Lead the People

Matt Lesser is the Founder/CEO of Uniquely Normal, LLC, which exists to equip and train leaders to build flourishing team members and organizations through empathy, empowerment, and excellence. Matt has had the honor of training leaders, teams, and boards in over 40 countries over the past 20+ years. Prior to launching Uniquely Normal, Matt served in C-Suite roles in private equity, banking, and industrial supply and distribution. Matt spent the first 15 years of his career leading his familys business in the wholesale (later adding retail as well) petroleum industry. After starting the business over after less than a year at the helm, the business grew from 3 people to nearly 200 and revenue by 20x before being sold.  Matt earned undergraduate degrees in business from Indiana University and an MBA from Taylor University. Matt is certified in nearly 20 personality, team building, and leadership assessments. Matt is a best-selling author and his first book, unSatisfied: When Less is More, was released in October 2022; his second book, unEngaged: Building Flourishing Organizations will be released late 2023. Matt also serves as an Adjunct Professor, and he has served on several Boards of Directors in businesses and non-profits both domestically and internationally. Top 3 Takeaways Don’t wait. Rather than constantly feel like success is just around the corner or “I’ll be happy when…” make a commitment to creating and experiencing success here and now. Soft is strong. Too many people mistake being transparent and vulnerable as weaknesses, but enlightened leaders know that these are the essential building blocks of trusting relationships. Give get. Employers who invest in their aspiring leaders will reap the rewards of loyalty, effort, and performance. If you want these outcomes, provide gobs of coaching and development first. From the Source “You have to identify, ‘Okay, what is my why? Why am I here?’ On this earth at this time in history, you know? ‘Why was I not here a thousand years ago or five thousand years ago or a hundred years ago? Why now?’ I think until we really get serious about identifying the WHY and identifying what we're passionate about what we're called to do then I think we have this in this internal sense of ‘I don't have a purpose. I don't know what I'm doing. I'm just going to get on that hamster wheel and just go because that's what we're supposed to do. That's what works.’“ “One of my favorite exercises that I do with leaders is fast forward to the end of your life and look back, what do you most want to be remembered for?” “I've worked with leaders all the time that set very, very high standards, high bars. And in their moments of transparency, they'll say, yeah, I can't meet my own standards.” “I learned to do less, but do it more focused, more intentional and with purpose. I talk about for, with and on purpose, and it's completely changing my whole perspective of life. It's changing me and it's changing my family too.” “Now I find it's much easier for me to say no, because if somebody asks you why, why are you saying no? Well, because it doesn't align with my core. It doesn't align with who I am. It's misaligned with my core values. There are other people out there that I'm sure they'll say yes to it, because it aligns to their core values, but this thing does not.” “Anybody that comes in your organization, [you need to] really identify quickly, why are you here? What is your purpose here? Where do you fit in? Where do you want to go? And we're going to invest intentionally in you from the very beginning to help you get there. Those are the organizations I think that are breeding loyalty and commitment like we're not seeing right now in, in the workforce.” “If people are our most important asset, why don't we view them as being on the balance sheet? And so I think it's a mindset.” “In my second book coming out, I talk about being, becoming, belonging, and then doing. I think if organizations can figure that out and how to help people understand who they are, where they want to be, what they want to become, how they belong in their organization, and then focus on the doing, I think they'll have an employee that will last, be committed and loyal to them like they haven't seen.” “The third book is all about, if you're serious about building this kind of a culture where you intentionally address the pains, the headaches when it comes to people, here's how you can do it. Not a magic formula. It's about being intentional and about a lot of hard work and getting it done. It will be released at the end of September.” Connect with Matt Website: http://www.uniquelynormal.com LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/matthew-lesser/ Email: matt@uniquelynormal.com

