Guest: Paul Austin You never know where the next big breakthrough in leadership research will come, so we’re going to sporadically feature outlier ideas, research from the fringe. Today is our first foray, as we investigate the role psychedelics can play in leadership development. Struggling with the dichotomy of legality and morality, Paul Austin found himself on an unexpected journey of self-discovery – a journey that led him to establish Third Wave, a platform dedicated to using psychedelics ...
Apr 12, 2023•52 min
Guest: Mike McLellan Supply chain disruptions: they’ve been at the top of the list for leaders’ anxiety in nearly every sector for years. Will it ever get better? Yes – if you’ve learned lessons from COVID and other supply chain disrupters. That’s the advice Mike McLellan has for leaders. A vice president of operations for DHL Supply Chain, Mike discusses the innovations DHL and others are implementing: from rapid responses to exoskeletons for warehouse workers. If your organization relies on su...
Apr 05, 2023•40 min
Guest: Dr. Ciela Hartanov Change is accelerating. Volatility continues unabated. And no business is immune. What’s a leader to do? Develop foresight and become future-ready, of course! Ciela Hartanov joins us in this episode to detail her practical process for developing foresight. As a futurist, she’s developed many tools for probing potential paths’ future outcomes. She’s distilled those tools into her foresight process. That, in turn, helps leaders adapt their mindsets, enabling them to make ...
Mar 30, 2023•56 min
Guest: Tara McGowan Misinformation and disinformation have become the lifeblood of social media – even some cable channels hungry for ratings. But, as a leader, you need hard facts and straight information. How did we get here, and what can you do to find the good data your decisions need? Tara McGowan, founder and publisher of Courier Newsroom , notes that propaganda and disinformation have always existed…but social media’s algorithms have amplified it exponentially, creating hard echo chambers...
Mar 22, 2023•58 min•Season 9Ep. 13
Guests: Brenda Hampel & Erika Lamont More than 40% of new leaders fail within 18 months. Why? Don’t blame the leader; look at the organization instead! Most organizations don’t onboard a new leader well, if at all. They assume a person’s success at one company will automatically transfer to theirs – but there are far too many variables at play to bank on that. Instead, an onboarding plan that goes beyond HR protocols and benefits sign-up is necessary: a plan that considers company culture, h...
Mar 18, 2023•46 min•Season 9Ep. 12
Guest: Betsy Myers, former Senior White House Advisor We may gripe about the pandemic, but it gave us one very positive change for women in the workplace: flexibility. It also highlighted for everyone that old-school leadership won’t cut it anymore. Betsy Myers says head and heart leadership is the model for today’s leaders. It fuses data-driven strategies and decisiveness with qualities such as warmth, compassion, empathy, and collaboration. In short, the head sets the purpose for an organizati...
Mar 15, 2023•49 min
Guest: Anne Klibanski Healthcare begins and ends in the home. At least, it should: you’re more likely to heal a bit faster and your outlook tends to be brighter at home instead of a hospital. Further, COVID revealed and amplified medical staff burnout and other issues already brewing in our healthcare system. It’s overwhelming for most healthcare leaders, but our guest – Dr. Anne Klibanski – tackles these issues head-on. The president and CEO of Mass General Brigham , she and her team created, a...
Mar 07, 2023•59 min
Guests: Mark Palmer & Eddie Moore Forget about future ready; you’re not ready for now! Most leaders operate at a disadvantage: they don’t have a formal blueprint of their organization. Yet organizational design is vital if you want to be ready for whatever the future brings to your business. From your supply chain to internal communications, organizational design is far, far more than an org chart. In this episode, guests Eddie Moore and Mark Palmer explain how absolutely vital design is in ...
Mar 01, 2023•50 min
Guest: Sharon Melnick Pushy. Manipulative. Lofty. We have a lot of negative views for powerful leaders – but that’s not what real power is about. When a leader is in their power, they raise everyone around them. It’s the difference between simply having power, and being IN your power. With her latest book, In Your Power , Sharon Melnick explores the ways women leaders, in particular, both grow and leak their power. She discusses those, as well as how turning down an invitation to the White House...
Feb 22, 2023•50 min
Guest: Carolyn Buck Luce Live an epic life. That’s the goal Carolyn Buck Luce advises you to have. In this episode, she shares ways to make that happen…and how that path started for her. Eight year old Carolyn Buck Luce was inspired by John F. Kennedy's call to service, and decided to take responsibility for answering it even though she was only in elementary school. She created her first Decade Game, a plan for the next ten years of her life. Despite the pre-internet turmoil of the 1960s, she w...
