On today's episode, Joanna and I talk about mastering your mind (what this is like real-time, real-life), and how this is a pathway to enjoying life and work, and to being excited about the future. I've known Joanna too-many-years-to-mention and I always love our conversations... she's real and easy to talk to and damn knowledgeable about Dethroning Your Inner Critic. In fact, she recently published a book [Dethroning Your Inner Critic] which fabulously tells you how to unhook from those self-criticizing thoughts and create a life & career you love. And if that wasn't enough, she also has an amazing podcast called Dethroning Your Inner Critic where she dives deep into your mindset and how women should rock their lives with confidence!

Thanks for joining us!

Today’s podcast is a unique one: my friend, George Kanuck, who was a guest a couple months ago, asked if he could flip the script and interviews me! We cover delegating, developing people, prioritizing and managing to-do’s, when to delay things so you can always bring your A-Game, working with a new team, and even a lesson learned in Cub Scouts that totally applies to work today.

…It took a while for me to get into a good rhythm with our chat so I edited out my slow beginning – which means this episode starts mid-conversation when George and I are talking about having multiple meetings scheduled at the same time, and how to prioritize your time.

In this episode, Matt Barnett (CEO @Bonjoro) and I talk about building customer relationships, fighting for creativity, growing a culture, and working through new challenges. If you haven’t heard of Bonjoro yet, you will soon. It's a super cool personal video email platform that connects with your sales system and prompts you to send short, customized messages, resulting in a dramatically increased response rate. Matt's passion for Bonjoro's mission - to help businesses build robust relationships with customers & better customer experiences through the power of video - comes through in everything we talk about.

Thanks for joining us!

Here we are folks. We made it to 2021.

In this episode, I’m going to walk you through creating an inspiring & joy-giving vision for 2021, and I’m not talking about a New Year’s Resolution because - at least for me - those usually aren’t inspiring and joy-giving. They’re usually goals that feel like a “should” (like lose 15 lbs or whatever) and then I miss a day and feel wrong about it and then give up. No, thank you.

I’m talking about a setting a vision: an intention that’s broader and truly inspiring, and gives you joy and energy.

A couple weeks ago, I was talking with one of my clients. He’s bright and hard-working, well-liked and respected by everyone (boss, peers, team members).  He always shows up for our calls ready to rock, and is so down-to-earth with all the many things happening now… just one of these super-on-top everything, but also so aware of the things he’s not quite managing...

In this episode of Lead.Grow.Elevate., I talk with H.G. Chissell.

H.G. and I hadn’t talked in YEARS and then we recently caught up. He invited me to participate in one of his quarterly conferences which was super cool, and I was struck by how much H.G. leverages the leadership art of influence – which is I topic I’ve been thinking a lot about lately, so we got together to chat about it.  

You know, everyone has to lead with influence to varying degrees. Sometimes we have a senior title and direct reports which can provide a lot of leadership support. But even then, we need to be good at leading with influence when we’re interacting with people outside of our direct team… like our boss or our peers or the Board.

For sure, there will be times when we won’t have that title or direct reports and we have to totally rely on our ability to influence.  

If you don’t know H.G. – let me tell you – aside from his mastery...

We just wrapped up our Thanksgiving holiday here in the States which naturally has me thinking about being thankful and the practice of gratitude.

If you’re someone with big goals and maybe a little ambitious, and maybe stressed out from time to time, read on. There’s some super cool stuff to know about gratitude, but before I tell you that, you should know where I’m coming from about it. I haven’t always been a pro-gratitude person. It’s just been in these past few years that I’ve had a gratitude practice and I can honestly say it’s a life changer. It’s a life changer in one of those subtle but can-definitely-feel-it kind of ways.

This is after years of telling myself, “I should do this gratitude thing. I should keep a gratitude journal.” I’d see posts on social media like:

-          If you only say one prayer, make it a thank you (Rumi)

...

Lately, I’ve been getting questions about how to improve Company Culture. I don’t know why the sudden influx on this topic but it’s been on my mind a lot and so I thought I’d share with you a few high-level points about what makes a culture great, and what destroys it. And for what it’s worth, I’m also going to throw in my 2 cents on how give yourself a better perspective on America’s polarizing political culture, but if you live outside the U.S., you can apply my 2 cents to own country’s cultural issues.

Culture is one of those amorphous things. You can feel it but you can’t always put words to it.

Culture is a mindset with corresponding behaviors. Mindsets and behaviors can be changed, and in fact, a culture is always being shaped – proactively or unintentionally.

Culture is often the difference between good and great companies. There are exceptions to this of course: companies with icky cultures that do extremely...

Join my long-time friend, George Kanuck (Zenoss' Chief Revenue Officer), and I as we talk about giving feedback. Hint: it includes caring for people and the goals. Plus, we cover several sloppy-feedback pitfalls to avoid!

Listen in and share with a friend.

Can't listen? Here's the transcript: 

I started thinking about this last week after I joined a networking group for entrepreneurs and someone asked the question, “What is your brand?” They asked in the frame of what you want your clients and prospects to think of you, but as I thought about it afterwards, each leader has a brand. We may not always think of it this way, but every leader (and every person for that matter) has a brand… there’s a way we are known by the people we work with.  

For leaders, this is an important question to consider: What is your brand?
The better your brand fits your environment and the results you want to produce, the more effective you’ll be at gaining buy-in and leading people to produce great results.
This is something to evaluate at least annually. Take a quiet 5 minutes and ask yourself the 3 simple questions.

The first question: How do the people I work with think of me? 

The question is not,...

In this episode, we’ll chat about how uncomfortable it can be to lead, whether you are leading yourself or others or an entire organization, there’s an inherent discomfort - and an awkward kind of feeling - that comes with leadership. And we’ll talk about the 1 most important thing that keeps us moving forward, through the uncomfortable spaces.

If you’ve led anything (and if you’re listening to this podcast, you definitely have), you know that great things happen when we lead ourselves and others into the discomfort of something new - through the awkward spaces – and to the other side.

I’m going to share with you a couple of recent examples of this that I’ve encountered: one is personal and the other is work related.

I’ll start with the personal example: I have 3 daughters, ages 16, 14, and 8, and I’ve seen each of them grow in their leadership this past week, deal with discomfort, and stay in it until they move...