everybody to do it, and do it most of the time.
What makes a great manager?
At a very basic level, we believe that managers should have one-on-ones and that they should be done regulary. We believe that they should get feedback, and often, on work that’s being done, and in a timely manner.
We believe that they should recognize employees and that should be done throughout the year so you can basically track these things over the course of time.
We think that they should run effective meetings. We think that they should help prioritize the work that their team is working on and help set goals and help set a vision and communicate. We think that they should be responsible; not only hold themselves accountable, but also hold their team accountable for things that are agreed upon in group settings.
The things we’re talking about are not some methodology or anything like that. These are all things that we think all managers should do.
Links and Resources
Connect with Aydin: LinkedIn | Twitter
https://www.fellow.app/
The Making of a Manager: What to Do When Everyone Looks to You by Julie Zhuo
200 Questions for 1on1
The Art of the 1on1 Meeting eBook
Our lessons from the "Making of a Manager"
Listening and hearing and providing feedback is the most critical to building coalescence or agreement in a group. – Ken Tencer
Welcome to show! Today we talk about Intrapreneurship – the power of next generation leaders with Ken Tencer, CEO of Spyder Works. Ken is a thought leader on entrepreneurship and innovation, and is currently the Intrapreneur in Residence for the Business Families Foundation.
He is the co-author of two books on innovation, The 90% Rule and the bestseller Cause a Disturbance, both avidly read by business leaders in the U.S., Canada and Europe. He is currently working on his highly anticipated third book, Never be Satisfied, focused on leveraging intrapreneurship to drive growth.
We also discuss:
- How to bring different people together,
- Embracing change to adapt to new environments,
- Real-time collaboration,
- Intrapreneurship,
- How companies benefit from intrapreneurship,
- The Intraprise™ Program, and more.
Click that play button to listen! Don’t forget to subscribe and rate us on Apple Podcasts!
The Secret to Bringing Different People Together
Prior to group meetings, I had quick chats with the individuals to understand what their motivations were, why they were thinking the way they were, what they thought possible outcomes could be, so that I had time to think about potential out comes and ways to lead or guide the group through meetings and the operationalization of our strategies.
Listening and hearing and providing feedback is the most critical to building coalescence or agreement in a group. I found that listening to people and saying, “Here’s why we did A, B and C – I heard what you said, but here’s what the group wanted and here’s how we incorporated things.”
We have a group on a board of 14 people, not everyone is going to agree with everything that you do and management won’t always agree with the direction you’re providing. The number one thing is for everyone to understand and communicate and talk about it, not just dictate.
Just open your mouth, have a conversation, hear people out. That, to me, has always been the key.
Ken’s biggest challenge
The biggest challenge has been myself.
For me, entrepreneurs are what I call “Island Leaders”. We sit on our own little island, make our decisions and we don’t often articulate why we make those decisions and sometimes we change our minds pretty quickly.
My biggest learning was how do I get off the island, how do I get out of my shell, how do I learn to bring other people in, respect what they’re saying and their abilities. It was really an eye-opener for me, that I had to learn and change and become a new person for the second half of my career.
Intrapreneurship
An intrapreneur is someone who works for an organization they do not own, but they are empowered to come up with ideas and commercialize them.
The really cool thing about intrapreneurship is it’s the most empathic part of the innovation toolkit. Intrapreneurship is about reaching into your greatest resource – the people working in your organization – and asking them if they have any ideas that they think can be brought to market to generate revenue, bring costs down, etc.
Links and Resources
Connect with Ken: LinkedIn
https://spyder.works/
info@spyder.works | T 877.281.7896 (Toronto)
The 90% Rule: What's Your Next Big Opportunity? by Ken Tencer and John Paulo Cardoso
Cause a Disturbance: If You Can Slice a Melon or Make a Right-Hand Turn, You Can Be a Breakthrough Innovator by Ken Tencer and John Paulo Cardoso
The Alliance: Managing Talent in the Networked Age by Reid Hoffman, Ben Casnocha and Chris Yeh
Intraprise™ - A Spyder Works Program
Whiteboards
A lot of people say, “I’m comfortable with investing in people and paying them market rates and all this kind of crap” – I think that’s bullshit. A lot of people tell themselves that, but in practice they don’t, and they really don’t do it unless they have funding. – Ross Andrew Paquette
Hi everyone! Today we talk about making tough calls to grow your business with Ross Andrew Paquette. Ross is the Founder, Chairman and CEO of Maropost. The company was founded in 2011 and has grown to become a fully unified customer engagement platform designed to provide a single solution for all areas of business—across marketing, commerce, service, and more.
We also discuss:
- How he grew his company without raising funding,
- Going against the status quo,
- Creating a framework around your growth,
- Investing in the right people early on, and more.
Click that play button to listen! Don’t forget to subscribe and rate us on Apple Podcasts!
Going Against the Status Quo
In the early stages of the company, I did a lot of things on my own, which I’m always very happy that I did. Being a company that didn’t take any funding, we didn’t have the ability to hire a VP of Sales, VP of HR – every VP-of-everything wasn’t an option.
By having to get involved in all those areas, I gained an understanding of not only what it takes to build and grow a business but an appreciation for what’s required to accomplish those roles, and an understanding of how things operate.
I don’t have a finance or marketing background, but I very much understand those roles. I had to go out and generate leads as a marketer; I had to go manage our customer billing from a finance perspective. I had to do a lot of those tasks at a time when we were actually quite large – we had six people in the organization doing about 7 or 8 million in revenue.
I believe a big part of us being able to get there was taking the time to really learn all those areas, as opposed to saying, “We’ll just go hire somebody for that and I’m just the overseer of everything that’s happening today.”
Pay what you can afford, or pay for quality?
I don’t think I really appreciated the fact that if I invested maybe $10,000, $20,000, $30,000 a year or more, I would get a significant increase in the quality of the individual. It was more like, “This person just needs to do this job, what’s the least amount of money I can pay to get that job done?”
But then I never considered, “I paid that person $60,000, but if I paid $90,000, I wouldn’t have to deal with issues 1-10.” I’m paying on one side or the other.
A lot of people say, “I’m comfortable with investing in people and paying them market rates and all this kind of crap” – I think that’s bullshit. A lot of people tell themselves that, but in practice they don’t, and they really don’t do it unless they have funding.
Being Held Hostage
Where I see a lot of organizations get into trouble is they make these decisions – pandering or as I would call it, “being held hostage”, which is a more dramatic version of that. They bring in people under a certain pretense, and I think most organizations are very transparent about that.
This is what you’re going to get for benefits, this is our office, these are the perks, the package – all of those things are quite clear. But then people come in and it’s like, “OK, well why don’t we have bean bag chairs? Why don’t we have Starbucks coffee? Why don’t we have these office upgrades? Why don’t we have standing desks? Why don’t I have a wide-screen monitor?”
The list goes on. And I feel like organizations sort of get into this circular approach of pandering or being held hostage by everybody where they feel like, “OK, we have to do this.” But what if you really can’t do that?
There’s a cost to all of these things. If you can’t afford to do that today, but you end up having to do it because you’re worried about people leaving or acquiring new talent and such, what is that going to mean for the future of your business?
Links and Resources
Connect with Ross: LinkedIn Instagram
https://www.maropost.com/
Simplify: How the Best Businesses in the World Succeed by Richard Koch and Greg Lockwood
Asana
Quickbooks
Salesforce
Office 365
Always listen. – Edwin Frondozo
Hi everyone! Today we talk about the importance of lifelong learning for new leaders with Edwin Frondozo. Edwin is an Entrepreneur, Startup Advisor and Founder and Host of The Business Leadership Podcast.
We also discuss:
- First hires,
- Onboarding systems,
- The importance of culture,
- Helping those below and above you move forward,
- Finding the time to learn new things, and more.
Click that play button to listen! Don’t forget to subscribe and rate us on Apple Podcasts!
Make your employees successful
Your job as a leader is to provide as much knowledge, as much resources as you can to your people. Assuming you’re hiring very skilled talent, you want to make sure that you’re giving them a space to excel in.
You want to be able to let your people grow so much that they’re going to get headhunted all the time, because your organization is topnotch. And that’s OK.
Make time for learning
If you really think you don’t have time, then stop watching Netflix at night. Stop your streaming services. Stop watching your favorite sports games. Don’t go on social media – you’ll get three hours back into your day.
Sometimes that can be tough to hear.
But a lot of us can absolutely find the time to learn, whether it’s sitting and reading, listening on the ride to work. I constantly remind my network of that because it’s so easy to get distracted with the every day that you actually don’t read or don’t consume or develop anything. And then you tell yourself this narrative, this lie, that there’s no time, when in fact there actually is time.
Listen, and continue to listen.
Listen. If you’re a new manager, even if you’re a new executive – don’t try to change anything in the first 90 days. You just want to listen. Listen to all your team members. Listen to your clients. Listen to your managers, the stakeholders.
You don’t want to change anything right away. You want to know what’s going on before you can implement something or change something or bring in what you think is better for the role.
Ultimately, it’s highly likely that you’re coming into a role that you’re replacing someone. So something’s going on. Something went right, something went wrong. That’s a great opportunity to really listen to the people who have been there before.
