WiseTalk

In this episode of WiseTalk, CEO and Executive Leadership Coach Sue Bethanis hosts New York Times and Wall Street Journal bestselling author Rich Horwath to discuss his new book, STRATEGIC: The Skill to Set Direction, Create Advantage, and Achieve Executive Excellence.Rich Horwath is the Founder and CEO of the Strategic Thinking Institute, where he serves leadership teams as a strategy workshop facilitator, executive coach, and strategic advisor. His work has been featured in publications including Fast Company, Forbes, and the Harvard Business Review. Chief Executive Magazine has introduced him as “the world’s foremost expert on strategic thinking.”As a former chief strategy officer and professor of strategy at the graduate level, he brings a practical, real-world approach based on strong foundational principles to help executives develop their strategic capabilities. Rich has appeared on ABC, NBC, CBS, and FOX TV to share his perspectives on current business strategy issues. In addition to his work facilitating strategy workshops for leadership teams and providing executive coaching services and strategic counsel, he is a highly sought-after keynote speaker for groups ranging from 10 to 10,000.Rich earned an MBA with Distinction from the Kellstadt Graduate School of Business at DePaul University and has completed postgraduate courses in strategy at the University of Chicago Booth School of Business and the Tuck School of Business Administration at Dartmouth College.

Sue Bethanis hosts consultant, coach, personal development expert, and author Ashish Kothari to discuss his new book, Hardwired for Happiness: 9 Proven Practices to Overcome Stress and Live Your Best Life.Ashish Kothari is the Founder of Happiness Squad, a company focused on helping individuals and organizations unleash the power of happiness to achieve their full potential. As a partner in McKinsey’s Leadership Practice, Ashish served as the Co-Dean for the Centered Leadership and Adaptability & Resilience programs. He combines over two decades of consulting experience with formal training as an Ontological Coach and has helped thousands of leaders and their organizations succeed by developing new mindsets and capabilities. His transformational approach is interdisciplinary and integrates wisdom from the worlds of science and spirituality.A lifelong student of human thriving, Ashish has read over 450 books and studied the teachings of world-renowned experts in the fields of spirituality, philosophy, psychology, and neuroscience. His purpose in life is to help individuals, organizations, and communities achieve their full potential through the power of happiness.Sue and Ashish discuss: The pervasiveness of the burnout problem How to “Build a Supportive Community” Practical tips for leading a happier life Self-awareness as the base for the nine powerful practices that can rewire your brain for happiness

Sue Bethanis hosts consumer and marketplace product and technology executive, and author, Yue Zhao.Yue was the first product manager and Head of Professionals at Thumbtack Inc. for 5 years, where she worked alongside the founders to build and scale a technology leader valued at $3.2B in 2021 with investment from Sequoia, Tiger Global, Capital G, QIA, and more. Then, at Fuzzy Pet Health, she was the Chief Product & Technology officer, helping the team find PMF for its telehealth offering and reach EBITDA positive within 6 months. Previously, she co-founded a wine e-commerce startup called FirstCrush. She spent 4 years at Meta working on Instagram Feed and Profile, Messenger Web and Desktop, and SMB Advertising.Yue is currently a Venture Partner at LifeX Ventures, a $100M fund actively deploying capital in healthtech, climatech, and the AI space. Her network in the product space, in particular, adds a new dimension to LifeX’s team of ex-founders and operators.As a seasoned executive career coach and advisor, Yue is passionate about coaching mid-career minority executives and helping the next generation of CEOs and founders hone in on the real pain points to solve for their customers.She holds a B.S. in Biomedical Engineering from the University of California, Berkeley, and an MBA from Harvard Business School.Sue and Yue discuss her new book, The Uncommon Executive: Breakthrough to the C-Suite as a Minority, and: How to adopt an executive mindset and develop skills that are critical for success Ways to demonstrate executive potential and land stretch assignments The challenges minorities face — overcoming biases and stereotypes, finding role models, and discovering superpowers How to influence luck and create opportunities with sponsorship, networking, and making smart job changes

