A Leadership Beyond

The principals at A Leadership Beyond are Predictive Index practitioners precisely because we are passionate about putting people at the center of leading change at the global and local level. Putting people first is the right thing to do, but we need to establish the business case as well as the moral case. Without a framework (Talent Optimization and tools (Predictive Index Assessment), even the most well-intentioned people initiatives fall short.

In our latest conversation we spoke with Olivier Aries Co-Founder/Talent Optimization Implementer at Thrive Collective. Our conversation focused on the Diagnose component of Talent Optimization, which is a tool to measure engagement of the people that leads to strategic action to fill any identified gaps. Here are a few of the highlights of this dynamic conversation:

• The importance of pulling people data in at the start of the change initiative.
• Engagement defined as the amount of discretionary effort employees put into their work above and beyond what is necessary to stay employed.
• You can't directly impact engagement. Instead, we must focus on what drives engagement, and what causes poor engagement. To impact engagement, leaders need to understand and act on the primary levers to better engagement.
• Right people in the right environment. Even the best people will fail in a toxic environment. We need to address the company culture, the team design, and the individual drives.
• The importance of evaluating your readiness to act before you stir the pot with an engagement survey. You lose credibility if you aren't committed to act. Be mindful of your capacity to change.
• The power to leverage data in an aggregate, team, and individual level. Just as self-awareness is a critical leadership skill for individuals, so can it be for teams and the entire system. Predictive Index empowers organization to scale awareness to create action to drive results (execution) by aligning business strategy to people strategy.

At the end of the day, creating an environment for high engagement results in execution. This is where business strategy and people strategy meet. People who are proud to be a part of the strategy, producing better work, and creating a better world.

That's Talent Optimized!

To discover how to realize these benefits for your organization and your people, contact us at [email protected].

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 Power of Founder & Force Multiplier

Manal Keen, CEO of Founder & Force Multiplier brings passion and commitment to every conversation.

In this conversation, Manal gives us her story, the drive behind her biggest why, as well as a good overview of the book The Founder & The Force Multiplier.

We won't give too much away, but her career journey toward her "why" is amazing – relatable and inspiring. She excelled in the male-dominated field of financial services, holding various roles in large financial institutions heading finance and strategy positions. (Eye-opening fact that she shares: females currently manage fewer than 2% of assets under management.)

Wanting to make a bigger difference and impact women and minorities in a more direct way, Manal is going to help lead the way to change that fact through her new roles as the first female adjunct professor at the University of North Texas in Denton to teach investments. Additionally, Manal is part of the Investment Management Board focused on driving internship opportunities for females, minorities, and students in underserved communities.

But she's not stopping there! Manal reconnected with Adam Hergenrother and became fascinated by the story of how the strategic partnership between Adam and Hallie Warner allowed Adam to become a serial entrepreneur.

Going from blog, to book, to movement requires new strategic partners and Manal is all in as this opportunity meets her passion for teaching, mentoring and inspiring business leaders. This already includes a recently launched podcast, a curriculum, white papers and much more to come.

A few insights from our conversation with Manal:

• A clear definition on the role of Force Multiplier and key distinction among operation manager, executive assistant, and chief of staff.
• The foundation of successful partnerships is a shared vision and values.
• Success in these partnerships is predicated in strong communication: open mind, constructive feedback, and trust. Soft skills aren't so soft, are they?
• Leveraging the 80/20 rule-with intention, by design, and with collaboration.

We thank Manal for sharing her passion and commitment with us.

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.

Tom & Adrienne

Hire the Right People - A Conversation with Dan Adams

We are excited to share our conversation with Dan Adams, an experienced Learning & Development Leader who is passionate about Tech, Cars, and Saving the Planet.

In this conversation we are taking a case study approach to demonstrate the practical application of using Predictive Index to quickly hire the right people to execute a new strategy.

This is a case study on how Predictive Index, "quite frankly saved our butts. Predictive Index was the difference between success and failure."

