Circle Up & Get REAL Podcast

When does our desire to win become stronger than our desire to build the community we say we want?

In this solo episode of Circle Up & Get REAL, I'm sharing the questions and connections coming up as I read William Ury's Possible. When does belonging start costing us our discernment? What happens when certainty replaces curiosity? And whose voices disappear when we insist there are only two sides?

I reflect on the difference between belonging and mattering, what it means to listen to understand, and Ury's invitations to go to the balcony, build a golden bridge, and engage the third side. Memories of a labor strike that divided families and communities coming together after devastating events bring me back to another question: Could we build those connections before a crisis asks us to?

I'm still reading, still pondering, and asking these questions of myself, too. What could become possible if we held our convictions and stayed willing to learn?

Matthew Hallaway spent the first 20 years of his career in banking. Today, he is the new Director of Advancement for Fargo-Moorhead Community Theatre—and preparing to take the stage himself as Inspector Eddie Constantine in Last Call at Chez Mort.

Looking backward, the path makes more sense than it might have while he was walking it. Mentors encouraged him to get involved. Relationships introduced him to new people and possibilities. His family developed a shared love of theater. Each experience opened another door, and Matthew chose to walk through it.

In this episode of Circle Up & Get REAL, Matthew and I talk about the role of the arts in creating a vibrant community, the many ways people can participate beyond performing onstage, and the ambitious new home being built for FMCT in downtown Fargo.

We also explore the difference between asking people for money and inviting them to invest in something meaningful. For Matthew, development is about building long-term relationships and collaborating to create a community where people can feel more alive.

Whether your place is onstage, backstage, in the audience, at work, or somewhere you haven't discovered yet, this conversation is an invitation to participate. A vibrant community doesn't happen around us. It grows through us.

For more info about FMCT, visit www.fmct.org. Reach out to Matthew via email at [email protected].

What happens when the career you've dreamed about no longer fits—and the business you build next asks you to grow in ways you didn't expect?

In Episode 326 of Circle Up and Get REAL, I welcome marketing strategist, coach, author, and Clarity to CEO podcast host Philippa Channer. Philippa connects the dots from managing high school football equipment to nonprofit communications, police academy, and launching Channer Consulting in February 2020.

Together, we explore recognizing strengths we may take for granted, becoming willing to receive coaching, and questioning advice we've followed without checking whether it works. Philippa shares how her work evolved from creating social media content to helping women entrepreneurs understand strategy and put it into practice.

The conversation also explores thinking beyond daily tasks, choosing what kind of business we actually want, and making room for life outside work. Philippa introduces her book, When Clarity Leads, and makes a promise to herself about her next chapter.

As you listen, consider: What are you continuing to do because someone once told you it was the right way—and is it still serving you?

Connect with Philippa at https://www.philippachanner.com or find Philippa Channer on LinkedIn.

What does it really mean to do what you say you will do?

In Part 2 of my conversation with longtime friend, mentor, and Extreme Leadership author Steve Farber, we continue exploring the ideas behind his newest book, The Radical Promise, co-authored with Jim Kouzes and Barry Posner.

Our conversation starts with love — something Steve has been talking about in the context of leadership and business for decades. Not love as sentiment or something "soft," but love made visible through action. Because, as Steve points out, without action behind the words, love isn't much more than a greeting card.

From there, we dig into credibility and the deceptively simple practice at the heart of The Radical Promise: Do What You Say You Will Do.

But what happens when we move from I to we?

For leaders, credibility isn't only about keeping personal promises. It's about modeling what we say we value as an organization. If the values on the wall aren't visible in the way leaders make decisions, allocate resources, communicate, and treat people, those values can actually undermine credibility rather than strengthen it.

We also explore the importance of knowing our own personal values, why alignment matters for engagement and commitment, and why organizations might benefit from asking a question that is surprisingly easy to overlook:

What's important to you?

And then the conversation gets wonderfully practical.

