Out Of The Comfort Zone

During times of uncertainty, keeping ourselves and our teams motivated, healthy and less stressed is essential work for leaders. We talk a lot about mindfulness and sleep. But we miss the importance of our sense of identity – who we are, what value we bring to our work and why work matters. Most people are hungry for a better sense of meaning and identity. Why does this boost performance, why should you care as a leader, and what can you do about it? Tune in to see how to have a better sense of peace in yourself and your team ultimately drives performance.

Leaders need to be great coaches. What do the best sports coaches have to teach business leaders about coaching for performance, to win and to build a strong team? Tune in to hear what John Wooden believed and practiced as one of the all time best college basketball coaches.

As a leader you know that trust is essential. How do you lead from a basis of trust versus a basis of control? How do you increase trust? And how does trust tie to inspiration and a sense of purpose. Tune in to hear more.

Regardless of the type of business you are in or lead, you are probably finding that you interact more and more with technical people – engineers, programmers, data scientists, artificial intelligence experts. How well equipped are to ask the right questions, bridge the gaps in communication and have confidence in your understanding? And as a technical specialist, how effective are you in communicating key decisions to business leaders? Tune in for advice for both.

Having a team that performs consistently requires having people that are maximizing their performance every day – they achieve peak performance. Olympic class athletes are obsessed by sustaining peak performance. They measure it and they monitor what impacts it from sleep to food to mediation. But as leaders, we expect to perform like an Olympic class atheletes every day but we do nothing to assess our “peak” and to understand how to sustain it. Plus we spend little time assessing what our team members need to be at their peak performance every day. We can change that with science and methodology. Tune in to hear how.

Drawing on her military experience, her engineering projects and her broad leadership experience, Jenn shows what it takes to truly do great things. Three steps make all the difference: Getting to know the team, building trust, and taking it to the next level. Easy to say, tune in to hear how.

If you think your career is stalled or you think you have been sidelined for whatever reason, this episode is for you. What are the signals that you have been sidelined? How can you turbocharge your career? How should you network? What if you can’t get another role?

As a parent or as a leader, you have probably thought carefully about the maternal leave policies at your company. But have you stopped to consider the impact on working fathers? Tune in to challenge the mythology around fathers and to consider why a full parenting policy benefits everyone and your bottom line.

Agency is an unusual word for business and we are not talking about hiring an “Agency”. For our purposes, agency is the ability for an individual to act independently and make their own choices. It turns out this concept is central to our ability to manage uncertainty, to adapt and probably to inspire others. What is it, how does it work, why does it matter for uncertain times and, most importantly, how can you have more of it? Tune in to hear more and learn what you can do for yourself and your team.

Compassion and accountability are secret ingredients for leaders. How can you be compassionate and hold accountability particularly in the face of disagreement, contention, conflict and drama. Tune in for more wisdom on managing drama, navigating conflict and having an amazing team.

Being part of an unstoppable team sounds like an amazing place to work. The question is how to create that environment – how to build a team that is unstoppable. Tune in to hear the key ingredients.

Tune in to hear the perspective and wisdom of one of the great thinkers, observers and leaders. What are we missing today? Why does it seem that we have so little leadership today? What do we need to think about for the future?

If you stop to think about the leaders you respect the most, the ones you have enjoyed working with and for, you will probably find that they are less about ego and more about integrity and openness. They probably leave you with a sense of dignity. They probably saw you as a human being not just as an output machine. There are three key questions we want leaders to answer. And it all takes humility. What is it? Why does it matter? And, how can you do more of it?

In a climate of change and uncertainty, the ability to personally adapt and to get your team to adapt is central to success. Adapting means learning a new way. In fact, getting out of your comfort zone is ultimately about learning – learning a new way to lead. We often say that the ability to learn and stay curious is a core competency. What makes for a great learning culture? What works and what doesn’t? How do you develop this competency in yourself and in your team?

Teams in which people are not afraid to speak up, to challenge, to risk saying a wild idea are teams with the best performance. Google has found that psychological safety is a key component of their best teams. Yet, people are afraid of causing trouble, looking foolish, not being promoted and more. How do you create a team, and an organization, that is not afraid?

Tune in to hear how one leader has managed several big transitions: The tactics used and the surprises along the way. We’ll talk about mistakes, globally dispersed teams, personal brand, building networks, confidence, trust and much more.

Culture is what every leader aspires to change or create. Yet, it is very elusive. We are going to de-bunk some common myths about changing culture such as “culture starts at the top” or “one company, one culture”. Want to know how to change the culture – or the habits and routines of your organization? Tune in for practical tactics.

Grief is something all of us deal with – whether it’s expected or unexpected loss of a loved one or the loss of a job or a relationship. Sometimes it’s the loss that comes with getting out of your comfort zone. By some accounts 5% of the workforce is experiencing grief at any one time. Do you know how to recognize grief? Or what to do if an employee is grieving? And, how well prepared are you for the grief in your own life? Tune to learn more about this taboo, but highly relevant topic.

We need more resilience – more adaptability, agility and grit. But how? Tune in to hear from the experiences of one of the first female helicopter pilots in the US Army and the experiences of people she has worked with plus how to develop more grit in your own career and in your life.

What does it really take to get people with radically different perspectives and beliefs to collaborate? Hear from someone who has spent years getting people to collaborate when they don’t like or trust each other.