Luann Abrams is the founder of CEOX, an organization whose mission is to elevate women into CEO, C-Suite and board roles. She is a partner in The Abrams Group, advising, investing in, and supporting the people, companies and causes that will leave it better. Prior to starting CEOX, she ran FoundersPad, an early-stage venture fund with a dedicated mentorship program in Bend, OR. Luann has a background in aerospace engineering and spent most of her 15 years in aviation working for a start-up aircraft company in Bend, OR. Here she led the certification engineering program at Columbia Aircraft where she oversaw the certification of several aircraft models and ensured that all designs met applicable regulations. Due to her diligence and integrity she was granted the authority to sign off on regulatory compliance on behalf of the FAA prior to aircraft delivery. When she is not working and living the Bend life with her husband and two sons, you will find her curled up with a good book and a hot cup of coffee. Top 3 Takeaways Women are winners. Luann cited some very compelling research on successful business outcomes that often fall to woman-led companies. We need to level the playing field. Beat the system. Whether by design or by default, women face a number of obstacles preventing them from rising to the CEO role. Understand and offset these wherever possible. Listen up. Even if you’re not a C-suite leader, you can be an ally for women’s advancement. Be proactive and ask women across your organization about the work experience they’re having then pipe down and listen up. From the Source “There's a lot of research showing that women-led companies grow faster, they generate more revenue, they use invested dollars to better effect, they exit earlier, and honestly, my favorite statistic is that they have happier employees. I just like to think about a world with more happy people in it.”​​ “Worldwide, women really only make up about 5% of CEOs, so there is a long ways to go yet.” “There is a lot of deep seated bias against women still. We have really grown up in a world that was designed by men for men and not necessarily in this patriarchal ‘we want to keep women down’ way, but just that was the reality of the situation. So we have this complete societal structure that was really created for men's success. It was not created for women's success. So every step of the way, women have barriers to getting to that top spot, to even excelling in their career in general and. It's often really not seen by both men and women.” “A study just came out yesterday that I was reading about that shows that high level women are often not given promotions and they're not given pay raises because they're seen as loyal so they don't need to have those additional incentives to stay at a company. Whereas men are seen as more often jumping ship to the next best thing. So more and more companies are incentivized to give them promotions and give them pay raises.” “Most board roles—most C-suite roles in general—are really hired within who you know. I think most people's first place they go to look for anyone is their own network, and most of us have networks that are most reflective of ourselves because we network with people that make us feel comfortable, and we feel most comfortable with people that look like us and think like us and act like us.” “If there's one common sentiment I hear across the women of CEOX is that they want their next thing to be impactful. It's not just about making money. It's really about leaving the world a better place.” “You have to take the blinders off. I can't even tell you how often I will do one of my talks in a big group of people, men and women, and I will get men coming up to me saying, ‘Oh, I had no idea that stuff happened.’ For example, women get interrupted 30% more than men get interrupted in a meeting. Men aren't aware of it because it doesn't happen to them.” “Listen to the women that you are working with and understand some of the barriers they're facing.” “I always say that if somebody is feeling comfortable enough to give you that feedback, that is actually a compliment to you because it means that they trust you. You will take it as it's meant to be taken, and that they trust you with solving it. You really need to be concerned if you're not getting any negative feedback ever. That's the big red flag.” “I love the idea that if I place a woman in a CEO role, she's now surrounded with a bunch of really smart, experienced women that she can go to for help if she needs it to navigate some of the difficult things that she's going to find in those roles.” Connect with Luann Website: http://www.projectceox.com LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/luannabrams/ Reference (“She E O”) “Women CEOs of the S&P 500” - https://www.catalyst.org/research/women-ceos-of-the-sp-500