Links and Resources
Connect with Edwin: LinkedIn Twitter
https://thebusinessleadership.com/
The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People by Stephen R. Covey
The Artist’s Way by Julia Cameron
Everyone's An Artist (or At Least They Should Be): How Creativity Gives You the Edge in Everything You Do by Ron Tite
Edwin’s Productivity Tips:
- Pomodoro Technique
- Systemizing your inbox
Get to the point where you actually are confident enough in your team, in your decision-making prowess, in your ability to consider failure, to think totally differently about the problem and see if there is a better way to attack it. – Matt Confer
Hi everyone! Welcome to today’s show. Today we talk about the Four Elements of Effective Decision-Making for New Leaders with Matt Confer. Matt is the VP of Strategy & Business Development for Abilitie, a leadership development company based in beautiful Austin, Texas.
We also discuss:
- The importance of developing relationships
- Trusting and leaning on your team and allowing them to fail,
- Preparing for worst-case scenarios,
- Testing your comfortable limits,
- Thinking differently, and more.
Click that play button to listen! Don’t forget to subscribe and rate us on Apple Podcasts!
Good relationships contribute to project success
If you don’t invest early on in developing a relationship with those that you manage, it’s going to be very hard when you get into the thick of a project and you have to really push your comfortable limits about what is possible to deliver.
If you just jump right into the pure, active managing and delegating and never build any sort of a substantial relationship, it just makes things all the more difficult especially when you’re talking about thousands of miles between you and doing all of your work virtually.
Identify the problem, and simplify it
When we throw a problem at leaders in our simulation, the initial instinct that everybody has is, “Ooh – a problem. I’m going to jump in and I’m going to solve it.”
The problem is, most teams don’t take the one to two minutes to say what actually is the problem that we’re embarking on. They get so excited by the chance to solve something, that they never take a step back and identify what the problem is.
The first step should be to identify it, and then simplify it. That should come before ever trying to embark on solving it.
Pivot, Pivot, Pivot
I almost never see a team in our simulation that ends up winning or ends up as one of the teams near the top that had one strategy, completely, effectively delivered that strategy, and never had to change course.
You have to be comfortable with the fact that you need to adjust to changing dynamics – either changing dynamics at your company, changing dynamics in your industry.
Links and Resources
Connect with Matt: LinkedIn Twitter
Abilitie
Freakonomics: A Rogue Economist Explores the Hidden Side of Everything by Steven D. Levitt & Stephen J. Dubner
Productivity Tip: Time Blocking and Reminders App
Hi everyone! Welcome to today’s show. Today we talk about the value of continuous learning and staying curious in your life and career with Tristan Cammaert. Tristan is a seasoned leader who has held various executive-level roles at RBC, currently at Earnst and Young.
We also discuss:
- The importance of team diversity, building trust, and being aligned to one strategic vision
- Getting out of our comfort zone
- Supporting the next generation of leaders
- Finding your why
- Servant leadership
- Having a vision, and a lot more.
Click that play button to listen! Don’t forget to subscribe and rate us on Apple Podcasts!
Getting out of your comfort zone
I do have the voice in my head that’s telling me “Stay where you are” on occasion, but I also will pause and take a step back and say, “Where do I know that I’d truly been at my best? Where have I been the happiest and most fulfilled in terms of my work?”
It has always been when I am pushed and when I’m outside of my comfort zone.
Find Your WHY
Most companies and individuals are able to talk about the ‘what’ and sometimes they get to the ‘how’, but they’re very rarely actually able to articulate the ‘why’ – why are we doing what we’re doing.
Servant Leadership
As a leader, you’re not supposed to be bossing people around. You’re supposed to be in service of the team that you have. Your job is to actually really help bring your team together, but you are in service to them, as opposed to being directive.
Tristan’s Advice to New Leaders
Make sure you hire and grow and manage from a diversity perspective – diversity of thought, not just in terms of gender, race or age.
100% - don’t stop learning. Make sure that you remain curious. There’s a whole bunch of ways you can do that – consuming videos, podcasts, books, etc.
Don’t try and boil the ocean – stick with one or two things that worked for you.
Links and Resources
Connect with Tristan: LinkedIn
Start With Why by Simon Sinek
Leaders Eat Last by Simon Sinek
Ten Percent Happier by Dan Harris
Be a student of your craft and of management. Have the mindset that even if you might be doing a good job, you know you can get a lot better. There’s so much to learn. – Andy Storch
Hi everyone! Welcome to today’s episode.
Our guest for today is Andy Storch. Andy is a Talent Development Consultant and Partner at Advantage Performance Group based in sunny Orlando, Florida. He’s the host of two podcasts: Talent Development Hot Seat, and The Andy Storch Show.
Today we talk about:
- The importance of personal and professional branding
- Impostor Syndrome,
- Understanding and acknowledging your own strengths and weaknesses,
- Putting yourself (and your content) out there
- and a lot more.
Click that play button to listen! Don’t forget to subscribe and rate us on Apple Podcasts!
Impostor Syndrome
I remember the first time I was an analyst at a large insurance company in California. I got promoted as a product manager, and I had an analyst reporting to me.
I realized very quickly that she knew more about the job than I did, and that was an intimidating and humbling situation because I didn’t really feel like I should be her manager. I felt like she should by my manager.
I know a lot of people end up in situations like that – whether it’s legitimate or not – because many people have a little bit of “impostor syndrome”, where you don’t think that you really deserve the title or the position that you’re in. I definitely had that then.
What I’ve learned later on in life is that being a manager is not about being the smartest person. It’s not about knowing more than the people who report to you.
It’s about being able to coordinate, put them in the right position to do their jobs, be there to coach them and help them with issues they’re dealing with.
Personal and Professional Branding
I really believe that in the future of work, things are changing. We hear about the so-called “gig economy”. It doesn’t mean that everybody’s going to be a freelancer or an independent consultant like me, but I do think that companies are going to be going to more project-based work. People are going to be moving around more, working remotely, working in different positions, different places, changing jobs a lot more often.
Therefore, I think it becomes more and more important for people to understand their own strengths and the strengths of the people around them, and getting different roles based on what those strengths are. And they’re often going to assign those things based on what you’re known for.
Everybody has a brand, something they’re known for, whether they take time to define it or not.
Stay hungry
Keep that mindset that you’ve never really reached your destination, or you’re on a journey of learning, of growth, even when you are 50 or 60 years old and pretty established in your career. That you don’t know it all, you don’t have it all figured out. That you could always learn from other people, and you have this curiosity, always.
Links and Resources
Connect with Andy: LinkedIn
Multipliers: How the Best Leaders Make Everyone Smarter by Liz Wiseman
Talent Development Think Tank 2019
http://www.talentdevelopmenthotseat.com/
http://bit.ly/AndyStorchShow
Knowing who you are and knowing what drives you – that will allow you to be more true to yourself, and it will allow you to have a more authentic leadership journey. – Steve Kent
Hi everyone! Welcome to today’s show. Our guest for today is Steve Kent, Chief Administrative Officer of the City of Mount Pearl, Newfoundland.
Today we talk about:
- His background in volunteerism and community service,
- Mentorship,
- Failing forward,
- The ever-elusive work-life balance,
- The importance of authentic and genuine leadership, and a lot more.
Click that play button to listen, and don’t forget to rate us on iTunes!
Find a mentor
When I found myself sitting in the council chambers for the first time, of course there’s a degree of intimidation that naturally goes with that. But very quickly, some of the senior members of the council took me under their wing and were able to provide advice and feedback and coaching and support.
Some of those folks, for years, have remained close advisors and friends.
I did a lot of listening than talking in the early days. It’s really important to not go in with guns blazing and really get the lay of the land, listen carefully, learn, demonstrate that you are interested in listening and learning, and pick your moments in terms of weighing in on the discussions and debates.
That’s what set me up for success in local government.
Work-Life Balance
I allowed myself to be completely consumed by the work, and it was hard not to be, because I was so passionate about the work we were doing. It consumed me. It affected my relationships, my health, and other aspects of my life – whether it was volunteering or my political life. I was still studying, and that proved to be challenging.
That work-life balance thing is something that we’ll always struggle with, but I’ve had some wake-up calls in the early days about the importance of consciously trying to find that balance. When I failed to do so, I got myself in some tough spots.
I still struggle with work-life balance, but I’ve learned along the way. You learn to make better decisions and take more time to reflect, plan, cope and seek support.
Staying true to yourself
I’ve spent a lot of time in public life and elected office, there were lots of difficult moments in politics – some I can talk about and some that I swore an oath that I won’t talk about. But the times when I got myself in trouble was when I wasn’t completely true to myself.
The advice I have for any new leader: no matter what situation you’re in, don’t compromise your principles. Be true to yourself, lead with integrity, lead by example, be honest, be genuine, be authentic, be your own dog.
If you are sticking out like a nail, someone will try to hammer you down and it’s important that you don’t let that happen.
Links and Resources
Connect with Steve: LinkedIn
Facebook, Twitter
steve@stevekent.ca
Switch: How to Change Things When Change Is Hard by Chip and Dan Heath
Good to Great: Why Some Companies Make the Leap and Others Don't by Jim Collins
Lists
Electronic Calendar
Fully understand where you are and maximize it.
