Lead with a Question

Gary Dixon - President, The Foundation for a Better Life Every once in a while, we all find ourselves wanting for a little inspiration. We may feel burnt out from working long hours, or depleted by the burden of caregiving, or discouraged by a creative rut. We may feel disconnected from a greater purpose, wondering if our efforts are doing anything at all. But the good news is that the right nudge...

Dan Ariely - Professor, Behavioral Economics When you run a business, one of your jobs is to make wise choices about where you place your bets. This definitely applies in the marketplace with your customers and competitors, but it also applies internally–especially as it relates to how you treat your people. How do you slice the pie? Maybe you offer pet insurance. Or more vacation time. What’s goi...

Scott Belsky - Chief Strategy Officer, Adobe Every organization has a culture–whether it be a family, a company, or even a sports team. Most of the time, there’s an unspoken assumption that people on the team will share a set of attributes and values. Over time, this can lead to a homogenizing effect–also known as groupthink. Deviations become less frequent, because they disrupt the balance. But i...

Gale Pooley - Economist and Author With so much at stake in the decisions we make, especially at the global, societal, and environmental levels, it can be easy to feel like our options and our resources are ever-diminishing. We are emotional creatures, and the narratives we embrace matter. Our guest today has spent years tracking some of the most important metrics on earth–things like literacy rat...

Bonnie Lin - Impact Investor and Advisor At BraveCore, we believe in turning pain into power. This can mean different things to different people, but at its heart, the principle teaches us that instead of avoiding a challenge or remaining stuck in our pain, we choose to let it fuel our future. Today’s guest is one of the best examples we’ve seen yet. Whether winning a fight with cancer, grappling...

John Ondrasik - Singer and Songwriter, Five For Fighting In The Lord of the Rings, Tolkien captures a solid bit of advice from Bilbo, directed toward his nephew Frodo. He says,  “It's a dangerous business, Frodo, going out your door. You step onto the road, and if you don't keep your feet, there's no knowing where you might be swept off to.” In the pursuit of success, it’s tempting to chase shiny...

Clint Schaff - Former Producer and Founder, LA Times Studios Mary Anne Radmacher wrote that “Your responsibility is to be an explorer, not a tourist in this adventure that is your life.” Our guest today took up that challenge from the time he was a kid: dreaming of robots, searching for community, and as he got older, discovering and amplifying stories that matter, at one of the biggest news agenc...

Steve Young - NFL MVP quarterback and author Let’s assume for a minute that you’ve just landed your dream job–your new employer is a household name, your title is the envy of thousands, and of course, you’re well-paid. But what would you do if you found yourself miserable with your new situation? Our guest today faced that very situation. But through some soul-searching, and a life-changing conver...

Guy Kawasaki - Podcaster and Chief Evangelist, Canva An impressive, and sometimes controversial group of figures populates the pantheon of people who changed the world: Walt Disney; Estee Lauder; Jane Goodall; Henry Ford; Marie Curie; Gandhi; Steve Jobs; Martin Luther King Jr. It’s tempting to assume that for this lot, greatness was somehow bestowed, like a birthright. And yet, when we dig deeper,...

Liz Ryan - CEO, Human Workplace Chris, Ian, and I owe a lot to the thinkers who’ve inspired us to focus on this work. Sometimes, you just come across someone whose insights, vision, conviction, and courage are so powerful that they seem to have their own gravitational field. Isaac Newton once wrote, “If I have seen further it is by standing on the shoulders of Giants.” Well, we recently met one of...

Nolan Bushnell - Inventor & Entrepreneur What do the Atari company and Chuck E Cheese have in common? Well, besides offering a lot of options for entertainment, it might surprise you to learn that they were both founded by the same man–a Silicon Valley entrepreneurial legend who holds the distinction as first and only person to ever hire Steve Jobs. But rather than resting on his achievements, he’...

Whitney Johnson - Author and CEO, Disruption Advisors Imagine for a moment that you’re suddenly forced to switch to your non-dominant hand for a week. Getting dressed, feeding yourself, brushing your teeth–the tasks you used to do on autopilot have now become deeply challenging and awkward. But by the end of the experiment, you’ve gotten the hang of it! What was once an inconvenience has gifted yo...

