Accelerate Your Performance

Sports and athletics have offered many of us an opportunity to develop critical leadership and life skills. Today's episode features a special guest who faced a unique set of circumstances requiring him to remain agile and authentic throughout his childhood and young career. His focus on being persistent and developing personal relationships recently paid off as he was selected in the 2020 NFL draft. Listen as New Orleans Saints Rookie, Zack Baun, shares his take on leadership, a few of his goals, and inspiring messages for us all.

This episode addresses questions such as: 

• What does it mean to be successful?
• How can we overcome moments of adversity?
• Is there space for more than one leader on a team?

Recommended Resources:  Leading with Vulnerability, From Hopeless to Champion, Building Trust with New Teams & Develop Aspiring Leaders
Recommended Podcasts: Inspire Others to Achieve, Connecting with Young Professionals,  Hitting the Wall & Leaders Don't Whine

What are the signs of a workplace culture in need of shifting? Are you noticing a disconnect between what leaders are trying to accomplish and what employees are internalizing? Do your employees continue to ask questions about what the organization can do for them, rather than speaking to how their lives are better because they work there? Today Janet provides 6 actions to stop doing and 6 actions to start doing to positively accelerate your culture.

This episode addresses questions, such as:

• Is your culture on track? 
• What do people expect their organizations to do for them?
• How can we make life better for employees? 

Recommended Resources: Cultivating a Culture of Resilience, Culture & Strategy of Organizational Excellence, Boost the Employee Engagement & The Keys to Employee Engagement
Recommended Podcasts: Can You Fix My Culture?, Stop the Subconscious Behavior Infecting Your Organization, Addressing Poor Performance & Increase Employee Engagement with Recognition

Dale Shaver returns from epsiode #151 to share the biggest challenges their data reveal and key takeaways for all leaders willing to collaborate to find creative solutions to community wide problems. Waukesha County Government was no stranger to partnering with schools, however, this pandemic brought about an opportunity Dale refers to as, "Snow days on steroids." Through their collaborative community effort, Waukesha County has safely returned students to in-person learning and put 13 thousand people back to work.

This episode addresses questions, such as:

• What does it mean for an organization to think outside of its swim lane?
• Why does a consistent meeting cadance impact trust? 
• How can we work in collaboration across our communities to solve problems? 

Recommended Resources: Transmission of SARS-CoV-2 in K12 Schools, CDC Says it's Safe to Reopen Schools - with Proper Precautions,  Measuring What Matters, & Plan Strategically to Make a Lasting Impact
Recommended Podcasts: Monitoring Covid Transmission in Schools Part 1, Focus on the Positive, Empower and Invest in Your Teams, Make Silos Disappear & Stop the Subconscious Behavior Infecting Your  Organization

Recently we've been hearing conversations around data demonstrating that with certain approaches to safety, students can return back to school in classrooms. Dale Shaver from the Waukesha County Government returns to the podcast to share the strategic efforts their county has applied to connect public health and k12 education. The results of this high-performing, collaborative community effort reveal incredibly positive outcomes for their surrounding school districts in Wisconsin - one we can all learn from and model in our regions.

This episode addresses questions, such as:

• What do the data say about the rates of in-person school covid transmission?
• What are the benefits of communities working together to collect data? 
• How do business owners play a role in the county's decision-making? 

Recommended Resources: CDC Study Wood County WI, Measuring What Matters, Implementing PDSA Cycles & Plan Strategically to Make a Lasting Impact
Recommended Podcasts: Focus on the Positive, Empower and Invest in Your Teams & Make Silos Disappear

A leader's most important challenge is to keep the organization from falling. To remain good, or even great depends on how we roll strategy, people, and service into how we approach leadership in the next decade. As change becomes ongoing and more complex, a traditional strategic plan will no longer suffice. To continuously improve and continuously adapt to change we need a fluid, dynamic, agile strategy and a workplace focused on continuous learning. Listen as Janet shares 5 ways to lead and work differently as learning organizations of the future.

This episode addresses questions, such as:

• What will it take to create the right learning organizations of the future?
• Why is traditional strategic planning no longer effective? 
• How do we revolutionize our ways of doing business to continuously change and evolve? 

Recommended Resources: Anticipating Change, Why Organizational Change Fails, Think Like a Customer & HBR: Speeding Up Team Learning
Recommended Podcasts: 3 Changes to the Major Role of Leadership, The 5 Behavioral Traits for Sustaining Improvement, Becoming an Improvement Organization & Are You a Curious Leader?

