Out Of The Comfort Zone

Collaboration is expected in business today. Real collaboration and powerful teamwork requires partnership – a term we use often but rarely analyze. What does it mean to create a meaningful partnership particularly within a team and with your manager? How do we most effectively create partnerships that make a difference? How do we avoid the dreaded 4 D’s? Tune in to learn more about how you can foster strong partnerships with your team, your manager and your peers.

Leading when the team knows more than you means that you must change the nature of your relationship with your team members. Because you are no longer the hero who can fix things or solve every technical problem, people come to you for other reasons. Unless each team member feels you care about him/her as a whole person, there will be no innovation, engagement, sense of purpose and receptivity to feedback. How do you convey that you care? Tune in to hear simple, executable tactics.

Have you found yourself defending yourself, saying “my intentions were good”? In your quest to support diversity, do you find yourself wanting to help but not quite succeeding? Tune in for a solution on how to move from being a believer to a builder. Hint, the answer lies in how you frame your intentions.

If you want to know what it takes to create and sustain a high performance team a winning culture, tune in to learn how some of the best in sports, Formula One racing, achieve exactly that. How do they keep the entire staff committed, engaged and innovating? How do they think about change and transformation? The solutions will surprise you.

Collaboration is how we solve complex problems, innovate, serve customers and ultimately do great things. At the same time, collaboration consumes precious time and adds to the overload. How do you balance competing demands? How do you buy back time? And, what should you do with that time? Tune in for more.

Stress for office workers seems to be everywhere – at home, at work, with family, away from family, and even on vacation. We have been told stress is bad for you and that we should eliminate or avoid stress. But is that true? What can you do to manage stress and build resilience? Tune in to learn from an expert who trains first responders.

Do you find yourself a little intimidated when you have to talk to the CEO, whether that is at your company, at a client or at a networking event? Do you wonder what you need to say and what the CEO wants to hear from you? If so, that’s not unusal. Tune in to hear how from someone who has a lot of experience talking with and connecting with CEO’s, C-suite executives and board members.

Everyone complains about the number of meetings and the ineffectiveness of meetings. What if you had tools and processes that would help you lead more productive meetings? What if those same processes helped make all conversations more effective? Tune in to find out how.

Often there are people who have an influence on our lives, our thinking and our careers. We call these people mentors whether they know their impact or not. Interviewing leading thinkers on a weekly basis means that you meet a lot of mentors who leave you with key insights. Tune in to hear the mentors my guest has met and the lessons he has abstracted from a few key individuals.

Conversations are ultimately essential for business – maybe for life as well. Some conversations are exciting and inspiring, some are difficult and others cover a whole range of emotions. Ineffective meetings, where most conversations happen, cost $37 billion a year. Tune in if you want to know how to have better conversations, breakthrough conversations and effective meetings.

Your job as a leader is to inspire and engage people. Communication is the means of accomplishing those goals. What do you need to do differently to inspire and engage more? Tune in to hear how.

In history, leaders have achieved incredible goals usually in spite of a lot of public criticism and strong oppositon. The advantage of looking at history is that we know the results, often decades later, had the impact the leader had hoped it would, perhaps even more so. For example consider the building of the Panama Canal. It was a near disaster and it costs lots of lives, but the ultimate impact has been enormous. How did the leader perserve, what kept him going and what really led to success? The lessons are powerful for today.

Whether you manage a team or not, you are leading when you influence people and outcomes. How do you become a spark in your organization regardless of your title and seniority? How do you create a culture of accountability and feedback? How do you create alignment? Tune in to hear these are more.

Have you stopped to think about how much fun you have at work or how much fun your team would like to have? What would be the impact on productivity and engagement if you increased the amount of fun? How can you do so even if you are not a funny person? Tune in to hear why and how.

This is the second in a two-part series on influence. You have decided what needs to happen; now how do you “sell the idea” or even yourself? Tune in to hear what research and experience says are the key factors in your ultimate outcome.

This is the first of a two part series on influence. We begin with looking at the toughest cases of influence – those that put pressure on you to go against your core values whether that’s because everyone else is doing so, because no one else has spoken up or because a person of power is applying pressure. How do you think through these situations? What do you do? Tune in to evaluate your approach to your ethics.

Everyone at some point deals with team members, peers and even bosses who act “crazy”, irrational and even hostile. It’s the biggest source of stress at work. What can you do to talk to someone who is acting crazy and without becoming crazy yourself? Tune in to hear insightful tactics.

In this interview with an entrepreneurial leader, we focus on the leadership journey, the transition from being the expert to leading at a larger scale and the experiences and insights along the way. Tune in to be inspired about your own career.

When there is tension and conflict, what can you do to facilitate a better conversation and reach a breakthrough? Tune in to hear more about why facilitation is essential for managing conflict and how you can get better.

Regardless where you work or what your level of responsibility, everyone has to have a tough conversation occasionally from finding the courage to ask for a raise to saying no or dealing with a difficult peer. Tune in to learn how to have these difficult conversations in the best way possible.