It's Not Personal

In this episode, Ken and Seth dive deeply into the process of protecting culture by thinking not only of the people you're working with, but also about the various people who will be coming after. How are we making changes that will positively impact those who come next? What does it take to protect the culture and build honest and open connections in your organization? You need to deal with the p...

In this episode, Ken and Seth talk about how being in a leadership role can feel isolating and lonely. It's important for leaders to understand how isolating leadership can feel at times. In many ways, nobody else in the organization can understand what it feels like to be in your shoes. All the ways that you might have connected with others before become limited when you are in charge. In this po...

In this episode Ken and Seth talk about the tension between self-doubt and self-confidence in leadership. How do we work with that interplay of self-doubt and imposter syndrome and maintain the presence of a leader. We have to learn to trust ourselves and have confidence that we belong in this role and earned our right to be here. It's unhelpful to doubt ourselves as leaders because all it does is...

In this episode Ken and Seth talk about the ways that work has developed over time and what it is that we are all being asked to do each day. What is it that we are being asked to do most of the days and how is that time that we are spending helping the company move forward? How do we get better at working with a distributed organization? How do we get better at coordinating and motivating people...

In this episode, Ken and Seth talk about what it takes to create a safe space for the up and coming leaders of tomorrow. What does it mean to be the kind of leader you might have needed when you were coming up in career. There's a tendency to make choices and play games with boundaries that might make things more convenient in the moment but could have negative impacts down the line. The courage t...

In this episode Ken and Seth talk about the importance of introspection and reflection on the success of leadership. When we take the time to be curious and reflect on ourselves and how we are impacting those around us, we can learn so much about how we are being received by others. What can you learn about yourself and your team when you take the time to be curious and process what's going well,...

In this episode, Seth and Ken talk about the ways that emotions impact a leader's ability to connect, motivate, and facilitate the success of a team. The more aware you are as a leader about what you're feeling and how those feelings impact your communication, the more effective you can be as a leader. Check in with yourself and get clear on what's going on with you and who you're being in the mom...

It takes courage to be clear, honest, and vulnerable in your words. In this episode, Ken and Seth talk about what it takes to share clearly what you're feeling and what's going on for you, without needing your audience to trust you. Trusting your audience builds trust. When you come in with clear intentions and a clear vision, you get a better chance to motivate and inspire. Be the kind of leader...

How do you create a culture of safety and support in your community and organization? What does it take to cultivate people's courage to speak up and say what they need you to hear? In this episode Ken and Seth talk through various ways to create a sense of safety and openness in your team and community. It's a challenging tension to balance between not wanting people to hide and also not wanting...

In this episode, Ken and Seth talk about the importance of vulnerability to being a real person in leadership and having a better impact, but to be aware of not overusing vulnerability. We want to be real and vulnerable, but we don't want to overshare. When we offer too much personal information, we can overburden our people with our own problems. While it's important to show your feelings and sha...

How do your beliefs impact the way that you lead? In this episode, Ken and Seth talk about how core beliefs can and will impact the ways that we communicate and lead. Belief systems are both powerful and dangerous. Can you set your own beliefs aside to see more clearly and make space for other voices? How are your beliefs possibly driving your actions and how are they getting in the way of you hea...

What does it mean to be authentically yourself? How do we show up as leaders with vulnerability? Ken and Seth talk about the ways that leaders can learn to drop their masks enough to inspire and engage their teams. The leader of any group, team, or organization has the opportunity to model what it's like to be uncomfortable with being real. Everything in tech and in business will have difficulty w...

Ken and Seth talk about what it took to put together episode 3 and all the weird turns and pitfalls that happened this past year. As the saying goes, "man makes plans and God laughs." In this episode, Ken and Seth sum up the ideas behind this season (the desire for leaders who are real and authentic) and they talk about dealing with disappointment and mistakes with a sense of humor.

In this final episode of season 2, Ken and Seth discuss the value of touching into our own ambition and our relationship to it. Perhaps you have something inside of you that wants to be expressed, and it's important that you take the time and the energy to express that thing. Toxic ambition is about thinking that you're inherently a better human being than someone else. Positive ambition is in bel...

In this episode, Ken and Seth talk about the value of feedback and how it can change your life. The three types of feedback that are most common are appreciation, coaching, and evaluation. It's so important to be clear on what you want to hear and how you want to hear it. Thanks for the Feedback, by Douglas Stone and Sheila Heen. The gift of feedback is when you can be specific and help the receiv...

What if you could manage your worry and the worry of your team more effectively by both planning and trusting that you will figure it out? The ability of leaders to meet the worries and concerns of their teams with compassion and a sense of purpose makes the difference between a team that is built on self trust or one that's based on fear and control. Ken and Seth talk about how leaders can learn...

We can train ourselves to be more comfortable with discomfort and get more out of our own experiences and the experiences of those around us. Being a leader means being uncomfortable most of the time. If you are avoiding that discomfort or if you're trying to manage your team away from discomfort, then you're going to create problems for yourself and others. In this episode, Ken and Seth dive deep...

In this episode Ken and Seth talk about the value of accepting that a career does not have to follow a straight path. Perhaps, it's even better if it doesn't. Ken shares how many of the successful people he works with in IT don't even have a computer science background. As a leader, you can provoke your team to think different about their own career path and how they might be able to support peopl...

In this episode, Ken and Seth talk about the importance of treating your teams, your employees, and your managers like adults so that they behave like adults. When we treat people like children, they tend to behave like children. When asked why he's willing to let his team decide whether to work remotely or come into the office, he says, "I have a fundamental principle, I only hire adults." Ken an...

How do you feel about conflict? What does it mean to be a "tough boss?" How do we hold ourselves accountable and why? It's important to bring feedback to people that removes the personal out of it. Why? It's because when we feel judged, we tend to shut down. Even so, it's crucial that leaders see the people who worked for them. The more you see them, the easier it is to motivate them and to help t...

Can we find the fun and the spontaneity in our work? What would it look like if people were willing to use a little playfulness in their job? Ken shares how he uses humor and playfulness with his group, and how these things help to create engagement and develop relationships. Sometimes little things like turning presentation slides into a game of finding little hidden jokes for his Executive Leade...

Can we be in competition with each other while also wanting each other to be successful? Want does it take to create a culture that celebrates the pursuit of excellence without the pursuit of the ego? In this episode, Ken and Seth talk about the value of healthy competition in an organization and the negativity of unhealthy competition. When your sense of success is dependent on the idea that your...

Culture is basically just a set of behaviors and expectations that we have for the people in our organization. In this episode, Ken and Seth talk about how you can influence culture and motivate change even in a hybrid situation. When we are aware of the anxiety that we have about whether our teams are actually doing the work, we can get much clearer about the ways that we want to measure and hold...

What is a leader's job when you get right down to it? Is it just to have meetings and make decisions? Or is it about helping other people be successful? Yes, there are other things that you're expected to do, but your role as a people-leader (no matter what you do for the company) is to help people be successful. Ken and Seth talk about how leaders can see themselves as having the power to lift ot...

Leadership isn't always about position power. Often times it's about the ability to influence beyond your sphere of control. In this episode, Ken and Seth talk about the various ways that a leader can influence a culture and bring along peers and management so as to see different perspectives. The more aware you are of what you're trying to say and how people's emotions work, the easier it is to m...