A Leadership Beyond

"Whether in business or our personal lives, clarity comes from having a clear sense of the self. When we are aligned with our inner wisdom all things are possible." -Kristin Lamar

We hear the clarion call to "bring our whole selves to work." Despite this, the fear of competing agendas and possible friction from diverse religious affiliations, can create an environment where people are hesitant to bring their spirituality to work. We are body, mind, and spirit; the whole person is not present if we deny the soul in our work.

What's a leader to do about this challenge?

In this riveting 30-minute conversation, Kristin Lamar offers us tips on how to become more conscious as leaders and to muster the courage to better align mindsets – professional, mental, and soulful.

The attempt to separate body, heart, mind and soul leads to dissolution and loss of power, insight, authenticity, creativity, resourcefulness, and creativity.

Kristin shows up in a way that builds instant trust as she encourages us to trust our inner wisdom and highest self – everywhere, including at work.

Conscious alignment is our superpower! Listen to this episode to hear the gems gleaned from our conversation with Kristin.

A Leadership Beyond exists to support the alignment between the business strategy and people strategy - to drive results with people not at the expense of people (Talent Optimization).

Subscribe to our podcast to join the Leadership Beyond Community of Conversation and hear insights from thought leaders and human development experts leading the way in the field of Talent Optimization.

As always, we'd love to hear from you about your insights, challenges, and successes around leading (self and others) through transitions.

Awareness is the starting point of most of our leadership discussions within this community of conversation. Once aware, we need a framework to guide our thinking and do authentic discovery.

This week's guest Michele Wucker, deepens our awareness of the peril we face if we ignore risk, as well as the opportunity for success, happiness and fulfilment presented by learning to navigate risks more effectively. Her newest book examines evaluating risk from the highly personal reflection, to cultural and global implications.

You Are What You Risk builds on, and in many ways mirrors, Michele's masterpiece The Gray Rhino, How to Recognize and Act on the Obvious Dangers We Ignore.

We are confident you will benefit from this thought-provoking and inspirational conversation. Michele has a gift in her ability to bring academic depth to life through the power of story.

A Leadership Beyond exists to support the alignment between the business strategy and people strategy - to drive results with people not at the expense of people (Talent Optimization).

Subscribe to our podcast to join the A Leadership Beyond Community of Conversation and hear insights from thought leaders and human development experts leading the way in the field of Talent Optimization.

As always, we'd love to hear from you about your insights, challenges, and successes around leading (self and others) through transitions.

With a background in staffing, our guest this week, Milan Batinich developed a passion for helping companies and individuals find the right talent and the right work. He started with a company that utilized Predictive Index (PI) for their hiring. At first, he was not a believer, but came to see how powerful a behavioral assessment is in leveraging behaviors and drives to support creating alignment between the individual, the culture of the organization, and the work to be done.

From the foundation of staffing contact centers, Milan has become a certified PI trainer and is certified through Stanford University on human behaviors and how to coach people for high performance. Recently, Milan has launched a motivational speaking business helping leadership teams learn about finding their Ikigai (Japanese concept that combines the terms iki, meaning "alive" or "life," and gai, meaning "benefit" or "worth").

Among the key points emerging from our conversation:

• You can't manage what you can't measure. For example, Milan sites a company he worked for with 60 employees experiencing a 90% turnover. Using people data, this company lowered their annual attrition rate from 90% down to 14.9%.
• Knowing what the job entails and the requirements of the work both cognitively and behaviorally makes it possible to do a better job of matching people to work.
• Finding the right fit works as well for existing employees as it does for recruiting. Milan shares an example of two internal employees mismatched and the solution turned out to be switching roles. We tend to throw work at people and people at work. Predictive Index used with the Talent Optimization framework helps us be more intentional.
• Coaching becomes more effective when we understand ourselves, the person we are communicating with, and the shared goals we are striving toward. Without this awareness we tend to coach based on our own style.
• The default of most companies for motivation is extrinsic. We establish rewards and benefits but ignore the intrinsic motivation. Predictive Index helps uncover internal motivations.

Listen as Milan shares his insights and experience of using Predictive Index to optimize talent.

A Leadership Beyond exists to support the alignment between the business strategy and people strategy - to drive results with people not at the expense of people (Talent Optimization).

Subscribe to our podcast to join the Leadership Beyond Community of Conversation and hear insights from thought leaders and human development experts leading the way in the field of Talent Optimization.

As always, we'd love to hear from you about your insights, challenges, and successes around leading (self and others) through transitions.

We are called to thrive.

Yes, we must first of all survive as signified in Maslow's Hierarchy.

