Shows
LeaderSHOPEp 21: David Ulrich – How meaning and belonging pay big dividends in the workplaceBelieve it or not, social isolation is a leading cause of death—ahead of high blood pressure, fast foods, alcohol, and obesity.People need meaning in their work. They need a sense of belonging. They need compelling answers to their “why” questions. Like most humans, workers listen to that internal radio station WIIFM—“What’s In It For Me?”David Ulrich offers wise insights on how to create a workplace culture that genuinely engages the heads, hearts, and hopes of the people who are expected to produce great products and services. BusinessWeek ranked him as the #1 managem...2025-07-2242 min
LeaderSHOPEp 20: Cynthia Kay – Contemplating entrepreneurship? Smart tips from an expertFor countless reasons, more and more people are leaving the work-for-someone-else world and hanging up their own shingles.But without proper planning and execution, the road to entrepreneurship can be bumpy and even treacherous.Cynthia Kay provides excellent guidance. Herself a successful entrepreneur, she’s founder of an award-winning media production and communications firm and serves clients ranging from Fortune 500 companies to small businesses and non-profits. She’s former board chair for the National Small Business Association and author of Small Business, Big Business: Proven Strategies to Beat the Odds and Grow a Great Business.2025-07-1539 min
LeaderSHOPEp 19: John Spence – Turning ideas into action can be “awesomely simple”As the saying goes, only mediocrity can be trusted to be always at its best.Poor leaders just maintain mediocrity. Harsh words, perhaps. But in this age of sound bites and image control, true and sustainable performance excellence seems to be the exception, not the norm.Fortunately, there are some excellent leadership practitioners out there who are willing and able to challenge mediocrity head-on. One of those practitioners is John Spence. He’s a coach and consultant for companies ranging from Microsoft, IBM, GE, and Abbott, to Merrill Lynch, AT&T, and Verizon. His book is...2025-07-0838 min
LeaderSHOPEp 18: Dr. Amy Edmondson – For top leadership results, make talking safePsychological safety—the belief that one can speak up, take risks, and admit mistakes without fear of punishment or humiliation—is a cornerstone of high-performing teams and healthy relationships.Dr. Amy Edmondson, a renowned Harvard leadership professor, is at the forefront of this field, demonstrating how environments of trust and open communication drive innovation, learning, and resilience. In the workplace and beyond, psychological safety empowers individuals to contribute fully, collaborate honestly, and grow from failure.Without it, even the most talented teams can falter, silenced by fear and self-protection.As Winston Churchill said, “Succes...2025-07-0142 min
LeaderSHOPEp 17: Bob Tiede – Want to be a better leader? Ask better questionsAsking good questions is a fundamental part of learning and discovery.Good questions can prompt people to challenge their own assumptions. Good questions can open the floodgates of fresh ideas. Good questions can help turn casual chitchat into meaningful conversation.The good news? Asking good questions is a skill that can be developed.Bob Tiede knows this better than most. He’s spent decades studying the art of good questions and has authored several popular books on the subject. His blog Leading With Questions is followed by leaders in more than 200 countries....2025-06-241h 05
LeaderSHOPEp 16: Sabina Nawaz – Why being boss isn’t always easy, but how you can thriveWhether you’re a boss now or hope to be in the future, Sabina Nawaz can help. Executive coach to thousands of business leaders—including Bill Gates and others whose names you would recognize—Sabina answers many of the questions you should be asking:* What are the make-a-difference factors between managers who become superstars and those who crash and burn?* Why does getting promoted present one of the riskiest times in your career?* How can you avoid the burnout trap?* How can creating a “Yes List” help you succeed as a manager?2025-06-1735 min
LeaderSHOPEp 15: Guy Kawasaki – How a heavy dose of “grit” enhances a growth mindsetEarly in his career, Guy Kawasaki worked closely with the legendary Steve Jobs, co-founder of Apple. In fact, Guy was designated as chief evangelist for the iconic Macintosh computer.Today he fills that same role for online graphic design app Canva and is creator and host of a popular podcast.The bestselling author of 16 books, Guy teaches entrepreneurship at two universities, is a highly successful venture capitalist, delivers popular TED talks, and advises senior execs at some of the world’s leading tech companies. You might say he stays busy.With things like cl...2025-06-1037 min
LeaderSHOPEp 14: Jodi Glickman – How to boost your value in the workplaceIn today’s competitive business environment, being “good” at work is simply not enough.To stand out from the crowd, you must have the tools to communicate effectively as you collaborate, give and receive feedback, and highlight your value and success.Still, some people get lulled into complacency about their marketability. After all, they may reason, jobs are so plentiful it's easy to pick and choose among opportunities.That shortsighted perspective can be deadly for their futures.Regardless of the current state of the economy, it's always smart to regard every day as...2025-06-0348 min
