Innovating Leadership: Co-Creating Our Future

Guest: Ann Mukherjee Ann Mukherjee’s life is one of complete inspiration, both personally and professionally. Her mother was killed by a drunk driver when Ann was just 14; as an adult, she endured alcohol related violence.   Yet today, she leads the second largest wine and spirits company in the world. Far from a contradiction, it’s a calling – one which sees not just customers and ROI, but caring...

Guest: Paul Austin You never know where the next big breakthrough in leadership research will come, so we’re going to sporadically feature outlier ideas, research from the fringe. Today is our first foray, as we investigate the role psychedelics can play in leadership development.   Struggling with the dichotomy of legality and morality, Paul Austin found himself on an unexpected journey of self-d...

Guest: Mike McLellan Supply chain disruptions: they’ve been at the top of the list for leaders’ anxiety in nearly every sector for years. Will it ever get better?   Yes – if you’ve learned lessons from COVID and other supply chain disrupters. That’s the advice Mike McLellan has for leaders. A vice president of operations for DHL Supply Chain, Mike discusses the innovations DHL and others are imple...

Guest: Dr. Ciela Hartanov Change is accelerating. Volatility continues unabated. And no business is immune. What’s a leader to do?   Develop foresight and become future-ready, of course!  Ciela Hartanov joins us in this episode to detail her practical process for developing foresight. As a futurist, she’s developed many tools for probing potential paths’ future outcomes. She’s distilled those tool...

Guest: Tara McGowan Misinformation and disinformation have become the lifeblood of social media – even some cable channels hungry for ratings. But, as a leader, you need hard facts and straight information.   How did we get here, and what can you do to find the good data your decisions need? Tara McGowan, founder and publisher of Courier Newsroom , notes that propaganda and disinformation have alw...

Guests: Brenda Hampel & Erika Lamont   More than 40% of new leaders fail within 18 months. Why?    Don’t blame the leader; look at the organization instead! Most organizations don’t onboard a new leader well, if at all. They assume a person’s success at one company will automatically transfer to theirs – but there are far too many variables at play to bank on that. Instead, an onboarding plan...

Guest: Betsy Myers, former Senior White House Advisor We may gripe about the pandemic, but it gave us one very positive change for women in the workplace: flexibility. It also highlighted for everyone that old-school leadership won’t cut it anymore. Betsy Myers says head and heart leadership is the model for today’s leaders. It fuses data-driven strategies and decisiveness with qualities such as w...

Guest: Anne Klibanski  Healthcare begins and ends in the home. At least, it should: you’re more likely to heal a bit faster and your outlook tends to be brighter at home instead of a hospital. Further, COVID revealed and amplified medical staff burnout and other issues already brewing in our healthcare system.  It’s overwhelming for most healthcare leaders, but our guest – Dr. Anne Klibanski – tac...

Guests: Mark Palmer & Eddie Moore Forget about future ready; you’re not ready for now!   Most leaders operate at a disadvantage: they don’t have a formal blueprint of their organization. Yet organizational design is vital if you want to be ready for whatever the future brings to your business. From your supply chain to internal communications, organizational design is far, far more than an org...

Guest: Sharon Melnick Pushy. Manipulative. Lofty. We have a lot of negative views for powerful leaders – but that’s not what real power is about. When a leader is in their power, they raise everyone around them. It’s the difference between simply having power, and being IN your power. With her latest book, In Your Power , Sharon Melnick explores the ways women leaders, in particular, both grow and...

Guest: Carolyn Buck Luce Live an epic life.   That’s the goal Carolyn Buck Luce advises you to have. In this episode, she shares ways to make that happen…and how that path started for her. Eight year old Carolyn Buck Luce was inspired by John F. Kennedy's call to service, and decided to take responsibility for answering it even though she was only in elementary school. She created her first Decade...

Guest: Reta Jo Lewis "It's not just about the the betterment of you and your family. It's about the betterment of the community." That is one of the core values that helped guide Reta Jo Lewis through an eventful leadership journey, culminating in her current role as president and chair of the board of the Export Import Bank of the United States — the first African American to accomplish this. She...

Guest: Henry Mintzberg There’s a lot of chaos for leaders to deal with, and it’s been pushing us out of balance for decades. Henry Mintzberg has had enough. Enough of the imbalance that is destroying our democracies, our planet, and ourselves. Enough of the pendulum politics of left and right, as well as the leadership paralysis in the political center. The world we live in needs a form of radical...

