Coaching for Leaders

Bonni is the host of the Teaching in Higher Ed podcast, Dean of Teaching and Learning and Professor of Business and Management at Vanguard University, and my life partner. Prior to her academic career, she was a human resources consultant and executive officer for a publicly traded company. Bonni is the author of The Productive Online and Offline Professor: A Practical Guide*.

• Jose asked about how to balance professional and personal responsibilities and get it all done.
• Jordan mentioned getting passed up for a promotion twice and wondering what suggestions we have on the feedback they have received.
• Ahmad asked us about resources for supporting high performances and team members who are struggling.
• Jenna shared a distinction between tuition reimbursement and tuition assistance that Dave expanded on.

• Getting Things Done* by David Allen
• Leadership Story Deck* by David Hutchens
• Start With Why* by Simon Sinek
• Hope for the Flowers* by Trina Paulus
• The Empowered Manager* by Peter Block
• Kim Scott’s distinction on Superstars vs. Rock Stars
• CliftonStrengths by Gallup

• How to Get Way Better at Accepting Feedback, with Sheila Heen (episode 143)
• Getting Things Done, with David Allen (episode 184)
• Five Steps to Hold People Accountable, with Jonathan Raymond (episode 306)
• The Way to Stop Spinning Your Wheels on Planning (episode 319)
• Finding Joy Through Intentional Choices, with Bonni Stachowiak (episode 417)
• The Way to Make Sense to Others, with Tom Henschel (episode 518)
• The Four Storytelling Mistakes Leaders Make, with David Hutchens (episode 553)
• How to Lead and Retain High Performers, with Ruth Gotian (episode 567)

Activate your free membership for full access to the entire library of interviews since 2011, searchable by topic. To accelerate your learning, uncover more inside Coaching for Leaders Plus.

Vanessa Patrick is the Associate Dean for Research, Executive Director of Doctoral Programs, a Bauer Professor of Marketing and lead faculty of the Executive Women in Leadership Program at the Bauer School of Business at the University of Houston. She has been recognized with a number of awards for both scholarship and teaching and was named one of the top 50 most productive marketing scholars worldwide by the DocSig of the American Marketing Association.

Vanessa was appointed as a Fulbright Specialist (2019-24) by the U.S. Department of State, Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs. She is a prominent scholar in her field and serves on editorial and policy boards of leading academic journals. She is currently an Associate Editor for the Journal of Marketing Research and the Journal of Marketing and she’s the author of The Power of Saying No: The New Science of How to Say No That Puts You in Charge of Your Life*.

Most leaders know that it’s important to say no to requests that aren’t the right use of time and resources. But how do you navigate this when the other party is likely to respond in a difficult way? In this conversation, Vanessa and I explore the patterns of difficult askers and how we can do a better job of responding when we’re interacting with them.

• We all have both marigolds and walnut trees in our lives. Marigold protect and strengthen us – walnut trees crowd out our time and interfere.
• Difficult askers often confront us with face-to-face requests, use their home court advantage, and insist on an immediate response.
• Pushback is normal and expected. It’s helpful to view it as a hurdle to overcome vs. something to avoid. Either way, we will spend the energy.
• Resentment is a helpful indicator that difficult askers are taking too much power. Establish personal policies that provide guidelines so you can proactively come back to values when considering requests.
• It’s helpful to consider advance requests in the context of fulfilling the commitment immediately, otherwise we’ll continue to feel the pressure of resentment and

• The Power of Saying No: The New Science of How to Say No That Puts You in Charge of Your Life* by Vanessa Patrick

Download my interview notes in PDF format (free membership required).

• How to Say No Without Saying No, with Lois Frankel (episode 471)
• How to Speak Up, with Connson Locke (episode 546)
• How to Help People Speak Truth to Power, with Megan Reitz (episode 597)

Activate your free membership for full access to the entire library of interviews since 2011, searchable by topic. To accelerate your learning, uncover more inside Coaching for Leaders Plus.

Liz Anderson has extensive experience as a solutions engineering leader and is the founder of the PreSales Path. She’s also an alum of the Coaching for Leaders Academy.

In this SaturdayCast, Liz and I discuss the inflection points she’s experienced in the past year, how intentional focus on her vision and identity helped move her forward, and the value of consistency through it all.

• Professional development is about finding the starting points and then adapting as you go.
• Once you decide on a new identity and direction, the indicators start to emerge on where to go next.
• When your heart and intention are in the right place, the tactical path is still not easy, but it is clearer.

• Liz Anderson

• How to Become the Person You Want to Be, with James Clear (episode 376)
• How to Nail a Job Transition, with Sukhinder Singh Cassidy (episode 555)
• How to Get Moving, with Gladys McGarey (episode 631)
• How to Get Traction With a New Habit (audio course)

Activate your free membership for full access to the entire library of interviews since 2011, searchable by topic. To accelerate your learning, uncover more inside Coaching for Leaders Plus.

Michael Bungay Stanier is the author of eight books, including The Coaching Habit, which has sold more than a million copies and is the best-selling book on coaching this century. Most recently he wrote How to Begin, and back in 2011 he created and edited End Malaria, a book written in partnership with Seth Godin that raised more than $400k for Malaria No More.

Michael is the founder Box of Crayons, a learning and development company that’s trained thousands of people around the world to be more coach-like. He has been featured in many publications including Harvard Business Review, Forbes, and Fast Company. His TEDx Talk on Taming Your Advice Monster has been viewed more than a million times. Michael’s newest book is How to Work with (Almost) Anyone: Building the Best Possible Relationship*.

Most leaders recognize the critical nature of healthy, peer relationships. Yet, few leaders lay an intentional foundation for success as those relationships start. In this episode, Michael and I discuss how to start with peers using the five questions in a Keystone Conversation.

• Nobody really like to say hello but everyone likes to be greeted. Make a decision to be the person that begins.
• Preparing thoughtful responses to the five questions in a Keystone Conversation will help you come to a dialogue in an authentic and vulnerable way.
• The responses themselves aren’t as critical as the process itself. By entering into a keystone conversation, you are laying the foundation for future dialogue and the best possible relationship.

The five questions of a Keystone Conversation:

• The Amplify Question: What’s your best?
• The Steady Question: What are your practices and preferences?
• The Good Date Question: What can you learn from successful past relationships?
• The Bad Date Question: What can you learn from frustrating past relationships?
• The Repair Question: How will you fix it when things go wrong?

• Preorder Michael’s book at bestpossiblerelationship.com
• Bonus audio: Michael’s process for writing this book (12 minutes)

Download my interview notes in PDF format (free membership required).

• How to Deal with Opponents and Adversaries, with Peter Block (episode 328)
• How to Involve Stakeholders in Decisions, with Eric Pliner (episode 586)
• How to Start a Big Leadership Role, with Carol Kauffman (episode 617)

Activate your free membership for full access to the entire library of interviews since 2011, searchable by topic. To accelerate your learning, uncover more inside Coaching for Leaders Plus.

Susan Cain is the author of Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can’t Stop Talking, which spent seven years on The New York Times bestseller list and has been translated into 40 languages. It was named the #1 best book of the year by Fast Company, which also named Susan one of its Most Creative People in Business. Her writing has appeared in The New York Times, The Atlantic, The Wall Street Journal, and many other publications. Her record-smashing TED Talk has been viewed over 30 million times and was named by Bill Gates one of his all-time favorite talks.

Susan has also spoken at Microsoft, Google, the U.S. Treasury, the S.E.C., Harvard, Yale, West Point, and the US Naval Academy. She received Harvard Law School’s Celebration Award for Thought Leadership, the Toastmasters International Golden Gavel Award for Communication and Leadership, and was named one of the world’s top 50 Leadership and Management Experts by Inc. She is now also the author of the bestselling book Bittersweet: How Sorrow and Longing Make Us Whole*.

We’ve all heard the value of positive thinking and aiming for happiness, but we don’t often think about the value of sorrow — and rarely in the context of leadership. In this conversation, Susan returns to the podcast to explore how the full spectrum of who we are can help us live — and lead – just a bit better.

• We espouse the value of happiness and positive thinking but don’t often recognize the value of appreciating sorrow and pain.
• Words like “pain” and “suffering” tend to not show up in our workplaces, even when that’s clearly what’s being experienced. Instead, these realities are often substituted with words like “anger” or “frustration.”
• Yes we should focus on our strengths, but beware of confusing a bittersweet temperament or sadness, with weakness.
• Having power or feeling superior may prevent us from seeing others sadness — or even our own. Leaders who can embrace humility often find that results follow too.
• The physical act of bowing can help with humility, as does capturing in writing moments of compassion (either from others or for others), as well as a focus on self-compassion.

• Preorder Bittersweet for a free book plate from Susan
• Empathy: The Human Connection to Patient Care by The Cleveland Clinic
• The Kindred Letters by Susan Cain

Download my interview notes in PDF format (free membership required).

• The Power of Introverts in a World That Can’t Stop Talking, with Susan Cain (episode 44)
• Use Power for Good and Not Evil, with Dacher Keltner (episode 254)
• Four Steps to Get Unstuck and Embrace Change, with Susan David (episode 297)

Activate your free membership for full access to the entire library of interviews since 2011, searchable by topic. To accelerate your learning, uncover more inside Coaching for Leaders Plus.

Tiffani Bova is the global customer growth and innovation evangelist at Salesforce, and The Wall Street Journal bestselling author of Growth IQ. Over the past two decades, she has led large revenue-producing divisions at businesses ranging from start-ups to the Fortune 500.

As a Research Fellow at Gartner, her cutting-edge insights helped Microsoft, Cisco, Salesforce, Hewlett-Packard, IBM, Oracle, and many other prominent companies expand their market share and grow their revenues. She has been named one of the Top 50 business thinkers in the world by Thinkers50 twice and she’s the host of the podcast What’s Next! with Tiffani Bova. She is the author of The Experience Mindset: Changing the Way You Think About Growth*.

While many organizations espouse that employees are their greatest asset, most senior leaders prioritize customer needs above all else. Data clearly shows that balancing great employee experience along with a quality customer experience drives better results. In this conversation, Tiffani and I discuss the mindset and initial steps that leaders can take to improve the experience for both employees and customers.

• In recent decades, we’ve been in the mindset of customer-first. Today, the biggest threat to organizations is worker unhappiness.
• While almost every organization espouses the importance of employees, few executive leaders can identify who “owns” the employee experience in their organization. In contrast, almost every organization has a clearly defined customer experience owner.
• Proper investments in technology are often an obstacle to an ideal employee experience. Getting better at this means that senior leaders in human resources, information technology, and customer experience must work together to help impact line up with intention.
• Three starting points for better employee experience are: reviewing data for customer experience and compare it to the trends for employee experience, utilizing employee advisory boards for a voice in emerging strategy, and reviewing employee survey results to determine what findings have been addressed.
• Getting better at balancing customer experience and employee experience means moving away from an expert’s mindset and towards a beginner’s mindset.

• The Experience Mindset: Changing the Way You Think About Growth* by Tiffani Bova

Download my interview notes in PDF format (free membership required).

• How to Discover What People Want, with Tiziana Casciaro (episode 565)
• Gallup’s Insights on Addressing Unhappiness, with Jon Clifton (episode 601)
• How to Solve the Toughest Problems, with Wendy Smith (episode 612)

Activate your free membership for full access to the entire library of interviews since 2011, searchable by topic. To accelerate your learning, uncover more inside Coaching for Leaders Plus.

Seth Godin is the author of 21 international bestsellers that have changed the way people think about work. His books have been translated into 38 languages. Seth writes one of the most popular marketing blogs in the world, and two of his TED talks are among the most popular of all time.

