Description

EP 203 | Unlock Your Team’s Hidden Potential  | Jordan Cole

Fence posts planted five feet apart in Irish soil grew back into trees. If your team’s culture is rich  enough, it can grow your people. Jordana Cole talks with Dr. Joey about the one question that transforms fence post performers into vibrant, tree-top contributors.

About Jordana Cole

Jordana Cole is an igniter of leadership and team potential, sparking behavioral change that doesn't just stick - it spreads. Jordana is the founder of Ignited, where she consults on l&d strategy, facilitates workshops, and serves as an ICF certified coach for leaders and organizations globally. Prior to founding Ignited, Jordana led enterprise learning and development functions within industries spanning financial services, technology, and ecommerce that featured companies both on the Fortune 50 and on Fortune's Best Places to Work list.

Jordana combines her rich background in organizational leadership with her master's degree in applied positive psychology from the University of Pennsylvania, to translate research and best practices into accessible and energizing actions that anyone can implement. She's been featured on podcasts and articles discussing the intersection of leadership, wellbeing, and organizational success. Her 2025 TEDx talk "What to Do When You Don't Know What's Next" currently ranks in the top 10% of views for all TEDx talks globally.

Key Insights

• People carry far more capability inside them than they realize. Surfacing it takes somebody who spots what they miss and  offers challenge and support together. Jordana calls it, push and catch.
• We spend 70% of our waking hours at work while 3 out of 4 people report working miserable. This misery spills into the rest of their lives.
• The fastest way to attract top talent is investing in current talent. Think of current team members as brand ambassadors who already describe your culture to their friends.
• Managers reach leadership roles cold, while teaching, healthcare, financial planning, and law all require education, certification, supervision, and continuing practice.
• Leadership is a behavior. Core knowledge accounts for 20% of it. Practice and habit account for the other 80%.
• Fixing what's broken reaches compliance and baseline. Growth arrives as you create clarity on what good looks like, create conditions that make it easy, and reward it.
• Systems and incentives quietly overrule training, so great leaders who arrive excited take their skills elsewhere once the culture contradicts the classroom.
• The pace and volume of change fills the mind the way clutter fills a hoarder's house. Such overcrowding shoves your people into survival mode where creativity and self-regulation both thin out.
• Research from Oxford behavioral economist Jan-Emmanuel De Neve links an organizational focus on well-being to higher profitability, higher productivity, better retention, and better engagement.
• Job security has thinned across industries once considered safe. Layoffs now arrive during profitable quarters which makes loyalty scarce.

Do One Thing

In your next interaction today, ask one person a real question and tell them one specific thing you appreciate about them.

Connect With Jordana Cole

Website: https://ignitedbyjordana.com/ LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jordana-cole-mapp-pcc-a8445a8/ TEDx talk: [TEDX URL PENDING - see Pending table]

Take Your Next Step

Discover where your culture stands in the free Work Positive Culture Assessment at workpositive.today. Four minutes.