LeaderSHOPEp 13: John Brandt – Like a deadly virus, nincompoopery can sneak up on you“People are born ignorant, not stupid. They are made stupid by education.”That may sound like a line from a comedian. But it’s actually from Bertrand Russell. You know—the British philosopher, logician, mathematician, historian, essayist, social critic and Nobel laureate. Not known for comedy.Intentionally or not, Russell provided a fair description of what often occurs in organizational cultures: Rules masquerade as reason. Sketchy thinking becomes strategy. Hair-brained ideas become products destined for the discount warehouse. Unchallenged nonsense evolves into the status quo. People go along to get along.Such unproductive environm...2025-05-2734 min
LeaderSHOPEp 12: Mary Abbajay – Why “managing up” is a skillset you needYou’ve heard it said, and you know it’s true: Employees don’t quit jobs, they quit bosses.For many people, the primary ingredient in job satisfaction is not the quality of food in the lunchroom. It’s not the office layout or equipment. It’s not even the workload or salary or benefits. It’s the relationship with the boss. In fact, one study showed that 65% of workers surveyed would choose a new boss over a pay raise.Many organizations still promote people because of their technical success rather than for management skills. To compound...2025-05-2038 min
LeaderSHOPEp 11: Willie Pietersen – You want to lead? Here’s the scoop on what it takes to succeedWillie Pietersen has the street cred to earn the attention of anyone interested in leadership. In addition to his teaching at Columbia University’s Graduate School of Business, he’s been a consultant to some of the world’s best-known organizations, ranging from Ericsson and Johnson & Johnson to ExxonMobile and the Girl Scouts of America. This former Rhodes scholar has also served as chief executive of several multibillion-dollar businesses, including Lever Foods and Seagram USA.Willie says we all learn intuitively, but few of us know consciously how to learn. The driver is curiosity—not idle curiosity, but ener...2025-05-131h 01
LeaderSHOPEp 10: Dana Perino – How good mentors can change a life’s trajectoryAs Oprah Winfrey has said, “a mentor is someone who allows you to see the hope that’s inside you.”Like many of us, Dana Perino has been blessed to have such people in her life. She grew up in Wyoming and Colorado. Then, in a series of events that were nothing short of serendipity (if not destiny), she wound up in Washington, D.C. As she has said, she was basically a cowgirl who went east.Her professional ascent was beyond anything she had imagined. She became White House press secretary and served more than s...2025-05-0641 min
LeaderSHOPEp 9: Steven Rogelberg – Transform your meetings from blah to brilliantAn estimated 55 million meetings occur in the U.S. workplace every day. And studies show that 90% of meeting attendees daydream during the meetings. What a waste of time and energy!Dr. Steven Rogelberg has come to the rescue. He’s an organizational psychologist whose pioneering research on meetings has been lauded around the globe and featured by top media outlets. His counsel is sought by many Fortune 100 firms and even the UN. He’s even testified before the U.S. Congress, a place not necessarily known for effective use of time.Steven’s research shows that a...2025-04-2933 min
LeaderSHOPEp 8: Jessica Chen – How to get noticed at work for all the right reasonsJessica Chen grew up in a “Quiet Culture” household where deference, humility, harmony, and single-minded hard work were both expected and praised.Worthy as those traits are, they seemed incompatible with much of what she found in the “Loud Culture” of today’s workplace. The result was that early in her career she felt underappreciated, passed over for opportunities and promotions. Stuck.Today, with background as an award-winning TV journalist, she speaks at Fortune 50 companies and conducts LinkedIn courses that have been watched by more than two million people. She’s also CEO of a global busin...2025-04-2234 min
LeaderSHOPEp 7: Bill George – How to live your life by a compass, not a clockIn today’s highly competitive hustle culture, maintaining even a semblance of “balance” is more challenging than ever. The really smart people have discovered that direction is more important than speed.One of those really smart people is Bill Geroge. He’s former chairman and CEO of Medtronic, the world’s leading medical technology company. Under Bill’s leadership, the company’s market capitalization grew from $1.1 billion to $60 billion.Bill has been a director of Goldman Sachs, ExxonMobile, Novartis, Target, and the Mayo Clinic. Today he’s executive fellow at Harvard Business School.In addition to t...2025-04-1532 min
LeaderSHOPEp 6: Heather Younger – To lead others, learn to lead yourself firstIn some workplaces, “leadership development” is all about equipping people to influence others. That’s a virtuous goal, but it often misses a crucial reality: to be genuinely effective in leading others, you must first master the challenge of leading yourself.Heather Younger understands that reality. She’s a celebrated workplace culture and employee engagement expert who’s written several bestselling books helping people navigate the roads to effectiveness in both their professional and personal lives. Her latest offering is The Art of Self-Leadership: Discover the Power Within You and Learn to Lead Yourself.Heather embraces t...2025-04-0838 min
LeaderSHOPEp 5 – Marshall Goldsmith: How to avoid sacrificing tomorrow on the altar of today“We are living an earned life when the choices, risks, and effort we make in each moment align with an overarching purpose in our lives, regardless of the eventual outcome.”That’s Marshall Goldsmith’s definition of an “earned” life. Of course that pesky final phrase—“regardless of the eventual outcome”—is a stumbling block for many people. But Marshall offers simple approaches that accommodate both people’s persistent need for achievement and the inescapable realities of everyday life.Marshall is widely regarded as one of the world’s top leadership coaches. He’s author of multiple bestselling bo...2025-04-0141 min
