The Lift

Your manager has been telling you for three years that your work is excellent. Then one day you're let go. Nobody saw it coming except the person who signed your reviews. James Coyle has watched this play out more times than he can count. His take: that's not a performance problem. That's a leadership failure.  Topic Highlights: – Why avoiding the hard conversation is always more expensive th...

You know the feeling of researching a hotel for three hours and still not booking it? The Points Guy Brian Kelly has made a career out of knowing exactly when to stop doing research – on flights, on investments, on the decision to quit your job – and just make it happen. For Brian, it's about knowing when you have enough information to move. Topic Highlights: – How Brian made the biggest decision...

Ben Brooks usually asks the questions. This week, he's the guest, and The Lift's Executive Producer, Steph Colbourn, takes the host chair to dig into the nitty-gritty of management. Leadership gets the TED Talks while management gets the eye rolls. But here's the inconvenient truth: 70% of the employee experience is determined by one thing - the quality of their manager. Problem is, we've been tal...

What do you do when the President of the United States, the Senate majority leader, the Secretary of Energy, and an army of lobbyists all want you to say yes – and your answer is no? Robert Powelson has been in that exact position.  In this conversation, Rob shares what it actually costs to hold the line – and, what it buys you. Topic Highlights: – What Rob said in a three minute 4th of July...

Ben went to Salzburg for two weeks of “pure PTO” vacation. He ended up spending the first day and a half locked in a hotel room, heart rate elevated, surrounded by sticky notes.  In today’s episode, we cover incompletions: the tasks that haven't been done, the conversations that haven't happened, the decisions still open. And why they are probably quietly costing you, your coworkers, and your...

When was the last time someone on your team told you something you didn't want to hear? If you have to think about it, you have your answer. Too many leaders have spent their entire careers avoiding conflict, and now they're running teams where nobody tells them anything useful, nothing real gets decided, and everyone is very, very pleasant about it. According to Amy Gallo, this isn't harmony – it...

Have you ever had this thought? “I have an HR problem. They’re too slow. Too reactive. Too focused on process and compliance.”  Here's an uncomfortable possibility: the HR you're complaining about may just be the HR you bought. If you've only ever funded HR for compliance and recruiting, don't be surprised when that's all you get. Part two in our series about getting the most out of your HR f...

Most executives think of HR as an order window. Fire this person. Hire that one. Fix the culture. Improve the managers. But underneath that fictional menu is a function absorbing things no one ever puts on a report: the weight of every employee's hardest moments, handled quietly, while still being expected to move the business forward. In part one of this two-part conversation, we pull back the cu...

Complacency doesn't feel like standing still. It feels like winning. Right up until it doesn't. That's the trap Snorre Kjesbu has spent his career trying to help his organization escape. As SVP & GM of Collaboration at Cisco, he runs a multi-billion dollar business, holds 20+ patents, and is blunt about where this ends: companies that stop pushing themselves don't just slow down. They go out o...

Tom Hardin was a rising hedge fund analyst making good money in New York City when he decided to make a few trades on inside information.  Then the FBI tailed him at 6:30 AM outside his dry cleaner. In the 18 months that followed, he wore a wire more than 40 times as an informant in the largest insider trading investigation in US history. What he learned about getting people to finally share...

Just Ben this week. In our very first solo episode, we go deep on the topic Ben has been teaching inside every PILOT cohort since day one, the one that shows up in almost every coaching conversation he has, the one that he considers the single biggest unlock in a career: self-advocacy.  Knowing what you need, knowing how to ask for it specifically, and being willing to hear no – and knowing w...

“Running is my meditation.” Michael Miller hears this a lot.  His response: “Knitting is my rock climbing.”  If you've been telling yourself exercise counts as meditation, this is the episode that gently, convincingly, changes your mind. Topic Highlights – The three types of meditation and why the one most leaders try is the hardest and least effective – How a 20-minute practice twice a...

