Paradigm Shifts Podcast

A study by Gallup estimated about 70% of the factors that influence employee engagement are owned by managers. Under each manager exists a micro-culture that has a significant impact on an employee’s daily behavior. It’s the managers responsibility then to create conditions where people look forward to coming to work, yet here’s the challenging part….. managers’ haven’t been taught how to do it. I...

Siloed cultures in an organization are those in which individual departments, teams, or divisions operate in isolation from one another. Siloes can lead to a lack of collaboration, communication, and integration between different parts of the organization, resulting in a lack of overall cohesion and effectiveness. On this week’s episode, we chat with Scott Avey on how to break down stubborn siloed...

Achieving a flow state for peak performance is an incredibly rewarding experience. It's a state of intense focus and concentration that allows you to work through challenging tasks with ease and efficiency. To achieve this state, there are routine practices you need to consider.  On this week’s episode, Alex Wisch shares his story around mental health and his experience moving into a flow sta...

Organization Development (OD) surfaced in the 1930’s through human relation studies and focuses on improving organizational effectiveness through the use of data-driven strategies and interventions. As organizations continue to change and evolve, so should the science behind it! In this week’s episode, Alan Landers walks us through the past, present, and future state of OD. What does the future ho...

Building trust on teams requires real work. In fact, high performing teams require trust in order to produce top results. This is especially true in a virtual or hybrid environment where only about 14% of how we communicate is through words. Think about how much information we miss in virtual environments and how impactful that is to building trust on your teams. On this week’s episode, Beth Harre...

How can you leverage people data in your organization to answer major questions around retention, engagement, and hiring? People analytics is a powerful tool that allows organizations to make data-driven decisions about their workforce. It can help organizations better understand their employees, identify areas of improvement, and maximize the potential of their workforce. Decision-making is alrea...

Everyone’s capacity for change is different. It’s a natural human reaction to resist change that is sudden, unexpected, or perceived as an obstacle. On this week’s episode, Dr. Jim Maddox suggests that hidden within that resistance to change is potential value and clues to helping people - and ultimately organizations - move through it more easily. If you’re undergoing personal and difficult chang...

What does self awareness have to do with situational awareness? In a world where situational awareness appears to be more and more critical, I had to ask a service-centered Executive Protection Agent who has conducted private security operations in over 60 countries, what self awareness can be gained from being situationally aware. In this week’s episode, Byron Rodgers takes us on some interesting...

This week’s episode is really special and might surprise you! I got the opportunity to chat with not one, but two guests on a topic that is personal and meaningful to me: brazilian jiu jitsu. Both of these guests have incredible stories about their journeys into martial arts. We chat about the leadership lessons and skills that they have learned through the art of brazilian jiu jitsu (BJJ). ...

“A WorldatWork study found that while 92 percent of companies surveyed have a formal compensation philosophy, only 63 percent have it in writing. More importantly, 53 percent of the companies surveyed indicate that most employees don’t understand their company’s compensation philosophy.” Where does your organization fall?  Today’s compensation practices are evolving at an unprecedented pace w...

When an organization fails to recognize and appreciate the importance of functional diversity in the workplace, it can lead to the inability to innovate, drive sales, and improve marketing. Does your organizational culture assume innocence or guilt? Competence or incompetence? On this week’s episode, Dr. Bonnie Green shares how to establish an environment that understands the value of functional d...

What’s usually the single largest line item on an organizations’ operating budget? More often than not, it’s their people. People likely make up anywhere between 40-80% of an operating budget, depending on the organization. Upskilling your managers to be effective coaches allows you to invest in the people who make things happen. Manager-as-coach is a role managers can and should play in the workp...

As workforces age, the opportunity to transfer invaluable knowledge to younger generations is critical for organizations. Where organizations may miss the mark is they either do not have a formal mentorship program to support an effective knowledge sharing strategy, or they do not have a mentorship program with a framework for guiding effective mentorship. On this week’s episode, Eric Rogell share...

You can say it's an employees' market, not an employers' market. Hiring the right people for the right roles can come at a cost if not done well. Missing the mark on cultural fit during the hiring process not only impacts the organizations' culture in the long-run, but also the organizations' ability to retain those employees. What do you do to attract the right candidates? How do you assess cultu...

Change is hard, and often, within businesses, it’s spoken about as something that happens at an organizational level.. but change doesn’t happen on a system-wide level until it happens at the individual level. One person at a time must get behind change in order for the change effort’s success to be realized. What are the barriers to change we experience in the workplace? How can we best overcome...

How do great leaders actualize their highest potential? Self-awareness is foundational for both leadership effectiveness and personal growth. As famed Swiss psychologist Carl Jung once said, “We don’t become enlightened by pretending to be perfect. Instead, we step into our brightest light and highest potential when we dare to face our shadow in the darkness.” In this episode, Dr. William Sparks,...

When asking your colleagues or employees in the workplace, “how are you?,” do you often get the response "Busy"? This response can feel overplayed and simply not helpful - we’re all guilty of it. In this episode, Mckendree Hickory, chats with us about techniques we can use to “deblur” words like “busy,” “good,” “fine,” for a more helpful interaction. Mckendree also walks us through various techniq...

There's a noticeable uptick in the use of narcissism across social media to describe people in our personal and professional lives. In this episode, Erika Weed, dives deep into her dissertation research as a Doctoral candidate around how narcissistic traits show up in leadership, the impacts, and the benefits of narcissistic leadership to organizations.  She'll explain how to effectively mana...