Authority Optional: Leadership Beyond the Rulebook

Max and Josh finally get to talk to an old teammate from their days in corporate. Aidan was the first leader Max promoted towards the dream team and joins the fellas in some reminiscing about what made the team work and how it's impacting job environments since then.

Max and Josh discuss an amorphous concept on what’s holding you back, the psychological obstacle that stops you or slows you down from achieving your goals. Or, in other words, what’s the thing that constantly stands in your way that you may have built yourself. They talk about the need to be able to understand and analyze it to be able to get over it in order to be successful. They both get vulne...

Max and Josh start a new series in the ongoing effort to help you streamline your life as a leader. The series takes words and phrases that turn into buzzwords and explains them with the hope that it makes sense out of it and, as always, tries to provide something useful to you in the process. This one is Communication Models, what they are, some examples, and what might be handy to try in your ow...

Max and Josh talk about an area on the continuum of knowledge that Max has coined, "The Sinister Window." We know what we know, and often we're also pretty sure of what we don't know. What's in between those two areas? Tune in and hear about it. Trigger warning: we use a pretty dark example to showcase how bad it can be, but we do bring things back around to work and leadership.

Max and Josh interview Nicholas Whitaker, an Executive well-being and performance coach, Conscious Leadership Activist, and the co-founder of Changing Work. We hypothesize on the current cause of destructive work environments being largely due to laziness and inherited broken systems, our collective efforts to create and maintain conscious leadership, and how as our generations progress we, as a s...

Continuing their interview with Jeremiah, the three get into more effective ways of helping other humans be better, managing up when the circumstances call for senior management to be coached, how powerful music can be, and just how valuable it can be to truly get to know your people.

Max and Josh interview a true visionary in the field of turning work environments into places that don't suck. Jeremiah has written and co-written a few books, worked for some extremely high value entities, and delivers a ton of excellent information in our two part episode where we cover everything from abstract thinking and leveraging seemingly disparate skill sets to actually treating people li...

Max and Josh talk about the way feeling or pattern can creep up on you and how it can impact relationships. This is particularly relevant in leadership as it is their belief that working towards optimal relationships on a team is part of the job. After some stories and examples they provide some tips and suggestions on reversing unproductive neuro-associations.

Max and Josh interview an expert on building cohesive cultures people ACTUALLY want to work in. Courtney Feider (say it like "fighter") utilizes over 25 years of experience in corporate business focused in the areas of leadership development, organizational strategy, behavioral development, and business communications/marketing. She talks about addressing the common bifurcation of work from who we...

Max and Josh wrap up the series on engagement with the biggest and best part: development. Starting with their intent, being super explicit about what excellence means which can mean gaining clarity from your own leadership, leveraging what they’re good at often discovered by assessments, and having the tough conversations when necessary are all part of strong development.

Max and Josh define this concept for the purposes of what is meant by it when they're talking and asking about it, how it impacts a quality team, and how to go about implementing it.

Max and Josh continue with the series on Engagement, now moving on to providing your team with autonomy. Hire the right people to do the job, then get out of their way. In addition to providing some steps that can aid this journey they discuss the importance of failure and how powerful it can be for someone to learn it's allowed.

Max and Josh interview Joel about an interesting transition in his life where he could have gone to a dark place but instead turned it into enlightenment, a fulfilling career, and strong leadership. They pick his brain on getting connected to his people, remote team building, and how he maintains psychological safety.

Max and Josh launch a series on Engagement, a critical component of creating an environment people actually want to work in.  The series starts with Inquiry, Max and Josh talk about some of the best questions they’ve found to ask in order to get engagement started. Additionally they provide examples for how those questions tend to pan out and how to leverage what you learn about the person so...

This is the sequel to last week's topic, Max and Josh reveal the last 3 steps to finding a way into crafting that culture you're after despite being in a business or work environment that may not be receptive to it.

First a big thank you to you guys for sending us questions, today's was regarding how to create a culture that makes sense to you in an environment where doing things different might not be welcomed. Max and Josh get into 2 of the 5 steps they've taken in just such and environment, completing the last 3 steps in next week's show.

Terminating somebody's employment can be tough to handle, Max and Josh might even argue that it should be. They discuss the methods they've found that makes it as close to smooth as possible, share some sticky ones, and even go into philosophies that can help with this often complicated part of being a leader.

How do you decide what to focus on first, or most? Max and Josh share some of their best practices and even go beyond the corporate experience to provide some tips and tricks on helping you decide what your priorities truly are and how to arrange them in ways that make sense to YOU.

Max and Josh interview a local creator, Cary Judd. Cary is a musician, a photographer, a filmmaker, and more. The three explore what makes a great team regardless of industry, what it means to have teammates that will be honest, and what Cary learned in the making of his documentary, 828, which can be found on Amazon Prime and Tubi.

Max asks Josh if he has any obsessions that turned out good for leadership. Josh's answer is spot on, exactly what somebody interviewing a prospective leader would want to hear. Max's answer is a little cloudier...

Max and Josh talk about what to do, what they have done anyway, when times were very difficult in a leadership position. Max reflects on one of his harder instances, the valuable resource that pulled him through it, and both discuss some ways of finding resources if you're looking. And of course, we're happy to be that resource if you want to call in or write us a question! authorityoptionalpodcas...

Max and Josh field an audience question that inquires about their thoughts and opinions on sales goals, how to handle them, experiences on coaching to certain behaviors, etc. They discuss having seen the worst versions, add some thoughts on how to deal with that, as well as provide some coaching tips regardless of what level of leadership you're in.

In the second part of our interview with Mac we explore his opinions on decentralized leadership and working remote. We wrap up on some parting wisdom Mac has for leaders looking to craft their own culture.

Our inaugural interview with Mac Christian, who has his own podcast: The National Land Podcast, was fun and informative. In part 1 of our chat with Mac we cover how he creates his culture, how he knows it's working, and some serious counterexamples of culture where he learned what NOT to do.

Max and Josh get their first non-caller question from a new leader who just leap-frogged her old boss. They get much more into detail about how to handle the boundary-pushing that happens sometimes when one of the team gets promoted to run it.