Robert founded INTRIGUE (formerly ITM Speakers) based on the idea that communication started with intrigue and ended with impact. He guides the company using lessons learned from decades as a high-tech marketing executive at companies such as ADP, Ceridian and SmashFly Technologies, and skills he's developed as an actor, playwright, programmer, electrical engineer, photographer, videographer, and musician. Robert has been on stage at national and international events as well as being published by such wide-ranging places as the Java Developer's Journal, The Compensation Handbook, and Concord Theatricals. Top 3 Takeaways Tell the whole story. Rather than simply present the facts, be sure to take your followers on a journey. Appeal to their need for relevance, relatability, and reassurance. Practice makes persuasive. You’ve likely seen a smooth and polished storyteller before. What you didn’t see is the number of hours and cringey attempts they put into honing those skills. Make a similar investment in your own storytelling. Make it stick. The benefits of a great story last long after the telling is done. The emotional shift you create can help those around you get over their obstacles and warm up to change. From the Source “Storytelling is the way that our minds absorb and store information.” "It's actually putting information into a format that the brain will naturally absorb and remember, and using all of the different elements of storytelling to hit all the levers in the brain. So not only remember and store this, but store it in a place where you are going to call upon it early. It's basically putting it at the top of the stack.​” “Leadership is sales. You're just selling an idea, not a product.” “It's showing your passion because how do you expect people to be passionate about something unless you can convey your passion in it? And if you are stuck in this whole features, facts, function world of ‘I'm going hit all the logical triggers’, but you don't transmit the passion to people, they're not going to be able to apply their passion to the project in which you need them to buy into.“ “The funny thing is this: tell an authentic story, even if it isn't yours as long as it resonates with you. You could share that story and say, ‘I heard this from my friend yesterday’, but if it means something to you, your authenticity will go through that story just as effectively—I should say, nearly as effectively—as a story of your own.“ “A lot of people are afraid that they can't tell a story. Well, it's a skill like any other, it can be taught. It can be learned. It can be practiced. Oh God, please practice! It's one of those things where people have to practice.” “if you know the structure and you know how to do an effective story, you can actually. Overcome the bad habits or not be afraid of the good ones. and there's a balance between detail and brevity, and you have to have enough detail to make the story interesting and real. But you need to know when to edit yourself and cut it off to the point where it's not going to get too long.” “Can, can I just talk about PowerPoint for one second? It's the great crutch, the necessary evil, and the villain of many stories. It can be an effective thing, and it's good to have visuals. Visuals are very powerful. The thing is that when I talked about editing yourself, that's the biggest thing that when I work with companies, and I take a look at their standard decks and I get to say: ‘Who owns the narrative on this slide? Do you own the narrative, or is it a pick your own adventure for the person looking at it? Because if it's a pick your own adventure, what you're doing is saying, please ignore me.’“ “In the beginning, you have to prove that you're worth listening to really quickly. You've got about 30 seconds to get people interested and to prove that you're worth listening to. Don't waste the time on, ‘Hey, this is my company, and this is where we're founded, and how many employees we have.’ No one cares. You haven't earned the right for them to care. So how are you going to open with some intrigue, something interesting that you're going to teach them?“ “You don't want to win the hour you're with someone. You want to win the five minutes after you leave. They're still remembering you.” “Metaphor takes people out of their world, takes them away from their core objections and gets them starting to agree with you.” “We don't have to just be in sales to think we need to tell better stories. If you're a leader, you need to invest in learning how to tell great stories.” “Let's take it from a pure leader perspective. You are putting forth a policy change, or maybe you're acquiring a company or maybe you're changing direction of your company. People are going to be looking at that after you're done, and they go back to their desk, and they're thinking, ‘okay, do I buy into this?’ And you could give 'em all the logic you want, but they're going to be relying on what feels right.“ “When it gets down to shifting the mindset of your employees or your partners or your investors, don't be afraid of using the same tools of storytelling that you would in a sales process because again, you are pitching ideas, and you want to get them leaning a certain way.“ Connect with Robert Website: http://www.intrigue.cc LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/mattsonr/ “Stories from the Silver Screen” Reference The Anatomy of Story by John Truby: https://amzn.to/4660A5J  

