Better Workdays

Part two of a conversation with spiritual advisor Glenn Ambrose from the Life, Laughter, and Lessons podcast.  Glenn is a passionate advocate for deep thinking and thoughtfulness, including when it comes to workplace issues like hiring, firing, and promoting.  Hear it for yourself on this week's episode of Better Workdays! Learn More About REAL Custom Training Read about our workshops: ⁠www.realcu...

I am a huge fan our special guest Glenn Ambrose. I was thrilled to have him join me on Better Workdays to help me explore "his" world of spirituality and how it interesects with "my" world of leadership development.  Glenn's free weekly podcast is called Life, Lessons, and Laughter with Glenn Ambrose.  Before I found Glenn's podcast through the Insight Timer App, I would have said HELL NO to a "sp...

The Wire. Lost. Bluey. All-time great shows with stellar third seasons…and now Better Workdays is proud to join their ranks! Season 3 of Better Workdays is here and host Andy Morrison is fired up to talk about the good, the bad, and the BS of leadership development. Andy outlines his growing disappointment with “leadership” influencers and LinkedIn culture, and explains how Better Workdays will st...

This episode is for anyone who struggles – or manages someone who struggles – with All or Nothing Thinking! Following up on our “Level Up Your New Year’s Resolution” episode, host Andy Morrison is joined by his daughter Haley to take a look at how All or Nothing Thinking can impact our ability to reach our goals.   Andy and Haley both share examples of goals they have for 2026 and break down the w...

This episode is for anyone who wants to pursue true – and lasting – personal growth!   New Year’s Resolutions are a great start, but true personal and professional growth requires a bit more. In this episode, host Andy Morrison from REAL Custom Training shows you how to use the 5 Whys root-cause-analysis technique to figure out the real problem your New Year’s Resolution is trying to solve. Once y...

This episode is for anyone who deals with challenging customers! Leadership skills like emotional regulation and active listening aren’t just for folks at the top of the org chart – they’re essential skills for any and every employee who interacts with customers. Customer Experience Specialist and REAL Custom Training instructor Heather Butterworth joins host Andy Morrison for a look at how custom...

This episode is for anyone who’s ever battled impostor syndrome! Host Andy Morrison is joined by Allison Rich, the Associate Director of TEEG - the Thompson Ecumenical Empowerment Group – a leading non-profit social service agency in Northeastern Connecticut.   As a young leader, Allison shares her own experience with impostor syndrome – the sense of self-doubt that we possess the knowledge or ski...

This episode is for anyone who wants to avoid The Conspiracy of Niceness! With today’s emphasis on positivity and empathy in leadership, it’s no surprise that many supervisors and managers are suffering the effects of being too nice in the workplace. In this episode, host Andy Morrison helps you understand the need to balance respect, empathy, and results as a leader, and gives you a list of thing...

Inspired by his family’s summer vacation, host Andy Morrison presents leadership lessons from Santa’s Village, a Christmas-themed amusement park in Jefferson, New Hampshire. Andy’s been visiting Santa’s Village for years and is always blown away by the park’s beautiful appearance, smooth operations, and dedication to providing an excellent customer experience.  There’s a lot to learn from the way...

This episode is for anyone considering whether leadership development programs are a worthy investment! Host Andy Morrison sits down with Jennifer Worden from Foster, LLC to discuss her experience in REAL Custom Training’s leadership development workshops. Hear first-hand from Jennifer about: What it’s like training alongside people from other companies and industries What it means to work for an...

This episode is for anyone who wants to know if your team ACTUALLY needs teambuilding! Join host Andy Morrison as he explores two common misconceptions in the workplace: not every “team” is actually a team and not all attempts at “teambuilding” actually follow the necessary steps to strengthen a team’s effectiveness.  Andy helps clarify the meaning of the terms team and teambuilding, and then give...

This episode is for anyone who wants to avoid common pitfalls of ineffective managers!  Borrowing from the work of Mike Woodcock and Dave Francis, Andy lays out the researchers’ 11 most common reasons managers fail in the workplace. The bad news? These 11 contributors to failure are just as relevant today as they were when Woodcock and Francis wrote about them waaaaaaaaaay way way back in the 1980...