Feb 15, 2023•49 min
Guest: Reta Jo Lewis "It's not just about the the betterment of you and your family. It's about the betterment of the community." That is one of the core values that helped guide Reta Jo Lewis through an eventful leadership journey, culminating in her current role as president and chair of the board of the Export Import Bank of the United States — the first African American to accomplish this. She is a passionate advocate for women in entrepreneurship and has a long history of working in politic...
Feb 08, 2023•50 min
Guest: Henry Mintzberg There’s a lot of chaos for leaders to deal with, and it’s been pushing us out of balance for decades. Henry Mintzberg has had enough. Enough of the imbalance that is destroying our democracies, our planet, and ourselves. Enough of the pendulum politics of left and right, as well as the leadership paralysis in the political center. The world we live in needs a form of radical renewal unprecedented in the human experience. But Henry doesn’t complain: he crafts solutions. In ...
Feb 03, 2023•45 min
Guests: Raj Sisodia & Sudhanshu Palsule In this episode, Raj Sisodia and Sudhanshu Palsule explore the power of conscious leadership. With Conscious Capitalism, this can inspire a higher purpose for businesses, transcending the old Industrial Era story of profit-driven motives. The world has changed dramatically, but our leadership and business models have yet to catch up. United in their belief that business can be a force of good, they share their research and personal journeys as they for...
Feb 01, 2023•54 min
Guest: Monique Jefferson Are you a hybrid leader yet? That’s what today’s work world demands. Most workers prefer work from home. Others prefer to be in the office. Still others like hybrid work: a combination of both. In this episode in our Connex Partners Executive Insights series, we ask—How do you lead people with such opposing preferences? And how do you accommodate the breadth of diversity in the workforce? Monique Jefferson says the answer lies in being intentional. The Chief People Offic...
Jan 25, 2023•56 min
Guest: James Brenza By their very nature, emerging industries (such as EVs, private spaceships, and cannabis) present unique leadership challenges – and opportunities – rarely encountered in long-established businesses. In addition to general entrepreneurism, you’re creating something new for the marketplace…and forging the team to shepherd it. Emerging industries often lend a new twist on old businesses: they allow the opportunity to relook at established practices, sparking innovation in the b...
Jan 22, 2023•49 min
Guest: Janet Fouts We recognize the many layers of stress we are under day-to-day. Those stresses are very real – and often increase as we move up the leadership ladder. That stress has consequences, both physical and mental. What can we do? Janet Fouts has distilled some very simple tools that can help us be less reactive and more responsive to what life throws at us. They’re based on her deep dive into mindfulness as she dealt with the extreme stress of working as a full time digital marketer ...
Jan 21, 2023•48 min•Season 7Ep. 38
Guest: Jacob Morgan There has been a lot written about leadership for the present day, but the world is changing quickly. What worked in the past won’t work in the future – so how do we prepare leaders who can successfully navigate and guide us through the next decade and beyond? What’s required of leaders, even the types of leaders we need, is in flux. So what can a struggling leader do now? Jacob Morgan wondered, as well, so he interviewed over 140 CEOs, then partnered with LinkedIn to survey ...
Jan 20, 2023•43 min
Guest: Greg Moran When young companies scale their business, there are many challenges…some obvious, and some no one talks about. Greg Moran joins the show for a discussion about the topics that are often avoided. Some have even been considered taboo! We’ll learn about back-office processes and tooling, hiring and diversity, space: culture and people, keeping the value chain in balance, pricing and value creation, establishing ESG processes, and minimizing distraction. It’s a primer for entrepre...
Jan 19, 2023•56 min
Guests: Neil Grunberg & Ira Chaleff “He who cannot be a good follower, cannot be a good leader.” Aristotle shared that wisdom over 2,000 years ago, but today we chafe at being labeled a follower. Yet, as Ira Chaleff and Neil Grunberg point out, if no one is following, then no one can be leading, either! Followership is critical in any organization. Think of followership and leadership as a yin and yang: each of us needs to be good at both of them, and each of us needs to know when to play wh...
Jan 18, 2023•44 min
Guest: Alice Yoo LeClair Contrary to old-school management beliefs, having a work-best-friend boosts productivity. Having an entire work community? That boosts a lot of people’s productivity, morale, even longevity with the organization. Best of all, the communities you foster at work don’t need to be work-related to have these effects: gamers, Trekkies, and football fanatics in your workplace all benefit. So how does an HR leader drive community building within their organization? Does remote w...