He is the founder of the altMBA, the social media pioneer Squidoo, and Yoyodyne, one of the first internet companies. His blog is at seths.blog and his newest book is The Song of Significance: A New Manifesto for Teams*.

Seth says that the foundation of all real skills is the confidence and permission to talk to each another. No place is that more apparent than in our meetings. On this episode, Seth returns to help us move towards meetings of significance.

• The song of significance is about work that matters, being part of something bigger than each one of us, and doing things we’re proud of.
• Many organizations and leaders hold meetings, but they are often reports and lectures. Meetings of significance are conversations.
• Despite knowing the critical important of conversations, we tend to resist them in our roles. Our work is to begin those conversations.
• Start with agreement on what a meeting is how we do work that matters through it. The problem is rarely with Zoom. The problem is how you show up to facilitate the meeting.
• Create the culture you need to serve people well by setting the tone for it. You have more power than you think.

• The Song of Significance: A New Manifesto for Teams* by Seth Godin

Download my interview notes in PDF format (free membership required).

• Five Steps to Hold People Accountable, with Jonathan Raymond (episode 306)
• The Way to Have Conversations That Matter, with Celeste Headlee (episode 344)
• How to Lead Meetings That Get Results, with Mamie Kanfer Stewart (episode 358)
• How to Use Power Responsibly, with Vanessa Bohns (episode 551)

Activate your free membership for full access to the entire library of interviews since 2011, searchable by topic. To accelerate your learning, uncover more inside Coaching for Leaders Plus.

Gladys McGarey is 102 years old and a still-practicing doctor. Recognized as a pioneer of the allopathic and holistic medical movements, she is also a founding diplomat of the American Board of Holistic Medicine. She is the cofounder and past president of the American Holistic Medical Association, as well as the cofounder of the Academy of Parapsychology and Medicine and the founder of The International Academy of Clinical Hypnosis.

Gladys lives and works in Scottsdale, Arizona, where for many years she shared a medical practice with her daughter. She currently has a medical consulting practice, maintains a healthy diet, and enjoys a good piece of cake every now and then. She has spoken at TEDx and is the author of The Well-Lived Life: A 102-Year Old Doctor’s Six Secrets to Health and Happiness at Any Age*.

Our efforts in leadership development, personal growth, or getting better at anything, are all about starting. In this conversation, Gladys and I discuss the critical nature of movement in our lives and work. We also explore how to identify where to start and why it’s more about beginning that finishing.

• All life needs to move. If we’re not moving, we can’t function.
• Stuckness is an illusion. If we know what to look for, movement is all around us and within us.
• A flashlight in the dark can only see a few steps ahead — but that’s enough to move in the right direction and begin seeing more.
• Look for the trickle around the dam. Noticing where movement already is will often be the starting point to go further.
• Doctors don’t heal patients, only patients can heal themselves. Pay attention to beginning instead of finishing.

• The Well-Lived Life: A 102-Year Old Doctor’s Six Secrets to Health and Happiness at Any Age* by Gladys McGarey

Download my interview notes in PDF format (free membership required).

• How to Tame Your Inner Critic, with Tara Mohr (episode 232)
• Leadership Means You Go First, with Keith Ferrazzi (episode 488)
• How to Make Progress When Starting Something New, with Michael Bungay Stanier (episode 562)

Activate your free membership for full access to the entire library of interviews since 2011, searchable by topic. To accelerate your learning, uncover more inside Coaching for Leaders Plus.

Jeremy Utley is the Director of Executive Education at the Stanford d.school, and an Adjunct Professor at Stanford’s School of Engineering, where he has earned multiple favorite professor distinctions from graduate programs. He co-teaches two celebrated courses, Leading Disruptive Innovation (d.leadership) and LaunchPad, which focus on creating real-world impact with the tools of design & innovation.

He is also on the teaching teams of d.org, an organizational design course, and Transformative Design, a course that turns the tools of design onto graduate students’ lives. One of the most prodigious collaborators at the d.school, Jeremy has taught alongside the likes of Lecrae, Dan Ariely, Laszlo Bock, and Greg McKeown. He is the author along with Perry Klebahn of Ideaflow: The Only Business Metric That Matters.

Brainstorming sessions often emerge to address a problem requiring new ideas or innovation. However, the way many of us approach brainstorming vastly limits what’s possible for our teams and organizations. In this conversation, Jeremy and I discuss where leaders go wrong and some of the most helpful mindsets and tactics to do better.

• We tend to like cognitive closure. That often stops us from moving forward more substantially during brainstorming.
• The Idea Ratio shows that 2000 ideas are needed for every one idea that goes to market. Most teams and organizations vastly underestimate this.
• Set the expectation that brainstorming is a process, not a single event. That will help you surface vastly more useful ideas.
• Gather initial suggestions before a session to avoid favoring extroverts and early anchoring on what’s said initially. A useful way to make this is ask the language, “How might we…?”
• Warm-up exercises can substantially help put team members in the right mindset for creativity, especially for those with busy schedules moving between contexts.

• Ideaflow: The Only Business Metric That Matters by Jeremy Utley and Perry Klebahn
• Jeremy Utley’s website

Download my interview notes in PDF format (free membership required).

• How to Be Present, with Dan O’Connor (episode 399)
• The Way to Nurture New Ideas, with Safi Bahcall (episode 418)
• How to Build an Invincible Company, with Alex Osterwalder (episode 470)

Activate your free membership for full access to the entire library of interviews since 2011, searchable by topic. To accelerate your learning, uncover more inside Coaching for Leaders Plus.

Donald Miller is The New York Times bestselling author of Building a StoryBrand and Business Made Simple. He has helped thousands of businesses grow with his powerful framework. In 2010, Don started the business he’d always dreamed of. Although his business was doing ok, he quickly realized it wasn’t what he thought it would be. Everything depended on him, and he was drowning in the mundane day-to-day.

For years, his business struggled to produce dependable, predictable results. Over years of fits and false starts, Don grew his business from nothing to nearly $20 million. In the end, he realized there were six key parts of a business, and if they were managed well, the business would fly far and fast. He’s captured those lessons in his book How to Grow Your Small Business: A 6-Step Plan to Help Your Business Take Off*.

A huge percentage of businesses fail before they have any significant success. One key trigger is failure to market the business effectively. In this conversation Donald and I discuss how to power the marketing engine of your business by using the key elements of the StoryBrand framework.

• Most small businesses think more about how their marketing will look rather than what their marketing will say.
• People are attracted to what helps them survive and thrive…and it helps to communicate those message simply.
• People buy products and services to solve problems, not because they care that much about the business.
• The customer is the hero. Never play the hero; always play the guide.
• People who are insecure talk about themselves. People who are confident talk about others. Talk about yourself only in the context of how it helps the customer.

• How to Grow Your Small Business: A 6-Step Plan to Help Your Business Take Off* by Donald Miller

Download my interview notes in PDF format (free membership required).

• Serve Others Through Marketing, with Seth Godin (episode 381)
• How Leaders Build, with Guy Raz (episode 491)
• How to Quit Bad Stuff Faster, with Annie Duke (episode 607)

Activate your free membership for full access to the entire library of interviews since 2011, searchable by topic. To accelerate your learning, uncover more inside Coaching for Leaders Plus.

Brian Feroldi is a financial educator, YouTuber, and author. He has been intensely interested in money, personal finance, and investing ever since he graduated from college. His mission statement is to spread financial wellness. He loves to help other people do better with their money, especially their investments.

Brian has written more than 3,000 articles on stocks, investing, and personal finance for The Motley Fool. In 2022, Brian’s book Why Does The Stock Market Go Up? was published. The mission of the book is to demystify the stock market. It was written to explain how the market works in plain English. He’s also the co-creator of the course, Financial Statements Explained Simply.

Most of us are not accountants, but whether you work in a small business, a large corporation, a non-profit, or a government agency, the numbers define what resources that we have. Being able to understand and speak the language of financial statements is essential for leaders who want to influence decisions. In this episode, Brian and I review how to understand and read one of the most important reports for any organization: the income statement.

• A few hours of focus on the fundamentals of financial statement can provide you understanding and influence throughout your career.
• An income statement (also called a profit and loss statement or P&L) shows revenue, expenses, and profit over a period of time. It’s similar to your personal budget.
• Revenue minus cost of goods sold is gross profit.
• Subtracting operation expenses from gross profit give you an organization’s operating income or EBIT (earnings before income and taxes).
• Depreciation spreads out the cost of tangible assets (equipment, vehicles, buildings) their useful lives. Amortization does the same thing for intangible assets (loans, copyrights, patents).
• The “bottom line” is literally the bottom line at the end, either net income or net loss.

• Brian Feroldi’s newsletter
• Financial Statements Explained Simply (course)

• Improve Your Financial Intelligence, with Joe Knight (episode 244)
• How to Approach Corporate Budgeting, with Jody Wodrich (episode 355)
• Dumb Things Smart People Do With Money, with Jill Schlesinger (episode 396)

Activate your free membership for full access to the entire library of interviews since 2011, searchable by topic. To accelerate your learning, uncover more inside Coaching for Leaders Plus.

Kwame Christian is a best-selling author, business lawyer, and CEO of the American Negotiation Institute. Following the viral success of his TED talk, Kwame released his best-seller Finding Confidence in Conflict: How to Negotiate Anything and Live Your Best Life back in 2018. He’s also a regular Contributor for Forbes and the host of the number one negotiation podcast in the world, Negotiate Anything, which currently has over 5 million downloads worldwide.

Under his leadership, the American Negotiation Institute has coached and trained several Fortune 500 companies on applying the fundamentals of negotiation to corporate success. He’s also the author of the book How to Have Difficult Conversations About Race and the creator of Negotiable, an Online Community to Learn to Negotiate Anything.

We often think about questions as a way to discover more — but have you also considered how your questions might influence? Kwame Christian and I discuss three key steps in order to persuade better through your intentional questions.

• Rapport questions help you make a connection with the other party and establish a baseline for how they communicate.
• A helpful place to begin on rapport is noticing something that you genuinely admire or are curious about in the other party.
• When gaining information, start broadly and then pull the thread when the other party leads you down a path. Beware that your role/position can cause people to say more than they otherwise might.
• “What would it take?” is often a helpful way to illuminate a path forward.
• Even if you ultimately are more directive, laying the foundation through questions allows the other party to be heard and understood.

Download my interview notes in PDF format (free membership required).

• These Coaching Questions Get Results, with Michael Bungay Stanier (episode 237)
• How to Ask Better Questions, with David Marquet (episode 454)
• The Way Out of Major Conflict, with Amanda Ripley (episode 529)

Activate your free membership for full access to the entire library of interviews since 2011, searchable by topic. To accelerate your learning, uncover more inside Coaching for Leaders Plus.

Henry Cloud is an acclaimed leadership expert, clinical psychologist and a New York Times bestselling author. His 45 books, including the iconic Boundaries, have sold nearly 20 million copies worldwide. He has an extensive executive coaching background and experience as a leadership consultant, devoting the majority of his time working with CEOs, leadership teams, and executives to improve performance, leadership skills, and culture.

Henry’s work has been featured and reviewed by The New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Boston Globe, Publisher’s Weekly, Los Angeles Times, and many other publications. Success Magazine named him in the top 25 most influential leaders in personal growth and development, alongside Oprah, Brené Brown, Seth Godin and others. He is a frequent contributor to CNN, Fox News Channel, and other national media outlets. Henry is the author of Trust: Knowing When to Give It, When to Withhold It, How to Earn It, and How to Fix It When It Gets Broken*.