Thank you to Dan for sharing his experience using @Predictive Index to drive results (high sales, lower returns) by aligning his business strategy and his people strategy.

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 welcome your questions, comments, and suggestions. To discover how to realize these benefits for your organization and your people, contact us at [email protected].

Our guest this week is Amy Riley, author of The Courage of a Leader.

Amy has spent decades teaching leaders how to step up, inspire, engage, and get extraordinary results. She helps them lead with courage.

"I want to help leaders, there is so much coming at them from all directions. I want to support them. If leaders are doing it correctly, there is a lot of processing and a lot of care, and a lot of head and heart that goes into their work."

Why Courage?

After collaborating with leaders in multiple industries, with diverse strengths, personalities, styles, and backgrounds, Amy observed that the common virtue present in all inspiring leaders was a bold demonstration of courage. These leaders said and did the necessary -- easy or not -- while maintaining authenticity. That's courage.

We are grateful to have Amy Riley in our community and confident you will benefit as we have from our conversation.

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 T. Falcon Napier, an internationally-recognized human development expert, specializing in sales, leadership and change management. He is the Founder of the Institute for Productive Tension® — an organization that researches the role of Productive Tension® in human performance.

Mr. Napier is best known for bringing the principles, tools and techniques of professional Tension Management® to corporate audiences worldwide through his three flagship programs: ChangeWorks!®, MasterStream® and Pride-Based Leadership®. He is also creator of the ChangeGrid® — the world's only client-driven, activity-specific coaching and management tool.

When we hear the word tension, our thoughts immediately go to high levels of tension, stress. The terms "tension" and "stress" have almost become synonymous.

Oh, I'm so stressed, so tense.

While it's true that leaders need a strategy for dealing with stakeholders experiencing high levels of tension, it is equally true and often overlooked that leaders need a strategy for dealing with little to no tension and all points between.

If we want to positively influence change, we must pay attention to where people experience tension.

In this episode, T. Falcon Napier helps us to see how to help people in a personal or professional situation to lead desired change more successfully by monitoring and managing the level of productive tension in themselves and others.

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.

On this episode of A Leadership Beyond podcast, we had a conversation with Dr. Julie Pham, author of the book, 7 forms of respect.

Julie Pham was born in Vietnam, came to the United States with her parents as a boat person. That is a strong part of her identity, and she learned early both the challenges and rewards of being bicultural. She had to adapt to being Vietnamese at home, American at school and work. Added to this is her experience studying and working in the UK, Germany, and Vietnam. These experiences have influenced and shaped the way Julie thinks about respect.

Julie launched research around how we like to be treated at work. The word "respect" kept showing up and she realized that people clearly sought respect, but there was fuzziness around what it is. This led her to create a new framework, 7 forms of respect™ to help us navigate gaining a deeper understanding of one another. This framework is highly actionable at the individual, team, organizational, and even societal level.

7 forms of respect™ is built on a foundation of sound research including focus groups, interviews, surveys, and personal experience. The real plus is that Julie presents in the form of conversation, just the way our community prefers. Adrienne and Tom left the conversation wanting to learn more.

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.

"Those at the top of the mountain didn't fall there." -Vince Lombardi

In this episode of A Leadership Beyond we had the pleasure of interviewing Tiffany Prince, author of Top of the Mountain Leadership.

Tiffany refers to herself as an "accidental trainer." She excelled as an individual contributor in biotech pharma and was promoted. She found herself thrust into a position with responsibility for others. She quickly realized this challenge required new and different skills than her technical position.

This seems like a no-brainer to this audience, but Tiffany points out from her research that 70% of leaders are not given leadership development support when they step into a new leadership role. Or the new leaders are thrown into a comprehensive, one size fits all program with no follow up - the "leadership training" box is checked.

There is a great cost to failing to provide strategic leadership training and career development support. Among them: losing good talent, drain on employee engagement, lower innovation, unproductive teams.

This conversation is full of tips from Tiffany's research and personal experience.