Jan 17, 2023•56 min
Guest: Rebecca Heiss From our archives, a special show about our hidden biases. We all have bias. In various forms, it’s built into our brains. But implicit bias creates a disadvantage for leaders and their organizations. Dr. Rebecca Heiss has studied bias extensively, and shares what implicit bias is and how it impacts each of us. As leaders, we need to understand and manage implicit biases because they impact our hiring choices, promotion and succession decisions, company policies—even how clo...
Jan 16, 2023•41 min
Guest: Michelle Sanchez-Bickley Amidst the Great Resignation, exceptional organizations are still retaining their top employees, and recruiting new staff. Renown Health is one of them. In the second of our Connex Executive Insights series, Michelle Sanchez-Bickley of Renown Health joins Maureen Metcalf to discuss the challenges of the Great Resignation for HR departments. It’s particularly challenging in the health care sector; the strains of COVID on our medical system put particular pressure o...
Jan 14, 2023•57 min•Season 8Ep. 8
Guest: Pauline Koelbl Surviving life as a refugee is one thing. To turn that life into a mission to empower other women is quite another. That’s exactly what Pauline Koelbl did. Escaping the war in Rwanda, she found herself a homeless refugee. Eventually, Pauline found a home in Tucson, Arizona. More importantly, she found mentoring and support there – and now “pays it forward” as the founder and managing director of ShEquity, and investment firm providing capital and other resources to women-le...
Jan 13, 2023•51 min•Season 8Ep. 10
Guest: Chris Nolan Does your world feel chaotic, unpredictable – lunging beyond your understanding or control? You’re not alone: in fact, the US military felt the same, and created the concept of VUCA to maintain a defensive edge. The good news: you can readily apply VUCA to your organization to maintain YOUR defensive edge! In this episode, Emmy award-winning filmmaker Chris Nolan reveals the power of storytelling to help leaders navigate the rapidly accelerating VUCA Max world. It’s an inspiri...
Jan 11, 2023•52 min
Guests: Nadia Younes, Gamiel Yafai, & Louise Carvalho Slow as molasses. That’s one way to describe how leaders have responded to the rapidly changing workplace. The work environment was already changing before the COVID pandemic; now, there’s no going back to the old “industrial” model. It doesn’t meet rapidly evolving employee expectations nor the major shifts in workforce demographics. That, in turn, means the Great Resignation should have come as no surprise at all! The new, effective workpla...
Jan 10, 2023•52 min
Guest: John Antonakis Power does tend to corrupt. Especially the more testosterone is added to the mix. That’s just one finding that the scientific study of leadership has revealed. Yet, despite the legions of leadership consultants plying their theories, very little research in the field has been conducted with scientific rigor. Even science basics, such as control groups and identifying variables, are missing. That punches big holes in many leading leadership philosophies and best-selling book...
Jan 09, 2023•56 min
Guest: Fara Palumbo Change is probably the biggest single consequence of the pandemic on organizations in every sector and of every size. Blue Cross Blue Shield of North Carolina not only weathered that change, but thrived – even winning awards. Their Chief People Officer, Fara Palumbo, talks with host Maureen Metcalf about the positive opportunities the pandemic presented to her HR department in launching initiatives – and making Blue Cross/Blue Shield an even better place to work. They discuss...
Jan 08, 2023•55 min•Season 8Ep. 13
Guest: Jonathan Reams Leadership is nothing without thought -- and research shows we (literally!) think with our hearts as well as our minds. Neurocardiology is just one way we're learning about how a good leader thinks. The development of more robust thinking skills is vital in growing as a leader. Jonathan Reams, of the Norwegian University of Science and Technology, discusses the mindsets required for leaders to be effective. Here's what Jonathan and Maureen cover: What the science of neuroca...
Jan 07, 2023•57 min
Guest: Jason Lioy Authenticity boils down to one key concept: be yourself. That concept is critical at Dawn Foods; their passion is their people, and their goal is to create a psychologically safe environment for people to bring their whole selves to work. In short, every Dawn employee can truly “be yourself.” Making the workplace a safe space took a lot of effort, but Dawn succeeded. The Great Resignation barely touched the company; taking DEI, empathy, and authenticity to a whole new level has...
Jan 06, 2023•54 min•Season 8Ep. 17
Guest: Heather Krentler Employees want to be heard. They want to know their employer wants the best for them. Continental Services heard – and worked hard to innovate their company culture to fully focus on the employee journey. Heather Krentler, Continental’s chief administrative officer, joins host Maureen Metcalf to explore Continental’s employee-led culture and how it came to be; the changes made not just to engagement, but sourcing the best talent in the first place; and how leaders embrace...
Jan 05, 2023•54 min
