I met Craig Dower through LinkedIn when he commented on one of my articles about culture. I was intrigued by his global accolades as CEO: President of Avanade Asia Pacific out of Singapore, CEO Salmat, CEO Xenith Ip, and now CEO of Qantm IP. It’s not the titles but the work he did: growing the business three-fold at Avanade, leading the largest transformation program in the company’s 40-year history at Salmat, and leading through a period of substantial change and steady earnings growth at Xenith IP. His secret? Focus on People First.
Why you should listen:
Why you need to reward values and behaviour as well as outcomes
How to transformational change fast, at scale: Get the people right, then identify three priorities: Focus, Simplify, Grow
As the CEO you need to be the chief change sponsor and chief storyteller
The hardest part about building high performing teams is getting the people right: a fit for behaviour and values, performance can be coached, but performance without values and behaviour is toxic
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Read MoreMarene Allison is the Vice President and Chief Information Security Officer at Johnson & Johnson. Previously she was head of Global Security at Avaya where she secured the World Cup network in Korea and Japan in 2002. Before that she was an FBI Special gent, working on undercover drug operations, terrorist bombings, and a mock nucelar terrorism exercise. She received a Bachelor of Science degree from the U.S. Military academy at West Point in the first class to include women.
With a long list of firsts, in a stellar and remarkable career, Marene shares her insights and lessons on leadership and people.
Why you should listen:
Why moving from command and control style to collaboration is a key move to thriving as a leader in a corporate environment
Learn strategies of a highly successful leader who garners fierce loyalty and commitment from her teams
Secrets from FBI interrogation to tell when people are lying
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Read MoreWhat does it take to build a wildly successful business? Author and entrepreneur Frank Fiume shares his deeply personal story on the highs and lows of creating a business based on passion. What looks like a linear journey is rarely that clearcut: Frank shares how he worked his way through each low and the lessons about life and leadership along the way.
Why you should listen:
Learn from Frank’s experience of turning adversity and a life in poverty to an advantage in shaping his ambitions.
Three strategies to make through the tough times: hire for your weakness, restructure to make sure you get the balance right and join a group of peers for sounding board and advice.
Anticipate the three stages of entrepreneurial growth: hunger, resilience, and fulfillment.
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Read MoreDo you feel like a creative dunce? Do you think that creative people are born with talent, and you’re just not one of them? Author, speaker, and creative powerhouse Kieran Flanagan breaks a few myths and lets us know we can all be commercially creative if we’re prepared to do the work.
Why you should listen:
Learn the number one strategy to generating awesome ideas
How to develop creative judgment
How to know you’ve got an idea that really hits the mark: Listen for the ‘ahhhs’
Don’t go into brainstorming cold - you need mental fodder
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Read MoreOwner of AllBids Rob Evans is a successful Canberra business owner. He’s been through many ups and downs and has now established the Fyshwick Business Association. He shares his struggles and insights.
Why you should listen:
Learn the specific steps Rob took to turn his workplace culture around that you can use too
Find out about the most important strategy that led to business improvement: results mapping
How the guiding force of “We’re all in this together” can help shape buy-in for employees and broader stakeholders by simply asking for feedback.
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Read MoreLeadership expert Tim Collings joins me in sharing insights on his leadership path, and core tips for leadership that makes a lasting difference, and transformative leadership.
Why you should listen:
How to find your leadership calling that will sustain you through tough times
Steal Tim’s insights on how to lead mixed Gen X and Gen Y teams
What to implement to be a transformative leader: imagine, ignite, immerse, and inspire.
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Read MoreAuthor of GREAT MONDAYS, ‘one of the best culture books of all time’ Josh Levine shares awesome insights about how to design a culture employees love.