When someone betrays your trust, what do you do next? In this conversation, Henry and I explore the five factors of trust and the importance of each one of them in our relationships. Then, we look at the starting point for rebuilding trust after a betrayal, beginning with you and your own support network.

• Five factors are key for trust: understanding, motive, ability, character, and track record.
• Repairing trust is not clean or orderly. The first step is about you, not the person who betrayed you.
• Leaders who have a support network already in place are better able to take a pause and work through emotion and anger.
• An authentic apology from someone should articulate the event itself, demonstrate their empathy for how the event felt to you, and appreciate the consequences of their actions.
• Forgiving someone does not mean you trust them.

• Trust: Knowing When to Give It, When to Withhold It, How to Earn It, and How to Fix It When It Gets Broken* by Henry Cloud

Download my interview notes in PDF format (free membership required).

• The Art of Constructing Apologies, with Sandra Sucher (episode 535)
• The Path Towards Trusting Relationships, with Edgar Schein and Peter Schein (episode 539)
• How to Approach a Reorg, with Claire Hughes Johnson (episode 621)

Activate your free membership for full access to the entire library of interviews since 2011, searchable by topic. To accelerate your learning, uncover more inside Coaching for Leaders Plus.

Morra Aarons-Mele is the host of The Anxious Achiever, a top-10 management podcast that helps people rethink the relationship between their mental health and their leadership. Morra founded Women Online and The Mission List, an award-winning digital-consulting firm and influencer marketing company dedicated to social change, in 2010 and sold her business in 2021.

She helped Hillary Clinton log on for her first internet chat and has launched digital campaigns for President Obama, Malala Yousafzai, the United Nations, the CDC, and many other leading figures and organizations. She is the author of The Anxious Achiever: Turn Your Biggest Fears into Your Leadership Superpower*.

In this conversation, Morra and I discuss some key tactics that help leaders release just a bit of control. Since control is often driven by fear, we can let go of some control by making small shifts in our practices, awareness, and planning. We also explore how to set boundaries that will help us lead in ways that are more helpful to others — and ourselves.

• Control is often caused by fear. Optimism can be a bit of an antidote to it.
• Adopt a practice mindset by making small shifts to endure uncomfortable things.
• Practice open awareness throughs surrender; the opposite of controlling and micromanaging.
• Get clear on scheduling, deadlines, longer term career goals. Those provide a healthy illusion of control.
• Create a distinction between having an emotion and being the emotion.
• Begin setting boundaries by noticing when you are moving from comfort to discomfort.

• The Anxious Achiever: Turn Your Biggest Fears into Your Leadership Superpower* by Morra Aarons-Mele
• The Anxious Achiever podcast

Download my interview notes in PDF format (free membership required).

• Four Steps to Get Unstuck and Embrace Change, with Susan David (episode 297)
• Effective Delegation of Authority, with Hassan Osman (episode 413)
• Align Your Calendar to What Matters, with Nir Eyal (episode 431)

Activate your free membership for full access to the entire library of interviews since 2011, searchable by topic. To accelerate your learning, uncover more inside Coaching for Leaders Plus.

Jill Schlesinger is an Emmy Award winning Business Analyst for CBS News. She appears on CBS radio and television stations nationwide covering the economy, markets, investing and anything else with a dollar sign. Jill is the host of the Jill on Money podcast and of the nationally syndicated radio show, Jill on Money, which won the 2018 and 2021 Gracie Award for Best National Talk Show.

Jill is a frequent speaker on a variety of topics, including macroeconomic, market and demographic trends; workplace issues for women and LGBT employees in financial services; and how to create authentic branding. She is the author of The Dumb Things Smart People Do With Their Money and her most recent book, The Great Money Reset: Change Your Work, Change Your Wealth, Change Your Life*.

In this conversation, Jill and I examine the decision-making process that many of us use when considering advanced degrees or certifications. We discuss some of the common missteps that people make in educational investments and identity three key steps that can help us do better. Plus, we encourage leaders to get clear on their goals and outcomes and alternative ways to fund major educational investments.

• Every situation is different. Examining your situation is more helpful than relying on an assumption that all educational investments are wise.
• Identify the precise skills, knowledge, or credential you hope to gain by going back to school and how your career with benefit.
• Remember that the cost of tuition does not always reflect the full cost such as lost salary or time out of the workforce.
• Explore cheaper options if they still archive your overall objectives. A cheaper degree from a less prestigious university may meet 95% of the outcomes you want.
• Consider how your employer may support your educational investments. Some companies will consider sponsoring some of your educational expenses if you make a formal request.

• The Great Money Reset: Change Your Work, Change Your Wealth, Change Your Life* by Jill Schlesinger

Download my interview notes in PDF format (free membership required).

• Four Rules to Get Control of Your Money, with Jesse Mecham (episode 356)
• Dumb Things Smart People Do With Money, with Jill Schlesinger (episode 396)
• The Way Into Better Conversations About Wealth, with Kristin Keffeler (episode 606)
• Seven Steps to Landing Professional Development Funding (MemberCast)

Activate your free membership for full access to the entire library of interviews since 2011, searchable by topic. To accelerate your learning, uncover more inside Coaching for Leaders Plus.

Jonathan spent 20 years building careers in business development and personal growth before realizing he could have the best of both worlds by starting his own company. Now, he uses those skills to advise CEOs and organizational leaders on how to create a people-first culture that drives results.

As the founder of Refound, his goal is to provide clients with a partner they can trust and programs that gives managers an experience of how they can make work a better place, one conversation at a time. He’s the author of the book Good Authority: How to Become the Leader Your Team Is Waiting For*. He’s also the creator of the Accountability Dial, used daily by many of our members and listeners to open up more healthy dialogue inside of their teams and organizations.

It may seem like you’ve had the same conversation about 17 times, but again you have an employee asking you, “Wait? Is this thing we’re talking about supposed to be part of my job?” You again clarify their role, but you’re also thinking in the back of your mind, “Really? We’re having this conversation again?” In this episode, Jonathan and I discuss four questions to ask of yourself — and your employee — to align them with the role.

• Mangers often complain that employees do not have clarity on their roles.
• Separate the role from the person. Depersonalizing the role actually helps you to have a better alignment conversation.
• What do you want employees to be owning, thinking about, and worrying about? Those are windows into the Soul of the Role.
• There are three steps to role alignment: defining the role, aligning the role with the employee, and sustaining the dialogue about the role.

Four questions that will help you define a role:

1. What is the purpose of this role?
2. What makes someone successful in this role?
3. What are three priorities for this role in the next 90 days?
4. Where are their decision-making rights?

• Refound Academy: Good Authority, Good Alignment, and Good Accountability courses
• Good Authority: How to Become the Leader Your Team Is Waiting For* by Jonathan Raymond

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• Effective Delegation of Authority, with Hassan Osman (episode 413)
• How to Balance Care and Accountability When Leading Remotely, with Jonathan Raymond (episode 464)
• How to Lead and Retain High Performers, with Ruth Gotian (episode 567)

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Bonni is the host of the Teaching in Higher Ed podcast, Dean of Teaching and Learning and Professor of Business and Management at Vanguard University, and my life partner. Prior to her academic career, she was a human resources consultant and executive officer for a publicly traded company. Bonni is the author of The Productive Online and Offline Professor: A Practical Guide.

• Susan asked about assessing the difference between an employee who has addressable gaps in their skills and knowledge versus when they are in over their head.
• Elizabeth asked our advice on managing a team member who appears over-confident in their abilities…and how to hold them accountable.
• Steve wondered how we handle household tasks between the two of us in the midst of our busy schedules.

• Analyzing Performance Problems* by Robert Mager and Peter Pipe
• The Alignment Problem by Brian Christian
• Wonder Tools by Jeremy Kaplan
• The Home Edit by Clea Shearer and Joanna Teplin

• The Way to Stop Rescuing People From Their Problems, with Michael Bungay Stanier (episode 284)
• How to Challenge Directly and Care Personally, with Kim Scott (episode 302)
• Five Steps to Hold People Accountable, with Jonathan Raymond (episode 306)
• Finding Joy Through Intentional Choices, with Bonni Stachowiak (episode 417)

Activate your free membership for full access to the entire library of interviews since 2011, searchable by topic. To accelerate your learning, uncover more inside Coaching for Leaders Plus.

Claire Hughes Johnson is a corporate officer and advisor for Stripe, a global technology company that builds economic infrastructure for the internet. She previously served as Stripe’s Chief Operating Officer, helping the company grow from fewer than 200 employees to more than 8,000.

Prior to Stripe, Claire spent 10 years at Google leading various business teams, including overseeing aspects of Gmail, Google Apps, and consumer operations. She is a board member at Hallmark Cards, The Atlantic, Ameresco, and HubSpot. Claire also serves as a trustee and the current board president of Milton Academy. She is the author of Scaling People: Tactics for Management and Company Building*.

You are charged with leading a reorg, but do you know the mindset, actions, and steps to take? In this conversation, Claire and I explore some of the key lessons she’s discovered as an executive leader in a quickly growing enterprise. We discuss the key triggers for a reorg, the three phases of reorganization, and common pitfalls leaders should avoid.

• Reorganizations or restructurings and often seen as a sign of a problem, but that’s not always the case.
• Why reorganize? Two triggers: (1) your team structure doesn’t match your strategy and/or (2) you have a talent issue.
• While there are times to go slower, the bias should be to move with haste. Don’t leave ice cream on the counter for too long.
• Be very cautious about creating structure around a single individual.

Three phases of a reorg:

• Phase 0: Decide whether you need a reorg and determine your new structure.
• Phase 1: Get buy-in from the key people who need to be involved.
• Phase 2: Create a communications plan and inform all of those affected.

• Scaling People: Tactics for Management and Company Building* by Claire Hughes Johnson
• Transitions* by William Bridges

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• How to Manage Former Peers, with Tom Henschel (episode 257)
• Three Steps to Great Career Conversations, with Russ Laraway (episode 370)
• How to Solve the Toughest Problems, with Wendy Smith (episode 612)

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Sally Helgesen has been cited by Forbes as the world’s premier expert on women’s leadership. She is a best-selling author, speaker and leadership coach. She has been named by Thinkers50 as one of the world’s top 20 coaches and ranked number 6 among the world’s thought leaders by Global Gurus. She is the author of several books, including The Female Advantage: Women’s Ways of Leadership and The Female Vision: Women’s Real Power at Work.

Her book The Web of Inclusion: A New Architecture for Building Great Organizations, was cited in The Wall Street Journal as one of the best books on leadership of all time and is credited with bringing the language of inclusion into business. She co-authored How Women Rise, with executive coach Marshall Goldsmith, examining the behaviors most likely to get in the way of successful women. Her newest book is Rising Together: How We Can Bridge Divides and Create a More Inclusive Workplace*.

When we get triggered, our default response tends to be either venting about it to others or suffering in silence. In this conversation, Sally and I explore how to respond in a more useful way. She invites us to consider being less invested in our initial response, creating an alternative script, and finding a path forward to influence different behavior.

• When we get triggered, our tendency is to either vent about it or suffer in silence.
• Being overly invested in our first response limits our ability to respond better. This is the authenticity trap.
• Create an alternative, positive script that helps your own mental well-being and precipitates a more helpful action.
• Whether the alternative script is true or not isn’t the point. The aim is to find the line between not humiliating the other party and also not letting a poor behavior be unaddressed.
• Wisdom from Sun Tzu: indirection or redirection to disarm an opponent is preferable to the direct engagement or combat.