Sue Bethanis hosts productivity expert, automation enthusiast, and bestselling author Aytekin Tank to discuss his new book, Automate Your Busywork: Do Less, Achieve More, and Save Your Brain for the Big Stuff.Aytekin’s entrepreneurial passion and firm belief in creating tools to make organizations more productive led him to build Jotform, a bootstrapped global SaaS company that provides powerful online forms to tens of millions of users.In addition to serving as the CEO of Jotform since 2006, Aytekin frequently contributes to Fast Company and Entrepreneur. A developer by trade but a storyteller by heart, he writes about his journey as an entrepreneur, shares advice for other startups, and provides insights on leadership, productivity, and using SaaS technology within workflows.Sue and Aytekin discuss: Why the future of business is no-code, and how you can use an automation-first mindset to unlock your productivity potential How to move from busywork to less work and finally have the time you need to accomplish your most important work How you can use delegation and automation to achieve “timefulness,” the state of having enough time

In this episode of WiseTalk, CEO and Executive Leadership Coach Sue Bethanis hosts the world’s leading expert in the rapidly growing field of trust repair, Dr. Peter H. Kim.Dr. Kim is a Professor of Management and Organization at the University of Southern California’s Marshall School of Business. He received his Ph.D. in Organizational Behavior from Northwestern University’s Kellogg Graduate School of Management. His research concerns the dynamics of social misperception, with a particular focus on the violation and repair of trust. This research has been published in the world’s leading scientific journals across management and psychology. It has received ten national/international awards from organizations, including the American Psychological Association, the Academy of Management, and the International Association for Conflict Management. This work has also been supported by multiple funding sources, including the National Science Foundation, the State Farm Foundation, and the Kellogg Dispute Resolution Research Center.Dr. Kim has also drawn on his expertise to develop and teach some of the most highly rated M.B.A. courses and executive training programs at his University. Popular accounts of his research have appeared in The Atlantic, New York Times, Washington Post, The Economist, and National Public Radio. His first book, How Trust Works: The Science of How Relationships are Built, Broken, and Repaired, is based on two decades of his original research on trust repair.

Sue Bethanis, CEO of Mariposa Leadership, hosts Emily Field, co-author of Power to the Middle: Why Managers Hold the Keys to the Future of Work and a partner at McKinsey’s Seattle office. Emily partners with leaders to shape data-driven organizational strategies designed to achieve business objectives, establish talent management as a distinctive advantage, and secure the human resources function as a driver of business value.Since joining McKinsey in 2017, Emily has worked with companies across industries, leading initiatives to transform the way organizations work. She puts particular emphasis on helping to establish a talent-first approach, instilling a high-performance culture, and adopting effective people-analytics approaches. Emily prepares leaders to manage the workforce of the future.Passionate about helping others achieve their full potential, Emily volunteers as a mentor to veterans and low-income students through her work with Capital Partners for Education and American Corporate Partners. She holds a BA in government from Georgetown University.Sue and Emily discuss:  Why organizations fail to see middle managers as their “most valuable players” How the Great Resignation, the pandemic, and the tech boom contributed to the obfuscation of middle managers’ importance What Hybrid work has done to middle managers How managers can “rebundle” jobs instead of eliminating them in the current age of AI and fears of job displacement