Why you should listen:
Why you absolutely should NOT reward outcomes, and what to reward instead
Learn the six steps to culture design
Why Peak Perks has hit Silicon Valley and how it’s a waste of money if you want to build a company to last
Simple culture hacks that are easy to implement for effective employee recognition
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Read MoreCo-Founder of Love and Magic Company, Oshoke Pamela Abalu is a leading light for grace and privilege in work. She advocates for a change of language to focus on SYMPHONY, and not diversity. This interview was incredibly moving. Oshoke speaks to our higher nature, calls us all forward to our true human nature where we see, honour, and include each other. This was a TRANSFORMATIONAL interview for me personally, and I’m honoured to share it with you.
Why you should listen:
Be inspired by the grace and wisdom from a leader who embodies love in all of who she is and what she does
Learn simple steps to take to ensure you business success with a symphony approach
Learn key distinctions for diversity, belonging, and the role we can play in making bigger contributions
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Read MoreAuthor of 6 books (nearly 7), personal branding expert Jane Anderson gives us the nitty-gritty on how to manage people’s perspective of you, namely your brand and reputation.
Why you should listen:
Learn how to figure out exactly what kind of reputation you do have (and is that a good thing or not)
How to amplify your best facets and aspects of your personal brand
What you absolutely must do to avoid screwing up your reputation
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Read MoreCindy Wigglesworth is best selling author of SQ21: The Twenty-One Skills of Spiritual Intelligence. Her work has had an enormous impact on my own perspective of leadership. The need to develop wise and compassionate leaders is needed more than ever. This is one of the most important interviews for leadership I have done so far. A must listen for those aspiring to make a bigger difference.
We discuss:
How the experience of divorce and raising a daughter was a profound stimulus for reflection and the impetus to explore better leadership
Why ego-driven leadership and its poorest forms of narcissism and self absorption is exhausting to be around
How leadership from the more expanded point of view the Higher Self attracts people willingly to follow you
The work of advanced spiritual intelligence as a continual practice
The calling “to be a light onto the world” is within us all, and the work we do can be the candle that lights the way for others
Why Cindy is grateful for President Trump as he has been a catalyst for Americans to examine the profound truth of how much racial divide is still systemic, and why there is still much racial and political healing to do in the USA
How Obama created the conditions that brought Trump forward
How we are all called to growth
The lotus flower blooms in mud, just as we can bloom through the muck and mess of our own lives
The role of a new thought Church to foster Buddha, Dharma, and Sangha
Why you need to have your BS challenges (belief system, as well as the other B.S.)
How emotional intelligence is the first thing to address as leaders: name the emotion, identify what triggered, and practice inserting a PAUSE between stimulus and response
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Read MoreScience journalist David Robson, author of the brilliant The Intelligence Trap - Why smart people make dumb mistakes, takes us on a wild ride through the stupid things smart people do, and why.
We explore:
Why real life human vampires are more deserving of compassion than scorn
How the ancient study of wisdom (and how to live our best life) is having a resurgence and renewal through the lens of Evidence Based Wisdom
How intellectual intelligence is different to rationality intelligence, and how this can be measured
The frightening condition of DYSRATIONALIA - when smart people think and do dumb things
How mindfulness is a step towards diminishing this trap
Why we need to get analytical about intuition
The importance of developing an emotional compass - this includes emotional awareness, differentiation, and regulation of emotions
How Brexit is the perfect example of motivated reasoning by smart people that drives greater polarisation
Benjamin Franklin’s moral algebra and its ability to immunise a little bit against motivated reasoning
How finding common ground and assessing the quality of the evidence in someone’s argument is the best method to avoid being polarising
If you are susceptible to “Pseudo-Profound Bullshit” (statements that sound profound but are really vacuous), you might need to take the cognitive reflection test
Emotional intelligence can be a bridge between intelligence and avoiding some major biases
Key tips to help avoiding the intelligence traps: curiosity, humility, considering the opposite viewpoint through the lens of evidence
Maintain a child-like curiosity, wonder and awe at the world.