• Rising Together: How We Can Bridge Divides and Create a More Inclusive Workplace by Sally Helgesen

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• The Way Out of Major Conflict, with Amanda Ripley (episode 529)
• End Imposter Syndrome in Your Organization, with Jodi-Ann Burey (episode 556)
• How to Create Inclusive Hiring Practices, with Ruchika Tulshyan (episode 589)
• How to Respond Better When Challenged, with Dolly Chugh (episode 615)

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Kathy Fiddler is the Vice President of Population Health for TidalHealth, a non-profit two hospital health care system on the Eastern Shore of Maryland. She has been instrumental in building community programs supporting improved access to healthcare services on the lower shore.

Kathy is a registered nurse and a retired Major in the United States Air Force Reserve. She served for 26 years in the US and abroad and supported Operation Restore Hope, Operation Desert Storm, and Operation Enduring Freedom. She is also a lifetime member of the Reserve Officers Association and a board member for the United Way of the Lower Eastern Shore. In 2019, she was recognized as one of the Top 100 Women in Maryland. She’s also an alum of the Coaching for Leaders Academy.

In this conversation, Kathy and I discuss her career growth over time from mostly clinical and operational work to leading at the executive level. We explore how being intentional about surrounding oneself with a diverse set of voices helps to both build confidence and surface better outcomes. Finally, we look at how working through discomfort in service of others can help us to make the world better through our work.

• The work of a leader is very different than the operational and technical work most of us did earlier in our careers.
• Having a smaller meeting before a larger meeting can help a more introverted leader engage in the way they want.
• We sometimes sell ourselves short by concluding we won’t add value. By leaning into that discomfort, we find it’s often the case that others struggle with similar fears.
• Shifting from having the right answers to asking the right questions will help a leader to uncover what may have been unsaid that’s critical.
• Finding communities of other leaders helps you to find the diversity of perspective to support you building your own confidence.

• Create Margin Through Intentional Leadership, with Amy McPherson (episode 429)
• Personal Leadership is a Journey, with Michal Holliday (episode 436)
• Lead Best by Being You, with Elena Kornoff (episode 474)

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Adi Ignatius is Editor in Chief of the Harvard Business Review Group, where he oversees the editorial activities of Harvard Business Review, hbr.org, and HBR’s book-publishing unit. Prior to joining Harvard Business Review in 2009, he was the No. 2 editor at TIME. He is the editor of two books: President Obama: The Path to the White House and Prisoner of the State: The Secret Diaries of Premier Zhao Ziyang. Both made The New York Times Bestseller List.

Adi lived and worked for nearly 20 years overseas. He was Editor of Time’s Asian edition and earlier served as Beijing Bureau Chief and Moscow Bureau Chief for The Wall Street Journal. He is also host of the HBR Channel. It is the 100th anniversary of Harvard Business Review.

Should leaders and organizations take a stand on current events, politics, or causes? Adi and I discuss this tough question in detail. While the answer will be different for every leader, we invite you to begin thinking about how you might approach this in your work.

• The traditional advice of “Don’t talk about politics and religion” is still the norm in some places, but increasingly leaders and being more vocal.
• Silence used to be the default. Silence now many send a message that leaders and organizations don’t intend to convey.
• While every leader needs to decide how they will navigate this, beware your feelings of certainty.

• Harvard Business Review

• Start With Why, with Simon Sinek (episode 223)
• Handling a Difficult Stakeholder, with Nick Timiraos (episode 581)
• How to Begin Difficult Conversations About Race, with Kwame Christian (episode 594)

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Carol Kauffman is an international leader in the field of coaching and has more than 40,000 hours of practice. Her clients are C-level leaders and their teams or elite athletes and creatives. She was shortlisted by Thinkers 50 as one of the top eight coaches around the globe for her thought leadership, entrepreneurial spirit, and contribution to coaching best practices. She is a founding member of the Marshall Goldsmith 100 Coaches and ranked the number one leadership coach in the world. She founded the Institute of Coaching with a $2 million gift from the Harnisch Foundation.

Carol is an assistant professor at Harvard Medical School, a visiting professor at Henley Business School, and a senior leadership adviser at Egon Zehnder. At Harvard she launched the annual Coaching in Leadership and Healthcare Conference, one of the school’s most highly attended events. Her professional development program, Leader as Coach, won Harvard’s inaugural Program Award for Culture of Excellence in Mentoring and has been rolled out throughout the United States. She was also the founding editor-in-chief of Coaching: An International Journal of Theory, Research, and Practice. Carol is co-author with David Noble of Real-Time Leadership: Find Your Winning Moves When the Stakes are High*.

In this conversation, Carol and I explore the mindsets and tactics that are helpful when taking on a new, big leadership role. We discuss how vision, resolution, scope, and altitude play a key role in your success early on. Plus, we invite listeners to consider the importance of peer relationships and recognizing how others see you as your role begins.

• Having the right altitude often means looking much more broadly at the organization and moving past a subconscious bias towards your old role or department.
• The “subject matter expert trap” is a common one. Your awareness will help you avoid it — or recognize it faster.
• Good peer relationships are one of the strongest predictors of success in a new role. Make time to build these critical connections.
• Learning to accept recognition is a key competency for an executive leader. Treat it as you would receiving any kind of gift.
• Have an enterprise mindset and remember that people perceive you as representing the organization vs. just yourself. Thinking like the entity can help you show up in the way you intend.

• Real-Time Leadership: Find Your Winning Moves When the Stakes are High* by Carol Kauffman and David Noble

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• How to Manage Former Peers, with Tom Henschel (episode 257)
• How to Nail a Job Transition, with Sukhinder Singh Cassidy (episode 555)
• How to Genuinely Show Up for Others, with Marshall Goldsmith (episode 590)

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Joe Hart began his career as a practicing attorney. After taking a Dale Carnegie Course, Joe reassessed his career path and future, ultimately leaving the practice of law, going to work for a top real estate company, and then founding an innovative e-learning company and serving as president of health and wellness company. In 2015, Joe was named president and CEO of Dale Carnegie.

The CEO Forum Group named Joe as one of twelve transformative leaders, giving him the Transformative CEO Leadership Award in the category of the People. He is the host of a top global podcast, Take Command: A Dale Carnegie Podcast, and he speaks around the world on topics such as leadership, resilience, and innovation. He is the author with Michael Crom of Take Command: Find Your Inner Strength, Build Enduring Relationships, and Live the Life You Want*.

In this conversation, Joe and I explore how to discover another person’s values through meaningful conversation. We examine three types of questions to ask that gradually illuminate what’s important to another person. By knowing what to ask and what to listen for, we can uncover values without asking a more awkward question like, “What are your values?”

Dale Carnegie invited us to, “Try honestly to see things from the other person’s point of view.” Use three types of questions to frame a conversation that uncovers another person’s values:

1. Examples of factual questions:

• How did you first find out about…?
• What keeps you busy during the week?
• What do you like to do for fun?
• What hobby or activity holds your interest?

1. Examples of causative questions:

• What got you interesting in doing this kind of work?
• How did you get involved in that hobby?
• What do you like about…?
• What caused you to enter into this industry?

1. Examples of values-based questions:

• Tell me about someone who’s had a major impact on your life.
• If you had to do it over again, what — if anything — would you do differently?
• Tell me about a turning point in your career.
• Tell about about something that you look back on as a high point or moment of pride.
• How did you get through a major challenge in the past?
• How would you describe your personal philosophy in a sentence or two?

• Take Command: Find Your Inner Strength, Build Enduring Relationships, and Live the Life You Want* by Joe Hart and Michael Crom

• Three Steps to Great Career Conversations, with Russ Laraway (episode 370)
• Discover Who You Are, with Hortense le Gentil (episode 459)
• How to Genuinely Show Up for Others, with Marshall Goldsmith (episode 590)

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Dolly Chugh is a social psychologist and management professor at the New York University Stern School of Business where she teaches MBA courses in leadership and management. She was one of six professors chosen from thousands at NYU to receive the Distinguished Teaching Award in 2020 and one of five to receive the Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Faculty Award in 2013.

She has been named an SPSP Fellow, received the Academy of Management Best Paper award, and been named one of the top 100 Most Influential People in Business Ethics by Ethisphere Magazine. Her first book, The Person You Mean to Be has received rave praise from Adam Grant, Angela Duckworth, Liz Wiseman, Billie Jean King, and many others. She is the author of A More Just Future: Psychological Tools for Reckoning with our Past and Driving Social Change.

All of us know that we will be challenged by others. Sometimes how we see ourselves limits what we could do to change our behavior. In this conversation, Dolly and I discuss how we can do better and the mindset and actions that will help us move forward.

• There’s no such thing as bad weather, only unsuitable clothing.
• Nostalgia feels good to many of us, but can get in the way of us seeing the “ands” in situations and experiences.
• When we are challenged, especially in the context of identity, our tendency is either to deny, distance, or dismantle.
• Feeling of guilt and shame are indicators that there is an opportunity to change. The goal is not to avoid them, but to use them as a starting point for different behavior.
• Use values affirmations to give you a booster shot to prepare for the inevitable challenges ahead. These affirmations will help you respond in a more healthy way for everyone.

• Dear Good People newsletter by Dolly Chugh
• TED talk: How to let go of being a “good” person — and become a better person by Dolly Chugh
• The Person You Mean to Be* by Dolly Chugh
• A More Just Future* by Dolly Chugh

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• The Way Managers Can be Champions for Justice, with Minda Harts (episode 552)
• How to Help People Engage in Growth, with Whitney Johnson (episode 576)
• How to Solve the Toughest Problems, with Wendy Smith (episode 612)

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Daphne E. Jones has 30 years of experience in general management and executive level roles at IBM, Johnson & Johnson, Hospira, and General Electric but began her career as a secretary. At GE, she served as Senior Vice President for Future of Work, Senior Vice President & Chief Information Officer for Product Engineering, Imaging, and Ultrasound, and as Senior Executive & Chief Information Officer for Global Services, all of which composed a $13 billion segment of GE Healthcare.

She serves on the board of directors for AMN Healthcare, Inc., Barnes Group Inc., and Masonite International Corp. She is the recipient of numerous domestic and international awards and recently started a company that teaches leaders how to prepare to serve on boards. She is the author of Win When They Say You Won’t: Break Through Barriers and Keep Leveling Up Your Success*.

In this conversation, Daphne invites us to look at ourselves through the lens of a product, just as others will view us. We discuss the three critical elements of how stakeholders view you. Plus, Daphne and I explore the steps you can take to improve how you’re perceived through the different lenses that stakeholders see us through.

• Stakeholders are crucial for your success and it’s helpful for you to view yourself in their eyes (and yours) as a product.
• Three elements are key: performance is doing your job well, image is how people describe you, and exposure is who knows you.
• When you get radio silence in the context of happenings inside of your organization, that’s an indicator you are underexposed. Caution: you can also be overexposed.
• Map your stakeholders in the context of their influence in your work and their interest in how it supports their own objectives.
• Mentors will make suggestions of things you should try. Find the part that will work for you and move on the advice.

• Win When They Say You Won’t: Break Through Barriers and Keep Leveling Up Your Success* by Daphne E. Jones
• To receive a free workbook, send receipt of your book purchase to daphne@daphneejones.com

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• How to Deal with Opponents and Adversaries, with Peter Block (episode 328)
• What You Gain By Sponsoring People, with Julia Taylor Kennedy (episode 398)
• How to Support Women of Color, with Minda Harts (episode 506)
• The Art of Mentoring Well, with Robert Lefkowitz (episode 599)

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Jennifer believes that leadership is one of the most vital renewable resources in the world. She designs and teaches leadership programs, coaches senior teams, and supports new ways of thinking about strategy and people. In her three highly acclaimed books, Unlocking Leadership Mindtraps, Simple Habits for Complex Times (co-authored with Keith Johnston), and Changing on the Job, she builds on deep theoretical knowledge to offer practical ways to make leaders’ work more meaningful and their lives more fun. She has worked with senior leaders in the private, non-profit, and government sectors around the world with organizations like Novartis, Google, KPMG, Intel, Microsoft, Wikimedia, and the New Zealand Department of Conservation.

