The Leader Factor

Tim and Junior continue their Leadership Journey series by diving into part two on leading teams. They discuss the challenges leaders face when transitioning from individual contributor to managing others. 0:02:15 - Transitioning from independent contributor to leading a team requires a fundamental shift in mindset and skills. It's often under supported by organizations. 0:08:50 - The team is the...

Today, Tim and Junior kickoff a three-part series on the leadership journey: Leading yourself, leading the team, and leading the business. Today's episode is focused on leading yourself. Tim and Junior emphasize taking personal accountability and ownership of your own development. You'll hear insights on cultivating wellness, self-awareness, and a growth mindset. Tim and Junior also share their pe...

In today's episode of Culture by Design, Tim and Junior discuss a question brought up in a recent Harvard Business Review article, which is, can you have too much psychological safety? The article suggested that excessive amounts of psychological safety could undermine accountability and performance. Tim and Junior share their perspective, pushing back on some of the misconceptions about what psyc...

In this two-part series, Tim and Junior discuss practical steps for effectively challenging the status quo. Innovation requires some dissent and deviation from the norm, but challenging the status quo can be difficult since it often feels personal. Today they cover the final 5 tips including bringing credibility, knowing your boss, framing dissent as exploration, and using data to support your cas...

In this week's episode of Culture by Design, Tim and Junior tackle a common organizational-wide dilemma, how do you effectively challenge the status quo? Questioning the prevailing mindset is tricky business. While innovation requires deviation from the norm, pushing for change often feels like a personal confrontation rather than an objective debate. So in this episode, Tim and Junior will provid...

Original Air Date: November 21, 2022 The culture dilemma (00:45). Many organizations tell us that they want to improve their culture, but often don’t know where to start. What does an unhealthy culture look like? What symptoms need to be identified and treated? The definition of culture (02:30). Culture is the way we interact. It exists anywhere where there are humans. Parts of it are visible, whi...

In this episode, Tim and Junior discuss how high-performing teams are formed and maintained. The quality of an organization is a reflection of the quality of its teams, and high-performing teams have patterns. Although there are many patterns, Tim and Junior will focus on a core four in this episode, including how high-performing teams (1) connect, how they (2) improve their skills, how they (3) v...

This special year in review episode of Culture by Design features hosts Tim and Junior interviewing members of the LeaderFactor team. They get unique perspectives on psychological safety trends and insights from 2023 based on interactions with clients. Guests include Jillian (Marketing), Ryan (Technology), Kelsea (Sales), and Alex (Client Success). 5 Key Moments Interest in psychological safety co...

In this episode, Tim and Junior introduce five simple but powerful questions to align teams and get everyone on the same page. They explain why alignment is critical yet often neglected, review the high cost of misalignment, and provide a practical framework to drive shared understanding and commitment among team members. 5 Key Points Alignment ensures strategies, goals, processes, and people are...

In this episode of the podcast, Tim and Junior dive into the critical leadership skills of accountability and critical thinking. They discuss why these competencies are important for leaders and team members to develop, define what accountability and critical thinking mean, explain the vital interrelationship between accountability and critical thinking, and share thoughts on how we can effectivel...

In this episode, Tim and Junior conclude their series on emotional intelligence (EQ) by discussing practical ways to improve it. They explain that EQ is a learnable skill that requires deliberate practice focused on improving behaviors. The key is consistently gathering feedback, monitoring your progress, and making incremental improvements over time. 5 Key Takeaways with Timestamps EQ is a learna...

In this episode, Tim and Junior delve into what they term the 'core logic'—a vital exploration of how EQ is not just an individual trait but the cornerstone of collective team intelligence. As they unpack the causal chain, they reveal how EQ is the linchpin in cultivating a safe space for vulnerability, ultimately steering both personal growth and organizational success.  Key Points The Importance...

In today's episode, Tim and Junior will continue our series on emotional intelligence. If you joined us last week for our kickoff of this series, you'll know that we answered the question, what is emotional intelligence? We shared our unique definition of emotional intelligence, which is the ability to interact effectively with other people. Today, we'll continue the discussion by answering the qu...

This week we're kicking off a new series on emotional intelligence. Our approach to EQ is different. There’s the mainstream idea of EQ, and then there’s ours and this episode will give you an inside look into how you can make EQ practical and actionable for the individuals and teams you work with.  Emotional Navigation [0:06:00]: Tim delves into the core concepts of emotional intelligence, emphasi...

Here at LeaderFactor, we're all about helping our clients take the theories behind psychological safety and culture and turn them into actual practice inside their organizations. Our goal is to make our content and frameworks as actual as possible, and that's what this episode is all about. We've taken some recent favorite practical moments from Tim and Junior and compiled them together. We'll hav...

In this week's episode of Culture by Design, Tim and Junior dive into what it means to create cultural accountability in an organization. Our definition of culture is the way we interact. At an individual level, cultural accountability is being accountable for the way you behave and interact with others. High performing organizations have high cultural accountability. As always, we move from theor...

How are you measuring your organization's culture? In this episode of Culture by Design, Tim and Junior are discussing just that. This is a fantastic episode for individuals who really care about being cultural architects and being practitioners in their roles, not just theorists. Tim and Junior will dive into the fundamentals of culture, the different ways we measure culture today, and what metri...

In this episode, Tim and Junior discuss how high-performing teams are formed and maintained. The quality of an organization is a reflection of the quality of its teams, and high-performing teams have patterns. Although there are many patterns, Tim and Junior will focus on a core four in this episode, including how high-performing teams (1) connect, how they (2) improve their skills, how they (3) v...

Today's episode is the final part of our four-part series on the change management principle, behave until you believe. This is our final episode in the series, and it's on challenger safety in practice. Tim and Junior will discuss why innovation requires deviation, why an environment of high challenger safety is not the default, and they'll give you practical behaviors for you to put challenger s...

During this episode of Culture by Design, we're continuing our four­-part series on the change management  principle, Behave Until You Believe. These episodes are focused on the practical application of each of the four stages of psychological safety and, this week, Tim and Junior tackle Stage Three: Contributor Safety. During the episode, they'll discuss our innate need to make a difference, the...

Today's lesson: Beware the Tyranny of Your Expertise Key Points: Expertise is a double edged sword. On one side, it’s knowledge, it's useful, and it’s leverage. On the other side, you can become insulated and you can lose touch with context. "The danger of the expert is that he often becomes a prisoner of his own expertise." -Peter Drucker. There is no field of knowledge that is static or complete...

Today's episode is part two of our four-part series on the Change Management Principle, Behave Until You Believe. These episodes are focused on the practical application of each of the four stages of psychological safety and focus on the key principles and behaviors that will help you foster an environment of high psychological safety. This week, Tim and Junior talk about what learner safety is, t...

Today's lesson: The 21st century requires Mission-type or mission-command orders Key Points: Mission-type orders include a clear statement of the superior commander's intent and state each unit's tasks in terms of operational effects to be achieved rather than specific commands. A mission-type order only works when your junior officers have the capability to do the job, including the critical and...

In today's episode, we're kicking off a new four-part series on the Change Management Principle, Behave Until You Believe. These episodes are focused on the practical application of each of the four stages of psychological safety and focus on the key principles and behaviors that will help you foster an environment of high psychological safety. To kick off this series, Tim and Junior will talk abo...

Today's lesson: Excavate Your Talents Key Points: The National Endowment for the Arts tells us that the average person possesses 500-700 different skills and abilities. Yet, Gallup tells us that only 10% of people are able to identify their natural talents. Everyone has special gifts, talents, and aptitudes– areas where their potential ability is two or three standard deviations from the mean. The...