Kit Campoy spent 24 years leading teams in retail stores. In 2022, she threw her store keys in the safe and left the career she loved to write full-time. She now writes, reads, and talks about leadership daily. She advocates for frontline leaders on LinkedIn and through her newsletter, The Voice of the Frontline. Her book, The Retail Leaders Field Guide: How to Run a Kick Ass Store Where Everyone Wants to Work is available now. Top 3 Takeaways Be prepared. Like many leadership situations, being a retail leader requires flexibility. Go ahead and make plans, but plan on changing those plans along the way. Be brave. Sometimes a situation may become unworkable. Rather than continue to sacrifice your mental wellness, you may want to take a step back or away in order to break free. Listen up. You may be the leader, but that doesn’t mean you’re expected to know everything or make perfect decisions. Allow for team participation and work together to move forward. From the Source “You step into the store with an idea of how the day's going to run. ‘I'm going to write my schedule, I'm going to do this, I'm going to do that.’ And who knows? A customer could come in with a huge problem that you have to sort out and fix, or corporate could change direction on a dime, and you have to throw out all of your plans. Or three people call out sick and you have to be on the floor with one other person and now you're really short staffed and you can't get the work done that you had planned on getting done.” “Like most places, you have to have a backup plan. You have to have a plan, and then a backup plan, and then a next backup plan. So that's constantly running in your mind. And then you also have to teach your support staff how to do that as well if you're not there.” “We're going to get through this day. However we can get through this day and we're going to support each other, and we'll figure it out. We always do.” “It was stressful. It was chaotic. But I think that's when you're like, ‘Okay, you know what? I'm going to take an extra break. I'm going to walk around the mall. I'm going to buy everyone coffee.’ Whatever you can do to lift people's spirits and be like, ‘All right, we're going to get through today. Tomorrow's another day.’” “Things evolve, and I felt like, “Who am I writing this for? Like what's the point of this newsletter?’” “For people who are creatives, they get very caught up in ‘Well, I started this project. I want to make it work.’ And it's okay if it doesn't work. You still learn something, you still got something out of that process.” “When we would get in leadership huddles at my store, that's how we spoke to each other: quick, direct, ‘This is what's happening’, ‘Who's doing this?’, ‘This directive is stupid’, ‘We're going to leave this to last.’ So yeah, that voice was very easy to cultivate and tap into because that was just how I led people.” “I didn't have any fear at all. It was just like, ‘Good, this is what I'm doing. This is how I talk. This is how I lead. This is my honest opinion of what's going on in the retail world in frontline work.’” “They started to write me up for some ridiculous things. I was written up for quote unquote ‘not being seen as a leader in the building’. And so then what, right? Like, what's the action plan? What do I do in this person's eyes? How do I make myself seen as a leader? There was no action plan. There was no follow up. There was no ‘these are the things that we wanna see out of you’. It was definitely a way to push me out.“ “I thought that I was going to show up to work and work hard and just move up. My whole life, that's what I thought. I’m just going to work hard, and I'm going to be honest, and I'm going to be good to people,and I will just keep getting promoted. And it's not like that. Life is not like that. And that's a really hard lesson to learn.” “My district manager was shocked that I was leaving. I just said, ‘You know what? I came here to learn how to run bigger teams and larger buildings, and I've done that and I'm done. So I don't know what I'm going to do, but I'm not doing this anymore.” “I went on LinkedIn and I did a survey, and I said, ‘Hey, do y'all want a book from me? Would that be helpful?. And it was overwhelmingly ‘Yes, please write us a book!” “That was the same when I led teams. It was just like, ‘Hey, this is the initiative. This is the directive. This is my idea of how we're going to proceed with this, but what do you guys think? Does that make sense to you? Should we do this differently?’ Seek feedback from everybody around you. You never know. Even sometimes my 17-year old sales associates had fantastic ideas, so just listen to everyone in the room." Connect with Kit LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/kit-campoy-you-got-this/ The Voice of the Frontline (Substack): https://kitcampoy.substack.com/ The Retail Field Leader’s Guide: How to Run a Kick-Ass Store Where Everyone Wants to Work (book): https://amzn.to/3NCWA3Y  

