Innovating Leadership: Co-Creating Our Future

Guests: Nadia Younes, Gamiel Yafai, & Louise Carvalho Slow as molasses.  That’s one way to describe how leaders have responded to the rapidly changing workplace.  The work environment was already changing before the COVID pandemic; now, there’s no going back to the old “industrial” model.  It doesn’t meet rapidly evolving employee expectations nor the major shifts in workforce demographics.  That,...

Guest: John Antonakis Power does tend to corrupt.  Especially the more testosterone is added to the mix. That’s just one finding that the scientific study of leadership has revealed.  Yet, despite the legions of leadership consultants plying their theories, very little research in the field has been conducted with scientific rigor.  Even science basics, such as control groups and identifying varia...

Guest: Fara Palumbo Change is probably the biggest single consequence of the pandemic on organizations in every sector and of every size.  Blue Cross Blue Shield of North Carolina not only weathered that change, but thrived – even winning awards. Their Chief People Officer, Fara Palumbo, talks with host Maureen Metcalf about the positive opportunities the pandemic presented to her HR department in...

Guest: Jonathan Reams Leadership is nothing without thought -- and research shows we (literally!) think with our hearts as well as our minds.  Neurocardiology is just one way we're learning about how a good leader thinks.  The development of more robust thinking skills is vital in growing as a leader.  Jonathan Reams, of the Norwegian University of Science and Technology, discusses the mindsets re...

Guest: Jason Lioy Authenticity boils down to one key concept: be yourself.  That concept is critical at Dawn Foods; their passion is their people, and their goal is to create a psychologically safe environment for people to bring their whole selves to work.  In short, every Dawn employee can truly “be yourself.”   Making the workplace a safe space took a lot of effort, but Dawn succeeded.  The Gre...

Guest: Heather Krentler   Employees want to be heard. They want to know their employer wants the best for them. Continental Services heard – and worked hard to innovate their company culture to fully focus on the employee journey.  Heather Krentler, Continental’s chief administrative officer, joins host Maureen Metcalf to explore Continental’s employee-led culture and how it came to be; the change...

Guest: Tammy Alvarez You shudder when Monday rolls around. You dread checking overnight work messages on your phone when you wake up. Yup: it’s easy to find yourself in a career you don’t love, and not know how to get out. Take heart! Tammy Alvarez has been there. She found her way out…and now coaches people to help them forge the path to careers they actually love. She shares some of her tips wit...

Peter Kozodoy was peeved at the number of lying, dishonest managers, CEOs, and other leaders he had to contend with.  So he analyzed honesty…and found that honest leaders not only do better, but their teams function better, too.  Peter discusses: How to use strategic brutal honesty to improve far more than morale: it improves sales, marketing, recruiting, and so much more; The simple 2-question te...

Guest: Kenny McDonald It takes a village to raise a city.  That twists traditional wisdom, but it’s true: no one leader can improve an urban landscape alone.  It takes a group of leaders in public and private partnership. When they’re united by one vision, their city can grow into a powerhouse.  Kenny McDonald oversees that for Columbus, Ohio – a city that’s launched into a bold future…most recent...

Guest: Jim Ritchie-Dunham   There’s more to grit than determination – a whole lot more.  Knowing that can help you harness this incredible power of passion and perseverance. Building on the work of Angela Duckworth and her seminal book , guest Jim Ritchie-Dunham shows how there are four levels of grit in an organization...an insight which dovetails neatly with his own work in ecosynomics.  Leaders...

Guest: Greg Moran "Good afternoon, staff. I'm listening." If only your boss truly listened, like Frasier Crane! The reality is most folks high up the chain have little clue about what the front line -- and the customers the front line interacts with -- are thinking. As the staff at one major company said, "They're not even listening to us." The solution is easy. Slack, Teams, and other chat channe...

Turning the tables, Christopher Washington -- the provost and Executive Vice President at Franklin University – interviews our host, Maureen Metcalf, on the top five trends leaders will contend with in 2023.  The key it to lead with a scientist's mindset, experimenting and creating opportunities to help your organization navigate the destabilizing effects of the trends, and to take advantage of th...