LeaderSHOPEp 4 - Dorie Clark: Reinvent yourself by managing your personal brandIn a crowded and noisy world, it’s sometimes hard to get your ideas heard. You want to stand out and make meaningful contributions, but you also want to avoid coming across as a self-promoter.Dorie Clark can help. As the New York Times has reported, Dorie is “an expert at self-reinvention and helping others make changes in their lives.”Dorie is widely regarded as one of the top business thinkers in the world. She teaches executive education at Columbia Business School. She’s the author of several bestselling books, and she consults and speaks for clie...2025-03-2537 min
LeaderSHOPEp 3 - Doug Conant: Building your life and career requires purpose and planEarly in his career, Doug Conant was unexpectedly fired from his job. He felt blindsided and was devastated. It didn’t make any sense to him. He’d been working hard, putting in extra hours, doing everything he thought he was supposed to. Then, bang! A young family, a mortgage, and no job.With hindsight, Doug says it was one of the best things that ever happened to him.A gritty outplacement counselor helped him realize that he hadn’t done anything wrong, he simply hadn’t been doing enough right. He had siloed his “work” self...2025-03-1641 min
LeaderSHOPEp 2 - Liz Wiseman: Boost your career impact by becoming a multiplierHave you ever been around leaders who walk into a room and you can almost see lightbulbs going off over people’s heads while the ideas flow and problems get solved? Liz Wiseman refers to these leaders as multipliers.Then there are some leaders who are also smart, but they have an entirely different effect. They tend to shut down the smarts of others. They are idea killers and energy zappers. Liz refers to these leaders as diminishers.Diminisher leaders issue directives based on what they can see and what they know, while multiplier leaders de...2025-03-1652 min
LeaderSHOPEp 1 - Stephen M.R. Covey: Making trust first so it will always lastTrust is the operating system of every relationship.Think about that metaphor: operating system. You can have great software programs installed on your computer. But if the computer’s operating system has a glitch, nothing seems to work right.In your work environment you can have world-class processes in place, backed up by well-conceived procedures. But if trust is fragile, you can never achieve consistently good results.In personal relationships, trust is always the key. It’s possible to like and even love someone. But if strong trust is not part of the rela...2025-03-1652 min
The Word Café Podcast with AmaxS1 Ep. 29 The Power of StorytellingSend us a textWhat we know today was told to us via verbal and written formats all by way of storytelling and for sure, the same way the generation unborn will come to know what we are doing here and now, what we call today. The power of storytelling cannot be denied, each culture be it modern or ancient have transmitted their essence stemming from the challenges they have surmounted and how this has influenced their belief systems.In this episode of the Word Café, our focus is on storytelling, its place in our c...2021-07-2115 min
Influence Change at WorkChange-Friendly LeadershipBestselling author Rodger Dean Duncan shares nuggets of wisdom from his book, Change-Friendly Leadership: How to Transform Good Intentions into Great Performance. Listen in to hear what Dr. Duncan calls the Four T's: key leadership behaviors that drive change.2014-11-1833 min
CIO Talk Network PodcastAffecting Lasting ChangeDespite the best intentions of an IT leader and his/her organization, efforts at change usually fail. A big announcement with lots of fanfare and a catchy slogan doesn’t guarantee success… Rather, effective organizational change requires active, engaged participation by everyone affected. So, how does a leader go about enlisting the heads, hearts, and hopes of his/her people, in order to implement effective and lasting change? Guest 1: Dr. Rodger Dean Duncan, Speaker, Executive Coach and Author Guest Bio: https://www.ciotalknetwork.com/contributor/rodger-duncan/ Guest 2: Daniel Traynor, SVP and CIO , Tennesee Vall...2013-01-1656 min
CIO Talk NetworkAffecting Lasting ChangeGuest 1: Dr. Rodger Dean Duncan
Title: Speaker, Executive Coach and Author
Guest 2: Daniel Traynor
Title: SVP and CIO, Tennesee Valley Authority (TVA)
Guest 3: Sanjeev "Sonny" Bhagowalia
Title: CIO, the State of Hawaii
Despite the best intentions of an IT leader and his/her organization, efforts at change usually fail. A big announcement with lots of fanfare and a catchy slogan doesn’t guarantee success... Rather, effective organizational change requires active, engaged participation by everyone affected. So, how does a leader go about enlisting the heads, hearts, and hopes of his/her people, in order to implement effective and lasting change?2013-01-1456 minCIO Talk NetworkAffecting Lasting ChangeGuest 1: Dr. Rodger Dean Duncan
Title: Speaker, Executive Coach and Author
Guest 2: Daniel Traynor
Title: SVP and CIO, Tennesee Valley Authority (TVA)
Guest 3: Sanjeev "Sonny" Bhagowalia
Title: CIO, the State of Hawaii
Despite the best intentions of an IT leader and his/her organization, efforts at change usually fail. A big announcement with lots of fanfare and a catchy slogan doesn’t guarantee success... Rather, effective organizational change requires active, engaged participation by everyone affected. So, how does a leader go about enlisting the heads, hearts, and hopes of his/her people, in order to implement effective and lasting change?2013-01-1456 min