Jennifer also supports executives one-on-one as a leadership coach. Over the last decade, she has developed the Growth Edge Coaching approach. She supports clients to find their current growing edge and then make choices about how they want to develop. She teaches coaches around the world transformational and developmental coaching approaches in her Growth Edge Coaching certification series. Jennifer speaks at leadership and coaching conferences, and she offers courses for coaches at universities all over the world. She is the co-author with Carolyn Coughlin of Unleash Your Complexity Genius: Growing Your Inner Capacity to Lead*.

In this conversation, Jennifer and I discuss the reality that most of us don’t like uncertainty. That makes experimenting with new ideas and actions in complex environments very challenging. We uncover several practices that can help us benefit from experimentation in the midst of complexity and grow from these experiences.

• Complicated situations are hard, but have a clear answer (such as how to send humans to the moon). In contrast, complex situations are dynamic; yesterday’s answer may not work tomorrow.
• Most of us really dislike complexity, to the extent that that people with terminal diseases are happier than those who will likely recover.
• Step-by-step approaches don’t work in very complex situations. Instead, take action through thoughtful experimentation.
• When experimenting, release your attachment to outcomes.
• Lean into humility and don’t shy away from endings. Putting end dates on experiments helps us move forward — and sometimes remove what isn’t working.

• Unleash Your Complexity Genius: Growing Your Inner Capacity to Lead* by Jennifer Garvey Berger and Carolyn Coughlin

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• Essentials of Adult Development, with Mindy Danna (episode 273)
• How to Pivot Quickly, with Steve Blank (episode 476)
• Help Your Brain Learn, with Lisa Feldman Barrett (episode 513)

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Wendy Smith is the Dana J. Johnson Professor of Management and faculty director of the Women’s Leadership Initiative at the Lerner College of Business and Economics, University of Delaware. She earned her PhD in organizational behavior at Harvard Business School, where she began her intensive research on strategic paradoxes—how leaders and senior teams effectively respond to contradictory, yet interdependent demands. She has received the Web of Science Highly Cited Research Award for being among the 1 percent most-cited researchers in her field and received the Decade Award from the Academy of Management Review for the most cited paper in the past 10 years.

Her work has been published in such journals as Academy of Management Journal, Administrative Science Quarterly, Harvard Business Review, Organization Science, and Management Science. She has taught at the University of Delaware, Harvard, and Wharton while helping senior leaders and middle managers all over the world address issues of interpersonal dynamics, team performance, organizational change, and innovation. She is the author with Marianne Lewis of Both/And Thinking: Embracing Creative Tensions to Solve Your Toughest Problems.

In this episode, Wendy and I discuss the dangers of either/or thinking and how that tendency limits our effectiveness. We explore how to shift to both/and thinking in order to resolve the most challenging problems. Plus, we share key tactics that will help us do this in more practical ways.

• Framing a decision as an either/or will often minimize short-term anxiety, but limits creative and innovative long-term possibilities.
• While easy to see both/and opportunities for others, we’re likely to approach things as either/or when it’s ourselves. An outside perspective from someone who’s not emotionally connected is helpful.
• Changing the question we are asking is the most powerful to navigate paradoxes.
• Moving up a level when facing tough decisions can help us see the big picture.
• Consider shifting from “making a choice” to “choosing” in order to lead us towards better outcomes.

• Both/And Thinking: Embracing Creative Tensions to Solve Your Toughest Problems* by Wendy Smith and Marianne Lewis

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• How to Ask Better Questions, with David Marquet (episode 454)
• How to Win the Long Game When the Short-Term Seems Bleak, with Dorie Clark (episode 550)
• The Leadership Struggles We See, with Muriel Wilkins (episode 559)
• How to Quit Bad Stuff Faster, with Annie Duke (episode 607)

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Jorge Alzate is a senior R&D manager at PepsiCo, an active leader in Toastmasters, and an alum of the Coaching for Leaders Academy. In this conversation, Jorge and I discuss what brought him to the podcast, how he utilized the Academy to help his career move forward, and the critical nature of courage for leadership growth.

• One action a day (the blue marbles for Jorge) is the way to create a new habit that can develops into a skill.
• Accountability is key to move us forward, even if it does not feel comfortable in the moment.
• Courage is the ability to act in spite of fear — and almost always necessary before confidence.

• Feel the Fear…and Do It Anyway* by Susan Jeffers
• Winning Conditions: How to Achieve the Professional Success You Deserve by Managing the Details That Matter* by Christine Hofbeck

• Leadership Through Consistency, with Joseph Getuno (episode 490)
• How to Build Confidence, with Katy Milkman (episode 533)
• How to Protect Your Confidence, with Nate Zinsser (episode 573)

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Patrick Lencioni is founder and president of The Table Group, a firm dedicated to protecting human dignity in the world of work, personal development, and faith. Pat’s passion for organizations and teams is reflected in his writing, speaking, executive consulting, and most recently his three podcasts, At the Table with Patrick Lencioni, The Working Genius Podcast, and The Simple Reminder.

Pat is the author of twelve best-selling books with over seven million copies sold. After twenty years in print, his classic book The Five Dysfunctions of a Team remains a weekly fixture on national best-seller lists. He has been featured in numerous publications, including the Wall Street Journal, Harvard Business Review, USA Today, Inc. magazine, and Chief Executive magazine. He is the author of The 6 Types of Working Genius: A Better Way to Understand Your Gifts, Your Frustrations, and Your Team.

Many of us have heard the invitation from Jim Collin’s book Good to Great to get the right people on the bus. But once the right people are on the bus, how to do you find the right seat for each person? On this episode, Pat and I discuss how to utilize the Working Genius model to find the right work for the right team members.

• When addressing burnout, the type of work someone does is more significant than the volume of work.
• Three stages of work are present for almost every team: ideation, activation, and implementation.
• A cup of coffee in an excellent thermos can stay hot an entire day — that’s true of us when we’re aligned with our working geniuses.
• Finding the right work for a team member is far easier than finding the right person culturally. Before you look elsewhere, be sure they are in the right seat.
• To fill gaps in your team’s geniuses, you can hire, borrow, or find people where competence will suffice for now. Resist the temptation to immediately jump to hiring.

• The 6 Types of Working Genius assessment
• The 6 Types of Working Genius: A Better Way to Understand Your Gifts, Your Frustrations, and Your Team by Patrick Lencioni

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• How to Get the Ideal Team Player, with Patrick Lencioni (episode 301)
• How to Lead an Offsite, with Tom Henschel (episode 377)
• The Mindset Leaders Need to Address Burnout, with Christina Maslach (episode 609)

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Ram Charan is a bestselling author, teacher, and world-renowned advisor to CEOs and other business leaders of some of the world’s best-known companies. His work is often behind the scenes and focused on highly sensitive and fate-making issues. Fortune magazine published a profile of Ram in which it called him “the most influential consultant alive.” His book Execution, lauded for its practicality, spent more than 150 weeks on the New York Times bestseller list.

Ram’s energetic, interactive teaching style has won him several awards, including from GE’s famous Crotonville Institute and Northwestern. Ram was elected a Distinguished Fellow of the National Academy of Human Resources and was named one of the most influential people in corporate governance and the board room by Directorship magazine. He has served on the Blue Ribbon Commission on Corporate Governance and serves or has served on a dozen boards in the U.S., Brazil, China, India, Canada, and Dubai. He is the author with Geri Willigan of Leading Through Inflation: And Recession And Stagflation.

In this conversation, Ram and I explore the changing macroeconomic environment and what leaders can do to address it. We discuss the importance of managing cash well and how pricing decisions can be made effectively. Plus, we discuss the critical nature of partnerships throughout the supply chain — and where the opportunities may be in the midst of challenge.

• Inflation consumes cash. Cash management is the number one risk to an organization during this time.
• The way to get ahead of the curve is to be predictive vs. reactive. This may be a time the existing business model needs to change.
• Inflation creates an illusion of growth. It’s important to adjust for this in all reporting and planning.
• Work with all sides of the value chain. Help customers deal with rising costs while also working closely with suppliers. Regular communication is essential.
• Smaller, regular price adjustments are better than less frequent, larger increases. Resist the temptation to offer less for the same price.

• Leading Through Inflation: And Recession And Stagflation* by Ram Charan and Geri Willigan.

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• Improve Your Financial Intelligence, with Joe Knight (episode 244)
• How to Approach Corporate Budgeting, with Jody Wodrich (episode 355)
• How to Multiply Your Impact, with Liz Wiseman (episode 554)

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Christina Maslach is the pioneer of research on job burnout, producing the standard assessment tool called the Maslach Burnout Inventory, award-winning articles, and several books, beginning with Burnout: The Cost of Caring, in 1982. Her research achievements over the past five decades have led to multiple awards from the National Academy of Sciences, Western Psychological Association, Society for Personality and Social Psychology, and many others.

Christina has received awards for her outstanding teaching, including USA Professor of the Year in 1997. She has been a Professor of Psychology at the University of California, Berkeley since 1971. Christina is now a core researcher at the Healthy Workplaces Center, at Berkeley, and the author along with Michael Leiter of The Burnout Challenge: Managing People’s Relationships With Their Jobs*.

In this conversation, Christina and I address the reality that burnout is often perceived as an issue with just the individual. We explore how leaders can begin to look at the larger picture: context, culture, and management, in order to address burnout more proactively. We discuss key mindsets that will help and a few tactics that almost every leader can use to get started.

• The canary in the coal mine is an indicator of a problem, not the source of it.
• Our tendency is to focus on the person (the figure) and to miss all the context and environment factors (the ground).
• Burnout is first and foremost a management issue. “Fixing” the person should not be the focus — instead, get curious about where there is a mismatch.
• Instead of focusing on what’s wrong with the person, shift to what may be wrong in the relationship between the person and situation.
• Ensure you have a plan for communicating survey results. If you’d done surveys previously, share those results and also the actions the organization had taken before engaging in more surveys.

• The Burnout Challenge: Managing People’s Relationships With Their Jobs* by Christina Maslach and Michael Leiter

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• Gallup Findings on the Changing Nature of Work, with Jim Harter (episode 409)
• How to Reduce Burnout, with Jennifer Moss (episode 561)
• How to Compare Yourself to Others, with Mollie West Duffy (episode 582)

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Annie Duke is an author, corporate speaker, and consultant in the decision-making space, as well as Special Partner focused on Decision Science at First Round Capital Partners, a seed stage venture fund. Her previous book, Thinking in Bets, is a national bestseller. As a former professional poker player, she has won more than $4 million in tournament poker. During her career, Annie won a World Series of Poker bracelet and is the only woman to have won the World Series of Poker Tournament of Champions and the NBC National Poker Heads-Up Championship. She retired from the game in 2012. Prior to becoming a professional poker player, she was awarded a National Science Foundation Fellowship to study Cognitive Psychology at the University of Pennsylvania.

Annie is the co-founder of The Alliance for Decision Education, a non-profit whose mission is to improve lives by empowering students through decision skills education. She is a member of the National Board of After-School All-Stars and the Board of Directors of the Franklin Institute. She also serves on the board of the Renew Democracy Initiative. Annie is the author of Quit: The Power of Knowing When to Walk Away*.

