Out Of The Comfort Zone

If you want to engage people, be seen as authentic, improve your communication, pitch your ideas or lead without being the expert, we have the answer. Tune in to learn a simple method that allows you to say less and get people to listen more in any situation.

As you reach the point in your career where you have been promoted to a role that requires you to lead outside of your expertise, your success depends in part on how well you learn to work with differences and how open-minded you can be to different perspectives. It’s a point of discomfort and it’s the point at which you have to stretch beyond the ways you have worked up to this point. How should you think about differences in styles, work patterns and perspective? How does emotional competence impact your ability to be open-minded? How can you think about and even assess differences?

Innovation can involve big ideas, whole new products and totally new processes. Equally, innovation happens in the many small things we think about, improve and question every day. As it turns out, both types of innovation matter a great deal to an organization’s success. So, what can you do as an individual or as a leader within an organization to be more innovative? How can you think about the future in a more productive way? My guest believes anyone can learn to be innovative. Tune in to hear some of the 63 small things, the nuggets, you can do at any level to be more innovative, more future-oriented.

The challenges of leading multiple generations at work is top of mind for most leaders. Between the supposedly retiring Baby Boomers, Generation X waiting in the wings, the new entry Millennials and now Generation Z on the horizon, organizations are struggling with how to navigate the different needs and expectations of all generations. As a leader, what do you need to know about Millennials and the new Generation Z? What do you need to know and do to keep young talent engaged? Tune in to find out how.

How do you connect with people who just are not “easy” conversationalists? How do you have a conversation with someone, especially when it’s a “tricky” subject, like politics or something else that bothers you? How do you stop avoiding those topics without damaging relationships? What can you do to be more persuasive with people? Tune in to find out how.

There is no leading if people are not following. What does it take to inspire people to follow you? What is it that encourages people to willingly abandon their immediate agenda and follow your agenda, maybe even taking a “hit” for you? Tune in to learn what distinguishes the best from the rest as well as to learn how you can improve your ability to inspire, regardless of your current level of responsibility or competence.

Listening – all of us know it’s important and all of us don’t do it well. Between multi-tasking, meeting team needs along with manager expectations and preparing your message let along doing the day-job, we don’t feel we have time to listen. However, have you ever thought about what you lose by not listening properly? If you trying to improve engagement, influence or emotional intelligence, then listening becomes more mandatory than you may have appreciated. How do you know you are listening well enough? That’s the topic for today – when does listening really matter and how can you get better at it.

Brands are still as highly relevant today as they were decades ago to build reputation and growth. What makes a great brand and how do brands evolve? More importantly, how can you take this framework for brand management and apply it to your personal brand? Tune in for answers to both your company brand strategy and your personal brand strategy.

My guest this week says that work-life balance is dead …. But we have to live well anyway. So how can we do just that given all the competing demands on our time and attention? Part of living well is the ability to be able to confront people and situations. What’s the formula for supportive confrontation? And, finally, what can we do to cope with stress?

These are turbulent times – with uncertainty, volatility, instant access to information and chaos just to name a few driving forces for leaders today. Most of this is outside of your control. How then should you think about leading through such times? What are the key skills that will get you through the turbulence and to the other side? Our guest calls these skills “artful leadership.” Join us to learn that that means and how to develop your capability.

If you don’t have a clue how to think about your career, your interests, what you should do or should do next, this is the show for you. Tune in to find out how to define your purpose, create a strategy and build a plan to land your ideal role. The process works for anyone: someone just starting their career, someone who is mid-career and someone who wants to shift careers.

Given how important trust is for business, collaboration, partnerships and leading, we spend far too little time thinking about how trust is created. It turns out that being a “trustworthy” character, doesn’t matter as much as you might think it does. Tune in to learn what really makes a difference in building trusted relationships and in getting people to take your advice or follow you when you are not the expert.

The better the relationships you have throughout an organization the better for your career, for your team, for the organizational culture and ultimately for the group’s performance. But, some people are a challenge to work with. Tune in to hear how to work with people who have big egos, what is required to build trust and what to do when trust has been broken – namely the process of forgiveness.

When managing super high-performing teams made up of highly-educated, highly-accomplished subject experts, what can you do as a manager to drive performance? Rupert Jones managed the number-one ranked team for equity research team in Europe for more than a decade and has quite a story to tell about his experience as a manager. Tune in to hear about his experiences and insights.

Organizations recognize that millennials will soon account for 50% of their employees. However, most managers are finding millennials frustrating as employees because from the manager’s point of view, millennials seem entitled, unwilling to do the detail work, not putting in their “time” and lacking loyalty, among other things. Millennials, however, have a different point of view about what it takes to build a career and what they will be loyal to. Tune in to learn more about how millennials view their careers, what they expect from their employers and what that means employers can do to get the best from this generation.

Why do some teams do so much with so little, while others have so much but accomplish very little? It turns out that people perform better with constraints. As a leader, what’s the best way to get your team to stretch – to do more – without feeling stressed out and overwhelmed? How can you do more with what you have? How can you inspire others to stretch? Tune in to hear the secrets of stretch and how to get more with less.

My guest is someone who has led in a lot of different circumstances – from the Navy, to sports teams, to university faculty and students and to business. What does it take to win a team over to you as the leader, particularly when they know more than you do? How does one build a team and keep everyone motivated? How can leaders manage strong personalities on the team? What are the lessons learned from observing a master coach?

In our packed, chaotic, stressed lives, many long for a sense of purpose and meaning. What truly creates meaning for each of us? What can we do to find a greater sense of meaning in work and in life in general? Tune in to hear the secrets uncovered by the research of today’s guest: Emily Esfahani Smith.

Creating the best team and generating the best results requires a team with diverse experience and diverse perspective. For most companies the push for diversity is mostly a push for more women on teams, on promotion lists and on top talent lists. However, that isn’t the only need. We will focus on how to increase the talent among African Americans and Black, Asian and Minority Ethnic (BAME). What are the experiences of people in this group? What can you do as a leader that will make a difference?

There is never enough time and you can’t manage time anyway. So how can you get the most out of your day, be as productive as possible and focus on what really matters? Tune in to hear tips and an approach that can revolutionize how you approach work every day, with greater productivity, less stress and more satisfied teams.