Real Job Talk

Welcome Brynne Kennedy - author, entrepreneur and congressional hopeful for CA’s 4th district. Brynne started Topia- an HR and talent resources software company that she grew to a global company with 100s of staff, wrote a book called Flat, Fluid, and Fast and and now is running for Congress! What can companies do to mobilize the workforce. Look at developing a portfolio of skills and marketing th...

This week we welcome Kim Lindauer. Kim is the owner of Kim’s Gym and founder of My Venn Life , her new endeavor built to help and support moms who are entrepreneurs. After 18 years of owning her own gym, Kim started My Venn Life to support other moms who own businesses. She saw a lot of support for male business owners, and wanted to support business people who are also moms in a space that was tu...

Welcome to Season 2 of Real Job Talk! We are kicking off this season talking about setting goals at the beginning of the year. First up in this episode, Kat and Liz both describe their process to set career and job-related goals. Kat’s process has been built over the last 10 years and includes a year-end completion process. Acknowledging the wins and the emotions around the goals that were not met...

This episode, Kat and Liz talk about leadership development, theater training, and neurodiversity with Sarah Noll Wilson. Sarah is a leadership consultant and also a proponent for working with neurodiverse people. Sarah started her career in leadership and teaching as a camp counselor and ropes course instructor. After a degree in theater performance and education, she took a day job in the insura...

Can you organize a company around collaborative projects and break free from your org chart? Liz and Kat talk with author Chris Creel, who says yes! Chris Creel, a technologist and futurist, is the author of Adaptive: Scaling Empathy and Trust to Create Workplace Nirvana . Adaptive is the result of years of research and re-thinking about how work gets down through collaboration and organizational...

Always wanted to be a road warrior with lots of travel to faraway places and with super status at hotels and airlines? The real thing is not so glamourous. We looked far and wide for a great guest to talk about the ups and downs of work travel, and found him in Liz’s house! In this episode, Liz’s husband Erick joins us to talk about his life traveling in tech sales. Erick has been a b2b software s...

We have a letter! This one addresses an issue that happens too often in the workplace: an unethical boss from a friend who signed off as, “My Boss is a Fraud With a Nice Car”. Ugh. The bottom line for our friend: it’s time for a new job! People act funny for all sorts of reasons. Sometimes it means something is going on that is not being communicated with the staff. If you sense something shady, d...

Liz and Kat talk today with Tracy Asamoah, a coach and psychiatrist who works with people around life transitions. If you’re stuck, she will move you forward in a calm, mindful way. Tracy’s background: she describes her journey from academic/non-profit work as a psychiatrist to private practice to a coach, mostly working with women, focusing around transitioning in their life and career. Tracy and...

Welcome! We’re talking about active listening in the workplace this week. What do we mean? In Active Listening, the listener fully listens , contemplates , and responds . The more we can actively listen, the more we can practice and the better we get. As a manager, active listening empowers employees and supports them in coming up with solutions, which helps employees thrive and builds trust. If i...

How do you go about considering and executing a job change? Liz & Kat talk with technologist Andrew Miller about his thoughtful process: when to leave, what to go towards, playing to your strengths, taking sabbaticals, and activating your network. Andrew is a technologist based out of South Carolina. He started as a consultant, implementing IT systems, and then went into pre-sales consulting....

Welcome Carlos!! Carlos tells us his background from non-profit to marketing to consulting. He talks through how giving it all to his business and not nourishing his relationships led to burnout, which made him re-start his career and write The UnAmerican Dream. What is a human first culture? Thinking about employees as people, not assets. We think about what causes behavior, and then figure out w...

In this episode we’re talking about the fun stuff at work. Parties, conferences….the not in the office “fun times”. What do I need to remember- what’s the difference between having fun and too much fun? Conferences, off-site gatherings, Club/kickoffs. General rules across all off-site/off-hours rules: IT”S A WORK EVENT! Keep your “work mask” on. Keep behavior appropriate and professional. Alternat...