Welcome to the show, everybody! Today’s guest is Jared Kligerman, President of The Think Tank, a boutique integrated marketing agency based here in Toronto, Canada.
Today we talk about the importance of networking as a new manager, and the power of those networking relationships.
We also discuss
- Jared’s early leadership blunders lessons
- Networking tips for introverts
- Why and how you should be networking
- How to choose the right networking events
- Pruning your network, and a lot more.
Click that play button to listen, and don’t forget to rate us on iTunes!
Come without expectations
Some people go into networking with the objective of landing a job or a client. This is one of the reasons why networking “doesn’t work” – the expectation that you’re going to get something out of it.
What really did it for me was meeting a bunch of people at networking events, who, from the beginning of the conversation, I knew there wasn’t going to be any business opportunity there.
We hit it off around a bunch of different topics – some of them were around business, but a lot of them were about personal stuff or sports. Those were the people I’ve kept in touch with, who I call up on a regular basis.
My perception and my objective now when I go to networking events is, when I go, I try to meet 15 new people. Truthfully, I very rarely hit that goal, mostly because along the way I end up meeting people I really jive with and I end up having a fantastic conversation with.
Find someone you enjoy talking to
Don’t expect that everybody you meet will have a strong connection with you and will want to have a long-term relationship with you. That’s just not the case.
You’re not going to have a rapport with every person you talk to.
Once I start getting comfortable talking to three different people, I up it to four people, then five. Then I start saying, “Now I want to try and meet five people, and I’m going to see if I can get one of those to be someone who’s really worth connecting and staying in-touch with long-term.”
Now I’ve built a new layer of objective where it’s still not about the sales; it’s about meeting five people, and meeting one who’s really going to be helpful in some way, or just someone I want to talk to.
It’s OK to be Picky
Being a dad, I want to see my little one more often, and recognizing how much time and energy my wife puts into it, I also wanted to be an active part of it.
I’ve built my personal rule that I’m only out one night a week, sometimes two if I have a lot of heads-up notice. And usually that second one’s with my wife.
Because I’m only allowing myself to be out one night a week, I’ve had to really get picky about which events I’m going to. There’s a lot of networking events hosted on any given night, in any big city, and I know a lot of people who bounce around all of them. I’ve done it, and it’s exhausting, with very low returns.
Links and Resources
Connect with Jared: LinkedIn
http://tttmrktg.com/
Fuckup Nights
Lead, Follow or Get Out of the Way: The Ultimate Guide to Leadership in the New World of Business by Greg Witz
One Powerful Mind: The Complete Approach to Emotional Management at Home and at Work by Paul Witz
Made to Stick: Why Some Ideas Survive and Others Die by Chip Heath and Dan Heath
Work-Life Balance
Lists
Healthy and engaged employees, in concert with a strong Growth Mindset workplace culture, are the secret sauce for business success.
When it comes to performance, it’s no surprise that the right mindset is critical to success. Today we’re going to talk with Dave Buzanko about how you can leverage a growth mindset to level up your results.
Dave is a Growth Mindset Strategist with over three decades of Marketing and Communication experience across many industries, including Banking, Retail, Wellness and Learning.
In this episode, we talk about:
- His wellness journey,
- Missed leadership opportunities,
- How Leadership styles evolved over the years,
- Leading your immediate circle of influence,
- Growth vs Fixed mindsets,
- How to develop a growth mindset,
- the five pillars of growth, and a lot more.
Click that play button to listen, and don’t forget to rate us on iTunes!
Leading your Inner Circle
To me, I always think, “I lead my family, my friends, and my co-workers around me.” I don’t lead thousands of people; I know that we can only manage so many relationships, so I try to focus on the ones that are closest to me. If I can teach those people how to care for the people in their charge, then my job as a leader is to pass that knowledge on.
That’s how I approach leadership today. It’s
Who’s in my immediate circle of influence?
What can I teach them?
How can I teach them?
How can I be the leader that they hope that I would be so that when they run into a tough situation, not only do they not feel embarrassed or ashamed or scared to speak up and say “I don’t have the answers,” but they’re willing to speak up and say, “I need your help”?
What is a growth mindset?
A person who has a Growth Mindset is somebody who is open to learning and improving their skill sets, while somebody with a fixed mindset believes that they’re born with a certain set of skills; they can’t improve upon those skills so they spend their lives measuring those skills and competing against each other, trying to define what they can do, but believing that there’s a limit to it.
In business and in life, we can easily be fooled into thinking that we are what we create for ourselves and we are nothing more.
The Five Pillars of Growth
For me, to make things actionable, I actually have five pillars of growth mindsets, and they’re based on five of the best scientific books.
Five Pillars of Growth:
- Understanding Why You Do What You Do
- Defining Happiness in Your Life
- The Ripple Effect
- Critical Mistake Analysis
- The Power of Identity
Links and Resources
Connect with Dave: LinkedIn
dave@heartfit365.com
www.heartfit365.com
The Infinite Game by Simon Sinek
Start with Why: How Great Leaders Inspire Everyone to Take Action by Simon Sinek
Find Your Why: A Practical Guide for Discovering Purpose for You and Your Team by Simon Sinek
The Happiness Advantage: How a Positive Brain Fuels Success in Work and Life by Shawn Achor
The Ripple Effect: Sleep Better, Eat Better, Move Better, Think Better by Greg Wells, Ph.D.
Atomic Habits: An Easy & Proven Way to Build Good Habits & Break Bad Ones by James Clear
Today’s guest is Sara Gallagher. Sara is the Vice President of Client Delivery, a Senior Consultant, Speaker, and Learning Facilitator at The Persimmon Group.
In this episode, we talk about:
- The lessons she’s learned and unlearned during her career,
- Impostor syndrome, mindfulness, and self-awareness,
- The importance of self-inquiry,
- Time/Energy Management, and a lot more.
Click that play button to listen, and don’t forget to rate us on iTunes!
Leaders need to be self-aware
You have to develop the skill of self-inquiry.
“What is this?”
“What am I feeling?”
“Why do I feel it?”
And stay with that train of thought. Don’t accept your first answer as true.
If meditation is too woo-woo for you, that might be something you could do and achieve the same type of awareness and result.
Be your kind of leader
If you’re familiar with Myers-Briggs, I’m an INTJ. INTJ’s are always the villain. I’m Emperor Palpatine in Which Star Wars Character Are You?, I’m the butler from Downton Abbey. My boss, Bill, is an ENTJ. We approach things in very much the same way, except that he’s very much an extrovert and I’m an introvert in an extroverted job.
One thing I was doing wrong (for me) for a long time was I was trying to be an ENTJ because that’s what was being modeled for me. And I was exhausting myself.
I have things I bring to the table, but I can’t work as many hours, in the same hours, in the same types of hours – meaning, always with people – that Bill can, and be successful. It’s being honest about that, and realizing that to be at my best, I will have to approach things my way.
Letting go of the belief that you have to be what has been modeled for you is really important.
Sara’s advice to New Leaders
I think when you first become a leader, you rush out to the bookstore or podcast menu and you look for
“How do I fix other people?”
“How do I get my team to do x?”
“How do I get them to do y?”
“How do we achieve results?”
And those are really valuable skills, but it’s so easy to lose touch with your own growth and your own development, and to forget that you still have growing to do.
Never invest more into someone’s personal development than they’re willing to put in themselves. Be others-focused, but also realize that that doesn’t mean you’re now the camp director over everybody’s professional development.
Links and Resources
Connect with Sara: LinkedIn
https://www.thepersimmongroup.com/
The Coaching Habit: Say Less, Ask More & Change the Way You Lead Forever by Michael Bungay Stanier
A Hidden Wholeness: The Journey Toward an Undivided Life by Parker J. Palmer
Hi everyone! Welcome to the show. Today we’re flipping the format a little bit and we’re going to hear from the employee standpoint of what they look for in a new manager. If you’re an aspiring leader, this is a great perspective to hear.
Today’s guest is Craig Rosenstein, a young man at the front end of his career. We talk about what’s important for a new manager to know from the eyes of someone they would be managing.
In this episode, we talk about the two big things employees are looking for in a new leader, credibility being a two-way street, starting new work relationships on the right foot and a lot more.
Click that play button to listen, and don’t forget to rate us on iTunes!
Give your Employees Support
I always see these posts on LinkedIn and they say, “Here are the things that are important to employees: Being compensated fairly, being recognized, having development” and they are all very valid and important points.
But the one word I never see is “support”. At the end of the day, you want your employees to feel empowered and feel supported enough to succeed. Everyone’s human and we have motivations, challenges and doubts, and the way to work through those situations is if you have that support system.
From a leadership perspective, what I look for is, firstly, someone who’s available, and secondly, someone who either has the information or tools to help me when I’m missing something, or at least could direct me to that avenue.
Give your employees Vision/Direction
Do I know what my manager, and specifically, what the organization is trying to accomplish and how they’re trying to accomplish it?
Even if I feel supported in a role, if I don’t see the bigger picture, or I’m not able to really understand how what I’m doing day to day impacts the business or the organization, then 1) I might not be as effective in my role, and 2) it might be like I’m doing things without a direction.