Some topics are easier to approach in the workplace than others. Conflicting issues and viewpoints often leave leaders stuck between a rock and a hard place. Discussing topics like diversity and inclusion can feel risky for leaders who don't know how their teams will react. With these leaders in mind, Dr. Gayle Juneau Butler and Dr. Janet Pilcher collaborated to develop a 3-stage framework to have positive, inclusive conversations. Listen as Gayle joins Janet to walk us through that approach.

This episode addresses questions, such as:

• What is the biggest barrier for leaders who are trying to address conflicting issues and viewpoints in the workplace?
• How do we create a space people can trust and engage within? 
• What communication tactics can we use to approach inclusive conversations? 

Recommended Resources: Valuing All Voices, Connections in Times of Challenge, Key Words at Key Times for Resilient Leaders & How to Talk with Your Team About the Violence at the U.S. Capitol
Recommended Podcasts: Employees are Waiting to Hear from You, The Little Things Pay Great Dividends, Connecting to Purpose Gives Us Courage & Strive for Equity and to Serve the Most Vulnerable

Reflect on the last time someone gave you constructive feedback... did it feel like a gift? That likely depends on the intent of the person providing the feedback. Within our own teams and organizations providing constructive feedback to one another is a necessary step in the improvement process.  Yet feedback that is littered with generalizations does little to help others improve. Listen as Dr. Janet Pilcher describes how to provide feedback as a gift, instead of an insult.

This episode addresses questions, such as:

• Can constructive feedback feel like a gift?
• How can we productively provide feedback when actions need to be improved? 
• Why is feedback a two-way street? 

Recommended Resources: Feedback that Inspires, Three Positives for Everyone One Constructive Feedback, Agility and Pulse Survey Success & Send the Right Message
Recommended Podcasts: Do People Really Want Feedback? & Deliver Productive Feedback

To have any chance at alleviating the growing number of teacher shortages, traditional and nontraditional institutions responsible for educating teachers have to consider new business models that meet potential teachers where they are in their lives, careers and educational journeys. It’s time for a wholesale rethinking of how we recruit, educate and support teachers for the workforce of the future. Today, Janet shares how she brought this vision to life, and how other leaders can approach innovative solutions to meet people where they are.

This episode answers questions such as:

• How do we plan and act differently in higher education? 
• What does it really mean to provide a service that meets peoples' needs?
• Why should we strive for greater collaboration and flexibility in our education organizations?

Recommended Resources: The Future of Education: Modernizing the Learning Pathways of New Teachers, TeacherReady, Listening to Customer Feedback, & Think Like a Customer

Recommended Podcasts: Transforming TeacherReady & Embracing the Customer Experience

Routines provide structure and comfort within our teams. Rituals go beyond providing structure to instill a deeper meaning behind a sequence of actions. As we continuously navigate change, we need structure to reduce people's anxiety and increase their confidence. People need to know their work has purpose and is worthwhile in helping an organization achieve results. Today, Janet shares one of the most important rituals we can instill in our teams along with 6 suggestions to consider.

This episode answers questions such as:

• What behaviors and actions do we need to include in our work environment to move routines to rituals?
• How can we keep everyone in our organizations informed and aligned to achieve the goals?
• Why is the daily huddle a critical ritual for our team?

Recommended Resources: Motivate with Recognition, Sample Daily Huddle, How Focus Leads to Results, It's All Great Until I'm on a Call, & 5 Critical Employee Needs

Recommended Podcasts: Execute Well, Building Trust in the Workplace, Leading Change with Empathy & Make Complex Work Simple

What skills do we need to cultivate now to lead our organizations into the future? In this episode, Janet challenges the solution of reorganizing the hierarchical structures within our organizations and recommends we focus on increasing agility to manage through consistent and continuous change. As leaders our most important job is to develop and coach employees to work across boundaries, transforming people into leaders.

This episode answers questions such as:

• How do we advance our skills as the leader of the team?
• Which relationships at work are most important for employees to prioritize?
• What gets in the way of breaking down silos and building cross-boundary teams?

Recommended Resources: Cross-Silo Leadership, Busting Through Barriers, Identify Barriers in Action & Cultivating a Culture of Resilience
Recommended Podcasts: The 5 Behavioral Traits for Sustaining Improvement, The Behavior that's Holding Leader's Back,  Be Bold About Action & That's the Way it is