Shannon Minifie: Box of Crayons

Shannon Minifie is the CEO of Box of Crayons, a learning and development company that helps unleash the power of curiosity to create connected and engaged company cultures. They are the organization behind the bestselling book The Coaching Habit by Michael Bungay Stanier. Shannon and her team recently released a report along with the Harris Poll titled Navigating a Fractured Workplace: How Relational Curiosity increases engagement, trust, and productivity.

Of course, you’ve heard that being curious and coach-like will help in leadership. But sometimes the very thing we think we’re doing well is actually getting in the way. In this conversation, Shannon and I explore the kind of curiosity that leaders often miss.

Key Points

5-6 hours of the average workweek is lost to the fear of making mistakes.

A strong majority of leaders say employees are expressing a desire for more feedback, and a majority also say that people are unable to receive hard feedback.

Relationships are the core of these conflicting messages. Without a relationship of trust, helpful feedback often doesn’t land that way.

Intellectual curiosity helps us learn what we don’t know. Relationship curiosity helps the other person learn what they don’t know.

Ask yourself: what is my goal in asking this question?

Rather than asking a question that starts with a “why,” consider asking a question that starts with a “what.”

The 7 Essential Questions:

What’s on your mind?

And what else?

What’s the real challenge here for you?

What do you want?

How can I help?

If you’re saying yes to this, what are you saying no to?

What was most useful for you?

Resources Mentioned

Navigating a Fractured Workplace: How Relational Curiosity Increases Engagement, Trust, and Productivity.

Interactive Learning Preview: Invest in the Power of Curiosity

The Coaching Habit* by Michael Bungay Stanier

Interview Notes

Download my interview notes in PDF format (free membership required).

Related Episodes

These Coaching Questions Get Results, with Michael Bungay Stanier (episode 237)

How to Ask Better Questions, with David Marquet (episode 454)

The Way to Be More Coach-Like, with Michael Bungay Stanier (episode 458)

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Ruchika T. Malhotra: Uncompete

Ruchika T. Malhotra is the founder of Candour, a global inclusion strategy firm that has worked with some of the world’s biggest organizations. She’s been recognized multiple times by Thinkers50 and co-wrote one of Harvard Business Review’s top 100 most-read articles in history: Stop Telling Women They Have Imposter Syndrome. She is the author of Inclusion on Purpose, MIT Press’s top-selling book of 2022 and now her newest book, Uncompete: Rejecting Competition to Unlock Success (Amazon, Bookshop)*.

A lot of people think about work as a competition for resources. But what if, by inviting others to the table, you created more for everyone? In this conversation, Ruchika and I explore the opportunity for all of us to uncompete.

Key Points

Many of us are so socialized to compete that we don’t realize the benefits of collective collaboration.

Reach out to someone who inspires you. Praising someone for something awesome about them, without an accompanying ask, is so rare.

Display genuine curiosity. Don’t confuse “nice” small talk for depth. Ask bigger questions that get to the heart of who people are.

As you build trust, talk numbers. In the professional context, real relationships of trust demand this kind of transparency.

Take regular stock of relationships. Take people at their word and also watch how their actions line up – or don’t.

Invite others to the table. The bigger your circle, the more you create for everybody.

Resources Mentioned

Uncompete: Rejecting Competition to Unlock Success by Ruchika T. Malhotra (Amazon, Bookshop)*

Interview Notes

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Related Episodes

End Imposter Syndrome in Your Organization, with Jodi-Ann Burey (episode 556)

How to Create Inclusive Hiring Practices, with Ruchika Tulshyan (episode 589)

Doing Better Than Zero-Sum Thinking, with Renée Mauborgne (episode 641)

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Kirstin Ferguson: Blindspotting

Kirstin Ferguson has been recognized globally by Thinkers50 as one of the top 50 management thinkers in the world and is the recipient of the 2023 Distinguished Leadership Award. She was an officer in the Royal Australian Air Force, and then went on to lead an international consulting firm as CEO, before serving on the boards of major publicly listed, private, and non-profit organizations. She is the author of Women Kind, Head & Heart, and her newest book Blindspotting: How to See What Others Miss (Amazon, Bookshop)*.

If we stop to think about it, almost all of us recognize that we have blind spots. Given that reality, anything we can do that helps us see what others might miss will help us lead better. In this conversation, Kirsten and I explore the mindsets and practices that will help us uncover more of our blind spots.

Key Points

Experts are better at knowing when they are right, but also less likely to show appropriate doubt when they could be wrong.

There’s a time to be a seeker and a time to be a knower. Both are important in different situations, but leaders in many situations would benefit from more seeking.

Blindspotting is about calibration, not hesitation.

Accept your intellectual limitations. A key way to do this is saying these four words more: “I don’t know yet.”

Disentangling your ego will help your blind spot better. Shift away from your pride a bit by separating yourself from your knowledge and expertise.

Hunt down your biases. Admitting they exist is step one. Model vulnerability by talking about your past mistakes both with yourself and with others.

Resources Mentioned

Blindspotting: How to See What Others Miss by Kirstin Ferguson (Amazon, Bookshop)*.

Interview Notes

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Related Episodes

Getting Better at Reading the Room, with Kirstin Ferguson (episode 651)

How to Find What’s Missing, with Jeff Wetzler (episode 732)

How to Teach Your Expertise to Others, with Roger Kneebone (episode 743)

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Goldie Chan: Personal Branding for Introverts

Goldie Chan is the founder of Warm Robots, a social media strategy and creative agency, and she is herself a creative, keynote speaker, author, and cancer survivor. She was named the “Oprah of LinkedIn” by Huffington Post, and her creative video channel won LinkedIn Top Voice for Social Media. She is the author of Personal Branding for Introverts (Amazon, Bookshop)*.