Consistently check-in
As a manager, sometimes you assume that they’re (your employees) are good – you’re checking in, you’re meeting frequently. But even as a manager, you need to continually check-in when people are getting busier or have more on their plate.
Oftentimes, especially with a high performer, you just assume they’re going to get it done and all is good, and they may or may not be of the communication style to let you know. So it’s really important to be constantly checking in and making sure your people, especially your high performers, are in a good place, and not just assuming all is well.
Links and Resources
Connect with Craig: LinkedIn
To Sell is Human by Daniel Pink
Craig’s advice: Don’t be overconfident about your memory. Always write things down, right away.
If you don’t know where you’re going, you’re never going to arrive there.
Hi everyone! Welcome to The New Leader Podcast. Today’s guest is Simon Brocklehurst.
Simon is a commercial leader with a unique breadth of experience working in, and with, many of the world’s leading organizations. He established CommercialSolutions consulting, a different kind of consulting firm, to help you solve your commercial challenges: creating clear, pragmatic plans and supporting their delivery.
In this episode, we talk about
- His first leadership role,
- Staying true to yourself,
- How to create a strategy,
- Disruption,
- And a lot more.
Click that play button to listen, and don’t forget to rate us on iTunes!
Stay True to Yourself
I worked in an organization with a very controlling culture; there was always a culture of fear. There was a lot of inexperience and insecurity in the leadership.
I was delivering the goals, but I think what I did there was I tried too hard to deliver how the people who were in charge wanted me to deliver, rather than how I should have done. I didn’t stay true to myself.
What I realized afterwards was that the internal conflict there was perceived as inauthentic sometimes by some of the people I worked with, and they didn’t see how much I really cared for them, how I really wanted them to be successful.
I think the lesson for me certainly is, whatever situation you’re in, you need to be authentic. Absolutely essential for any leader, new or experienced.
What is Strategy?
For me, strategy should be simple. It should be very practical; it should yield results quite quickly, because you need to have a clear vision and you need to make it happen.
Strategy is a plan. That’s it. It’s a plan to achieve something.
You need to do a couple of things: one, you need to have a clear vision. Obviously, you must have an idea of where you’re going. Pick a destination. The best way to do that is to do it with a group.
Then it’s about what you are going to do to achieve that vision. What are you going to focus on? What are you not going to focus on?
The final thing is who’s going to do what, when and how. Prioritization – don’t try to do it all in one go. Break it down into tasks and say, “Which one are we going to do first, second, and later on to get to where we’re going?”
For me, it’s all about this continuous process of improving and moving towards your vision.
VISTA
I have a process, I call it VISTA – Vision, Strategy, Tactics and Achieve. It’s not rocket science, it’s pretty simple.
- Create a Vision.
- Decide on what are your focus areas, your strategies.
- Get your tactics clear. What are the things you are actually going to do?
- Achieve them. Stay flexible, track where you’re going, keep the discipline, make sure you’re focused on what you’re doing action-wise and everyone knows what’s doing what and when.
Links and Resources
Connect with Simon: LinkedIn
www.commercialsolutions.global
Emotional Intelligence 2.0 by Travis Bradberry
Hi everyone, welcome to the show! Today’s guest is Mark Hood. He is a Senior Sales Consultant at Sales Performance International.
In this episode, we talk about
- How he lived through the Hudson River plane crash
- Empowering your subordinates
- Leading from the back vs Leading from the front
- Productivity
- And a lot more.
Click that play button to listen, and don’t forget to rate us on iTunes!
Empower your subordinates
When I first moved into those leadership positions, about 80% of what I did was fly to various engagements and help close business. It’s always fun and always rewarding to be the hero. I could offer certain things that they couldn’t offer, so therefore, it behooved me to go in and close the deals.
That worked very well until I got to the point where I had 125 sales people, 10 regional managers, and I realized that I was going to run out of time, energy and ability.
At that point, a light bulb went off in my head. As a servant leader, you have to empower your subordinates. Help them understand that when they come to you, that they should ask the right questions about what they want or what they need to help close business.
Being a leader is an honor
If you’re selected to be a leader, that’s an honor that transcends just about any compliment that could be paid to you. If you’re going to be a manager and you’re going to wear that mantle of manager or leader, you need to wear that mantle proudly, knowing that you’ve been bestowed with the ability to make someone’s life better. And you should do anything to make yourself better, to ensure that you do that.
Leadership Advice
It’s best to act now and early, than to wait until you have everything lined up perfectly. A moderate decision now is much better than a perfect decision 6 months from now. Actions and proper steps executed early can lead to a quicker decision.
Links and Resources
Connect with Mark: LinkedIn
mhood@spisales.com
Killing Patton: The Strange Death of World War II's Most Audacious General (Bill O'Reilly's Killing Series) by Bill O’Reilly
Why Leaders Eat Last by Simon Sinek
I’ve learned that people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel. – Maya Angelou
Welcome to The New Leader Podcast. Today we are going to talk about what to do when emotions come into the workplace. Specifically, what to do when someone cries at the office.
As a new leader, what do you do when one of your employees or colleagues starts crying? I have gone through this firsthand with both men and women, so I am going to share four quick tips that will help you when you encounter this type of situation in the future (if you haven’t already).
Hit that play button and don’t forget to subscribe and rate us on iTunes!
Don’t Get Weird Maybe you come from a family of “non-criers”, or you believe crying is not acceptable at work. But the moment you see someone’s eyes start to well up and they begin to lose their breath, it isn’t about you. It’s about them. Don’t make it about yourself.
When somebody starts crying and they start to apologize for it, just say this,
“It’s OK. It just means that you care.”
Create A Safe Space Whether it’s your office or your employee’s office, let them know that the conversation is just between the two of you. Letting someone know that they have a safe zone for moments like this goes a long way.
Listen I cannot emphasize this enough. This isn’t the kind of listening where you’re “listening” but you’re feeling awkward, you’re trying to find a solution, you’re waiting for that person to catch their breath so you can talk – I’m talking about genuine listening to what is, and isn’t, being said.
Avoid Problem-Solving In highly emotional moments like this, your employee is not looking for you to solve their problems. If they are, they will likely ask you to. But it’s most likely that they just need an ear to listen to them.
Links and Resources
Connect with me: LinkedIn | Facebook
info@iandaley.com
Every time you get to know someone a little bit better, you build a little bit of trust with them, a little bit of camaraderie with them. – Mo Dezyanian
Hi everyone, welcome to the show! Today’s guest is Mo Dezyanian, President of EmpathyInc.ca, a media consulting group.
Mo is a seasoned digital strategist who has spent the past 8 years designing and executing successful digital programs for national and international brands. In 2015 he established Empathy Inc. to help brands navigate the media space in a digital world. With his team of consultants, he is bringing blue chip strategies to national and international companies.
In this episode, we talk about
- Empathy in leadership,
- How to connect and build trust with your team,
- How to bring in more empathy in the workplace,
- Moving your industry forward,
- And a lot more.
Click that play button to listen, and don’t forget to rate us on iTunes!
Empathy in Leadership
One of the very first definitions of empathy in leadership for me is when you’re in a leadership position, very little of what you do in your day-to-day is actually about yourself. Almost all of everything that you do in a day-to-day basis is about your team and the people you are trying to convince to do something for the organization or for you.
Within that mindset, empathy is the key to unlocking all of that. When you understand where people are coming from, what it is that they want from their job, then you get to unlock their talent in an exponential way.
Taking the time to walk in that person’s shoes and see things from their perspective, whether it’s with your immediate reports or whether you’re leading a team through dotted lines or however that looks like within your context – that for me is empathy. That’s the crux to figuring all of this out.
Know what drives your team
The first thing you have to do when you’re tasked to lead others is to get to know your team at a personal level.
I always have this paradigm that it’s never just business; it’s always personal. So get to know your team personally: what’s their life like outside of the four walls of the office, what drives them, what they like, their hobbies. Those things are all important. Nine times out of ten, these are the things that drive people to show up to work to begin with.
Take this one small step
Breathe. I know it sounds simple, but sometimes we’re doing the work and we put our heads down and somebody gives us a different opinion and we don’t breathe and take a second to understand why they are giving us that perspective.
I had a manager and I liked him and we got along well and we’re always doing good work together. Then out of nowhere, he started to become slightly more unresponsive or a little bit more grumpy every day. It was getting harder to get at him and tap through and understand what’s going on. He would show up to the meeting, get the job done, then he will leave.
Me being the junior that I was, my interpretation of that was, “Well, I have to try harder. I have to work for it.”
I started staying in later, doing more work, taking on more projects, just trying really hard to impress my manager, and he was just shutting down. He was not responding to that at all, and that was frustrating to me. I felt like I was failing every day because I was not getting through to this guy.
One day at 7 in the morning, I showed up early to the office, and he walks in. I said, “Hi Mark, how’s it going?” and he just goes, “You know what man? My marriage is going through a rough patch. I don’t know what to tell you. I’m just not there anymore these days.” And he just walks out.
That was the turning point for me. This whole time, it wasn’t even about me. I’m just one of his direct reports; at the time he had five or six others, and I wasn’t even a senior who had other direct reports. I was a junior. I was probably the least of his problems.