Our community of conversation is dedicated to nourishing the siren call to go beyond, and to be sure to join others as we learn to thrive, despite our challenges. Thriving together. We can get beyond the shock to our world brought to us by accelerated change and exacerbated by the pandemic. But never alone!

For this episode we had the opportunity to chat with two experts who have collaborated with a team to research, write about, teach, and share ways we can seize the pain of change to create better leaders and transform this pain into an opportunity for better work, better lives, better world.

Welcome our guests from Lewis University, Adrienne's alma mater, Dr. Michele R. Kramer, PhD, MSN, RN, AHN-BC and Dr. Lesley Page, PhD. We mention this because it relates to our recently published networking strategy guide. Adrienne got the diploma and easily could have just moved on with life. But as a lifelong learner, she made the effort to stay connected to Lewis and her friends and educational mentors. Lucky us that she did!

Michele and Lesley had been focusing on new approaches of leadership, with a more wholistic and spiritual foundation. They recognized that the comprehensive tome published every decade was not sufficient to address the ever-changing field of leadership and leadership study. They began writing articles on the subject.

And then COVID hit! Each of us can identify and follow that statement with how radically their work was upended. Yes, and the field of health care, even more! Their recent research is driven by the collision of understanding leadership and navigating the pandemic. Listen as our guests share insights into leadership in a VUCA environment (volatile, uncertain, complex, and ambiguous).

A Leadership Beyond exists to support the alignment between the business strategy and people strategy - to drive results with people not at the expense of people (Talent Optimization).

Subscribe to our podcast to join the Leadership Beyond Community of Conversation and hear insights from thought leaders and human development experts leading the way in the field of Talent Optimization.

As always, we'd love to hear from you about your insights, challenges, and successes around leading (self and others) through transitions.

Rather than having a guest this week, we decided to record the co-founders of this community having a conversation using Your Strategic Networking Guide. The strategy guide is the first module in our Strategic Leadership Series. Download your copy at https://aleadershipbeyond.com/your-strategic-networking-guide. If we are not already connected, you'll be automatically subscribed to become part of our community to whom we bring the expertise of leaders as well as insights on optimizing your leadership excellence.

Your Strategic Networking Guide is comprised of a series of generative questions that help you focus your networking activities according to your values, style, and goals.

We are preparing to initiate a research project to discern the greatest challenges that leaders are facing in strategy, execution, and all points between. We will focus our outreach for participants within our own networks, rather than a broad solicitation to the masses.

We desire to get beneath the buzzwords (Great Resignation, Quiet Quitting, you know them) to the day-to-day, real-world challenges on the messy runway of leadership execution. Our intention is to harness this research to tailor services that support addressing the most pressing leadership needs.

We hope by hearing our example of this guide in action inspires you to try it for yourself. We invite you to play around with the Strategic Networking Guide and we welcome thoughts on your experience.

Stay tuned for more on our Leadership research initiative.

A Leadership Beyond exists to support the alignment between the business strategy and people strategy - to drive results with people not at the expense of people (Talent Optimization).

Subscribe to our podcast to join the Leadership Beyond Community of Conversation and hear insights from thought leaders and human development experts leading the way in the field of Talent Optimization.

As always, we'd love to hear from you about your insights, challenges, and successes around leading (self and others) through transitions.

For this episode we had the opportunity to chat again with the Queen of Clarity, Ann Latham.

The discussion was about her newest book, The Disconnect Principle.

A continuous struggle in business communication is giving and receiving feedback well. While formulas focusing on behavior and impact may help to a certain degree, we are still left uncomfortable giving feedback, tend to procrastinate or sugarcoat our feedback until the message and meaning are lost.

The disconnect principle is as simple as it is powerful:

"If someone doesn't do as you expected, all you know for sure is that he or she didn't do as you expected. Period. There is a disconnect between what you expected and what happened."

We are too quick to assume we know the cause of the disconnect: He's not committed, she's not reliable, he's inconsiderate, she needs more training…. and endless speculation that ends the real communication, and thwarts the process of realignment.

Ann shares, the best response to a disconnect is "I think we have a disconnect." Our assumptions, judgments and speculation allow our disclarity to appear as clarity. We claim to know, therefore disrupting discovery into what truly is going on and how we can work together to prevent disconnect in the future.

The Disconnect Principle is something we can begin to practice today, as well as something we can build on individually, in our teams and throughout the culture to grow in building better relationships and producing better results.

Listen to this episode as Ann shares some people-centered, collaborative problem-solving insights from her new book.

A Leadership Beyond exists to support the alignment between the business strategy and people strategy - to drive results with people not at the expense of people (Talent Optimization).