Guests: Raj Sisodia & Sudhanshu Palsule In this episode, Raj Sisodia and Sudhanshu Palsule explore the power of conscious leadership. With Conscious Capitalism, this can inspire a higher purpose for businesses, transcending the old Industrial Era story of profit-driven motives. The world has changed dramatically, but our leadership and business models have yet to catch up.   United in their be...

Guest: Monique Jefferson Are you a hybrid leader yet?   That’s what today’s work world demands. Most workers prefer work from home. Others prefer to be in the office. Still others like hybrid work: a combination of both. In this episode in our Connex Partners Executive Insights series, we ask—How do you lead people with such opposing preferences? And how do you accommodate the breadth of diversity...

Guest: James Brenza By their very nature, emerging industries (such as EVs, private spaceships, and cannabis) present unique leadership challenges – and opportunities – rarely encountered in long-established businesses.  In addition to general entrepreneurism, you’re creating something new for the marketplace…and forging the team to shepherd it.   Emerging industries often lend a new twist on old...

Guest: Janet Fouts We recognize the many layers of stress we are under day-to-day. Those stresses are very real – and often increase as we move up the leadership ladder. That stress has consequences, both physical and mental. What can we do?   Janet Fouts has distilled some very simple tools that can help us be less reactive and more responsive to what life throws at us. They’re based on her deep...

Guest: Jacob Morgan There has been a lot written about leadership for the present day, but the world is changing quickly. What worked in the past won’t work in the future – so how do we prepare leaders who can successfully navigate and guide us through the next decade and beyond? What’s required of leaders, even the types of leaders we need, is in flux. So what can a struggling leader do now? Jaco...

Guest: Greg Moran When young companies scale their business, there are many challenges…some obvious, and some no one talks about. Greg Moran joins the show for a discussion about the topics that are often avoided.  Some have even been considered taboo!  We’ll learn about back-office processes and tooling, hiring and diversity, space: culture and people, keeping the value chain in balance, pricing...

Guests: Neil Grunberg & Ira Chaleff “He who cannot be a good follower, cannot be a good leader.”   Aristotle shared that wisdom over 2,000 years ago, but today we chafe at being labeled a follower. Yet, as Ira Chaleff and Neil Grunberg point out, if no one is following, then no one can be leading, either!   Followership is critical in any organization. Think of followership and leadership as a...

Guest: Alice Yoo LeClair Contrary to old-school management beliefs, having a work-best-friend boosts productivity.  Having an entire work community?  That boosts a lot of people’s productivity, morale, even longevity with the organization.  Best of all, the communities you foster at work don’t need to be work-related to have these effects:  gamers, Trekkies, and football fanatics in your workplace...

Guest: Rebecca Heiss From our archives, a special show about our hidden biases.   We all have bias. In various forms, it’s built into our brains. But implicit bias creates a disadvantage for leaders and their organizations. Dr. Rebecca Heiss has studied bias extensively, and shares what implicit bias is and how it impacts each of us. As leaders, we need to understand and manage implicit biases bec...

Guest: Michelle Sanchez-Bickley Amidst the Great Resignation, exceptional organizations are still retaining their top employees, and recruiting new staff.  Renown Health is one of them.   In the second of our Connex Executive Insights series, Michelle Sanchez-Bickley of Renown Health joins Maureen Metcalf to discuss the challenges of the Great Resignation for HR departments.  It’s particularly cha...

Guest: Pauline Koelbl   Surviving life as a refugee is one thing.  To turn that life into a mission to empower other women is quite another.    That’s exactly what Pauline Koelbl did.  Escaping the war in Rwanda, she found herself a homeless refugee.  Eventually, Pauline found a home in Tucson, Arizona.  More importantly, she found mentoring and support there – and now “pays it forward” as the fou...

Guest: Chris Nolan Does your world feel chaotic, unpredictable – lunging beyond your understanding or control? You’re not alone: in fact, the US military felt the same, and created the concept of VUCA to maintain a defensive edge. The good news: you can readily apply VUCA to your organization to maintain YOUR defensive edge! In this episode, Emmy award-winning filmmaker Chris Nolan reveals the pow...