Dr. Susan Landers has thirty-four years of experience in the neonatal intensive care unit (NICU). She practiced in academic medicine (on the faculty of two medical schools) and in private practice. She authored over thirty peer-reviewed academic papers. She found her work in the demanding environment of the NICU rewarding & managed to postpone burnout until the end of her career. Susan and her physician husband raised three children (now all young adults) while they practiced medicine full time. She’s the author of a memoir titled So Many Babies: My Life Balancing a Busy Medical Career and Motherhood. Susan enjoys recounting some of her best, and worst, life experiences, and how she managed to stay resilient. She likes to share with other professionals what she learned along her journey as an ambitious, successful doctor. Top 3 Takeaways Leadership can be high-stakes. Dr. Landers’ experiences in the NICU may be unrelatable for those of us outside of medicine, but our leadership outcomes are incredibly meaningful in their own right. We need to match that intensity. Get personal. People handle stressful situations differently. Get to know your team members well and work hard to meet their needs while helping them perform at their best under the circumstances. Be the home team. Your spouse, partner, or family members may not come to work with you, but your work comes to them. Stay close to one another and co-develop strategies to meet all the demands you face together. From the Source “I enjoyed working with the babies and the moms and dads because they were sort of imagining what their children could be. It was an emotionally raw time, especially for parents who had an unexpectedly preterm or sick baby, and that drew me to that field.“ “It's a place where there's lots of heartbreak that usually gets healed. Most of the babies recover and grow and thrive and go home. For some people—a smaller percent of the tiniest preemies and the sickest babies—the heartbreak doesn't mend and they lose their child.” “I liked the blend of surgical and medical. I liked getting to know the families. I loved working on a team.” “The public doesn't realize that it's not just the doctors and the nurses, it's all the support staff.” “I loved the way when a baby was really, really sick, everybody jumped in. Very few words were spoken, and we all did our jobs, did our jobs well, and hopefully at the end we were rewarded.” “Most people were so fearful that they hung back psychologically until they either understood what was going on or felt more comfortable and could ask questions. Most people got quiet and introspective.” “[Dads] were great about asking questions and writing things down and taking instruction. The mothers really needed to be allowed to touch and talk to and sing to their baby. That was the thing that would always take them from fear or grief or terror to being a mom.” “It's very, very challenging for a leader to draw out what's going on with the team members and how that person's attitude affects the product or the service that you're delivering.” “The first 10 years of being a mother, I had to learn how to be a good enough mother and leave my work at work and not bring all the stresses of the NICU home with me.” “Two full-time jobs in medicine are not compatible with having a normal family life. We didn't have a normal family life.” “For parents today who are both professionals, both working full-time, I wanna just say it is not easy if you and your spouse are juggling childcare work, maybe sick parents, not to mention a pandemic.” “The communication has to be clear. The support systems have to be there. There has to be a way for the couple to maintain their relationship because the family dies if the couple doesn't stay together.” “Over the years, the whole practice became family friendly. I mean, not all the time, but because men and women have different priorities. Most of the time they learn to accommodate wives and mothers because we're different. We just think about things differently. We carry our children's problems to work with us.” Connect with Dr. Landers Website: http://www.susanlandersmd.com LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/susan-landersmd/ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/drsusanlanders  

Susan Hobson is a High-Performance Leadership Coach, published author, Founder/CEO of Elite High Performance Inc., and a member of the Forbes Coaches Council. Susan’s science-based Elite High-Performance Coaching process draws on her first hand experience competing at some of the most competitive environments on the planet – Princeton & Harvard Universities and The National Women’s Hockey League. Rob Kalwarowsky specializes in helping leaders become high-impact individuals who turn their teams into happy, high-performing units that achieve their goals. He believes that traditional leadership coaching methods are not always enough to bring about the change that today's dynamic work environment demands. That's why Rob has taken a unique approach, blending together neuroscience, mindset coaching, high-performance leadership strategies with cutting-edge technology and data to provide a clear path to building a high-performing team. Susan and Rob’s podcast, the Leadership Launchpad Project, explores groundbreaking leadership strategies with top experts worldwide in the fields of leadership, business, management, psychology, mindset and sports. Top 3 Takeaways Get in there. The real work of leadership is the inner work. Make the time to get to know yourself in order to step into your full potential. Lead at every level. Executives chart the course and individuals do real work while managers in the middle connect the dots. Each layer requires its own leadership capabilities. Everybody hurts. Hurt people hurt people. We have to commit ourselves to healing our wounds and emerging stronger so we can better serve our mission and those around us. From the Source “Once we can let all this stuff go and work with ourselves in our inner experience then we can truly step into who we are and be authentic 2.0 leaders.” “That actually gets the best performance out of not only ourselves but also the business, and the people around them. And those people are happier, healthier, more productive, and the business thrives because of this.” “‘What behaviors do we need to take to make psych safety improve within our team?’ These things are super important because it's a nice concept and we all love to read books, but at the end of the day, we gotta walk the walk as leaders.” “The folks at the top talk strategy and goals and values and vision, and the folks at the bottom do the work, but the middle managers are the ones who actually have to create actionable strategies and implementation plans.” “The leaders who have that 2.0 heart centric, human centric, EQ driven approach to leading their teams are gonna find that managing change is a lot less disruptive to their nervous systems.” “The parts of us that we avoid are the portals to our next level … to our potential.” “It's never a selfish thing to examine your experience and to know thyself. Socrates said that was the whole purpose of life because when you know thyself … happy people … we lift other people up and that's the key that we should be looking at here in leadership. What is the damn point of having somebody leading the way if they're not lifting everybody else up that's following them?” “People are literally dying because the leaders are driving them. We learn as children that ‘hey, if you work hard, if you deliver, if you get an A from your teacher, if you get a pat on the back from your coach cuz you scored a goal … you are something’. That's all bullshit.”​​ “Who's benefiting? The folks that are at the top. Who's dying? Everybody else. And some of the folks who get to the top, they're doing it because they're truly hurt the most, and that's why they behave in the ways they do.” Connect with Susan and Rob LinkedIn (Susan): https://www.linkedin.com/in/jumpstartliving/ LinkedIn (Rob): https://www.linkedin.com/in/rob-kalwarowsky/ Website: http://www.elitehighperformance.com/ The Leadership Launchpad Project (podcast): Apple - https://podcasts.apple.com/ca/podcast/the-leadership-launchpad-project/id1530978841 Spotify - https://open.spotify.com/show/0jmVzYZy8sDDwUgOeqJPSg Amazon Music - https://music.amazon.ca/podcasts/d12a5b8b-a6b9-4705-9dc4-0f8cf8bafffc/the-leadership-launchpad-project Stitcher - https://www.stitcher.com/show/the-leadership-launchpad-project Google - https://podcasts.google.com/feed/aHR0cHM6Ly9hbmNob3IuZm0vcy8zNDkwNDdkMC9wb2RjYXN0L3Jzcw YouTube - https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC561W4wZZE_5GK00C0FCSsA Links to Matt’s Appearances on Leadership Launchpad Project “Inhuman Leadership Destroys Too Much Value with Matt Poepsel”: https://podcasts.apple.com/tt/podcast/inhuman-leadership-destroys-too-much-value-with-matt/id1530978841?i=1000609229916 “Your Last Competitive Advantage with Matt Poepsel”: https://podcasts.apple.com/tt/podcast/your-last-competitive-advantage-with-matt-poepsel/id1530978841?i=1000528567469

Dr. Marisol Capellan is an internationally recognized and award-winning educator, TEDx speaker, executive coach, and corporate trainer. She is the Founder of The Capellan Institute, a leadership, coaching, and corporate training company specializing in workplace culture, diversity, equity & inclusion, and soft skills development. Dr. Capellan is a former lecturer at the University of Miami, Miami Herbert Business School lecturer where she taught management and organizational behavior classes and served as the associate director of their Masters in Leadership program. She holds a doctoral degree in Higher Education Leadership and a Masters of Management with Specialization in Leadership from the University of Miami. Her dissertation focus was on the trajectory of women to leadership positions. As an Afro-Latina, mother, and immigrant, she has faced and witnessed many of the institutional and systemic barriers and biases that Black women face in their career trajectory to leadership roles, which sparked her passion for women’s empowerment and the need to increase the representation of women in positions of power. As a result, she published her book; Leadership is a Responsibility, about her career journey experience as a Black Hispanic woman in Academia, the stories of Black women in the workplace, and the need for responsible leaders to create a more equitable society where minorities can belong and thrive. In addition, her personal story of resilience has been featured on CNN and Telemundo as an unstoppable woman, where she discussed how her mindset helped her life and career trajectory as an immigrant in the United States. Top 3 Takeaways Business is personal. Each team member is having their own experience at work. Resist the urge to think collective members of any subgroup are having an identical experience. Take action. Active sympathy requires leaders not only to listen but to take action. Asking others to ignore unfair treatment or asking them to do your job is not