Tiffany Prince has done extensive research on the impact that artificial intelligence and globalization have on the future of work; she is passionate to see that we maintain a positive and humanistic approach. We'll join that cause!

We enjoyed this conversation with Tiffany and find ourselves wanting more.

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 episode is Naval Flight officer and COO of Wolf Management Solutions, Ron Higgs. We had the opportunity to discuss how to cultivate the mindset of a Naval flight officer, and how to translate these attributes into success for our unique leadership journey.

Here are a few insights you'll get from listening to this dynamic conversation with Ron:

-The three components to ensure we learn from every mission: Aviate, Navigate, Communicate

-The importance of planning – as well as remembering that, "Aviation is like life, things rarely go as planned. Plan for the scenarios: "What happens if the engine fails?"

-Understand YOUR own mission and how it relates to the Bigger Mission

-Feedback is the key to learning from what went right - and wrong

-Revisit the mission frequently through the lens of shared values

-A framework for understanding leadership styles for predictable success: Visionary, Operator, Processor, and Synergist

Ron shares that flying is the easiest part; landing is the harder part. Harder yet: landing when things go wrong while in flight.

The pandemic made this truth close to home for us. We may have been cruising along on auto pilot… and then …

Soar on, dear leadership flight officers!

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.

In this week's conversation we spoke with Damaris Patterson Price. Damaris uses story and the power of metaphor without ever losing mooring to the practical action needed to be our best as leaders.

In our conversation, Damaris refers to Shakespeare and Gulliver's Travels, but the emphasis remains, as her book promises, on straight answers about how we can unlock our truest leadership power.

Here are a few highlights from our conversation:

What is a leader? The perception and attraction to becoming a leader can be the title, the money, the status, the power -- in short, positional. This drive comes up empty and self-serving overall. The best leadership is to become your best in service to your people, your customers, and all stakeholders.

Permission – Give yourself permission to claim your gifts, to step up and stand out. This can be especially difficult for female leaders wary of appearing arrogant.

Humility – Confident, yes! Arrogant, no. The tension between hubris and insecurity. Walk as servant rather than as an expert.

Fall in love with your work – Become willing to pay the price. Remain ever curious, ever learning and determined to be the best you can.

Reimagining Human Resources – A consultancy; not an order taking or giving department. Solving business problems through an "HRian" lens.

We hope you enjoy and benefit from the conversation as we did.

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.

"Everyone has a plan until they get hit in the mouth." ~Mike Tyson

A recurring theme in our community is that COVID has challenged our assumptions, forced us to rethink strategy, and raise our leadership game. And it has led many of us to amazing transformational change, whether we intended to or not.

The journey of leading transformational change must always begin in each of us, AND fortunately we never do it alone. The best we can do is watch, listen, and learn with other leaders that have great perspective, insight, and broad experience.

It was a thrill to have the opportunity to engage with Ian Ziskin, accomplished leader, and lead author of the recently released book The Secret Sauce for Leading Transformational Change.

This powerful book is a collaborative project, with two hundred voices contributing. Each contributor concludes with leadership suggestions for action, making the format of this book especially pragmatic. Because of the number of contributors, each author must be concise. Ian points out, "Over 200 voices in just under 200 pages."

The book is perfect for skimming as well as deeper reflection on what resonates most. Great for summer reading!

The contributors to The Secret Sauce are drawn from Consortium for Change – Business inSITE Group (C4C), a community co-founded by Ian, consisting of a network of seventy-five successful coaches and consultants.

The additional authors are business leaders with experience leading transformational change.

Listen to this dynamic conversation with Ian to gain these insights:

-Three "Ts" important to leading transformational change

-Reflections on reimagining Human Resources

-Explanation of wholistic systemic change vs. situational

We are confident you will benefit from this conversation on transformational change and anticipate the book to be added to your summer reading list.

If you'd like to take it even a step further and bring the conversation of The Secret Sauce to your people, let us know, we're happy to make that connection.

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.