We’ve all heard the lie that, “Winners never quit and quitters never win.” In reality, one of the best practices to develop is how to recognize more quickly when you should quit something that’s not working. In this conversation, Annie and I discuss how to set kill criteria for yourself and frame goals in more helpful ways to know when quitting is the best answer.

• Kenny Rogers was right; professional poker players know that a big part of success is quitting approximately 75% of the time.
• “Quit while you’re ahead” is often poor advice since we tend to quit too early when good things are happening. On the contrary, we tend to quit too late when we’ve accumulated sunk cost.
• Determine kill criteria in advance when you’re not as likely to be swayed by the emotions of the moment. The best criteria contain both a state and a date.
• Find someone who loves you but doesn’t care about your feelings. Trust and permission are essential to open up these kinds of conversations.
• Effective goals include at least one “unless…”

• Quit: The Power of Knowing When to Walk Away* by Annie Duke

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• How to Pivot Quickly, with Steve Blank (episode 476)
• The Way to Make Better Decisions, with Annie Duke (episode 499)
• How to Build Confidence, with Katy Milkman (episode 533)

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Kristin Keffeler is a thought leader and consultant at the forefront of a global shift in family wealth advising, known as Wealth 3.0. She guides affluent and enterprising families, the rising generation, and the professionals who support them in embracing the positive power of wealth, aligning their vision with their impact. As the founder of Illumination360, she specializes in human motivation and behavioral change, family dynamics, family governance, rising generation education and development, and intergenerational collaboration.

She is the Dean of Positive Psychology for the Purposeful Planning Institute, sits on the Board of Advisors for the Bailey Program for Family Enterprise at the University of Denver, is a faculty member with the Ultra-High Net Worth Institute, a certified trainer with 21/64, a national nonprofit for advancing multigenerational philanthropy, and is the co-founder of Beneficiary Bootcamp. She is the author of The Myth of the Silver Spoon: Navigating Family Wealth & Creating an Impactful Life*.

In this conversation, Kristin and I discuss a reality that’s true for almost every leader: whether we have wealth ourselves, almost all of us interact with wealthy people. We explore some of the myths of wealth to understand the psychological challenges that wealth often brings. Plus, we learn from what works (and doesn’t) for wealthy families so that we can have better conversations about wealth in our own families.

• While wealth brings resources, it also brings psychological challenges for many people with wealth.
• More money doesn’t equal happiness. Small inheritances can increase happiness, but large ones do not.
• Many people with wealth find close relationships a bit of a struggle.
• While our perception may be that the most wealthy are selfish and greedy, more often individuals (especially next generations) tend to under-identify with family wealth.
• Ground decisions in values that align with a vision of thriving.
• There’s a huge difference in the next generation having a little bit of ownership in a financial event vs. not having any ownership.

• The Myth of the Silver Spoon: Navigating Family Wealth & Creating an Impactful Life* by Kristin Keffeler

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• How to Reduce Drama With Kids, with Tina Payne Bryson (episode 310)
• Dumb Things Smart People Do With Money, with Jill Schlesinger (episode 396)
• The Way to Build Wealth, with Chris Hogan (episode 502)

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Ian Morgan Cron is a bestselling author, speaker, trained psychotherapist, songwriter, and Episcopal priest, but he may be best known for popularizing the Enneagram. The Enneagram is a personality typing system identifying nine types of people and how they relate to one another and the world. His popular Enneagram book, The Road Back to You* gave fresh language and interest in this assessment.

Ian enjoys sharing about the Enneagram with audiences of all sizes because of its power for igniting personal growth, and how it can enrich our personal and professional lives. His newest book The Story of You* helps people go a step further, using Enneagram wisdom to uncover and rewrite our own false narratives so we can live life more fully.

In this conversation, Ian and I look at the core aspects of the Enneagram model and how it can help us understand ourselves better so we can also support others more effectively. We highlight the nine Enneagram types and their key traits and distinctions. Then, we discuss how the first steps leaders might take in order to start raising their own self-awareness.

• Too often we believe that how we see the world is “normal” instead of recognizing that there are many normal ways to see the world.
• Personality is like the rooms of our home. We have a favorite room but we still use all the other rooms when its appropriate.

The 9 Enneagram Types

1. The Perfectionist – Ethical, dedicated and reliable, they are motivated by a desire to live the right way, improve the world, and avoid fault and blame.
2. The Helper – Warm, caring and giving, they are motivated by a need to be loved and needed, and to avoid acknowledging their own needs.
3. The Performer (or Achiever) – Success-oriented, image-conscious and wired for productivity, they are motivated by a need to be (or appear to be) successful and to avoid failure.
4. The Romantic (or Individualist) – Creative, sensitive and moody, they are motivated by a need to be understood, experience their oversized feelings and avoid being ordinary.
5. The Investigator – Analytical, detached and private, they are motivated by a need to gain knowledge, conserve energy and avoid relying on others.
6. The Loyalist – Committed, practical and witty, they are worst-case-scenario thinkers who are motivated by fear and the need for security.
7. The Enthusiast – Fun, spontaneous and adventurous, they are motivated by a need to be happy, to plan stimulating experiences and to avoid pain.
8. The Challenger – Commanding, intense and confrontational, they are motivated by a need to be strong and avoid feeling weak or vulnerable.
9. The Peacemaker – Pleasant, laid back and accommodating, they are motivated by a need to keep the peace, merge with others and avoid conflict.

• The Road Back to You: An Enneagram Journey to Self-Discovery* by Ian Morgan Cron and Suzanne Stabile
• The Story of You: An Enneagram Journey to Becoming Your True Self* by Ian Morgan Cron
• Take the Integrative Enneagram iEQ9
• Typology Institute Enneagram courses

• Enhance Your Self-Awareness, with Daniel Goleman (episode 353)
• The Way to Be More Self-Aware, with Tasha Eurich (episode 442)
• Discover Who You Are, with Hortense le Gentil (episode 459)

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Gustavo Razzetti is the CEO and founder of Fearless Culture, a culture design consultancy that helps teams do the best work of their lives. For more than 20 years, he has helped leaders from Fortune 500s, startups, nonprofits, and everything in between. He is also the creator of the Culture Design Canvas, a framework used by thousands of teams and organizations across the world to map, assess, and design their culture.

In addition to his consulting work, Gustavo regularly speaks with leaders and teams about culture change, teamwork, and hybrid workplaces. He is the author of four books on culture change. His most recent book is Remote Not Distant: Design a Company Culture That Will Help You Thrive in a Hybrid Workplace*.

In this conversation, Gustavo and I explore the critical nature of trust for building belonging on hybrid and remote teams. We examine the principles of psychological safety and how this matters just as much in digital collaboration. Perhaps most importantly, we look at several tactics to open up trust that will help us pave the ways towards team belonging.

• Hybrid work environments have the potential to be the best of both words, but in some places it is now worse.
• Trust is between individuals. Psychological safety is about how safe we feel with a team.
• It’s helpful to think of building psychological safety like climbing a ladder. Ironically, the higher you go on the ladder, the safer you feel taking risks.
• Welcoming questions such as “What’s your superpower?” and “What’s your kryptonite?” can be useful starting points for building trust.
• Metaphors are often a powerful way to entire into more complex, emotional discussion without feeling unsafe.

• Remote Not Distant: Design a Company Culture That Will Help You Thrive in a Hybrid Workplace* by Gustavo Razzetti

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• How to Create Team Guidelines, with Susan Gerke (episode 192)
• How to Build Psychological Safety, with Amy Edmondson (episode 404)
• How to Engage Remote Teams, with Tsedal Neeley (episode 537)

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Lynn Perry Wooten is a seasoned academic and an expert on organizational development and transformation. She became the ninth president of Simmons University on July 1, 2020 and is the first African American to lead the university. Her research specializes in crisis leadership, diversity and inclusion, and positive leadership—organizational behavior that reveals and nurtures the highest level of human potential.

Lynn has also had a robust clinical practice, providing leadership development, education, and training for a wide variety of companies and institutions, from the Kellogg Foundation to Harvard University’s Kennedy School, and to Google. She is the coauthor of Arrive and Thrive: 7 Impactful Practices for Women Navigating Leadership and the coeditor of Positive Organizing in a Global Society: Understanding and Engaging Differences for Capacity Building and Inclusion. She is also the author with Erika James of The Prepared Leader: Emerge from Any Crisis More Resilient Than Before*.

In this conversation, Lynn and I discuss why crises are not isolated events, even through they are often treated that way. We explore the critical nature of trust and how to build it quickly in crisis. We then detail three key areas of trust that will help leaders begin to support a team shift towards better outcomes.

• Crises are not single events. They happen again and again, necessitating leaders preparation for them.
• In normal times, trust is key. In a time of crisis, it’s essential.
• Regular communication is essential in a crisis. Avoid the tendency to downplay risks. In fact, it’s useful to paint a picture of the worst case scenario.
• Leaders need to determine is there is a strong sense of a contractual obligation between them and their teams.
• It’s critical for leaders to assess the competence of their team to be able to respond to the crisis at hand.
• Frequent, high performance meetings are essential during a time of crisis.

• The Prepared Leader: Emerge from Any Crisis More Resilient Than Before* by Lynn Perry Wooten and Erika James

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• How to Lead in Crisis, with Carol Taylor (episode 55)
• How to be Diplomatic, with Susan Rice (episode 456)
• The Way Out of Major Conflict, with Amanda Ripley (episode 529)
• The Starting Point for Inclusive Leadership, with Susan MacKenty Brady (episode 584)

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Gemma Aguiar is the CEO of Design Like Whoa. Her firm helps brands like Sephora, Meta, the Golden State Warriors, and Spotify amplify their brand and strengthen their culture through sustainably focused apparel, accessories, and gifts. Her team serves clients by curating meaningful, high-quality products through partnership with local, minority-owned, sustainable, and mission-driven businesses. She’s also an alum of the Coaching for Leaders Academy.

In this episode, Gemma and I discuss the transition she made of doing it all herself early on in the business to now empowering a large team. We detail how she made this change tactically through calendar blocking, regular delegation, and intentional outcomes. Plus, we explore how asking for help is a critical muscle for all leaders to develop.

• Gemma didn’t see the growth potential in her traditional role, so she started her own, sustainable business.
• Being able to do lots of things well can be a trap for leaders. Shifting to delegate effectively is key.
• Getting clear on how time is used through planning and calendar blocking is essential.
• The responsibility of leadership changes over time. It’s key to be able to learn and adapt as the organization demands a different skillset.
• Asking for help is a critical competency for leaders. Getting better at this opens tons of doors.

• Design Like Whoa
• hello@designlikewhoa.com

• These Coaching Questions Get Results, with Michael Bungay Stanier (episode 237)
• Five Steps to Hold People Accountable, with Jonathan Raymond (episode 306)
• The Way to Capture the Power of Moments, with Chip Heath (episode 329)
• Align Your Calendar to What Matters, with Nir Eyal (episode 431)
• How to Define a Role, with Pat Griffin (episode 517)

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Jon Clifton is the CEO of Gallup. His mission is to help 7 billion citizens be heard on their most pressing work and life issues through the Gallup World Poll, a 100-year initiative spanning over 150 countries. He is a nonresident senior fellow at Baylor University’s Institute for Studies of Religion and serves on the boards of directors for Gallup and Young Professionals in Foreign Policy.

Jon has been interviewed on BBC News, Axios, C-SPAN’s “Washington Journal,” and Al-Jazeera, and he has testified in front of the U.S. Congress on the state of American small business and entrepreneurship. He is a frequent contributor on Gallup.com and has written for The Hill, The Diplomatic Courier, and The Global Action Report. He is the author of Blind Spot: The Global Rise of Unhappiness and How Leaders Missed It.