Most senior leaders got to where they are by being the expert. But Helen Tupper has research showing that the moment you start thinking of yourself as an expert is the exact moment you stop growing.  If you've been coasting on competence, or are quietly terrified of being a beginner again, this episode is for you. Topic Highlights – How expertise quietly kills curiosity, and what to do before...

Ask almost any leader if they're self-aware and most will say yes. But research shows only 15% actually are. That gap – between who we think we are and how others experience us – is where most leadership development needs to start.  Unfortunately, it almost never does. Margaret Andrews, who has spent two decades teaching this at Harvard, is here to help close the gap. Topic Highlights – Why t...

“You're not a good fit.”  “The company's going in a different direction.” Every manager thinks these phrases are legally safe. But according to attorney James Bryton, they're basically an engraved invitation to a lawsuit. And a lot could be avoided if leaders took a different approach to letting people go. This is part two of our two-part series about letting people go with empathy and dignit...

Most leaders know when someone isn't working out, for months – sometimes years. So why does it take so many of them so long to do anything about it? Dr. Dennis Davis has a theory, and it has a lot more to do with the manager than the employee. This is part one of our two-part series about letting people go with empathy and dignity.  Topic Highlights: – The real cost of the “performing-at-35%-...

How do you work with people you genuinely can't stand? Not someone who rubs you the wrong way in a meeting. Someone on the opposite side of your moral compass. Adam Kahane has spent 35 years finding that answer in some of the most intractable conflicts in modern history. His conclusion? You don't blow the system up. You find the cracks. Topic Highlights: – The simple tool for moving from blame to...

What's the fastest way to kill any chance of actually moving the needle on a big, complex project? According to longtime NYC power broker Kathryn Wylde, it's defensiveness.  Kathryn knows this because she spent 50 years dragging billionaires, union bosses, and city officials into the same room and getting them to agree on the best way forward. And she’s here to share how she did it. Topic Hig...

People with a best friend at work are *seven times* more likely to be engaged in their jobs. Yet most leaders spend zero budget, zero strategy, and zero intentional effort on workplace friendships.  Tom Rath has done the research to understand the power of friendship at work, and how leaders can better foster it.  Topic Highlights: – Why Gallup's employee engagement prompt "I have a best...

Here’s a scorching hot take: modern workplaces make it nearly impossible for employees to forge real connections. But according to third space culture expert Adam Tanaka, it’s not the connections themselves that are impossible – it’s the space where they’re (not) happening in. So we took this episode into a wood-fired Finnish sauna pop-up on the Brooklyn waterfront to test his theory.  Topic...

No one loves a genuine truth bomb more than kids – unfiltered, no social contract, no concern for how it will land. Ginny McCormick has spent her career figuring out what that kind of radical honesty, and the play that produces it, can teach the rest of us. Turns out the principles that work in the playroom work just as well in the boardroom. We just forgot them somewhere along the way. Topic High...

When was the last time someone on your team told you something you didn't want to hear? If you have to think about it, you have your answer (too long ago). Too many leaders have spent their entire careers avoiding conflict, and now they're running teams where nobody tells them anything useful, nothing real gets decided, and everyone is very, very pleasant about it. According to Amy Gallo, this isn...

During World War II, the Office of Strategic Services published a manual teaching ordinary citizens how to sabotage the enemy from within. One of the tactics: hold unproductive meetings.  Nearly a century later, Dr. Rebecca Hinds is dedicating her career to studying why meetings fail – and what it actually costs when they do. Topic Highlights: – The WWII sabotage manual that became standard b...

Roughly 75% of the global workforce has a faith identity that shapes how they work, when they need time off, and whether they feel like they can truly show up. Reverend Mark Fowler isn't asking leaders to get a theology degree. He's simply asking them to be a better host. Topic Highlights: – How religion is already happening at work – usually in quiet corners and over lunch – and what leaders are...

Many business relationships can’t seem to get out of transactional mode. That’s why Marco Ziegler flew almost 100,00 miles in one year – not to close deals, but to show up for his clients. There's a difference, and that’s the whole point. Marco has a formula for this philosophy. And it’ll make you reconsider how you think about client relationships.  Topic Highlights: – The Trust Equation: fo...