Leadership NOW with Dan Pontefract

As a professor at the McGill University Desautels Faculty of Management and for +25 years as a Fellow and an Associate Fellow at Green Templeton College, Oxford University, Dr. Karl Moore spends a lot of time interacting with the current and future leaders of our world...CEOs and millennials/Zs. Starting with his Ph.D. Karl has studied CEOs and how they lead and develop strategies. At McGill, he teaches an MBA course, CEO Insights, where 31 CEOs come to join the class for an hour each Fall. This class has also been turned into an hour-long radio show across Canada. The show is called the CEO Series. His newest and tenth book will be released in early 2023 and is titled "Ok Boomers: Working with Millennials and Zs," which studies the way that millennials/Zs act as leaders and the way that managers need to act to create meaningful interactions with millennials/Zs. In this wide-ranging discussion with Dan Pontefract, Karl and Dan get into the nuances of generational leadership.

An accomplished executive and trusted advisor to seven CEOs, Jim Reid has navigated significant change and immense pressure to build winning teams that outperform competitors. He has coached, advised and developed thousands of aspiring leaders as CHRO in organizations such as Rogers Communications, Husky Injection Molding Systems and MDS. Originally trained as a military pilot, Jim built his expertise working alongside some of the best thinkers on leadership including Jim Collins, Jeffrey Pfeffer, John Kotter and Dave Ulrich. Jim was recognized in 2021 as one of the 50 Best Executives in Canada by The Globe & Mail’s Report on Business Magazine. His new book, "Leading to Greatness: 5 Principles to Transform Your Leadership and Build Great Teams," contains five core leadership principles for top-level executives who will be primed to take their organizations and teams into the future upon application. The principles are: Principle 1: Define a crystal-clear understanding of values and purpose and never deviate. Principle 2: Recognize core strengths and align them with passion. Principle 3: Identify and engage the right people and get them in the right seats; no leader excels at everything. Principle 4: Learn to manage energy not time to become fully engaged in life (and thus, leadership). Principle 5: Develop a consistent inner discipline to achieve exceptional results.

A leadership thinker and practitioner, Céline Schillinger has been recognized multiple times for her innovative engagement initiatives in the corporate world. After a plentiful business career across several continents, Céline now runs her own consultancy, We Need Social and is the author of her first book, "Dare to Un-Lead: The Art of Relational Leadership in a Fragmented World." Céline helps organizations and leaders create value through Engagement Leadership: the active mobilization of internal and external stakeholders, at the interplay of technology, management research and living systems thinking. In this Leadership NOW discussion with Dan Pontefract, Céline and Dan get into the merits of her new book as well as the state of organizational culture and leadership in general. Céline was awarded the Medal of the National Order of Merit by the French government in 2017 for her efforts for diversity in the workplace.

Andrew Barnes is the co-founder and CEO of GO1.com, one of the world's largest onboarding, compliance, and professional development platforms. He is a Rhodes Scholar, has a Masters in Science and Education from Oxford University, and a PhD in Business Strategy from Queensland University. Go1 is a fascinating company, one that allows companies to upscale their workforce with on-demand training and a dynamic content-driven platform connecting to systems such as Microsoft Teams, Salesforce, Slack, etc. In this conversation Dan Pontefract discusses with Andrew the state of organizational learning and why companies are choosing Go1. Think of Go1 as a firm acting as a glue that binds the book of various learning offerings and platforms together.

Sasha Seymore is the co-founder and COO of Learn to Win, a software platform that unlocks "Last Mile Learning" for organizations. What is Last Mile Learning? It's the critical operational knowledge unique to every team. Last Mile training drives 80% of job performance, but it's unique to every org and can't be bought off-the-shelf. It lives in your experts' heads. It's taught informally - if at all. Learn to Win's platform makes it fast and simple for anyone to build a lesson. Their mobile-first platform delivers learning in bite-size chunks that become easy to consume in the flow of work. The company has clients such as the Pittsburgh Penguins, the U.S. Air Force, Novartis, the Special Olympics and the Carolina Panthers. As a recovering Chief Learning Officer, Dan Pontefract was fascinated to quiz Sasha on a number of different questions to get to the bottom of how organizations and employees need to 'learn to win.'

Mondo Cozmo is the performing name of Los Angeles-based singer/songwriter Joshua Ostrander. His music boasts the bold, expansive sound of the likes of Arcade Fire, Bob Dylan, Beck, and various hip-hop artists. But his sense of purpose might be what is most remarkable. It’s a lesson for us all. Mondo Cozmo has just released a fantastic new third album—titled “This is for the Barbarians,” and we discuss not only the album but what drives him as a purpose-fuelled leader including social causes, relationships, and of course, love. As Ostrander says in our conversation, “Just follow your heart and know that it’s going to lead you to the right place.”

“No regrets.” You’ve heard people proclaim it as a philosophy of life. That’s nonsense, even dangerous, says Daniel H. Pink in his latest book, "The Power of Regret: How Looking Backward Moves Us Forward." Pink sits down with the other "dp," (Dan Pontefract) and they get into a rollicking conversation on the topic of regret. Pink discusses his research including American attitudes about regret as well as his own World Regret Survey—which has collected regrets from more than 16,000 people in 105 countries—where he identifies the four core regrets that most people have. Pink discusses the four regrets arguing they operate as a “photographic negative” of the good life. By understanding what people regret the most, we can understand what they value the most. Tune in and learn more about regret. You can't live a life with "no regrets."

Megan Witherspoon serves as Vice President, Communications for Altria. She leads communications and engagement strategies across multiple audiences on behalf of the Altria family of companies in this role. In her 17 years at Altria, she has held roles across a range of functions: corporate responsibility and community relations; strategy and business development; investor relations; marketing; and, of course, as part of her current executive role, corporate communications. Witherspoon's take on the current state of corporate culture is one to appreciate. In this conversation with Dan Pontefract, Witherspoon holds no punches with her take on culture, purpose, flexible work, and what leaders need to do differently in this day and age.

Have you ever thought was it was like to work in a single organization for 30+ years? Have you ever considered how cool it might be and what career development greatness might come of it? Dan Camp has. Since 1988, Dan has worked at McDonald's in a number of roles including his latest, managing director of McDonald's for the Czech Republic and Slovakia. In this engaging and full-of-career-goodness discussion between Dan Pontefract and Dan Camp, learn about Camp's time at Hamburger University, how he got his start, and what he's learned from a leadership perspective working across multiple different roles in multiple different cities across one of the world's most iconic brands, McDonald's.

Have you ever considered changing careers altogether? Have you ever thought about making a 180-degree workplace turn? Have you ever shifted from being a longstanding sales account executive in telecom to becoming a Royal Mail Letter Carrier in England? Phil Goddard has. Phil Goddard did. Phil Goddard now is. Cambridge, UK-based Phil Goddard is one of those rare examples in life. He stared down a role he was unhappy with and decided to shift his thinking. Check out this enlightening discussion between Dan Pontefract and Phil Goddard as the latter discusses his 25+ year career in telecom and why he shifted to becoming a Royal Mail letter carrier, sharing what he has learned along the way.