I was there busting my butt, and he wasn’t noticing me because…why would he?
Sometimes when you just take a deep breath and take a look around you, why the other person is doing what they’re doing, it can really enlighten you.
Links and Resources
Connect with Mo: LinkedIn | Twitter
https://empathyinc.ca/
The Brain That Changes Itself: Stories of Personal Triumph from the Frontiers of Brain Science by Norman Doidge
UnSelfie: Why Empathetic Kids Succeed in Our All-About-Me World by Michele Borba, Ed. D.
Impact vs Cognitive Energy Matrix
A lot of people say, “I don’t want to give away too much.” I say, “Give away everything. Give away tons of stuff.” It works when you do that. Giving away free samples works. – Bruce Johnston
Hi everyone, welcome to the show! Today’s guest is the first person who connected with me on LinkedIn that suggested we have an offline conversation, which I thought was a refreshing move in the social media world we live in.
Bruce Johnston is a LinkedIn Expert and Consultant, and I thought he’d be a great guest to talk about LinkedIn and where it should be in our professional lives as managers and (aspiring) leaders.
In this episode, we talk about his story as an accidental LinkedIn consultant, how to optimize your LinkedIn profile, memberships, LinkedIn publishing, and a lot more.
Click that play button to listen, and don’t forget to rate us on iTunes!
Practical Uses of LinkedIn
Your LinkedIn Profile You have to think of it like a pyramid.
The base level of your pyramid is your LinkedIn profile. It’s important to have a profile, and it’s important to have it semi-completed. It’s important that people can know about you, your track record, background, because it’s the place that people go to reference check.
If I hear about someone interesting in a casual conversation, the first thing I do when I get a chance and no one’s looking is I get my mobile phone and look that person up on LinkedIn.
Your Profile Photo A lot of people don’t bother putting a photo; you should have a photo. It makes you look trustworthy. The absence of a photo works the other way – when you don’t see a photo, people automatically think, “This person is a technological luddite; they don’t know how to put a photo on their profile” OR “What are they trying to hide?”
Publishing on LinkedIn
There are two big things you can do on LinkedIn: 1) you can increase your reach and have more people become aware of you or your company, and 2) you can increase your credibility.
I get a lot of people who go, “Well, I tried publishing for 3 weeks. I published 5 or 6 times in 3 weeks and didn’t really get anywhere.”
I go, ”Well you have to do it more often than that.”
Ford doesn’t advertise on three football games and then give up. They keep doing it, and keep doing it and keep doing it, and that’s how everyone’s aware of who they are and what they sell. It’s that repetition. You see it, and it doesn’t sink through the first couple of times, but sooner or later it does.
You have to keep it up, and you have to stay focused; you can’t wander off and doing odd things, talking about your hobbies. If you’re doing this as a business, then it has to be the business.
You know what your customers want and what questions they have? Good. Start answering them.
Bruce’s Productivity Tip
Figure out when you’re at your most productive and do your important work then. I’m most productive early in the morning, so I tend to do most of my writing and my work that takes deep thinking – that tends to take place between 6 and 8 o’clock in the morning.
It’s before all the preoccupations set in – before I start talking to people, before people start emailing me, before people start calling me. That’s when I’m thinking very clearly and I can be really focused.
Links and Resources
Connect with Bruce: LinkedIn
Rework by Jason Fried and David Heinemeier Hansson
The New Strategic Selling: The Unique Sales System Proven Successful by the World's Best Companies by Robert B. Miller, Stephen E. Heiman and Tad Tuleja
Whenever I do reviews with any of the guys in my team, that review always ends with me trying to drag feedback out of them for things that I could do differently and blind spots that I may have, or things that I may be doing that for them personally isn’t the most motivating. – Carl Blundon
Welcome to the show everybody! Today’s topic is Managing Different Generations. I have a great guest with us today who’s the Outsourcing Director for Adecco Taiwan, Carl Blundon.
In this episode we talk about his journey, generation gaps, what he looks for in a team member, customizing feedback, seeking feedback from your team and a lot more.
Click that play button to listen, and don’t forget to rate us on iTunes!
Investing in Your People’s Growth
My two years in that role were incredibly successful from a financial perspective. We had 32% top line growth the first year, 16% following up on that the second year, so it was really good.
I think the biggest mistake or failure that I had was that a lot of that growth was coming from my own sales. I was still spending too much time out, selling on my own and contributing too much on my own, rather than investing that time into the development and the success of the people that I had working for me.
I was taking them with me; in my eyes, I was showing them the ropes but I was still doing it myself.
When you look at those numbers – 32% and 16% - they look great. But had I spent more time investing in their development that first year, maybe that 32% might have been 24 % or 25%, but the second year when we were all working in similar levels of efficiency, maybe that 16% that second year is also up around 30% or 32% or 35%.
Because you’re not depending on your own ability. You’ve brought the people in your team up to a similar level and you can reap the rewards for it.
Managing Different Generations
I think it’s a little bit overblown. I think people make a little bit too much out of the generation gap.
In the end, we’re not the same as our parents were; we don’t have the same aspirations that your typical baby boomer might have had. I don’t think it’s really fair to expect that out of younger people, no matter what generation they’re coming in from.
No matter if you’re managing someone who’s older than you or younger than you, you have to sit down and figure out what motivates that person, what they want and to really understand them in order to get the best out of them.
Giving Feedback
For me, I don’t think you can have a one-size-fits-all approach when you’re giving feedback to people in your team.
I have people in my team that are older than me, that are more senior and have been in the company longer than me. I’m not necessarily going to go in and deliver that feedback in exactly the same way and words that I would deliver it to a 22-year-old.
You can want and expect people to take feedback, but you also have to give it in a customized way. You need to understand your people’s personalities and understand what type of feedback and setting and tone is going to allow them to react positively.
Links and Resources
Connect with Carl: LinkedIn | Twitter | Instagram
Purple Cow, New Edition: Transform Your Business by Being Remarkable by Seth Godin
Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can't Stop Talking by Susan Cain
Fitbit App
Welcome to The New Leader Podcast. Today we have a short, 12-minute episode on the importance of one-on-one meetings.
We talk about five things:
- What’s a one-on-one meeting?
- 5 reasons why we do one-on-one meetings
- When do you do them?
- How does it work? What’s the format?
- Potential pitfalls to avoid with these types of meetings.
Hit that play button and don’t forget to subscribe and rate us on iTunes!
One-on-One Meetings Very simply, it is a meeting between a manager and an employee. It’s dedicated time on a regular basis, it’s pre-scheduled, and it’s always private between those two people.
Why do we do them? One-on-one meetings encourage open communication. That’s the basis of a great foundation of a relationship – regular communication. It also gives employees time to prepare. If you know you have access to your manager on a regular basis for a set period of time, it allows you to think and prepare for what you want to talk about.
How does it work? Before you even have that one-on-one with an employee, you want to give them notice about what’s coming around the corner. Nobody likes a surprise from their manager on a Monday morning about a major change in their routine. So I would recommend that you give them at least 4-6 weeks notice. It sounds long, but it does take the edge off when a change is coming.
You want to be transparent. In that message, you’re telling them why you want to connect.
Links and Resources
Connect with me: LinkedIn | Facebook
info@iandaley.com
The Effective Manager by Mark Horstman
If you are a new leader, I will tell you, be yourself. Be your best self. Bring your excitement. Bring your enthusiasm. Love your job. Make sure you know what you’re doing. Tell everyone what you’re doing, and everything will sort itself out. – Neil Pasricha
Hi everyone! In today’s episode, we talk about how to get back up when life knocks you down. This is the episode where we learn practical strategies about failure. We often talk about success, about over-achievement, disruption, innovation, but we rarely talk enough about when life really kicks us in the gut and how to get back up and keep moving.
Our amazing guest today is Neil Pasricha. Neil is a New York Times Best-Selling Author of The Happiness Equation, The Book of Awesome, and he’s got a new book coming out called Back to Awesome, where he talks all about failure – what do we do with it, how do we become more resilient to move forward in our lives.
Neil is currently the director of the Institute of Global Happiness. He has a popular TED talk with over 3 million views. He has an amazing podcast called 3 Books with Neil Pasricha, which won an award as one of Apple’s Best of 2018 Podcasts.
Neil is an all-around great guy, a down-to-earth human, and I’m really excited for all of you to listen in.
A Benign Envy
You, as the leader, have to be the most excited person in the room. People can only match your level of vision, your level of enthusiasm, your level of commitment. Whatever you show them that you are willing to do, that is setting a high bar that people can aspire to and it creates inside them a benign envy.
There’s two kinds of envy. One is called malicious envy – that’s the negative envy, something like jealousy. The other is called benign envy, which is actually something that we all want. It means that you’re surrounded by someone you consider a role model, and it improves your own behavior and your own drive.
Find your small pond
One of the things I do whenever I’m going through failure or through a loss is I find small ponds. What does that mean?
When I was at Harvard Business School, I was lucky enough to have lunch with the dean one day, the retired dean of HBS. He was like, “How’s school going?”