This episode is for bosses who want to understand freedom’s role in leadership! Fresh off the July 4th holiday, host Andy Morrison has the concept of freedom on his mind. In every company across all industries, employees are always pushing for more freedom, creating challenges for managers who have to balance the desire for freedom with the need for quality results. Andy explains why this push for...

In this episode of Better Workdays, Andy Morrison breaks down the critical distinction between toxic and difficult behavior in the workplace. Drawing from real-world leadership training, he explores how intention, impact, and good faith help you decide when to coach—and when to escalate. Plus, he shares a practical matrix and five-question framework to help leaders respond with clarity and empathy...

This episode is for anyone who wants to reframe their negative thinking!  Special guest and REAL Custom Training instructor Heather Butterworth joins host Andy Morrison for a firsthand overview of Heather’s favorite leadership tool: The Cognitive Crown.  The Cognitive Crown can be a useful framework to raise self-awareness around our internal reasoning and take action to shift toward a more positi...

This episode is for anyone who wants to understand how each level of leadership affects the other levels of leadership in your organization! From the front-line to the C-suite, organizational leaders are tasked with specific areas of responsibility, but these distinctions are not commonly understood in the workforce, leading to internal obstacles and frustrations. Start removing those obstacles in...

In this special episode of Better Workdays, host Andrew Morrison dives deep into his love for The Batman (2022) — and invites an unlikely guest: ChatGPT. Together, they unpack what makes the film a true noir, explore the power of moral ambiguity, and break down the detective story structure. But it’s not just about Gotham. This episode reveals how storytelling, character complexity, and even pop c...

Inspired by the great Malcolm Guite, Andy attempts to give an improvisational tour of his library and accidentally smashes his cell phone in the process.     But before he breaks his phone, Andy shares and reflects on some enlightening clips of Malcom Guite discussing embarrassment over a messy office and the inspiring notion that “there is no such thing as a blank piece of paper.”      If Malcom’...

This is episode is for bosses who want to promote growth mindset! Growth mindset – the idea that cherished qualities and abilities can be developed through learning, effort, and feedback – is an important tool for leaders who get the best out of themselves and others. In this episode, Andy takes a look at 5 easy to remember mantras that can help any boss lead in a way that promotes the power of gr...

 This episode is for anyone trying to manage cell phones in the modern workplace!    Join host Andy Morrison for a look at real-world ideas on how organizations can mitigate the impact of cell phone usage and distraction.    And this time around, the ideas aren’t coming from Andy – they were generated by participants in one of Andy’s recent problem-solving workshops.    As frontline supervisors th...

This episode is for anyone who wants to lead their team through a brainstorming exercise that actually gets results!  Better Workdays host Andy Morrison takes a look at a repeat offender when it comes to terrible meetings: the poorly-run brainstorming session.  Brainstorming can be a fun and highly effective tool IF it’s done properly. This episode gives you 5 ways to make sure your brainstorming...

This episode is for anyone who wants to get the most bang for your buck when you use a third-party provider for your leadership development programming.  Better Workdays host Andy Morrison is in the business of providing leadership development programming for small to medium-sized companies that don’t have an internal department dedicated to talent development.  As a provider, Andy has firsthand e...

This episode is for anyone setting goals for 2025!  Join host Andy Morrison for a look at two change models that help explain why some goals and resolutions are easily reached, while others can seem perpetually out of reach no matter how hard or how often we try. Pulling from the books Developing Coaching Skills and The Coaching Habit, Andy presents a framework we can use to reframe our thinking a...

This episode is for managers who don’t want to sacrifice long-term success in exchange for short-term results!  Join host Andy Morrison as he explores Dr. Paul Hersey’s model for Effective Leadership. This simple model can help us understand why leadership styles like micromanaging and bullying may be effective at driving short-term results, but ultimately hurt us, our employees, and our organizat...

This episode is for anyone who wants to help their kids learn how to fail without getting discouraged!  Helping employees develop a growth mindset requires the same strategies as helping a little kid develop one. You’ve got to resist the natural tendency to praise talent and instead focus on helping the other person think about the process, effort, adjustments, and strategies they used to achieve...