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Read MoreDo you struggle with perfectionism? Procrastination? These are some of the blockers to doing good work. Our very desire to do good work stops us from doing so! Lynne Cazaly is an author, international speaker, and master facilitator. She has published six books, including her latest Ish - The Problem with our Pursuit for Perfection and the Life-Changing Practice of Good Enough.
We talk about:
How leaders get in the way of good results by trying to censor the inputs and control the outcomes
High performing teams work intensely within constraints, and celebrate small wins
Defining the standard you are working towards, and why that is important is the critical first move away from perfectionism paralysis
The next move of identifying the high value tasks, the 20% of tasks that give you 80% of results, is your next best move
How using a pressure on/ pressure off method works for both introverts and extroverts in an iterative agile-ish process
Improvisation techniques help us release the hold of perfectionism and embrace ish, knowing it will be ok
The game-changing paradigm of the Pratfall effect (stuffing up and appearing more likable as a result)
The spotlight effect - people are not noticing your faults as much as you think they are
Wabi sabi - how the Japanese philosophy of embracing the beauty of imperfection can apply at work
How we can get distracted by things that don’t really matter, like grooming eyebrows for 18 hours per week!
Check yourself - if you feel overwhelmed, chances are you have a ‘P’ problem - perfectionism and its twin, procrastination
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Read MoreHe helps smart people be people smart. As the co-author of Forever Skills along with Kieran Flanagan, Dan Gregory is a leading thinker on what leaders can do to move people to sensible action.
We explore how the real test of leadership is what we do when things go wrong, how the gaps in skills we need as leaders vary from industry to industry and culture to culture, how corporate Aussies are strong in risk-taking, why making values-based decisions is important for long-term vision, why we need to use a value lens to avoid short-term reactive decisions, how to consume 200-300 books per year, how to challenge your own perspective with Socratic questioning, why thinking in questions is the best strategy to avoid the traps of default thinking, what Dan’s shadow flaw is.
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Read MoreWe are wired to belong. Contemporary workplaces are modern-day tribes, and yet so many leaders treat them as transactional places of misery. In fact, 82% of leaders have been found to be lacking in the required skills to lead effectively. There is a serious deficit in the soft skills.
Author, consultant and tech startup leader, Shawn Murphy talks with me about the key principles of belonging in his latest book, Work Tribes:The Surprising Secret to Breakthrough Performance, Astonishing Results, and Keeping Teams Together. These are to be valued, welcomed, and wanted.
We discuss the ins and outs of belonging, how it’s an outcome, not a program, how you can’t operationalise belonging but you can develop programs to develop leadership skills that foster belonging, how any behaviour change expected from a training program needs to be backed up by accountable tracking afterwards, why ‘hiring for culture fit’ is a fast-track to building a country club and not a successful business, why hiring for ‘how you can contribute to the culture’ is a better approach, how we need to have better conversations - ones about the playbook and values and purpose of an organisation - so we can avoid catty bitchiness in workplaces, and how we don’t need to wait for permission or a program to create positive work experience. We can get started right now with self awareness.
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Read MoreWhat do you do when your social drinking becomes a crippling habit in a downward spiral of destruction? We can admit defeat, we can surrender, we can ignore it, or we can own it. Rachel Hind chose complete responsibility. Her journey to sobriety is one of personal honesty, radical self healing, and personal transformation shows great courage.
We talk about how drinking for middle aged women has increased 85% in the last ten years, the warning signs for the start of liver cirrhosis, how the first stage of healing begins with honesty with oneself, why pain and suffering can be the biggest opportunity for self empowerment, is alcoholism an addiction or not, the two very different paths for recovery, Jack Canfield’s model of E + R = O (event plus response equals outcomes), the switch from success based on external markers to success based on living according to one’s values, and how one’s quality of life is directly related to how much uncertainty one can deal with.
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Read MoreWhat does it take to be a real man? Life Coach for Men, Greg Gillies, knows that it’s not what we usually think. It’s not about material success, business goal achievement, or a facebook narrative. He believes we need to clear the programming from our past so we can embrace the best of who we can be.