leadership. Be brave. Recognize that we have longstanding, systemic issues to overcome. Expect subtle and not-so-subtle pushback when you instill fair leadership practices. From the Source “I always wanted to turn my dissertation into a book where I can speak to women and tell them about what happens in the workplace, how can they prepare, what are the pitfalls, and at the same time encourage leaders to know about the experiences of women in the workplace.” “It happens so often. Sometimes leaders are so disconnected from the organizations and they just expect the managers to do the right thing, and sometimes you don't know what they're doing.” “There is this texturism that happens within our group, and there is also colorism where people that are lighter skin get better treatment or are seen as more valuable than people that have darker skin, and that goes all the way back to colonization.“ “Sometimes leaders, when they have a diverse teams, they usually validate the experience of the majority within that team.” “Usually what happens is, at least the women that I interview from my book, they will say, ‘well, all of a sudden I'm treated differently because I'm the problem.’ ‘How come you cannot get along with everybody else?’ ‘How come you are the only one having that experience?’” “Leaders need to have the openness to others, people's experiences and perspectives because everybody is different, and that will make you a better leader. If you know that somebody else is having a different experience in your team, you'll be able to rectify that, manage that behavior, see what's going on, maybe implement new team norms or team guidelines.” Connect with Marisol LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/marisolcapellan/ Website: https://marisolcapellan.com/ Leadership is a Responsibility: How to Become an Inclusive Leader in the Modern Workplace by Understanding the Lived Experiences of Black Women and Afro-Latinas at Work (book): https://amzn.to/3oW0hJM  

Jennifer Dulski is CEO and founder of Rising Team, a SaaS company that equips managers with the tools and training to build engaged, connected and successful teams. She has a wide range of executive experience in leadership roles at technology companies including, Facebook, Google, and Yahoo!, and Dulski was also president and COO of the social enterprise company Change.org. Dulski writes about leadership and the future of work for LinkedIn Influencers and serves as a lecturer in management at the Stanford Graduate School of Business. Her first book, Purposeful, about how each of us can be movement starters, was published by Penguin Portfolio in 2018 and is a Wall Street Journal Bestseller. Top 3 Takeaways Give people what they need. Employees are looking for the three Ps—Purpose, People, and Path. Team leaders need to understand how to help them connect these dots. Teams need tools. Managers are already overwhelmed. Expecting them to be comfortable kicking off people-centric conversations is just one more thing. Tools like Rising Team can help. Think beyond the tech. Generative AI and ChatGPT are performing seemingly human tasks but they won’t ever perform the most deeply human aspects of a team leader’s work. From the Source “What I wanted to do was create tools that would help leaders actively practice and bring back the skills that they're learning with their teams.“ "When you look at the data, people really care about what we call the relational elements. Of course people care about their salary and benefits and so forth, but they want to feel valued by their company and their manager. They want a deep sense of care and trust with the people they work with, and, all of that lands on managers to deliver and it's hard. It's hard to deliver those things, especially without any help.“ “People are not willing to just sit in jobs that they hate at companies that don't treat them well.” “The C-suite tends to overestimate employee satisfaction around their wellbeing by 65%. They think, well, we're happy…they must be happy too. And it's just not true.“ “When you ask remote workers, a lot of them feel more connected to their team than they did before [the pandemic] at places where they are being intentional about it.” “Recognition and appreciation are incredibly critically important. Consistency and frequency is important, and also individual needs really matter.” “After having done those motivator charts with thousands of people over decades of time, I can tell you that the three things that are most common are purpose—does what I work on matter to me, people—do I like and respect the other people I work with, and path—do I have a growth path in front of me here?“ “We just don't give managers the tools to deliver those things. It's not enough to tell them to do it.“ “It is true that ChatGPT will be able to replace all sorts of writing tasks and coding tasks and so forth. The one thing it will never be able to replace is ‘How do we get people to understand each other and care about each other and work well together?’” Connect with Jennifer Website: http://www.risingteam.com LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jdulski/ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/dulskijen Twitter: https://twitter.com/jdulski Links Purposeful: Are You a Manager or a Movement Starter (book): http://www.purposefulbook.com  

