On Connection

Balancing work and well-being is a constant challenge for many, particularly for leaders who are managing both people and organizational commitments. Well-being easily slips down the priority list when pressing accountabilities come up, and it can feel like a “nice-to-have” rather than a necessity. However, well-being is a critical foundation for productivity, engagement, collaboration, and leader...

In this episode of  On Connection , host Robin Anselmi interviews Pedro Zannoni, CEO of Lacoste Latin America. With a rich background in the sporting and fashion goods industries, Pedro has successfully grown global brands in new regions and tackled various leadership challenges. As an ambassador for Diversity and Inclusion at Lacoste, Pedro shares valuable insights on elevating women's leadership...

Organizations rely on leaders to effectively direct action and inspire collaborative work even when they don't have direct authority over everyone they need to influence. Often, these are leaders a few rungs below senior leadership that are responsible for driving strategic priorities forward, influencing across a matrix, and doing so without relying on title or reporting structure. There are effe...

Strategic planning and budget setting are core responsibilities for organizational leaders, yet they often come with unique challenges. These processes rely on a series of crucial conversations that directly impact not only how challenging that process feels, but also the quality of the resulting plans and commitments, ultimately guiding successful execution. In this episode, Robin and Mickey shar...

A critical first chapter in a leader's growth comes when they are no longer just accountable for their own performance, but for that of others. Whether managing a team for the first time or taking on more leadership in collaborative work, this leap requires new mindsets and skills to guide collective rather than individual success. Challenges for this population include: - Setting expectations &am...

Bringing a team together - whether that be for meetings, offsites, retreats, kickoffs, happy hours, or other forms of gathering - is an important part of cultivating team culture, generating alignment, and building connection. Many will report that their teams don't meet often enough, or meet too much. At the heart of both critiques is a question - when we do meet, how do we ensure it's a...

Of the challenges unique to senior roles, "Enterprise Leadership" is a common point of focus in our work with clients today. Enterprise Leadership is a distinction that refers to both a role and a mindset: taking responsibility for the health of the whole enterprise, and for the promises it makes to its stakeholders and citizens. Leaders can have great capability and expertise in leading...

Imagine if all use of your time, energy and attention at work led to real value. How much would you get done? How would you feel? Now imagine if all use of time and resources across your organization caused value - no meeting, task or project was a waste. Every organization has waste in its system, but the real problem is that we either don't notice it, or we don't feel empowered to do any...

Mike Tetreault, Chief People Officer of The Nature Conservancy, joins Robin Anselmi to talk about the value of Radical Partnership, and why it's a necessary focus for leaders navigating dynamic and complex challenges. Mike leads the team focused on enabling a healthy, strategic and agile organizational culture that is dedicated to creating a world where people and nature can thrive. He believe...

Change and uncertainty are unavoidable challenges for organizations and leaders to lean into today. Whether those changes and shifting circumstances are externally driven or strategic choices, they can be disruptive and dislocating. They also offer powerful opportunities for generating connection, resilience, and value-producing cultures. Mickey and Robin join Emma Rose to share what they've o...

When we find ourselves in disagreement with another person, it's easy to put our energy into winning the argument. How do I get my point across? How do I get them to see it my way? How do I prove that I'm right? If we treat conversations and conflict like a win-or-lose game, we all lose. If we practice conversational accuracy, we create an opportunity for both sides to learn from the other...

Conflict resolution and the valuable management of differences are leadership skills that continue to be identified as critical areas of development across organizations and industries. While conflict is something we all tend to avoid or leave unresolved, the way we choose to engage with it can either hurt our goals and working relationships or increase our access to trust and new insights. In thi...

Leading others has its challenges, and for the most senior leaders of organizations there are some challenges that weigh heavily. What gets elevated to senior leadership isn't the easy stuff. It's often the complex, messy, challenging things that couldn't be resolved by others. Those leaders, however, are just human beings - people that have personal lives and responsibilities that dra...

A new year brings opportunities for reflecting on our hopes and intentions for the year ahead, both personally and professionally. In organizational life, we set strategic plans and priorities, schedule milestones and deadlines, and put together development plans for ourselves and others. Most know that no matter how great the plan, we often get derailed as circumstances inevitably shift. So how c...

We know that influence is not limited to those with tenure, title, or hierarchy. Every member of an organization has the capacity to influence those around them, the quality of work, the collective understanding of challenges, and much more. Choosing to develop influence as a skill is a worthwhile investment not only for senior leaders but also for leaders and contributors of all levels. We recent...

A leader’s ability to influence others, the quality and trajectory of work, performance, and results is integral to organizational success, and an indicator of the value that leader provides. What things are made better by their contribution? What do they uniquely contribute that people can count on them for? We are all influencing all the time, whether we’re aware of it or not. Becoming conscious...

A challenging part of work (and life) is addressing the disappointments and challenges that come up in our relationships with others. It could be performance or collaboration issues, delivering disappointing news or feedback, or anything else that's difficult or uncomfortable to bring into conversation. Being able to step into these conversations emotionally grounded, with a firm sense of purp...

Belonging is the B in DEIJB, one of the initials less understood or talked about, though not any less important. In fact, some consider belonging to be the outcome or indicator that diversity, equity, and inclusion are being addressed successfully. What has us feel like we belong? What value does that experience afford us? As individuals and as a collective. Why should leaders and organizations ca...

Performance reviews and feedback can be some of the most valuable tools in growth and career development, though they can also be some of the most dreaded employee experiences. As of 2022, 95% of managers are dissatisfied with their organization’s review system – a statistic that shows not only is there room for improvement, but managers would likely welcome a change. What makes a feedback convers...

There are times we all feel stuck, held back, or inhibited and often we aren’t clear or confident about what we can do to change it. Not only is this a source of frustration, but over time it can devolve from decreasing engagement and motivation to hopelessness, resentment, or despair. How people engage with this experience and what they’re looking for is what leads to stuckness becoming a dead en...

Our ability to influence people and the course of events starts with the level of credibility we have. It is a foundational leadership skill, one that we've found is generated, not granted. It’s especially common for us to see credibility as a point of development focus for those looking to elevate their presence and influence within an organization. Over years of working with senior executive...

Practicing Inclusive Leadership - leadership that inspires inclusivity and causes an experience of belonging - is not just soft and emotional work. It is a rigorous commitment that will naturally result in confronts, difficult conversations, and hard decisions. Inclusive Leadership is a call to cause both belonging and disruption, and doing so valuably requires understanding what it means to use p...

Emma Rose is joined by guest Lisa Horwitz, who plays a critical role in the digital transformation of a large national healthcare company. Over the past few years, her background in user experience design has helped her support the adoption of new technology across their clinics nationwide, and she’s approached it as a research project with a focus on how to successfully guide behavior change. Lis...

Growth and development are key parts of our lives at work, and for leaders, this is both a personal undertaking and something to sponsor in others. What best supports successful development? How can we design for growth towards our goals, our vision for ourselves and for our work, and fulfillment that enriches our working experience and contribution?  Carolyn French and Krista Spence join Emma Ros...

For the second in our series on Power, we do a deeper dive into what we mean when we talk about power. Michelle and Robin share the different "types" of power (as defined by the American Psychological Association) and how they can help us further investigate our own relationship to power - as leaders, employees, teammates, and as people. Power, Part 1 APA Types of Power The Cycle of Valu...