#1 | Oliver Triebel on lessons from 25+ years of working with leaders and developing leadership skills

Welcome to DWFF #1! Leadership feels like a good place to start the podcast. It is one of those foundational capabilities directly connected to “doing well” professionally. At work, it can take many forms: consider the senior leader who makes a difficult trade-off in allocating company resources to an unproven business area; consider the Team Lead who translates a high-level change story in a way that resonates with their team members, injecting ample context to make the story work; or, consider the individual contributor who is closest to the details and raises their well-founded concern in a meeting, even though it’s “raining on the parade”...

Leadership is also connected to “feeling fine”, at a personal level. Not just when it comes to self-leadership read as “discipline” or “self-control” related to eating right, training, or preventing the next episode of Paw Patrol auto-starting because it is, admittedly, convenient from time to time. I am thinking of leadership in the sense of hearing others, being available and present for them, investing in relationships, not just the ongoing project of the self… 

In this episode, I sit down with Oliver Triebel, who has over 25 years of professional experience as a consultant, trainer, coach, and facilitator. He has worked with clients globally and across sectors, often with a focus on strengthening leaders and leadership teams. 

We cover different definitions of leadership, including what it means to lead self, lead others, and lead organizations. We review different leadership types, ranging from “the heroic captain” (cue: Bonnie Tyler) to the so-called “servant leader” and discuss when certain combinations of traits are successful and when they fail. We also talk about followership and what followers can demand but also should expect to contribute (fun fact: leadership produces >4.5bn results on Google; followership produces just under 2.3m results. We seem to be nearly 2000x more interested in learning about leadership than learning about followership ;) 

Please check out this fun, practical, occasionally conceptual, and story-rich conversation with Oliver Triebel.