The Communicative Leader

Send us Fan Mail Dan Joseph, a former Army Combat Engineer, talks to us about some important and heavy aspects of leading. It is a nice reminder that leading is hard, because it is hard -- not because you are doing it wrong.   Inspired to help others after a soldier in his platoon attempting suicide, Dan wrote a book entitled, "Backpack to Rucksack: Insight into Leadership and Resilience by Milita...

Send us Fan Mail What do you get when you integrate your experience as a two-time CEO into Executive Coaching?  An incredibly rich, thoughtful, and effective perspective.   Aneace Haddad brings so many thoughtful, leadership insights to the this episode! He talks to us about integrating mindfulness into our leadership, teams, and workplace, but he also stresses the importance of listening and embr...

Send us Fan Mail David Birkam, a professional creative,  shares his experiences and empirical research with us regarding how to successfully navigate virtual ad hoc work teams.  Being appointed to a project team can be challenging in a best case scenario.  But what about when these teams are comprised of individuals from several different work units with likely with no shared history who are then...

Send us Fan Mail Our guest, Brenda Harrington, is what my daughter calls "a kick-butt girl." Case in point, check out a quote from her recent book, Access Denied : "Playing to win requires an understanding of the game, knowing who the star players are and developing and executing a playing strategy."  Brenda is beyond knowledgeable in terms of adaptive leadership and personalized leadership coachi...

Send us Fan Mail Bob Gaydos, CEO of Pendella, proposes a very compelling idea. And one that I am fully on board with. Bob suggests rethinking the traditional employee benefits package. In addition to helping offset the cost of medical and dental, Bob argues for earmarking money for annual employee professional development. Why? This can help employees enter leadership roles earlier in their career...

Send us Fan Mail Hello leaders! I am excited to kick off Season 3 of The Communicative Leader with a conversation with Steve Marcinuk, Co-Founder and General Manager of Intelligent Relations. Steve is among the humblest of leaders you will ever meet AND among the most talented of leaders you'll ever meet. Steve is an advocate for constant learning, asking questions of your team and listening (gasp...

Send us Fan Mail We have had so much fun this season --- we’ve had some incredible guests talk to us about best practices for organizational change, to the power of language, importance and impact of psychological safety and self-care and wellness at work. We’ve also tackled everything from navigating conflict to crafting personal vision statements and overcoming imposter syndrome.  In this episod...

Send us Fan Mail In our last episode we looked at the research behind self-care, burnout, and wellness at work. In this episode, we continue our focus on wellness by diving into a conversation with an expert from the mental health field. I am so excited to welcome Christine Omilion-Sugg, LPC to The Communicative Leader. As a  licensed professional counselor, she gives us concrete tips and practice...

Send us Fan Mail Self-care is NOT : ■ A new-agey fad ■ Indulgent ■ A luxury ■ Expensive ■ Time intensive ■ Optional Self-care can be integrated into any schedule and any budget.  Those who engage in self-care tend to be happier, more productive, and more reslient and a whole heck of a lot stressed.  Sounds pretty good to me :)  We talk about self-care, how to engage in it as an individually, how t...

Send us Fan Mail Think about your family for a minute. Who is the de facto leader? That is, who does everyone go to for the plan for the day or the trip? Who is the joker or class clown of the family?  Who is the nurturer? These same roles playout in the workplace  -- sometimes we embody these roles formally – such as the leader – but generally speaking, we ebb and flow between the roles throughou...

Send us Fan Mail Today on the Communicative Leader I am so excited to welcome TED speaker, author, and leader in the field of global English Communication Heather Hansen. Heather’s Ted Talk titled 2 billion voices: how to speak bad English perfectly has over 200,000 views and her recent book, UnMuted is a best seller in Business management and Workplace culture. Today, Heather chats with us about...

Send us Fan Mail Conflict is not good or bad. Conflict is neutral. Conflict can be productive, but if it goes unaddressed or is not navigated tactfully it can also be damaging. Conflict is a normal part of organizational life. Today on the Communicative Leader, we dive into best practices for managing conflict, discuss conflict between leader and member and peers, and consider how to better unders...