In this episode of WiseTalk, CEO and Executive Leadership Coach Sue Bethanis hosts best-selling author and workplace mental health expert Morra Aarons-Mele. Morra hosts The Anxious Achiever podcast for LinkedIn Presents, which won the 2023 Media Award from Mental Health America, was a 2020 Webby Awards Honoree, 2022 “Best Commute Podcast” Signal Award winner, and is frequently a top 10 management podcast and top 50 business podcast. She’s passionate about helping people rethink the relationship between their mental health and their success. Morra speaks to and consults frequently with Fortune 500 companies, startups, and U.S Government agencies. She is a LinkedIn “Top 10 Voice” in mental health.Morra is an entrepreneur and communications executive. In addition to her work in workplace mental health, Aarons-Mele founded the award-winning social impact agency Women Online and created its database of female influencers, the Mission List, which she sold in 2021. Morra was named 2020 Entrepreneur of the Year at the Iris Awards, created to recognize excellence among digital content creators. She has helped three US presidential candidates and a range of mission-driven organizations create communications, marketing, and fundraising campaigns.Morra is also a prolific writer. Since 2004 she has covered the campaign trail, the White House, the lactation room, and the office cubicle. She has written for the New York Times, Entrepreneur, Fast Company, Slate, InStyle, O, the Wall Street Journal, Forbes, and the Guardian. She is the author of the new book, The Anxious Achiever: Turn Your Biggest Fears into Your Leadership Superpower, a compelling guide to managing the anxiety that comes with succeeding and leading.Morra has degrees from the Harvard Kennedy School and Brown University. She and Nicco Mele live in Boston with their three children.

Sue Bethanis hosts leading efficiency expert Nick Sonnenberg. Nick is an entrepreneur, Inc. columnist, guest lecturer at Columbia University, and the Wall Street Journal best-selling author of Come Up for Air: How Teams Can Leverage Systems and Tools to Stop Drowning in Work.He is the Founder and CEO of Leverage, a leading operational efficiency consultancy that helps companies implement his CPR® Business Efficiency Framework. This is the culmination of Nick’s unique perspective on the value of time, efficiency, and automation, which stems in part from the eight years he spent working as a high-frequency trader on Wall Street. The CPR (Communication, Planning, and Resources) Framework consistently results in greater output, less stress, happier employees, and the potential to gain an extra full day per week in productivity per person—just by using the right tools in the right way, at the right time. Nick and his team have worked with organizations of all sizes and across all industries, from high-growth startups to the Fortune 10.Sue and Nick discuss how to:  reduce stress and burnout by creating a more stable work environment improve company culture by empowering your team to spend their time on work that matters increase employee happiness, satisfaction, trust, and retention by making work easier stop wasting time in meetings with four proven techniques

Sue Bethanis hosts award-winning researcher Paulo Savaget. Paulo is an associate professor at Oxford University’s Engineering Sciences Department and the Saïd Business School. His primary fields of expertise are entrepreneurship, sustainable development, systems change, and innovation management.The emphasis of his work is on transforming unjust systems through entrepreneurship. He formerly served as Postdoctoral Researcher at the Skoll Centre and as an Assistant Professor at Durham University. Outside academia, he worked as an entrepreneur and as a consultant to large companies, non-profits, and government agencies in Latin America, and the OECD. He received his Ph.D. from the University of Cambridge as a Gates Scholar.Paulo is the author of the new book, The Four Workarounds: Strategies from the World’s Scrappiest Organizations for Tackling Complex Problems, a smart guide that offers a behind-the-scenes look at groups around the world that have mastered the art of subverting the status quo.Sue and Paulo discuss: how ‘workarounds’ can help solve systemic problems how to achieve massive wins with minimal resources how the business world can learn from the innovative wit and practical ingenuity of scrappy organizations

Sue Bethanis hosts master somatic leadership coach, trauma psychologist, and mindfulness instructor, Chris Johnson. Chris is the founder of Q4 Consulting Inc., a Chicago-based consulting firm that helps leaders transform themselves, their teams, and their organizations to meet future challenges, grow and thrive.Chris is a passionate advocate for the power of business to create prosperity, beauty, and happiness in the world. She’s been involved with Conscious Capitalism Chicago for over a decade currently serving as Chair, and on the leadership team of Ellevate Chicago, an organization committed to developing professional women. This past summer she published a book, The Leadership Pause: Sharpen Your Attention, Deepen Your Presence, and Navigate the Future, an eye-opening, accessible guide to developing one’s leadership via the deliberate, body-based practices that tap the wisdom and intelligence of the body.Sue and Chris discuss: Why intentionally practicing pause is so essential and powerful for leaders in today’s marketplace How to build your capacity, resilience, and confidence to transform high-pressure moments into opportunities How to cultivate your attention and focus to shape your actions and strategic vision