The Experimental Leader

Today I honor my great-aunt Sarah. Her journey and her life were where she lived fully. She's a businesswoman and a loving family member for her whole life. And I challenge you to figure out the best ways to grapple with your leadership's loneliness and create the fullest life you can for yourself.

It's been great being here with you today. I love talking to Tricia Timm about her book. And I'm a huge advocate for how we figure out how to be authentic and let others be authentic. So my challenge to you is, what barriers do you need to remove for yourself to be more authentically in the world this week? And what can you do to remove a barrier for someone else to be more authentically them? Lov...

Well, this was a fascinating day at The Experimental Leader podcast. I love talking to Randi Roberts and thinking about career development.  What do you intend for your career? And then, how do you intend to leave if you decide to go? What do you intend to create for yourself? Love the show?  Subscribe, rate, review, and share! Here’s How » Join The Experimental Leader community today: m...

It's been great being with you here today. I loved Amy Wong's perspective on that, something I always talked about. Think about where the flow is constricted and where it's good, where the energy, the money, the light, the joy flows, where it doesn't, and what the bottlenecks are. And how you can remove them to restore and optimize flow in the ways you want to in your life for this year 2023. Love...

It was so great to be here with Lisa Hale. It was amazing to get to hear her thoughts. It's so rare for me to have on-air conversations with other master-certified coaches. And I love this idea of really looking at fulfillment. I love that different emotions can live in us at any one time. We can be happy. We can grieve. We can experience everything. We don't have to be one thing. We can change ou...

Well, it was super fun talking to Fred Fowler about experimenting. And I love that.  He said anytime you try something new; you're experimenting. I believe this wholeheartedly.  And I think one of the things I want to challenge you or you need to do is, if you are doing something new, think of it as an experiment number one or two. Think about how long you will do the experiment and how...

It's been great being here with Alexandra Blum today.  I loved our conversation. I want to challenge you to go out and look at your leadership. Look at your people. Look at where you can infuse. Look at where you can infuse empathy into the conversations that you're having. Look where they are struggling and not connected to your brand, where you can help and mentor them.  And dive deep...

It has been so fun being here with Marsha Redmon.  And I love thinking about how we experiment with virtual teams and how we get people. We treat the people in our meetings virtually, and how you give them a voice by pairing them with others. I think that's a great thing to experiment with. To create some equity and to get their ideas into a room.  I think it's so easy to marginalize the...

It was great talking to Brandi Olson. I enjoyed our conversation. And as I was thinking about it, I was thinking about a couple of things that are part of my leadership toolkit with people. One is I often recommend that leaders end meetings when they're done. Set aside one meeting every couple of weeks with your team. Where you check in and do all the warmth and things that need to be done, but do...

It's been a pleasure being here today with Claudia Aronowitz. I loved that she talked about "NO" as a learning word. I often tell my clients that "NO" is a two-letter word that will change their life. I also challenge you to look for places where you can use "NO" without explanation.  So you know, we sometimes soften " NO " for people by explaining why we can't do it. I'm busy. I'm this... Bu...

Well, it has been a joy to be with my dad today.  The heart of the scientists with that Ph. D. in physics growing up around him makes me want to challenge you. Think about where you need to be experienced or experimenting in your life.  Where do you need to be stretching? Look for new ways to use the technology that's evolving. Love the show?  Subscribe, rate, review, and share! Her...

Well, it was great to be here with you today. I loved talking about Gemba walks and women in leadership. I challenge you to think about where you want to learn more about the people you're supervising and the world you want to see more. And go there and look at what's happening on the ground. Do your Gemba walk. Figure out what you want to learn. Then, find out what you can see. It's all there wai...

It's been so fun to be here with you today.  And oh my goodness, Anne Bokma is just such an experimenter in her soul. So it's fun to talk to her about how she approached her book. You know, it reminds me of being in a workshop at the University of Michigan with Mike Rother, the author of Toyota Kata. And he, you know, said if you want things to change, start changing something somewhere.&nbsp...

Well, this has been super interesting. And if you want to think more about leadership, or any of those things, I'd love to invite you to go to my website, melanieparish.com. You can learn about individual coaching, you can learn about the Leadership Essentials program, and you can get a copy of the book. And it's interesting to pivot. It's interesting to redirect live. So I think anytime things ha...

Well, it's been super fun to be here with Crista Grasso. It's amusing to talk about continuous improvement. And I want to challenge you to go out and look for a space in your calendar for some time that you can block out to hold for innovation in your life. Maybe it's an innovation Friday. Perhaps it's an hour, in the morning or on Tuesday. It doesn't matter. Take some time to consider how yo...

It's been so fun to be with you here today. And it was super fun to hear Greg talking about how his leadership journey has evolved. I want to reiterate the idea of sharing thoughts. Sometimes it's a year before they happen. Sometimes it's two years; my example of the Unitarian Church is 20 years. That's a bit long, but you want to start sharing your ideas and seed your environment with the things...

I had a great time on the show today with Melissa Keenan. And our discussion brings me back to the thought that our discussions' quality compensates for our relationships' quality. So, this week, I'd want to encourage you to go out and have meaningful discussions with individuals you care about. And I'm sure you've been putting off a conversation or two because it was summer, the kids were going t...

It was such a joy to be here with Kimberly Wiefling. She's such a clear leader in her field. I love how she brings in evidence-based models for leadership. And it's so interesting how she talks about feedback loops, which we discussed in the experimental leader. How do you learn about yourself as a leader? How do you take in information and learn? And then how do you figure out how it's impacting...

Well, it's been a joy hanging out with Paul Reed, as always. Thank you so much. I loved having him on the show. It was wonderful. Well, that was so much fun. And I think it's very important to look at both retrospectives.  And think of that socio-technical complexity and how it intersects with the Gemba Walk. It's not my concept. I referenced it in The Experiment Leader book.  It's impor...

Well, it was great having Mark Carpenter on the show. It's been really interesting to talk to him.  I love this idea of a story. To illuminate the good and also come out and talk about the things that didn't go so well. It's really important to have a way to share our vulnerability through a story. I want to challenge you to come up with a story in which you can share your vulnerability. We d...

It was so fun to talk with George Murray about how to pay attention as a leader and about all of that. And I have a challenging question for you. How can you ignite the people around you to engage in the things they love to do? That's my challenge question to you this week. Go experiment. Love the show?  Subscribe, rate, review, and share! Here’s How » Join The Experimental Leader community t...

It was fun to be here with Mckenna Sweazey.  And I love this idea of, if you're having a bad day, go ahead and let people know it's a different kind of feedback loop, which I talked about in the experimental leader book.  But I love the idea that if we wonder what people think we're thinking, we just tell them. Let people know how we're feeling, and what we're experiencing so that we inc...

Well, it is so fun to talk with Marita Fridjhon. She is masterful at systems and what I would call feedback loops.  And I love this idea of systems-inspired leadership. The idea that we don't have to lead alone is much a part of how I think about leadership.  I want to challenge your thinking. Think about where you try to go it alone and have to be smart? I want to bust you on that. I wa...

Well, that was a fun conversation with Todd Long.  And one of the biggest takeaways for me from this conversation is that it's such an interesting idea to think about the fact that the vision doesn't have to come just from the leader. We can have these conversations that develop our vision.  Vision can come from everywhere in the organization. We can throw out drafts and we can get feedb...

It was lovely to speak to Liam Martin.  I love this idea of the experimental context. We tried some experimentation on taking remote work home or taking the office home.   And I'm fascinated by this idea of asynchronous, remote work, helping to build more a diverse and inclusive work environment and get rid of some of the biases that we might have. I want to continue to explore it....