Send us Fan Mail Many leaders time the time to really think about and reflect on decision-making. I also think formal leaders spend a lot of time thinking about resources and strategic initiatives and deadlines. I don't think as many formal leaders set aside time to consider how the way they communicate intersects with leadership and power. Power can exist without leadership, but leadership cannot...

Send us Fan Mail Vision statements aren’t just for organizations or workgroups or project groups. Vision statements are for individuals – for those in formal leadership positions and for those who are not. We can cast vision statements that will help us be where we want to be in five years or vision statements that guide our current project or that we live by. Today on the Communicative Leader, we...

Send us Fan Mail Hi leaders! This week’s episode is an extra fun one. Why?  Psychological safety expert, Stephan Wiedner, joins us.  Stephan and his team help develop high-performance leaders, teams, and organizations.  How?  By focusing on psychological safety and good ole interpersonal communication skills. So what IS psychological safety? Psychological safety is our belief within our work envir...

Send us Fan Mail More and more I have people telling me that they’re less interested in formal leadership roles. The pandemic has shifted priorities for some and for others, the idea of overseeing other adults and the headaches that often come with that doesn’t sound like an appealing one.   My response? You’re leading with or without a title. You’re leading when you’re mindful of it. You’re leadi...

Send us Fan Mail The leader-member relationship can get a bad rap. We've all likely had some managers who were, well, not so great in that role. We might have had a manager (or managers) who were pretty crummy. But I'm also hopeful that you've worked with a manager who helped you to grow and succeed. Some dismiss the relationship the share with their leader as one of little importance. Oh my frien...

Send us Fan Mail Imposter syndrome can sneak up on the best of us.  It also sneaks up on most of us from time to time.  A 2019 study found that up to 82% of folks report feeling like a fraud or experience feelings of self-doubt regarding their abilities from time to time.   So...as you likely gathered, imposter syndrome is that pesky feeling that nags us and whispers not-so-nice things in our ears...

Send us Fan Mail In 2020, as many as two-thirds of all employed Americans worked remotely, and now 75% of us prefer working from home at least some of the time. What does this mean? It means we need to stretch and flex and adapt our leadership and our communication to fit this brave new world. So how do we do it? How do we bring that connection and responsiveness and authenticity into the hybrid e...

Send us Fan Mail My friends, we have come to our season 1 finale.  This is very bittersweet, because I've been having so much fun chatting with you each week. But now we're taking time to brainstorm and plan for season 2 (coming in the New Year).  So how are we wrapping up the first season? A greatest hits!  Presumptuous? Heck Yeah.  But also a whole lot of leadership communication goodness! In th...

Send us Fan Mail When we think about public leadership, we are all likely to have different reactions…different thoughts and visuals that come to mind. Some of us may have a warm, positive feelings associated with the term public leadership and others well, it may be a different story all together.  Here’s the thing my friends, public leadership encompasses a whole slew of leadership roles and act...

Send us Fan Mail In order to remain successful, organizations need to grow and change to meet consumer’s needs. But we also know that many of the most successful organizations such as Zappos, Google, and Disney have incredibly strong cultures. There’s the rub, my friends. Culture tends to be stable, predictable, prescriptive…It is designed that way in order to effectively speak to new employees, s...

Send us Fan Mail Peers can really make work a waaaaayyyyyyyy better experience. From someone we can laugh with when that customer shows us with the worst breath again to someone we can say “hey I know that we went over the instructions like a hundred times, but can you show me again how do to this?” And that is a lot easier than going to our manager to do so. Peers can be a bigger source of suppor...

Send us Fan Mail Teams can be hard work. As we've talked about before, a lot of time teams just don't work - and that is under the best of circumstances. On this episode of The Communicative Leader, we talk with Karen Cashin and learn about how she leads a team where members rotate on and off -- generally every 6 to 12 months. Let's make this even messier. Those who join the team are not communica...

Send us Fan Mail Many of us have grown up on a diet of teams that has led to an almost reverence for them. But I think it is a whole lot easier to pull up examples of bad team experiences we've had, than the good ones. Now there's the rub, my friends. If teams are supposed to be this magical vehicle for innovation and productivity, why do so many offer to work individually when (in theory) a team-...