Steve and I both confess that The Radical Promise has made us notice the seemingly insignificant promises that fall out of our mouths: "I'll bring you that book." "I'll send you that." "I'll do that next time."

Do those count?

Maybe especially those.

When expectations have gotten low enough, simply becoming someone whose word can be counted on begins to stand out. And Steve takes the idea one step further: What if we listened closely enough to notice something another person would value — and did it without ever promising to?

We also talk about audacity, the difference between ego-inspired and love-inspired audacity, and the reminder that changing the world doesn't have to mean changing the whole world. We each have a small-w world — a family, team, organization, community, or even one relationship — where our choices matter.

This conversation ultimately comes back to something both very simple and very challenging:

Before asking other people to live up to their words, what if we started by asking whether we are living up to ours?

Go to www.theradicalpromise.com to become a founding member and find out more!

A Facebook meme about gas prices and the Keystone pipeline sent me looking for more information. But what caught my attention wasn't really the pipeline. It was the conversation underneath the meme—and the language people were using about "us" and "them."

I began wondering: Who exactly is "they"? What makes someone part of "us"? And why can questioning a group's assumptions be interpreted as evidence that you belong to the other side?

Then the inquiry became more personal.

As I tried to correct what I saw happening in the conversation, I began to recognize that I might be demonstrating the very pattern I was pointing out. I became committed to being right. I created my own "them." And in my attempt to correct, I may have forgotten to connect.

In this solo episode of Circle Up & Get REAL, I explore the relationship between belonging, certainty, curiosity, and our very human desire to know that we are on the right side. I also wonder whether we can create communities with a meaningful "us" that doesn't require someone else to become "them."

And yes, there is also a meme involving moose heads, a man tied to the roof of a vehicle, and the sweeping conclusion that men cannot be left alone.

We can practice discernment, notice our own patterns—and still laugh.

What if serving a mission didn't require sacrificing yourself in the process?

In this episode of Circle Up and Get REAL, I sit down with Kayla Deitch, the first full-time Executive Director of the North Dakota Association of Nonprofit Organizations — NDANO.

Kayla stepped into a 30-year-old organization at a moment of change, with an opportunity to listen, build relationships, connect nonprofit leaders across North Dakota, and help imagine what the sector could become.

And there is plenty to imagine.

We talk about the realities many nonprofit leaders are facing: burnout, underpayment, isolation, uncertain funding, and the pressure to keep doing more with less.

But we also talk about possibility.

What happens when nonprofit leaders stop accepting scarcity as part of the job?

What if fair compensation isn't selfish, but part of creating sustainable organizations?

What if nonprofit leaders don't have to figure everything out alone?

And what changes when organizations begin to see one another not as competitors for limited resources, but as potential collaborators?

Kayla shares what she is learning during her first months in the role, why she is spending so much time listening to leaders across the state, how she is thinking about advocacy, and why she believes breaking down silos may be one of the most important things NDANO can do.

We also explore the tension between running a nonprofit like a business and remembering that mission and impact can't always be captured on a spreadsheet.

Along the way, we talk about authentic leadership, abundance, resilience, board development, AI, and the courage to be the person who sees possibilities other people might call naive.

Maybe nonprofit leadership doesn't need more people willing to sacrifice themselves for the mission.

Maybe it needs more people willing to create the conditions where both the mission — and the humans carrying it — can thrive.

What is your word worth?

In this episode, I sit down with my longtime friend Steve Farber to talk about his newest book, The Radical Promise—and an idea that sounds remarkably simple:

Do what you say you will do.

But Steve's invitation goes much deeper than keeping the big promises we consciously make.

What about the casual "I'll get back to you"?

The introduction you said you'd make.

The email you meant to send.

The thing you told your team you'd take care of.

Were those promises?

Steve and I explore how credibility is built—or quietly eroded—in those seemingly insignificant moments. We talk about why leaders may be making commitments without realizing it, what it means to develop a more "contractual attitude" toward our words, and why consistently following through can make someone remarkably valuable in a world where people have grown accustomed to being disappointed.