In this conversation, Jon and I discuss why many objective numbers like GDP appear positive and yet don’t correlate to wellbeing and happiness. We examine how to think about more subjective measures and ways for leaders and organizations to gain insight. Plus, we dialogue about what managers can do to help make genuine connections in the workplace.

• While objective trends worldwide such as GDP and the Human Development Index have been positive for decades, people are angrier, sadder, and more worried than ever.
• There’s a key distinction between how someone sees their life and how someone lives their life.
• Money does not buy happiness, but it is hard to be happy without it.
• Frequent conversations, listening, and framing work around strengths are key actions managers can take to address unhappiness with employees.

Examples of questions/survey topics to ask of customers to gain insight into emotional attachment:

Company always delivers on what they promise.

I feel proud to be a Company customer.

Company is the perfect company for people like me.

Examples of questions/survey topics to ask of suppliers to to gain insight into emotional attachment:

Company always treats me with respect.

Company is easy to do business with.

Company always does what they say they will do.

• Blind Spot: The Global Rise of Unhappiness and How Leaders Missed It* by Jon Clifton
• CliftonStrengths (formerly StrengthsFinder) assessment

Download my interview notes in PDF format (free membership required).

• These Coaching Questions Get Results, with Michael Bungay Stanier (episode 237)
• How Teams Use StrengthsFinder Results, with Lisa Cummings (episode 293)
• How to Help People Thrive, with Jim Harter (episode 532)

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Scott Anthony Barlow wants you to find work you love. He is CEO of Happen To Your Career and host of the Happen to Your Career podcast, which has been listened to over 3 million times across 159 countries and is the largest career change podcast in the world.

As a former HR leader, Scott has interviewed over two thousand people for jobs and completely rejects the way most organizations choose to do work. He’s a nerd for self development, human behavior, and ice hockey. He’s the author of the book Happen to Your Career: An Unconventional Approach to Career Change and Meaningful Work*.

In this conversation, Scott and I discuss the assumptions that many of us bring to finding career happiness — and where those assumptions might lead us astray. We also explore in detail the process that Scott and his team use with clients: career experimenting. In addition, Scott and I share how we’ve used experimenting in our own careers to align with meaning.

• People assume that you start with clarity. In actuality, you start with declaring priorities, which is what eventually creates clarity.
• Taking vacation or an extended break from work is important for many reasons, but it’s not often the activity that creates clarity.
• Movement and experimenting is the way you move from declaring your priorities to creating clarity.
• Use career experiments as a way to begin surfacing interests and relationships that will help you to find clarity.
• Leaders should open the door to career experimentation to support employees in developing themselves inside the organization — or potentially moving onto other opportunities.

• Happen to Your Career: An Unconventional Approach to Career Change and Meaningful Work* by Scott Anthony Barlow
• Finding the Career That Fits You (Scott’s FREE 8-Day Video Course)

Download my interview notes in PDF format (free membership required).

• How to Actually Move Numbers, with Chris McChesney (episode 294)
• Three Steps to Great Career Conversations, with Russ Laraway (episode 370)
• Ten Years of Leadership, with Dave Stachowiak (episode 541)
• How to Reduce Burnout, with Jennifer Moss (episode 561)

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Robert Lefkowitz is James B. Duke Professor of Medicine and Professor of Biochemistry and Chemistry at the Duke University Medical Center. His group spent 15 difficult years developing techniques for labeling the receptors with radioactive drugs and then purifying the four different receptors that were known and thought to exist for adrenaline. In 1986 Bob and his team transformed the understanding of what had become known as G protein coupled receptors, when he and his colleagues cloned the gene for the beta2-adrenergic receptor.

Today, more than half of all prescription drug sales are of drugs that target either directly or indirectly the receptors discovered by Bob and his trainees. These include amongst many others beta blockers, angiotensin receptor blockers or ARBs and antihistamines. He has received numerous honors and awards, including the National Medal of Science, the Shaw Prize, the Albany Prize, and the 2012 Nobel Prize in Chemistry. He was elected to the National Academy of Sciences, the Institute of Medicine, and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. He is the author with Randy Hall of A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to Stockholm: The Adrenaline Fueled Adventures of an Accidental Scientist*.

In this conversation, Bob and I explore the important nature of mentoring in his success — and how he has in turn utilized mentoring to support so many colleagues and students. We discuss the importance of building careers around problems versus techniques and other key principles that effective mentors adopt. Plus, we explore the key of ownership of work and using fun as an indicator to follow.

• Success is rarely accidental. Most people with extraordinary accomplishments had outstanding mentors along the way.
• Teach people to build their careers around problems, not techniques.
• The crucial job of a mentor is to keep things in focus for the person you are mentoring — both in their current work and their careers.
• People achieve the most motivation when they have ownership over their work.
• A key measure of striking the right guidance between ownership and guidance is whether or not everybody is having fun.

• A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to Stockholm: The Adrenaline Fueled Adventures of an Accidental Scientist* by Robert Lefkowitz

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• What You Gain By Sponsoring People, with Julia Taylor Kennedy (episode 398)
• How to Know What You Don’t Know, with Art Markman (episode 437)
• How to Lead and Retain High Performers, with Ruth Gotian (episode 567)

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Oscar Trimboli is an author, host of the Apple award-winning podcast Deep Listening and a sought-after keynote speaker. He is passionate about using the gift of listening to bring positive change in homes, workplaces, and cultures around the world. Through his work with chairs, boards of directors, and executive teams, Oscar has experienced firsthand the transformational impact leaders and organizations can have when they listen beyond the words.

Oscar is a marketing and technology industry veteran with over 30 years experience across general management, sales, marketing, and operations for Microsoft, PeopleSoft, Polycom, Professional Advantage, and Vodafone. He is the author of the book, Deep Listening and now, his newest book, How to Listen: Discover the Hidden Key to Better Communication*.

In this conversation, Oscar and I explore several of the assumptions that tend to get in our way of listening well. Oscar highlights distinctions that will be useful mindsets for you in showing up better in future conversations. Plus, we discuss how listing goes far beyond simply asking questions.

• Before we begin listening, it is helpful to tune…much like as orchestra.
• We can’t always give our full attention, but we can make the choice as to whether we are paying attention or giving attention.
• As much as we intend otherwise, sometimes we listen less well in our closest relationships.
• Aim to be curious instead of drawing conclusions.
• Asking questions does not necessarily mean you are listening well. Aimless and arbitrary questions are everywhere.

• How to Listen: Discover the Hidden Key to Better Communication* by Oscar Trimboli

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• The Way to Be More Coach-Like, with Michael Bungay Stanier (episode 458)
• Four Habits That Derail Listening, with Oscar Trimboli (episode 500)
• How to Genuinely Show Up for Others, with Marshall Goldsmith (episode 590)

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Megan Reitz is Professor of Leadership and Dialogue at Hult International Business School where she speaks, researches, consults and supervises on the intersection of leadership, change, dialogue and mindfulness. She is on the Thinkers50 ranking of global business thinkers and is ranked in HR Magazine’s Most Influential Thinkers listing. She has written Dialogue in Organizations and Mind Time.

She is a regular contributor to Harvard Business Review and her research has recently featured in Forbes, on the BBC, in TEDx talks, and in numerous academic and practice-based journals. Her latest research on employee activism was nominated for the Thinkers50 Breakthrough Idea Award. Her most recent book with John Higgins is titled Speak Up: Say What Needs to Be Said and Hear What Needs to Be Heard*.

Many leaders consider what they need to do in order to speak truth to others, but rarely focus on how to make it easier for people to speak to them. In this conversation, Megan and I explore what leaders can do in order to hear what needs to be heard. We share several tactics that will make it easier for others to surface what you need to hear.

• Speaking up and listening up go hand in hand. Power always affects what gets said and what gets heard.
• A key checkpoint is whether or not you really value the opinion of others.
• Where you have conversations can make a massive difference on how comfortable the other party is in surfacing an important message for you to hear.
• Leaders who have margin in their daily schedules create space for the right moment to hear truth.
• Proactively invite challenge and debate through specific invitations. One example: “What do you know that I need to know, but will never be told?”

• Speak Up: Say What Needs to Be Said and Hear What Needs to Be Heard* by Megan Reitz and John Higgins

Download my interview notes in PDF format (free membership required).

• How to Ask Better Questions, with David Marquet (episode 454)
• How to Speak Up, with Connson Locke (episode 546)
• How to Use Power Responsibly, with Vanessa Bohns (episode 551)

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Bill George is executive fellow at Harvard Business School, where he has taught leadership since 2004. He is the author of four best-selling books: Authentic Leadership, True North, Discover Your True North, and 7 Lessons for Leading in Crisis.

He was chair and CEO of Medtronic, the world’s leading medical technology company. Under his leadership, Medtronic’s market capitalization grew from $1.1 billion to $60 billion, averaging 35 percent a year. Bill has served as a director of Goldman Sachs, ExxonMobil, Novartis, Target, the Mayo Clinic, and World Economic Forum USA. He has been named one of the Top 25 Business Leaders of the Past 25 Years by PBS, Executive of the Year by Academy of Management, and Director of the Year by National Association of Corporate Directors. He is the author with Zach Clayton of True North: Leading Authentically in Today’s Workplace, Emerging Leader Edition*.

We’ve all seen leadership go badly and most of us struggle with tendencies to get pulled off course. In this conversation, Bill and I explore the five most common archetypes that tend to derail leaders and the antidote that prevents them. We also discuss how we can recognize these tendencies in ourselves so that we can do better for others.

Five archetypes of leadership derailment:

• Imposters: political animals who figure out who their competitors and then eliminate them.
• Rationalizers: masters of denial who don’t take responsibility themselves.
• Glory seekers: motivated by the acclaim of the world.
• Loners: they believe they can make it on their own and reject feedback.
• Shooting stars: they build shallow foundations and move on quickly to the next things, often avoiding commitment.

Antidotes to leadership derailment:

Write down the most difficult ethical dilemma you are currently facing and chronicle the “least generous” interpretation of your actions.

Project forward a decade and assume the worst: you have derailed in a major failure. Envision the situation in which you could lose your way.

• True North: Leading Authentically in Today’s Workplace, Emerging Leader Edition* by Bill George and Zach Clayton

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• Discover Your True North, with Bill George (episode 225)
• Leadership Lies We Tell Ourselves, with Emily Leathers (episode 479)
• How to Help Your Manager Shine, with David Gergen (episode 588)

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Amy Gallo is an expert in conflict, communication, and workplace dynamics. She combines the latest management research with practical advice to deliver evidence-based ideas on how to improve relationships and excel at work. In her role as a contributing editor at Harvard Business Review, Amy writes about interpersonal dynamics, communicating ideas, leading and influencing people, and building your career.

Amy is co-host of HBR’s Women at Work podcast and author of both the HBR Guide to Dealing with Conflict and Getting Along: How to Work with Anyone (Even Difficult People)*.

In this conversation, Amy and I discuss one of the most common questions she receives from leaders: how do I handle a colleague who’s passive aggressive? We examine what causes this behavior, how to respond to it, and what to avoid that could worsen the relationship. Plus, we discuss the intention that leaders can bring in responding to passive-aggressive behavior that will help everybody move forward.