James Jensen - Founder and CEO, JUMP A well-lived existence is not for the faint of heart. Setting and pursuing goals invites challenge. It creates the potential for disappointment. When we’re younger, dreaming big dreams comes easily. But for some reason, we can lose that ability as we get older. Like barnacles that attach to the hull of a ship, fears can cling to us and slow our PRAW-gress throu...

Chad Reynolds - Founder and CEO, Vurvey In times past, the process of bringing a product to market was a bit of a black box. And for many companies, it still is. Often, consumers don’t really have a chance to provide feedback on a company’s offering until it’s already been released. But in our new climate, people want to be seen and heard. They want to be active participants in the creation of the...

Chris Jones - 2022 Arkansas Gubernatorial Candidate What do you get when you combine a scientist, an ordained minister, a business leader, a husband, and a father? Well, you get today’s guest. His family roots in the state of Arkansas, dating all the way back to the 1700s, have given him a sense of groundedness, residency, and a love for his state, challenges and all. In fact, he loves his state s...

Joel Peterson, Chairman of JetBlue Airways and Professor at Stanford Have you ever been part of a low-trust organization, where people seem to devote more energy to protecting themselves than to collaborating, or building good products? Or one where leaders hoard power and seem reluctant to give the reins over to anyone else? You might ask yourself how things got to that point, but an even more pr...

Lizzi Perkins, Senior Brand Strategist When you read a really moving story or watch a powerful film, you can often experience a taste of what the characters are feeling. You grieve with them as they suffer loss. You cheer them on to victory and share in their celebrations. Our capacity to see ourselves vicariously in others’ lives is one of the most human things about us. So today, let’s spend a f...

Archie McEachern, Global Enterprise Leader & former VP at Nike When I was a kid, I learned about fire safety. One of the visual frameworks adults presented to me was the “fire triangle”: the idea that for fire to exist, you had to have three ingredients: heat, oxygen, and fuel. Take one of these three things away, and you had NO fire. Well, just like fire needs certain conditions to thrive, busine...

Jaydeep Ranade, Director of Wireless Engineering at Facebook Let’s dig into the “misfit” principle for a minute. What is a misfit, really? Is a misfit defined by language, culture, appearance, or personality? We’ve tapped into that topic before, but today, our guest has a different take, one that has to do a lot with seeking out opportunities to learn and be stretched as a leader. And for him, it...

Randy Nelson, founder of Pixar University It's time to wrap up a conversation where we were learning so much from our guest that we couldn’t fit it all into one episode. So if you haven’t heard our last episode, “How can you create a culture of curiosity? - Part 1,” we really recommend going back to that one first.  But just in case, here’s a review–we recently caught up with Randy Nelson, founder...

Randy Nelson, founder of Pixar University Some guests are harder to describe than others. Take today’s invitee, for example. How should we summarize his CV?  A teacher. A trainer. A recruiter? A coach? How about a juggler, or an actor? An artist. A calligrapher. What about a filmmaker, programmer, or systems analyst? The fact is that all these labels, and more, apply. With such diversity of intere...

Pualei Lynn, Startup Founder, Humanitarian, and Style Consultant Let’s get real for a second–it’s really easy to get caught up in comparisons: who’s taking the most amazing vacations? Who’s the fittest? Whose business is prospering the most? Who has the most admirable family? The list never ends. Now, if things are going well, these external comparisons leave you feeling pretty good about yourself...

Ryan Woodward, Storyboard Artist for Marvel, Warner Bros, and more Have you ever wondered why some movies connect with us, while others don’t? Flashy special effects can help, but at their heart, good films include meaningful stories, and characters we care about. Our guest today knows a few things about the creative process, having logged dozens of credits working on movies like The Iron Giant, t...

Jessica Cox, Aviator and World Record Holder This week, we’ll start off with a quote, attributed to Leonardo da Vinci: “Once you have tasted flight, you will forever walk the earth with your eyes turned skyward, for there you have been, and there you will always long to return.” For this installment, we want to take you to a higher place. We’ll meet a woman who faced huge physical challenges, righ...

James Matthews, Coach of NBA Coaches Today, we connect with a man whose life is a collage of influences, from his roots in India, to his love of sport, to his exclusion as a kid, to the traditional path others had seemingly mapped out for him. But rather than simply accept or reject those forces, he’s folded them into a sense of self that has allowed him to lift and serve others through co-creatio...