I’m like, “Bad. I’m stressed, school’s really hard, I’m up late every night studying, and all the big, fancy companies are coming to campus… Not only are we supposed to do homework every night, but we’re also supposed to have beer with people we don’t know and apply for these jobs that we probably won’t get…”
You know what the dean said to me? He’s like, “Oh man, that’s terrible. Well why don’t you just leave the beach?”
“What beach? What are you talking about?”
“Well right now you’re standing on the edge of the beach, like there’s a fence. If you look inside the beach, there’s like 10 bathing beauties, but there’s a thousand people like you outside the fence. The odds of you landing one…are super small.”
“So what am I supposed to do?”
“Leave the beach. Go find the broken companies, the bankrupt companies, the companies going through a hard time…If you can call them up, if you can work your way inside, if you can take a lower level position, then you will get unbelievable opportunities, because you’ll be working something in there. You will be given a lot of responsibility, promoted, taken seriously in meetings, and they will want to hear from you and your learning will vastly accelerate.”
So I did that.
Neil’s Advice
“Don’t take advice.” That would be my advice. Often when we’re asking for advice, we’re really looking for an alibi. We’re looking to confirm something we already have inside ourselves. That’s why some resonate, some do not.
When it’s resonating with you, it’s something you already believe. The people you’re asking are telling you the thing you want them to tell you, because you have something inside yourself.
You can look at the most common advice of all – it all contradicts.
”Actions speak louder the words” OR “The pen is mightier than the sword” – which one is it? Is it “The early bird catches the worm,” or is it “good things come to those who wait”? Which one is it?
You can’t find objectively true advice that applies in any case.
Links and Resources
Connect with Neil: LinkedIn | Facebook
http://neil.blog/
https://globalhappiness.org/
How to Get Back Up by Neil Pasricha
The Happiness Equation by Neil Pasricha
The Book of Awesome by Neil Pasricha
3 Books with Neil Pasricha
Neil’s TED Talk: The 3 A’s of Awesome
The One-Minute Manager by Ken Blanchard
The Black Swan by Nassim Nicholas Taleb
Forest App
Don’t be afraid to give positive feedback. People are desperate to get feedback, even when it’s negative.
Welcome to The New Leader Podcast! Today on the show you will learn the three fundamental ways to better negotiation. My guest is David Dingwall – a legitimate heavy-hitter in this space, and he has the resume to back it up.
As a lawyer, David was elected to the House of Commons in 1980, at the age of 27. In the mid-90s, he was a cabinet minister under Jean Chrétien, and held various portfolios including the Administer of Public Works and the Administer of Health.
Currently, David is President and Vice Chancellor of Cape Breton University. He holds Commerce and Law degrees from Dalhousie University, has studied Corporate Governance at Harvard Law School, and is also a graduate of the Institute of Corporate Directors through the Rotman School of Management at University of Toronto.
I’m really pumped about this episode and I hope you get a ton of value.
As always, don’t forget to rate us on iTunes!
How to become a better negotiator
The big aspect of being a negotiator is your own individual preparation. I have found, time and time again, in law, in university, in the private sector, in nonprofit organizations, is that the person/s who are on the negotiating team leave it to the last minute and think that they can proceed in an orderly fashion by not giving it much time.
So I urge my clients and others to take a lot of time and prepare yourself accordingly. There’s no detail which is too small – whether that be on your subject matter expertise, whether it be on your request, whether that be framing your ask, or whether it’s the mechanics and the logistics of the actual negotiation itself.
Preparation, preparation.
Walk away from a bad deal
I’ve sat down with individuals, big organizations, small organizations, and had to conclude that there’s just not going to be an arrangement here.
These people are so far apart, the relationship is not there, they don’t care about the relationship, and that it’s in everybody’s best interest to say, “Thank you very much. I understand your position, but I’m afraid that we’re not going to be able to conclude an arrangement today.”
You’ll be surprised how that turns the other party.
Up, down, or across?
If you’re in an organization, are you negotiating up? Are you negotiating down? Or is it across?
The dynamics are very, very different.
If you’re dealing with a superior, you need to be much more prudent. You should be prudent at everything, but much more prudent in terms of how you handle yourself and how you frame the different issues that you want to have resolved.
I tell my clients, “Write what your options are before you even sit down with the other side.”
You just can’t sit at a negotiating table, whether it’s up, down or across, and have no justification for what you’re trying to say.
Links and Resources
Connect with David: LinkedIn
http://www.davidcdingwall.com/
Negotiating So Everyone Wins by David C. Dingwall
Whenever you go out and get earned media, you’re going to get people’s attention in an authentic way unlike the banner ads and pay-per-click ads that are constantly distracting us and disrupting our day around us. We go right to the content.
Welcome to The New Leader Podcast! Today on the show we will be talking about the importance of great PR as leaders with one of the world's top experts in earned media and PR, Adrian Salamunovic.
Adrian is the co-founder of CanvasPop and DNA11, as well as the co-author of FREE PR: How to Get Chased by the Press Without Hiring a PR Firm.
In this episode we talk about his book, his two tips on how to fast-track your career and personal growth, owned, paid and earned media, hiring a coach versus finding a mentor, empathy and authenticity.
I hope you enjoy this episode, and don’t forget to subscribe and rate us on iTunes!
Self-awareness
I think being self-aware and knowing where your strengths are and where your strengths aren’t is probably the biggest barrier for any manager or entrepreneur.
In my case, I made the decision early on to bring in a business partner on my last couple of ventures. He had a background, or at least a desire to be a leader as far as managing people. Then we hired a CLO, and then we hired a CFO and so on and so forth.
I think being a great leader is knowing where your strengths and weaknesses are, and then finding people to fill in those weaknesses.
The Benefits of Earned Media
We’re in an attention economy, there’s no doubt about it. Attention is worth more than it ever has been, and the reason is, there’s more noise than ever before.
There’s information coming at us in every direction. Knowing how to work with earned media gives you a superpower, which allows you to cut through that noise in an authentic way like we’re doing right now.
You and I are having a conversation, and people who are listening to this podcast have chosen to listen to this podcast. We’re not actually having this conversation between you and I; we’re having a conversation between us and a few thousand other people. That’s powerful. And it’s not advertising.
Finding a mentor
There’s two ways to do it. The first one is really fascinating, and a bit of a plug for Clarity.fm. I’m not only a huge user, but I’ve used the platform to find people whenever I need just a few minutes or half an hour of advice or coaching.
No matter what you’re looking for, you can find it there.
I happen to be one of the top-rated people on that platform today. It has about 75,000 members. You can just go in, and if you need help with SEO, there’s an expert for that. If you need HR advice, there’s an expert for that. If you need PR advice, there’s me.
The second way is using LinkedIn. It is a little bit more difficult because whenever you’re cold-pitching people, “Will you be my mentor?” That’s not going to work.
Usually, I will reach out on LinkedIn, establish a relationship with a person, and bring value to them first – whether it’s by sharing information I think they should know about, or buying their product and becoming a customer.
Instead of asking, giving. It’s hard to say no to a LinkedIn request if someone’s your client or they’re using your product, for example. It’s hard to say no to somebody if they’re a fan – they really love what you’re doing, or if they’re referring people to you.
And then later you can put them on your podcast, and then they get to know you, and then you an approach them later on.
Build value first. LinkedIn and Clarity are the two fastest ways where you can find the right mentor.
Links and Resources
Connect with Adrian: LinkedIn | Twitter | Facebook
Find Adrian on Clarity.fm: https://clarity.fm/adrian-salamunovic
FREE PR: How to Get Chased by the Press Without Hiring a PR Firm by Cameron Herold & Adrian Salamunovic
CanvasPop
DNA11
Clarity.fm
The E-Myth Revisited: Why Most Small Businesses Don't Work and What to Do About It by Michael E. Gerber
Play Bigger: How Pirates, Dreamers, and Innovators Create and Dominate Markets by Al Ramadan
Asana
Fellow
Something that I never believed in was telling people what to do
Today we are going to dig into the topic of why culture is so important in the workplace. Our guest is Workplace Culture Architect, Carolyn Swora. She is also the principal and founder of Pinnacle Culture, and author of the great book, Rules of Engagement: Building a Workplace Culture to Thrive in an Uncertain World.
We talk about the importance of creating a shared vision, connecting people to their “Why”, knowing your people’s strengths, culture and values, and many more.
I hope you enjoy this episode, and don’t forget to subscribe and rate us on iTunes!
The power of creating a shared vision
Carolyn went from being a peer to being a manager in her first leadership role. Below, she shares one of the biggest things she has learned.
Because I had worked with these two people before, I thought, “I can’t come in and tell everyone what to do.” I naturally gravitated to “Let’s create a vision or an image or what the end state looks like for us,” and that really worked well.
It really set me up to realize the importance of doing that. Great managers don’t come in and tell everyone what to do. They give people the space to do it on their own, and they inspire them to connect to something bigger and essentially find their ‘Why’. Finding their ‘Why’ is important.
Why is culture important
So much has changed in our workplace. People recognize collectively, now more than ever – how we get our work done really matters, and how we get our work done will impact what gets done.
You can have the most wonderful, perfect, beautiful strategy, and it will not get executed half as well as you would like it to if how you’re getting things done isn’t given some attention.