• Don’t use the “passive-aggressive behavior” to label someone. It rarely helps and often results in more defensiveness.
• Focus on the other person’s underlying concern or question rather than how they are expressing it. Not everyone is able to discuss thoughts and feelings openly.
• Consider doing hypothesis testing to determine what’s next. Language like, “Here’s the story I’m telling myself…” can help everyone move forward without assigning blame.
• When making a direct request, stick to the facts. Review past behavior like you’re a referee vs. a fan.
• Artificial harmony is a danger spot for teams and leaders. Setting norms can help to reduce passive-aggressive behavior.

• Getting Along: How to Work with Anyone (Even Difficult People)* by Amy Gallo

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• The Way to Have Conversations That Matter, with Celeste Headlee (episode 344)
• Four Habits That Derail Listening, with Oscar Trimboli (episode 500)
• How to Prepare for Conflict, with Amy Gallo (episode 530)
• The Way to Get People Talking, with Andrew Warner (episode 560)

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Kwame Christian is a best-selling author, lawyer, professor, and the Managing Director of the American Negotiation Institute. He has conducted countless specialized trainings worldwide and is a highly sought after keynote speaker. His best-selling book, Finding Confidence in Conflict has helped countless individuals overcome the fear, anxiety, and emotion associated with difficult conversations. The book was inspired by Kwame’s TED Talk with the same name that has over 250,000 views. He’s also host of the Negotiate Anything Podcast, the most popular negotiation podcast in the world.

Kwame was the recipient of the John Glenn College of Public Affairs Young Alumni Achievement Award in 2020 and the Moritz College of Law Outstanding Recent Alumnus Award 2021. Additionally, Kwame is a business lawyer at Carlile, Patchen & Murphy LLP and serves a professor for The Ohio State University’s Moritz College of Law in its top-ranked dispute resolution program and Otterbein University’s MBA program. He is also a Contributor for Forbes and his LinkedIn Learning course, How to Be Both Likable And Assertive, was the most popular course on the platform in July of 2021. He is the author of How to Have Difficult Conversations About Race: Practical Tools for Necessary Change in the Workplace and Beyond*.

In this conversation, Kwame and I discuss how to begin a difficult conversation about race. We explore the key questions that each of us should ask ourselves so that we can determine in advance what we want to gain from a tough conversation. Finally, we look at the three critical things to say in the first 30 seconds that will help you start an important conversation that helps everybody move forward.

• It’s hard for someone else to appreciate how much of a person’s identity affects every other area of their lives until you’ve lived it.
• People explain away racism because they don’t like it and don’t want it to be true.
• Whether you think a conversation is about race or not, if it’s about race for the other person then you’re having a conversation about race.

There questions to ask yourself before a conversation:

1. What do I hope to accomplish in this conversation?
2. Given what I know about them and the situation, what is likely to be their goal?
3. What are three questions I can ask them that will help me to understand their position?

• Use situation, impact, and invitation as the starting point for a difficult conversation. Usually this is less than 30 seconds.
• “Naked facts” reduce the likelihood that someone will dispute the premise of what you are addressing.

• How to Have Difficult Conversations About Race: Practical Tools for Necessary Change in the Workplace and Beyond* by Kwame Christian
• Negotiate Anything podcast

Download my interview notes in PDF format (free membership required).

• The Way Into Difficult Conversations, with Kwame Christian (episode 497)
• How to Reduce Bias in Feedback, with Therese Huston (episode 510)
• The Way Managers Can be Champions for Justice, with Minda Harts (episode 552)

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David Hutchens helps leaders find and tell their stories. He works with leaders around the world to find, craft, and tell their most urgent stories for the purpose of creating shared meaning, preserving culture, disseminating learning, and speeding change in organizations.

He has taught the Storytelling Leader program at some of the most influential organizations — and he’s written many books, including the Circle of the 9 Muses and The Leadership Story Deck. He is the co-creator with longtime friend of the show Susan Gerke of the GO Team program. He’s also the author of the new book, Story Dash: Find, Develop, and Activate Your Most Valuable Business Stories…In Just a Few Hours.

In this conversation, David and I discuss how to find stories that you can use in your organization. We reflect on the reality that we both hear many leaders say to us: “How do I find the right stories?” David then shares the key principles and steps that every leader can take to surface and curate the best stories.

• The “Us At Our Best” taxonomy is what it looks like when are are delivering with energy and excellence. A recent Southwest Airlines story is an example of this.
• Find the area the area of your work where you need to influence the emotional system.
• Trust stories about small moments. Don’t attempt to create an epic drama of huge importance. The best stories are individual incidents that send a bigger message.
• Formal story mining can be done alone or as team building. Institutionalizing practices like story sharing can help this happen regularly and naturally.
• When informally collecting stories, listen for time, place, and person as signals that a story is beginning.

• Download a free set of Story Deck cards or…
• Reach out to David directly at david@davidhutchens.com for more free resources
• Purchase the full set of Leadership Story Deck by David Hutchens

• How to Create an Unstoppable Culture, with Ginger Hardage (episode 350)
• Three Stories to Tell During Uncertainty, with David Hutchens (episode 486)
• The Way to Earn Attention, with Raja Rajamannar (episode 521)

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In 1982, Ari, along with his partner Paul Saginaw, founded Zingerman’s Delicatessen with a $20,000 bank loan, a Russian History degree from the University of Michigan, 4 years of experience washing dishes, cooking, and managing in restaurant kitchens and chutzpah from his hometown of Chicago. Today, Zingerman’s Delicatessen is a nationally renowned food icon and the Zingerman’s Community of Businesses has grown to 10 businesses with over 750 employees and over $55 million in annual revenue.

Besides being the Co-Founding Partner and being actively engaged in some aspect of the day-to-day operations and governance of nearly every business in the Zingerman’s Community, Ari is also a prolific writer. His most recent publications are the first 4 of his 6 book series Zingerman’s Guide to Good Leading, including A Lapsed Anarchist’s Approach to The Power of Beliefs in Business.

In this conversation, Ari and I explore how the power of our beliefs show up in virtually every one of our daily actions. We examine how to begin looking at what isn’t working and how to start examining our beliefs. When those beliefs aren’t working, Ari shares several, critical steps we can take to begin to change our thinking.

• Our beliefs, many of which we may not be consciously aware of, are often calling the shots in our daily actions and behaviors.
• Start examining a belief by picking a current problem to address.
• Listen carefully to your internal voices to identify the language showing up. Notice places especially where you frame things as facts, certitudes, thoughts, theories, norms, shoulds, and should nots.
• Examine how you came to the beliefs that you uncover. Then, confront your cannons.
• Change now, find facts later. Most people do that the opposite way.

• A Lapsed Anarchist’s Approach to the Power of Beliefs in Business by Ari Weinzweig
• Humility: A Humble, Anarchistic Inquiry by Ari Weinzweig
• Schein On, You Crazy Diamond by Ari Weinzweig

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• The Path of Humble Leadership, with Edgar Schein and Peter Schein (episode 363)
• How to Help People Engage in Growth, with Whitney Johnson (episode 576)
• Help People Show Up as Themselves, with Frederic Laloux (episode 580)

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Ruth Gotian has been hailed by the journal Nature and Columbia University as an expert in mentorship and leadership development. Recently, she was named as the #1 emerging management thinker in the world by Thinkers50. She was a semi-finalist for the Forbes 50 Over 50 list and has coached and mentored hundreds of people throughout her career.

In addition to being published in academic journals, she is a contributor to Forbes and Psychology Today, where she writes about optimizing success. She is the Chief Learning Officer in Anesthesiology and former Assistant Dean of Mentoring and Executive Director of the Mentoring Academy at Weill Cornell Medicine, where she is a faculty member. She is the author of The Success Factor: Developing the Mindset and Skillset for Peak Business Performance*.

In this conversation, Ruth and I explore her research on how high achievers build their networks — and also what works for us both in our personal practices. We discuss several tactics that most leaders can use to strengthen existing networks. Plus, we examine the mindsets that tend to lead to success in professional relationships, in spite of busy schedules.

• High achievers are always seeking perspective, insight, and inspiration from people in many different career stages and disciplines.
• Use the 24/7/30 rule when making new connections. Reach out within 24 hours, again in 7 days, and also at 30 days.
• Almost always there is a way you can add value to another person, even if they are at the top of professional game. Find that way to help.
• When you create content on social media, you emerge as one of the 1% of professionals who choose to do this.
• Give without expectation of anything in return.

• The Success Factor: Developing the Mindset and Skillset for Peak Business Performance* by Ruth Gotian
• How Do You Find a Decent Mentor When You’re Stuck at Home? by Ruth Gotian
• Networking for Introverted Scientists by Ruth Gotian
• Conversation Starters by Ruth Gotian

• The Power of Weak Connections, with David Burkus (episode 347)
• How to Strengthen Your Network, with Marissa King (episode 425)
• How to Get Noticed on LinkedIn, with Stephen Hart (episode 495)
• How to Lead and Retain High Performers, with Ruth Gotian (episode 567)

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Marshall Goldsmith is one of the world’s leading executive coaches and the New York Times bestselling author of many books, including What Got You Here Won’t Get You There, Mojo, and Triggers. In his coaching practice, he has advised more than 150 major CEOs and their management teams, including clients like Alan Mulally, Frances Hesselbein, and Hubert Joly. His newest book is The Earned Life: Lose Regret, Choose Fulfillment*.

We’ve all heard about the benefits of empathy and most of us assume that more empathy for the people we lead is always better. In this conversation, Marshall and I look at the different types of empathy and explore the downsides of leaning into empathy too much. Plus, we discuss how singular empathy can help busy leaders stay present in the midst of their busy schedules.

• There are multiple types of empathy — and each of them bring challenges along with their positive attributes.
• We often hit the reset button successfully at work, but then neglect it in our personal relationships.
• Singular empathy helps us to stay present with people and to move between the multiple spaces and situations that most leaders find themselves in daily.
• A key question for us all to ask ourselves: am I being the person I want to be right now?

• The Earned Life: Lose Regret, Choose Fulfillment* by Marshall Goldsmith

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• The Way to Stop Rescuing People From Their Problems, with Michael Bungay Stanier (episode 284)
• Getting Better at Empathy, with Daniel Goleman (episode 391)
• The Way to Be More Self-Aware, with Tasha Eurich (episode 442)

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Ruchika Tulshyan is the founder of Candour, a global inclusion strategy firm. She is a regular contributor to The New York Times and Harvard Business Review. As a keynote speaker, Ruchika has addressed organizations like NASA, Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, and the United States Congress.

Ruchika is the author of The Diversity Advantage: Fixing Gender Inequality in the Workplace, and most recently, Inclusion on Purpose: An Intersectional Approach to Creating a Culture of Belonging at Work*. She is on the Thinkers50 Radar list and named as one of Hive Learning’s Most Influential D&I Professionals for the past two years.

In this conversation, Ruchika and I discuss how leaders can adapt their hiring practices to attract more diverse candidates — and ultimately support inclusion inside their organizations. We discuss the importance of what to both include and avoid in job postings. Plus, we examine how well-intended interview practices can sometimes have unintended results on supporting diversity and inclusion.

• Make the hiring process transparent from start to finish.
• Include an authentic equal opportunity statement.
• Refrain from using certain words in job listings. Examples include: rockstar, ninja, hacker, guru, manage, build, aggressive, fearless, independent, analytic, and assertive.
• Emphasize skills and experience over professional degrees.
• Avoid panel interviews and refrain from asking questions or having conversations about culture fit.

• Inclusion on Purpose: An Intersectional Approach to Creating a Culture of Belonging at Work* by Ruchika Tulshyan

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• How to Get the Ideal Team Player, with Patrick Lencioni (episode 301)
• How to Be More Inclusive, with Stefanie Johnson (episode 508)
• Start Finding Overlooked Talent, with Johnny Taylor, Jr. (episode 544)

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