Subscribe to our podcast to join the Leadership Beyond Community of Conversation and hear insights from thought leaders and human development experts leading the way in the field of Talent Optimization.

As always, we'd love to hear from you about your insights, challenges, and successes around leading (self and others) through transitions.

The word "philosophy" means love of wisdom. Wisdom is not contained in abstract concepts, nor in academic mental gymnastics. Such exercises can be effective as they sharpen our ability to think critically. But philosophy at its core has always been about living a great life, aligned as best we can to the highest imaginable good.

Life optimized!

For this week's episode we had the opportunity to chat with Paul LaLonde, Vice President of People and Culture at the Community Economic Development Association of Cook County (CEDA).

Paul happened across a modern perspective on the ancient work of Epictetus. He grabbed this book in the bargain bin at the bookstore and this philosophy continues to impact his personal and professional life.

Paul is a contributor to the soon to be released book, People Fusion: Best Practices to Build and Retain a Strong Team. Paul contributes the chapter entitled "The HR Philosopher: How Philosophy Can Be a Difference Making Pursuit for Business Leaders."

Listen as Paul shares some gems of wisdom with our community.

A Leadership Beyond exists to support the alignment between the business strategy and people strategy - to drive results with people not at the expense of people (Talent Optimization).

Subscribe to our podcast to join the Leadership Beyond Community of Conversation and hear insights from thought leaders and human development experts leading the way in the field of Talent Optimization.

As always, we'd love to hear from you about your insights, challenges, and successes around leading (self and others) through transitions.

Adrienne and Tom, co-founders of this growing community of conversation, decided to practice what they continually teach and need to remind themselves and others to do.

For the last recording of 2022 (first post of 2023), rather than have a guest, they took time to breathe, pause, celebrate, and reflect. Before digging in for the work of the exciting new year, let's reflect on where A Leadership Beyond has been and set intentions for the new year. Watch as Tom and Adrienne reflect on 2022 and share their plans for 2023.

A Leadership Beyond exists to support the alignment between the business strategy and people strategy - to drive results with people not at the expense of people (Talent Optimization).

Subscribe to our podcast to join the Leadership Beyond Community of Conversation and hear insights from thought leaders and human development experts leading the way in the field of Talent Optimization.

As always, we'd love to hear from you about your insights, challenges, and successes around leading (self and others) through transitions.

This week we had the opportunity to interview Robert Snyder, author of the soon to be released book, Innovation Elegance: Transcending Agile with Ruthlessness and Grace.

In our community's name is the word "beyond." What we intend to imply is that leaders must manage the messy runway while at the same time collaborating, innovating, and creating a compelling future of work – at the individual, team, organization, and societal levels.

The good news is we don't create from scratch, we can draw from what is currently working and find new applications.

Robert draws leadership and management ideas from the Performing Arts with a unique style, using analogy and metaphor in a way that makes the business application accessible and immediately actionable.

A glance at his bio and his business experience clearly shows how he's made this strong connection. Listen as Robert tells of his journey from an awkward male beginner in Latin dance, to being part of a dance team, and now teaching dance. Every phase of his dance learning journey contains lessons for us all.

A Leadership Beyond exists to support the alignment between the business strategy and people strategy - to drive results with people not at the expense of people (Talent Optimization).

Subscribe to our podcast to join the Leadership Beyond Community of Conversation and hear insights from thought leaders and human development experts leading the way in the field of Talent Optimization.

As always, we'd love to hear from you about your insights, challenges, and successes around leading (self and others) through transitions.

Our guest this week is Liz Brigham. Liz is the W. Spencer Mitchem Director of Innovation and Entrepreneurship at the Jay Hurt Hub for Innovation and Entrepreneurship at Davidson College.

Liz has had vast and varied experiences in her career, which includes Disney, industrial supply distribution, and leadership in a global financial company. That journey finally led to her current role of being a catalyst for innovation and entrepreneurship within higher education. Liz's role is not confined to higher education but is focused on serving Davidson College, the community, students, alumni, and faculty, as well as the local community and the world at large.

That winding road moved fast for Liz, but she stayed grounded and brought her love for people and desire to be a builder to every turn of her career. Listen as Liz shares what keeps her grounded in a fast-paced, result-oriented world.

A Leadership Beyond exists to support the alignment between the business strategy and people strategy - to drive results with people not at the expense of people (Talent Optimization).

Subscribe to our podcast to join the Leadership Beyond Community of Conversation and hear insights from thought leaders and human development experts leading the way in the field of Talent Optimization.

As always, we'd love to hear from you about your insights, challenges, and successes around leading (self and others) through transitions. To learn more visit us at https://aleadershipbeyond.com.