Building blocks of culture
Values are the building blocks of your culture. Quite often you’ll see these beautiful words or values painted on a wall when you walk in, in the corporate brochure, on the website, etc. and employees might look the other way and think, “Yeah, right. We don’t really do that.”
Values will tell you how people make decisions.
Carolyn’s advice for New Leaders
You are an enabler. You’re not a doer. You’re there to create an environment for people to do their best work. Help set the context, help them find the vision and the purpose in what they’re doing, and then go let them do their thing.
You’ve likely been promoted into this job as a leader because you were good at getting stuff done, but that is not what is going to define your success moving forward.
Links and Resources
Connect with Carolyn: LinkedIn | Twitter | Facebook | Instagram
Visit her website: http://carolynswora.com/
Rules of Engagement: Building a Workplace Culture to Thrive in an Uncertain World by Carolyn Swora
Headspace (App)
Never stop learning, and always treat people with respect.
Happy New Year! Welcome to The New Leader Podcast. This is the place for those who are new to people management and who aspire to leadership roles.
Our special guest today is Trevor Murphy, Senior Vice President of Hockey Operations to the Newfoundland Growlers, an East Coast hockey league team based in St. John’s, Newfoundland.
On this episode we talk about Sports Leadership – Lessons from the Ice. We talk about Trevor’s background, volunteerism, and the lessons he learned from experience, as well as his mentors.
I hope you enjoy this episode, and don’t forget to subscribe and rate us on iTunes!
First Lesson I learned very quickly to lean on people around you that have experience, and don’t be afraid to ask questions, because there’s never a bad question. It’s not a sign of weakness; it’s actually a sign of strength in my opinion, when you’re willing to ask questions and take feedback from other people.
Second Lesson One thing I learned…was to treat people the right way. If you read different books and watch different videos on leadership and such, you see the difference between being a boss and being a leader.
Developing that leadership aspect as opposed to the boss mentality – the quicker a young professional can figure that out, I believe the more success they’re going to have in a leadership role.
That’s something I learned from watching, seeing how people did things. I tried to do that right away.
The boss comes in and tells people what to do, but a leader shows them what to do and leads by example.
Third Lesson Don’t sweat the small stuff. Don’t get me wrong – I do sweat the small stuff sometimes when I want things to go well. But I’ve learned over the years how to handle some adversity, and how to handle some negativity.
You’ll quickly learn that you can’t please everybody. You’ll never please everyone, but you can do your best to please people.
You strive to be the best you can be, you strive to be the hardest working person you know. You strive to do things right all the time. At the end of the day, if you know you’ve done that, then that’s something that you can be very proud of.
Links and Resources
Connect with Trevor: LinkedIn | Twitter
What it Takes to be Number One by Vince Lombardi
The Last Lecture by Randy Pausch
Welcome to The New Leader Podcast. I’m your host, Ian Daley. Today we’re going to have a short, five-minute episode to wrap up 2018.
The purpose of this episode is two-fold. First, I want to give you a quick teaser on some upcoming guests that will be joining the show in 2019, and second, I want to remind you about the free tool that you can access to make 2019 a banner year.
Have a wonderful holiday season and see you next year!
Upcoming Guests One of my guests in the beginning of January will be David Dingwall. David and I will talk about the three things about negotiation that you need to know in your career. David is an expert in this area.
Next up we have Carolyn Swora who’s a workplace culture architect. Carolyn is the author of Rules of Engagement: Building a Workplace Culture to Thrive in an Uncertain World. Culture in the workplace is a very hot topic right now and Carolyn and I will dig into that.
We will also have Trevor Murphy, Senior Vice President of Hockey Operations at the Newfoundland Growlers – a professional hockey team. Trevor and I are going to talk about sports and leadership lessons from the ice. I’ve known Trevor since I was young, and he’s really someone who embodies everything that a leader should be.
Lastly, we’ll also have Adrian Salamunovic, a serial entrepreneur. He and I sat down to chat about his new book, Free PR: How to Get Chased by the Press Without Hiring a PR Firm. We will talk about public relations and PR for leaders and new managers.
Free Tool If you want to make 2019 a banner year, click this link to access a free tool I’ve created called an Achievement Workbook. If you already have a copy of the workbook, or if you signup to get a copy, I’ll also throw in a free 30-minute consultation if you send me an email at info@iandaley.com.
The reason I do this is because I know how much it benefited me having somebody walk me through the goal-planning exercise when I’m setting my goals for the new year. 2019 should be the year where you take control and blast through your goals, and I’d be honored to be part of that.
Links and Resources
Connect with me: LinkedIn | Facebook
Welcome to The New Leader Podcast. I’m your host, Ian Daley. Today we’re going to answer the question: How do you know you’re ready for management?
This episode is geared towards those who aspire to leadership roles but are not there yet, and are curious to know – how do you know when you’re ready for that first management role?
Today’s guest is Catherine Rice, Vice President of Sales at Roche Pharmaceuticals, who has a great wealth of experience and knowledge in this topic. She is a highly effective and motivational leader who inspires improvement at district, regional, and national levels by driving performance and change management through tenets of simplicity, focus, and competitiveness.
In this episode, we look at:
- Catherine’s biggest failure and success as a leader
- How to know you’re ready for management
- Going from “I” to “We”
- Being open to criticism, and a lot more.
I hope you enjoy this one.
Biggest Failure As a people manager, it’s natural to want something for someone, but they don’t necessarily want that for themselves. You can see potential in them, and you try to push, and you try to get them there, there’s a lot of advice giving, but nothing’s happening because they’re not there yet. They may not have the self-awareness nor the desire to want what you potentially want for them.
If you ask me the reverse question, what some of my greatest successes were was helping people grow and develop and get those promotions. The failures were not recognizing when someone had the roadblock up and didn’t want it for themselves, or they just weren’t there ready to change, but I was pushing them to do it when they weren’t there yet.
It was really hard, and I had to learn not to get frustrated. I would resort into becoming too much of an advice giver.
“You should do this. How about you try this?” versus “What is it you want, and how can I help you get there?”
From “I” to “We” For me, the number one thing is, “Are they ready to make that transition from it’s all about me to it actually has absolutely nothing to do with me?”
That’s a key distinction if you're going to be a strong people manager.
It’s tough, especially in sales when you have high performers. I’ve done a lot of reading in this area, and if you look at any group, those who tend to be promoted and put into management positions are the people who are super strong, key contributors, or individual contributors. These are your top sales person, your best physician, your best office worker. If they’re really good at their task, they tend to get promoted.
However, do they have the skills necessary to be a great people manager, and can they make that transition from “it’s all about me and my results” to “it actually is about the team and the team’s results”?
That’s a key distinction, and people have to have an awareness of that.
Being Open to Criticism
If you find yourself being open to people being critical of you, then you’re ready to be a people manager.
As a manager, it’s not just about you giving feedback – you’re going to get it yourself, and sometimes you don’t necessarily like what people have to say about you as a person.
You’re in a spotlight role as a people manager; you can’t hide. So you have to be open to that. And some people are, and some people aren’t.
Links and Resources
Connect with Catherine: LinkedIn
Visit their website: https://www.roche.com/
The Coaching Habit: Say Less, Ask More & Change the Way You Lead Forever by Michael Bungay Stanier
Fierce Conversations: Achieving Success at Work and in Life One Conversation at a Time by Susan Scott
Brené Brown
The Gifts of Imperfection: Let Go of Who You Think You're Supposed to Be and Embrace Who You Are by Brené Brown
Welcome to The New Leader Podcast. I’m your host, Ian Daley. Today we’re going to talk about Creativity in Leadership – why it’s important, and how leaders can be more creative.
Today’s guest is Ron Tite. Ron is a speaker, and the Founder and CEO of Church+State, a Toronto-based marketing agency. He’s also the author of Everyone’s an Artist (or At Least They Should Be), published by HarperCollins in 2016. Ron has been an award-winning writer and creative director for brands such as Air France, Evian, Johnson & Johnson and Intel, to name a few.
In this episode, we look at:
Ron’s first experience as a manager,
the definition of a true leader,
his biggest win and biggest loss,
the importance of creativity in leadership,
his favorite streamlining tools and how they make work more efficient,
and a lot more.
I hope you enjoy this one.
Ron’s First Management Role My real first management role was my very first job. Like most comedians and creative directors, I did a Phys. Ed. degree. My very first job was helping launch the National Executive MBA program at Queen’s University – the Queen’s School of Business.
There I was, a Phys. Ed. grad. I didn’t know how I got there, but being an administrator and a manager in a School of Business, launching a video conference Executive MBA program, was not something I spoke to my high school guidance counselor then.
I landed in this place because I was there as a summer student. The Director of it said, “You’re smart enough to really understand where we have to take this. You’re a good enough team player that you can build trust with people and rally people around a shared cause. You’re competitive because of your athletic background, but you’re not too competitive, like you’re not a jerk about it.”
True Leadership When we talk about leadership, we talk about direct reports. But the reality is, with this outsourced world, with this gig economy, and with these fuzzy lines between roles, where people are inside your organization or outside your organization, they’re a contractor, or a freelancer – whatever. All that stuff goes away now.