Steve also takes us behind the scenes of The Radical Promise: why he returned to the parable-style storytelling of his earlier books, how real people and experiences found their way into the story, and how leadership legends Jim Kouzes and Barry Posner became part of the narrative.

We also talk about overcommitting, learning to say no, tracking the promises we make, and the connection between credibility, love, leadership, and the kinds of workplaces we create.

And because Steve and I have known each other since 2004, there are a few stories along the way.

Maybe the question isn't simply, "Do I keep my promises?"

Maybe it's:

Do I know when I've made one?

Find out more about Steve's new book at www.theradicalpromise.com.

Wayne Dyer famously said, 'When you change the way you look at things, the things you look at change.' But do they? Does the object itself change—or does a different perspective allow us to see something that was there all along? In this solo episode, Jodee moves from that question into her first full spoken explanation of Human Systems Development. Rather than treating an organization as a machine whose people and outcomes can be controlled, Human Systems Development asks us to see people, relationships, teams, cultures, and organizations as living systems. Every system is already producing outcomes consistent with the conditions that have emerged within it. We cannot plant corn and demand a carrot. We can, however, become more conscious of the ground we are tending. Jodee explores culture as something elusive but always present—much like electricity or energy. We may not be able to hold it in our hands, but we can feel its effects, and it always leaves clues. She introduces three parts of the Human Systems Development worldview: how we develop capacity, how we see the system, and how we work together over time. She also invites us to look through three lenses: individual, relational, and systemic. The goal is not to eliminate tension and uncertainty or engineer people into predetermined outcomes. It is to develop our shared capacity to navigate reality well, notice what our systems are producing, and tend the conditions in which people can contribute, learn, and become more fully who they are.

Most meaningful decisions are not between right and wrong. Jodee explores the fine lines between being and doing, acceptance and resignation, conviction and certainty, and stewardship and control — and the discernment required to feel the difference.

We often talk about decisions as though the choices are obvious: one way is right and the other is wrong. But many of the decisions that shape our lives happen somewhere less certain — between right and right, along fine lines that shift with our intention, energy, experience, and circumstances. In this solo episode, Jodee explores several of those distinctions: being and doing, patience and passivity, acceptance and resignation, conviction and certainty, surrender and giving up, and stewardship and control. From the outside, the behaviors can look almost identical. The difference often lives underneath them. Jodee reflects on a time when constant doing looked like dedication but was also connected to avoidance, resentment, and the identity she had built around being the person who would always stay late and take on more. She considers how acceptance can acknowledge reality without abandoning agency, how conviction can guide us without hardening into certainty, and why certainty closes the curiosity that dialogue requires. The episode offers discernment not as a way to find the one perfect answer, but as a capacity we can develop: integrating head, heart, gut, and the signals of the body before we decide. The question is not only, 'What am I doing?' It is also, 'What energy, intention, fear, or story is doing it through me?'

Has money been given a job it was never meant to do — proving your worth? In this solo episode of Circle Up and Get Real, Jodee Bock explores money as a tool and an exchange of value, while questioning the meaning we attach to salaries, prices, rates, achievement, and someone else's willingness to pay. She shares the personal path from a Midwestern 'work harder' mindset through corporate leadership, accidental entrepreneurship, free speaking engagements, undercharging, and the gradual separation of worth, value, and cost. The conversation ultimately shifts from transaction to stewardship: using the time, talents, relationships, and resources entrusted to us in service of something greater. In this episode: • Why working harder eventually reaches a limit • How salary, pricing, and external validation can become tangled with worth • What free talks and $100 gigs taught Jodee about value • Why money can represent exchange without measuring humanity • Moving from achievement and transaction toward stewardship • What organizational culture makes possible when humans are treated as humans • The question that can change how we earn, spend, save, and give Reflection: If money no longer had to prove your worth, what might change? Check out www.emergentculturelabs.com for more info about our work