Guest: Terri O'Fallon Few leaders set out to harm others – but it can happen despite our best intentions. The key is to look outward from our decisions to all the ripple effects they generate. And the best way to look outward is to look inward! It’s hardly a secret that our emotions affect our cognition. Our guest, Terri O’Fallon, founder of Stages International, reveals in this episode that ident...

Featured Guest: Chris Nolan One look at the headlines on any given day makes it clear: the world is UNclear. How can an organization navigate through the volatility, uncertainty, complexity, and ambiguity to survive – much less succeed? By understanding VUCA, a concept developed by the Pentagon in 1987 to give our military an edge in chaos. Filmmaker Chris Nolan joins Maureen Metcalf to share how...

Featured Guest: Matt Qvortrup As a political scientist, Matt studies democracy – its evolution, and particularly how democracies decline.  He shares his perspective on the rise of populism across the world, how that leads to un-democratic leaders, then answers the question, “Is American democracy a brittle twig or a supple bamboo?”  He offers solutions, too; every strong democracy in history thriv...

Featured Guest: Christopher Washington Christopher Washington joins Maureen to discuss the Leadership Trends for 2021 and Beyond.

Featured Guest: Evan Sohn Having trouble filling positions? Brace yourself: the Great Resignation is morphing into the Job Hopper Economy. Evan Sohn, the CEO of Recruiter.com, is in a unique position to see beyond the simplistic explanations of TV pundits. He joins host Maureen Metcalf to share his big-picture view of the state of hiring today…and where it will be tomorrow. Lesson 1: “Money solves...

Featured Guest: George Limbert “Character is what you do.” That’s a fundamental leadership principle for George Limbert, president of Red Roof.  This is our second visit with George since he began his leadership journey as a first-time corporate president last summer.  Red Roof has prospered under his guidance, proving the value of his philosophies.  Character sits at their core. A focus on charac...

Featured Guest: Terri O'Fallon, Ph. D. & Kim Barta MA Although our bodies stop growing, our minds continue to develop throughout adulthood. But seeing the world differently can be confusing as your old brain emerges into the new. That confusion can be doubly difficult for leaders navigating their own growth (or Vertical Development) with that of their teams. At each successive level, leaders expan...

Featured Guest: Rachael Kelly Every business has its ups and downs. But when trauma hits, the worst thing to do is ignore it. The best: tend to your people! Rachael Kelly watched the effects of COVID quarantine rapidly cascade through the restaurant industry…including at her organization: Smokey Bones. As a restaurant chain, the quarantine hit Smokey Bones hard -- and almost instantly. That, in tu...

Featured Guest: Raj Subrameyer Raj Subrameyer knows about toxic leadership first-hand: HE was a toxic leader. Fortunately, Raj learned before it was too late that the toxins affect the leaders just as much as their teams. Anxiety, depression, anger, sleeplessness, illness...they all mount up. In this episode, Raj talks about his former leadership style, and his subsequent journey to a better work...

Featured Guest: Ruchira Chaudhary Something was wrong with the company. Working for a large corporation in Singapore, Ruchira Chaudhary realized there were too many issues blocking a thriving work environment…and it all stemmed from poor leadership.  Now an international executive coach and author of Coaching: The Secret Code to Uncommon Leadership, Ruchira joins us to reveal how coaching is more...

Featured Guest: David DeRam David DeRam is a 30-year veteran of the software and start-up world.  But it wasn’t until he co-founded Greenlight Gurus that he fully realized the power of mindset training in boosting performance, morale, innovation, and outlook for every member of his team.  Giving his team every edge possible is quite literally a matter of life and death: Greenlight Gurus develops q...

Featured Guest: Rebecca Ryan All of us took history classes, but who’s taken future classes? Studying the future is a discipline that stretches back decades. Strategic foresight is the established and proven process of looking at future probabilities, yet many business and NPO leaders either don’t know about it, or don’t understand it.  It’s used by Fortune 200 companies, the U.S. military, the Wo...

Featured Guest: Chris Nolan One look at the headlines on any given day makes it clear: the world is UNclear. How can an organization navigate through the volatility, uncertainty, complexity, and ambiguity to survive – much less succeed? By understanding VUCA, a concept developed by the Pentagon in 1987 to give our military an edge in chaos. Filmmaker Chris Nolan joins Maureen Metcalf to share how...