ILI Class Content

Simplify Work: Crushing Complexity

Featured Guest: Jesse W. Newton
We are in the midst of the fourth industrial revolution, yet have not realized the significant productivity gains that previous revolutions delivered. Author and Global Management Consultant Jesse Newton believes this to be in part because of the debilitating complexity that organizations have created over their existence. He’s spent years specializing in unburdening organizations from paralyzing complexity. Growing complexity has traditionally been met with added structures, processes, committees and systems. As a result, organizations often become a complicated mess, clouding strategic focus, slowing innovation and breeding complacency. In his new book, Simplify Work: Crushing Complexity to Liberate Innovation, Productivity, and Engagement, Newton delivers a newfound clarity on the case for simplification and the steps organizations and individuals need to take to unleash their potential.

Improve Virtual Team Success by Leveraging Paradox

Featured Guest: Jean Brittain Leslie
Organizations and the people working in them find themselves in environments that are increasingly volatile, uncertain, complex, and ambiguous (VUCA). Under these conditions, tensions that are ongoing, and seemingly overwhelming can be difficult to understand, much less easy to address. These tensions show up in all facets of organizational life including leadership (control vs. empowerment), teamwork (task vs. relationships), strategy (competition vs. collaboration), structure (centralize vs. decentralize), and in the individual (work vs. home). These conflicting demands, when pursued jointly, are often referred to as paradoxes. Reframing these tensions beyond either/or problems in need of a single solution enables us to produce an outcome that is superior to tackling one demand at a time. Jean explains how to work with paradox and apply these tools to improving virtual team success. She draws on the rich research she conducted to provide solutions.

Digital Body Language: How to Build Trust and Connection

Featured Guest: Erica Dhawan
In a world of work-from-home and so much of our personal interaction being digital, we need to understand what we are conveying by digital body language. Today, Erica Dhawan joins the show to share findings from her newest book – Digital Body Language – which decodes the new signals and cues of effective collaboration and teamwork in a digital-first human workplace. Listeners will learn to investigate and improve their own digital body language so that they can support a silo-breaking, trust-filled environment at their places of work. Listeners will understand that the language and punctuation we use across all mediums requires that we be careful, conscious and considerate, and always mindful of how our recipients might respond.

Leading with Story: Captivate, Convince, Inspire

Featured Guest: Paul Smith
Paul talks about the power of story for leaders. He shares his insights about what works, why it works and how you will be more effective as a leader if you master the use of story as one of your skills. Paul recounts a compelling story told by Bob McDonald, CEO of Proctor and Gamble and connects it to a primary leadership and parenting lesson for him. Through his use of story he illustrates: 1. What is a great leadership story? 2. What are the primary elements? 3. Why use stories to lead and sell? 4. What are the most common mistakes of using story? You will walk away with a foundation for using story in your role as a leader. You can also learn more about using story in leadership by reading Paul's book: Lead with Story.

S5-Ep1: Situational Analysis - Increase Presence and Effectiveness

Featured Guest: Belinda Gore, PhD & Mark Palmer
Situational analysis is one of the five key elements of Innovative Leadership. Being effective at situational analysis means you are able to evaluate four key elements of any organizational situation:
1. Your personal values and thoughts;
2. Your behavior;
3. The organizational culture; and,
4. The organizational systems and processes.
As leaders we are continually responding to changing and competing demands and situations. It is important to have a holistic framework that allows us to evaluate the situation and align each of the key elements. We use situational analysis in a broad range of circumstances ranging from validating key decisions to evaluating opportunities. This tool increases leadership effectiveness and also allows them to act with a higher level of authenticity and presence. A major theme of the conversation is presence. By understanding what is happening and who we are as well as what we value, we are liberated to be our authentic selves.

Difficult Conversations That Get Positive Results

Featured Guest: Marcia Reynolds
There is no more time to put it off – you have to have that uncomfortable conversation. Marcia Reynolds joins the show to help you turn resistance into a productive result. You will learn how to mentally prepare for your conversation as well as what to do while you are in it. No matter if you are wearing the hat of leader, parent, or friend, you will gain the confidence and tips you need to hold your next difficult conversation!

Implicit Bias - What You Don’t See Hurts You!

Featured Guest: Rebecca Heiss
Implicit bias creates a disadvantage for leaders and their organizations. We would like listeners to have a clearer understanding of what implicit bias is and how it impacts each of us. As leaders, we need to understand and manage implicit biases because they impact our hiring choices, promotion and succession decisions and our policies. To hire and retain top talent, we need to remove bias from the decision making process as much as possible. During this show, Rebecca talks about her research and extensive work in this field. She discusses: 1. What is implicit bias? 2. What is the business case for addressing it? 3. What examples have you seen where bias adversely impacts an organization meet it's goals internally with staff and externally with customers or clients? 4. What can leaders do to become aware of and reduce the impact of bias in themselves and their organizations? 5. What works for you with your biases?

The Roller Coaster Reality of Complex Transformations

Featured Guest: Dale Meyerrose & Michael Sayre
As we listen to leaders talk about their transformation success - it sounds as if they created a plan, executed on the plan and declared victory. In working with large complex change, this is rarely true. Things happen that derail the project such as acquisitions, divestitures, and market changes. The test of a successful leader is how he or she responds to the changes that happen and pivots to revise the strategy for success and implements these changes. Two seasoned experts answer the following questions and share their experiences: 1. You have both led successful transformations across multiple sectors and industries, what challenges that came up for you and how you responded? Let's start with a change you didn't anticipate? 2. How did you manage the people who were living through uncertainty - in some cases worried about losing jobs and their families financial security? 3. Did you see any common themes?

Leveraging Creative Conflict to Improve Impact

Featured Guest: Mike Morrow-Fox
One of the key skills leaders consistently struggle with is conflict management. In this discussion, Mike shares a range of approaches to help leaders address difficult conversations and manage conflict. Included is a discussion about why leaders need to address conflict including the impact of "bad apples" on team performance, and the impact of positive influences. Both are contagious, but confronting bad apples is essential to positive outcomes.
Mike then shares several models that help leaders think about how they will navigate the inevitable conflicts they will face. These models help leaders build actual skills to manage conflict personally. Finally, Mike talks about building a culture that supports healthy conflict resolution. It is not enough for key leaders to have the skills, it is important to build the organizational aptitude and agreements about how it will navigate conflict in a manner that is generative. When conflict is addressed effectively, organizations thrive.

Building Leadership Self-Awareness Using Type

Featured Guest: Belinda Gore
Part of the challenge in building innovative leadership is learning to become more introspective and how to put that introspective knowledge into practice. Looking inside yourself—examining the very makeup of your inner world—enables you to function in a highly grounded way, rather than operating from reactive habits and biases that simply lead to more uninformed or unconscious decision making. One way to observe this is by examining qualities intrinsic to your inner being, described as types, which reflect the basic makeup of your personality. The Leader Personality Type plays a critical role in how you see the organization and also how you provide guidance. It is an essential foundation of your personal makeup and greatly shapes your leadership effectiveness. During this interview, Belinda and Maureen will discuss how to use the Enneagram to prepare leaders to improve their self-awareness AND their leadership effectiveness.