Paul Burton is the Founder of C-Coach, a science-backed coaching technology platform. As a leader who turns problems into solutions, Paul uses that passion to make a positive impact on people. Merging empathy and compassion with emotional intelligence, tenacity, and the willingness to take risks, he envisions a future of limitless possibilities. His long-term goals include creating ongoing awareness about human-powered change, building partnerships with like-minded businesses, and initiating new government practices that support education for people in all walks and stages of life. Top 3 Takeaways Know the enemy. People begin a shiny new job full of hope and energy. If either wanes, it’s most likely due to the behaviors of those around them. Know your numbers. Coaching and leadership produce significant human benefits, but these practices also boost the bottom line. Use the commercial impact of coaching to fuel its investment. Know the drill. We regularly promote technical experts into management and leadership roles without thinking about the internal change and challenges that arise. Give coaching and support before, during, and after a promotion to ensure holistic success. From the Source “All of your business problems relate to people whether it be the design, whether it be the strategy, whether it be like the delivery, whether it be attitude—whatever it may be—it all comes back to people.” “The approach to growing people through their career is all too often siloed.” “The thing and the beauty with coaching and the fundamental thing for me is about getting to know what you don't know. How else do you get to know what you don't know?” “The world has changed significantly because of technology. I personally think we almost got to a stage now where we ask leaders to do the impossible.” “The very specific things I think managers are struggling with is having the confidence to be vulnerable, the confidence to be human, the confidence to say that I haven't got all of the answers and I don't need to have all the answers." Connect with Paul Website: https://www.c-coach.com LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/paulburton3

Tom Stewart has over 30 years experience in the U.S. Army. He has served in various leadership capacities including Battalion Commander while deployed in Afghanistan. Tom also served in multiple executive level staff positions including Assistant Chief of Staff, Director of Logistics, Director of Operations, and Director of the Joint Staff. He has a strong background in strategic planning and synchronizing large organizations toward a common goal. Top 3 Takeaways Get Over Yourself. When done properly, leadership is a selfless practice. Focus on the mission, the culture you want to create, and the welfare of those around you. Round It Out. Leadership is both an art and a science. That means we need to practice and study it at the highest levels in order to realize our full potential. Make the Investment. Pursuing an advanced degree, executive education, or another program of intensive study boosts your learning and achievement and amplifies your impact. From the Source “When I teach leadership, it's about leading in the most selfless manner possible, because it’s not about you, it's about the people that have to live with the policies you create, the environment that you create. So therefore, leaders should, in fact, look for professional development, but they really need to do it for the right reasons.” “Find what's right for you in your career and your interests and your passion, and go after it. Don't procrastinate. Don't be a wallflower standing there watching everybody else advance their education. You need to get off your own rear end and find that intrinsic motivation, and it should hopefully be for the right reasons, and that's so that you can lead better—for the people that have to follow your leadership.” “The hesitant leader is the one that understands the weight that they carry on their shoulders with that level of responsibility where other people are depending on you. The eager leader Is the one that may not be as selfless, who may in fact want career advancement because it's where it's gonna get me my salary, my title, my parking spot out front. So the eager leader may not fully appreciate the weight of a thousand burning suns that'll be on your shoulders when you have other people that are relying on you for their welfare and their happiness and their job security and the culture in which you create where they have to work every day.” “Nichols combines leadership theory which is the academics with practice which is the art to make for the real world educational experience we teach based on grounded research from our faculty.” Connect with Tom Website: http://www.nichols.edu Email: thomas.stewart@nichols.edu LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/tom-stewart-35957410/ Links Master of Science in Organizational Leadership at Nichols College: https://www.nichols.edu/degrees/master-of-science-in-organizational-leadership/