Greg shares his own downward spiral from successful executive and business owner to numbed out alcohol abuser through to renewed and liberated healthy male leader. He reveals how kinesiology and quantum matrix therapy helped clear his unconscious past beliefs so he could choose more powerful ones.
We take a deep dive into sympathetic nervous system dominance, the body’s natural healing system, releasing negative emotions and beliefs from our past, resolving conflicts in our brain.
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Read MoreHow do we make sense of chaos and lead through it? What can we expect from Generation Z / Generation Alpha as leaders? What is the antidote to the pessimism we experience through post-modernism? These are some of the robust questions James and I explore in our conversation about his book, Metamodern Leadership - A history of seven values that will change the world.
We travel through the historical periods of modernism, post-modernism, and metamodernism to look at how we see and operate in the world. We look at developmental models of human experience. We consider the 4 generational archetypes and how they have affected our leadership over the ages. We ask, Trump vs Obama, nationalism vs globalism - what will empower people and nations? How can we lead from behind in chaos? A very full and engaging conversation for those interested in leadership needed for our complex world.
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Read MoreImagine in the lift at the end of the day, being asked for the 8th time, ‘so, what happened to YOU?’ People with disabilities are confronted daily with intrusive questions about the intimate details of their physical condition. Something we would not dare ask others. This is but one of the challenges people with disabilities endure every day. Disability leader and advocate Christina Ryan wants us to get beyond the discomfort of visible difference and get on with the job of talking leadership: how difference offers more viewpoints.
We explored disability as identity, disability disadvantage in employment, vertical developmental leadership through the lens of disability, the core attributes of disability at the leadership table (inclusion, collaboration, resilience, and innovation), how acknowledging the whole self including disability is fundamental component of spreading perspective and inclusion in workplaces and community.
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Read MoreKhaysan grew up watching her parents work hard to set up a caravan park from the ground up. This sparked the courage to start her own business at the age of 24, which she grew successfully before a tumultuous exit some years later. Discovering she is not a great long-term employee, (she gets bored), Khaysan dove into a new business venture called Project Athlete which blends mindset, nutrition, and health for personal transformation.
We explore what she learned from her parents (all business takes time, you gotta love it to make it through hard times, and no bad times last forever); what she learned after rising and falling quickly in business for herself (comfortable breeds complacency and laziness); how she bucked social programming to embrace the entrepreneurial life; mindset secrets from professional athletes (passion fuels everything, stay coachable, and things happen for a reason - get back on the horse after a fall); how her definition of success changed from being all about the money, to money being just a byproduct of doing something that sets your soul on fire; three mindset principles for success (awareness of habits, what triggers good and bad habits, and time for being patient).
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Read More“You can be excellent, but not have excellence in your life.” Four time Olympian Dan Collins says his biggest failure was his proudest moment - it allowed him to become the man he is. Competing at the highest level in sports teaches us a thing or two about performance. But Dan discovered something more than that. He discovered that elevation of consciousness is the highest end game for any human, that mastery of emotions is pivotal for any endeavour, and that physical health is the foundation for all things. In this intimate and open conversation, Dan shares his nightly journaling habit, his ‘mindless’ exercise practice, meditation for mindful stillness, how mastery of big moments comes down to breathwork, how practicing stepping into big moments helps us prepare for even bigger moments, what exactly is a ‘big moment’ (it’s the goal driven commitment we make to ourselves, our family, and the people we serve), how big moments are the threshold of what you are striving for and who you are aiming to become, how at the ‘edge of limits is where life happens’.
Dan also shares his three cornerstone principles: developing consciousness and personal accountability, embracing excellence as a never ending journey, and LOVE - be vulnerable enough to give and receive love and savour love of life itself. Dan believes we need both a FIXED mindset (concrete goals to strive for) and a GROWTH mindset (practicing excellence as a never ending habit). What is he most proud of? Longevity of his excellence journey - the tests get bigger as you get bigger as a human.
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