We’re people, and we bring our lives to work, but what are the lines and what can we share and not share at work? Bottom line: be yourself, but maybe you should be your work self. Try not to let your personal life affect your work product. We break it down into three categories: Health, Relationships, and Family. Health: We all have our own filters, and your health issues may bring up issues for o...

Welcome to Liz and Kat’s former boss, J. Mike Smith from BackWest Consulting ! We invited Mike on to talk about teams, building teams, what makes good teams, and how to be good team member. First, Mike breaks down for us the difference between teams and work groups. What are the interdependencies? Building a goal, vision and figure out what the team is trying to do? Process of building a team- Mik...

A lot of the job interview is other people asking you questions. But we've always told you that you should be asking them questions as well! But our bad -- we tell people to ask questions, but we didn’t help them figure them out what to ask. Oops! This epsiode takes you through some of our thoughts and advice around making the interview a two-way street. Look at your must-have list that you made a...

Alexis Pokorny is our guest for this epsiode. Alexis’ background in sales at Cisco, and how she turned around a team using mindfulness and how she rolled out a mindfulness program for Cisco’s 70,000 employees. This program became her passion, and she launched Open Deltas to help more teams incorporate mindfulness into companies from mom and pop shops to Fortune 50. We ask Alexis for her goals of O...

Our Resources for New Managers page Listener question! Yay!!! Today we answer a listener's questions about becoming a new manager, and how to go from individual contributor to manager without looking like a newbie. We discuss the potential lack of development opportunities for new managers, and how to learn how to managing people and being someone your team will look up to and respond to. First, d...

Welcome Amy Lewis, aka @commsninja! Amy is an incredible influence marketer in the tech world, and we’re so excited for her to join us to talk about her experience, and our topic du jour- Imposter Syndrome. Amy shares about public speaking being a trigger for Imposter Syndrome. We talk about how Imposter Syndrome kicks in when we’re being spotlighted for our expertise, and how we feel like an impo...

Do you talk about compensation in the job talk process? Quick answer- YES! Don't game the process- be clear on what you want. Holding back information puts you at a disadvantage with your offer- it will end up with low results until they know what you expect. Answer the question with what you WANT to make- what it will take for you to sign on the bottom line. How do you find out what you're worth?...

Our goal with this episode is to help you prepare for a layoff, to know what to look for before it happens, to be ready for it, to leave your current role gracefully, and how to go about a post-layoff search. Before the layoff: Follow your company news, and look for signs the company, or your group, isn't doing well. Listen for indicators like, "We're phasing out your product", or know if there is...

Liz and Kat introduce Chris (who Liz has known forever!). We talk about human sustainability and reflection on staying healthy within the work that you do. We discuss feeling stuck and working past it. Advice around listening to that "wise voice inside yourself". Our brains and bodies have a lot of wisdom in them, and we need to listen. We talk about burnout, signs on burnout and how to listen to...

Liz and Kat answer a listener question around how to ask for a raise. We talk about the best ways to approach the topic, how to read the situation before you ask, and ultimately how to be successful in getting yourself paid more for your job.

Have you been wondering if you've been taking too much of your friends' time asking questions in their area of expertise? Join Kat and Liz and their guests John Troyer and Dr. Michelle Natinsky as we talk about how to be friends with people with expertise in areas of our lives without overstepping. A marketer, a shrink and 2 career coaches walk into a podcast.....what happens? You get practical ad...

Today Liz and Kat giggle and swear as we discuss a bunch of aspects of working with tough characters who “never do anything wrong”. Listen in for tips on how to sniff out assholes in the interview process, how to succeed on a team with them, how to coach them, and how to manage them. After you listen, you should be able to navigate your relationships with assholes in the workplace with ease, grace...

You aced the interview, but you don't have the new job until you accept the offer! Liz and Kat cover how you navigate in the period after the interview. After the interview, should you send thank you notes? Would a thank-you gift make you stand out? When can you check back if you haven't heard anything? What do you do if you realize you totally screwed up an answer? What's the number one thing you...