True leaders are the ones who can rally a group of people around a shared purpose. Sometimes those people report to you and sometimes they don’t.
Why Creativity is Important As a Leader
The key aspect of creativity is when somebody stops and asks themselves,
“Hold on a second. What if there are no rules?”
The complete opposite of creativity is doing things the way you always do them, and that’s the way a lot of leaders operate. There’s a set of rules, and you follow the rules.
Here’s the 5-step plan to leading people.
This is what you do on a daily basis. You do an HR-mandated 360 review. This is how it goes; this is the document you use. These are the things you say.
And you do that, and it becomes efficient. You guarantee quality. You all follow the same steps every single time. It’s an assembly line of leadership.
And there are people who have built their careers with no absolute brilliance, but with an absolute commitment and discipline to following the rules. There are things you do, there are ways you dress, there are things that you say – and if you just follow those rules, you’ll do very well.
The problem is that pretty much in every aspect of leadership, pretty much in every single category on the planet, all those rules have been thrown out the window.
We are now in a situation where there are no rules. We’re seeing entire categories being completely disrupted simply because of outside disruptors who are solving the problems the establishment can’t, or won’t. And the reason they are solving these problems is because they’re not following the rules.
Links and Resources
Connect with Ron: LinkedIn
Visit their website: https://churchstate.co/ | http://rontite.com/
Everyone’s an Artist (or At Least They Should Be): How Creativity Gives You the Edge in Everything You Do by Ron Tite, Scott Kavanagh and Christopher Novais
The Seven Words You Can Never Say on Television by George Carlin
Slack
Evernote
Scrivener
ICONIC: How Organizations and Leaders Attain, Sustain, and Regain the Highest Level of Distinction by Scott McKain
All the Light We Cannot See: A Novel by Anthony Doerr
Welcome to The New Leader Podcast. I’m your host, Ian Daley and today I’m really excited to have Joanne Shields with us. Joanna is the co-founder of StarFish Learning Inc, as well as a talented facilitator, designer and consultant. She specializes in enabling organizations and individuals to excel through the application of powerful learning experiences.
Joanna has worked with many leaders over the years as a consultant, and brings with her insights that I know you will find a lot of benefit from today.
In this episode, we are going to look at:
- what separates the best leaders from the rest,
- how to stay on top of it all without drowning in a sea of distractions (e.g., email, social media),
- planning and discipline,
- setting boundaries, and
- productivity and enjoyment.
I hope you enjoy this one.
Joanne’s Experience as a New Leader I had four direct reports – two of them were younger than me, and I felt like I could connect with them. I felt like they were at a similar age and stage to me. The two older women, I was terrified of. I thought there was no possible way they were ever going to learn or listen or be led by me.
I would say my real strength, and what I focused on as a new leader, was understanding that I would make mistakes, and being transparent about that. I worked collaboratively with all of my staff to co-create and understand how I can best support and coach them. Although I will say I was probably not a very good coach back then; I probably did a lot more telling than asking.
But I do think my intention really was to connect with them at the head level and at the heart level. I believe that if you ask them, even today, that’s what they would say, that I had a real desire and intention to help support them and to help them grow and develop their potential.
Biggest Failure as a Leader My biggest failure probably is not being willing to have tough conversations early on.
I think that’s very tough for leaders, especially new leaders. We always want to bring the positive side, the supportive side, the collaborative side to our discussions. But I really believe that what we don’t talk about and what we sort of gloss over can get in the way – not only of performance, but also the relationships that we build with our people.
If I had to give a piece of advice to a new leader, I would say find a way to approach those tougher conversations. There’s lots of good reference material out there – Fierce Conversations, Crucial Conversations. And do that in the spirit of development and support.
As we always say, you need to be firm with the problem and the actions that are going to be taken clearly state your expectations. But also be sensitive to the people side of the issue.
I think that if I had learned that earlier on, it probably would have saved me a lot of grief.
What Makes a Great Leader From what I’ve seen, from the leaders that I’ve worked with, there are a couple of things that stand out. The first one for me is the whole analogy of being the kingmaker, not the king.
How do we really equip our people to reach their potential? Challenge them, but don’t stretch them beyond reason.
How do we give them opportunities to grow and develop and to really shine in the organization and with their customers?
I think great leaders know how to do that. They know when to ask and when to tell. They know when to be giving a lot of direction, and when to be giving a little bit of direction. But at the end of the day, I really feel like they get tremendous fulfillment, and really get very jazzed up when their people do well.
And I think that’s authentic.
Links and Resources
Connect with Joanna: LinkedIn
Visit their website: http://www.starfishlearning.com/cms2/
Fierce Conversations: Achieving Success at Work and in Life One Conversation at a Time by Susan Scott
Crucial Conversations: Tools for Talking When Stakes Are High, Second Edition by Kerry Patterson, Joseph Grenny, Ron McMillan and Al Switzler
Radical Candor: Be a Kick-Ass Boss Without Losing Your Humanity by Kim Scott
Good to Great: Why Some Companies Make the Leap and Others Don't by Jim Collins
The Coaching Habit: Say Less, Ask More & Change the Way You Lead Forever by Michael Bungay Stanier
Hi, this is Ian Daley. Welcome to the pilot episode of The New Leader podcast.
This is the podcast where you’ll find practical, actionable advice for new leaders, or those who aspire to move into leadership roles. You’ll learn directly from those who walk the walk as they share their leadership stories, struggles and successes.
Today our guest is Chris Spurvey, founder of Chris Spurvey Sales Growth Consulting Inc and co-founder at Dockridge Digital.
Chris spearheaded the growth of Plato Consulting to the point it was acquired by one of the largest management consulting firms in the world (KPMG). In the process, he sold over $300 million in consulting services.
Following the acquisition, Chris turned his focus to helping other “non-sales sellers” find a way to grow their revenue in a consistent, stress-free manner. He published It’s Time to Sell: Cultivating the Sales Mindset, founded Make Sales a Habit University and today is a growth advisor to business owners and their management teams throughout the world.
We talk about his background, his experience as a manager, becoming VP at KPMG, his biggest win as a leader, following your intuition, and many more. We even touched on the practical applications of psychology!
I hope you enjoy this one.
Advice for new leaders What was the first 6-12 months like for you as a new manager?
When I think back to them looking at me, and me looking at them as their leader, I never stopped to pause and “think” through their eyes, and that is the most important aspect in my opinion in terms of how to actually motivate and inspire and get people to act in a way that is going to progress them and also benefit the organization.
We, as leaders, need to be looking through the eyes of the individuals we are leading and think about what is exactly going to motivate them. Think about not only the business side of it, but also think about their personal lives.
They’re coming at their jobs through their own bodies and as a new leader, we – I know I did – never really realized that. We look through our own eyes.
We look at the individual, and we think about what’s going to benefit us as individuals – that’s the initial reaction.
At the base of it is an individual who has a heart and a mind, and ambitions and motivations that are exactly the equivalent of yours – they’re just a couple of years behind you or me as a new leader at that point in time.
So I would suggest making sure always pausing, to think through the eyes of the individual you’re leading.
Biggest WIN as a leader What would you describe as your biggest win from the people aspect of helping a consultant land a big client?
This guy Ed in our local office, who at that time was a senior consultant, came to me and said, “Chris, I am really struggling with this idea of going out and selling and finding new clients.”
The more I dug into that, the more I realized that he had a really negative view as to what sales is. He saw sales as being something pushy, which many people do. It’s the stereotypical used-car salesman type of mindset.
What I did with him is I helped him identify some unique gifts and strengths that he had, and I reframed sales around that couple of unique strengths.
After talking to him for a half hour I learned that he is a very curious individual. He actually has a website that he manages and monitors in his spare time. This was a user forum for Mustangs.
As I spoke to him and saw that curiosity and problem solving ability I said to him, “When you think about it, when you go in to meet a prospective new client, if you go at it from the perspective of being curious about who they are as individuals, and then try to diagnose and solve their problem, sales will just happen naturally from that interaction.”
I remember it specifically, because about a month later he landed a $250,000-dollar contract and now he is, I believe, a manager.
I inspired him and got him to see sales through a different lens and I was able to have him see it, but also wrap it in the context of his daily job.
And so even without a new model, image and new tactics and techniques that pertains to sales and now he’s excelling in the organization. So that’s one of the wins of working with those consultants, reframing and working around this topic of sales.
Follow your intuition If you follow your heart, your heart will very rarely lead you astray.
Not to get too woo-woo for that matter, but we have higher faculties, and those higher faculties are perception, intuition, our will, our reasoning factors and so on.
We have a tendency to live through our senses – sight, smell, taste, touch, etc – but we have these higher faculties like memory that we should be trying to develop.
The one key factor that I believe a leader needs to hone in on is their intuition and that’s really being able to tap into what your heart is telling you, and follow that intuition because I believe it will rarely lead you astray.
Links and Resources
Connect with Chris: LinkedIn | Facebook | Instagram
Visit his website: http://www.chrisspurvey.com/
It’s Time to Sell: Cultivating the Sales Mindset by Chris Spurvey
The Courage to be Disliked by Ichiro Kishimi and Fumitake Koga