Many of us aspire to have a powerful personal brand, but it’s not always clear where to start. In this conversation, Goldie and I zero in on the five elements that matter most – and what you can do to get started.

Key Points

Five C’s of personal branding:

Clarity: Surface it by determining three words you want to be associated with.

Consistency: The internet is for introverts. Find the medium where you can show up often and that plays to your strengths.

Competency: Rather than promoting yourself, promote the ideas and practices you stand for through your experience.

Confidence: Ego is when you shout who you are to a room, and confidence is when you know who you are in a room.

Community: Join in on conversations with people discussing what you care about. Find these communities or build your own.

Resources Mentioned

Personal Branding for Introverts by Goldie Chan (Amazon, Bookshop)*.

Interview Notes

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Related Episodes

The Four Critical Stories Leaders Need For Influence, with David Hutchens (episode 148)

The Way to Get Noticed by Key Stakeholders, with Daphne E. Jones (episode 614)

Your Reputation is Your Currency, with Maha Abouelenein (episode 703)

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Muriel Wilkins: Leadership Unblocked

Muriel Wilkins is the founder and CEO of Paravis Partners and a sought-after C-suite adviser and executive coach with a twenty-year track record of helping senior leaders take their performance to the next level. She is the coauthor of Own the Room and the host of the Harvard Business Review podcast Coaching Real Leaders. She’s just released her newest book, Leadership Unblocked: Break Through the Beliefs That Limit Your Potential (Amazon, Bookshop)*.

You may have spent years aiming for the leadership role you now have. But now, once you’re in the job, it can be really disorienting to feel like you don’t belong. In this conversation, Muriel and I explore this reality that a lot of leaders face and what do when you run into it.

Key Points

Feeling like you don’t belong is a normal and common reality at inflection points in your career.

A vicious cycle can emerge: you’re waiting to be included while others are waiting for you to engage.

While you can’t control others, you can break the part of the pattern you have control of.

Define your value proposition. What gets missed when you don’t show up?

Remind yourself of shared goals or values with the group. This prevents the small stuff from distracting you as much.

Identify a few supportive people and build relationships with them.

Resources Mentioned

Leadership Unblocked: Break Through the Beliefs That Limit Your Potential by Muriel Wilkins (Amazon, Bookshop)*

Interview Notes

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Related Episodes

How to Start a Big Leadership Role, with Carol Kauffman (episode 617)

How to Start Better With Peers, with Michael Bungay Stanier (episode 635)

The Habits That Hold Leaders Back, with Marshall Goldsmith (episode 696)

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David Hutchens: Story Dash

David Hutchens works with leaders around the world to find, craft, and tell their most urgent stories for the purpose of creating shared meaning, preserving culture, disseminating learning, and speeding change in organizations. He has taught the Storytelling Leader program at some of the most influential organizations, including NASA, Paypal, Loreal Paris, Cisco, Walmart, Google, and FedEx. He’s written many books, including the Circle of the 9 Muses, Story Dash, and The Leadership Story Deck.

When organizational change is happening, leaders need to be intentional about lining up with culture, especially if it’s the time to shift that culture just a bit. We often do the logistics well, but we miss the power of both the human and emotional connections. In this episode, David and I discuss how story can help us make a meaningful shift.

Key Points

The organizations that are being intentional about culture are also being intentional about story.

Getting beyond the logistics of changes and leaning first into humanity and emotion help people frame cultural shifts.

Leaders go first. Embodied stories from leaders are surprising, counter-cultural, and repeatable.

Asking for stories is rarely sufficient. Instead, invite stories through intentional prompts like, “Tell me about a time you felt more engaged, alive, and happiest in your work here.”

Received stories are the ones told by employees. Adding an emotion word to an invitation such as, “What’s a time you were proud?” often surfaces more genuine stories.

David is now a Coaching for Leaders expert partner. Connect with him to discover how he might support your organization in making a meaningful cultural shift via our partners page or email him directly at [email protected].

Resources Mentioned

Circle of the 9 Muses: A Storytelling Field Guide for Innovators and Meaning Makers by David Hutchens (Amazon, Bookshop)*

Story Dash: Find, Develop, and Activate Your Most Valuable Business Stories…In Just a Few Hours by David Hutchens (Amazon)*

Leadership Story Deck by David Hutchens (Amazon)*

Related Episodes

Leadership Means You Go First, with Keith Ferrazzi (episode 488)

How to Start Finding Useful Stories, with David Hutchens (episode 593)

How to Bring Out the Best in People, with Donna Hicks (episode 724)

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Monica Chartier: Coaching for Leaders Fellow

Monica Chartier is a group product manager in the technology industry. Her work has centered on supporting a global product experience, getting a million visitors a day. In addition to her e-commerce and technical experience, she indexes heavily on coach-like leadership with her team and also inside our community as one of our Coaching for Leaders Fellows.

In this conversation, Monica and I explore a need inside the Coaching for Leaders membership community and how we used the design thinking process to approach it. We outline the five key steps we followed and how you might do the same to address a problem inside your own organization.

Key Points

Five steps to solve a problem using design thinking:

Empathy: Start with Intentional Listening and Observation.

Define: Clarify the Real Problem to Solve.

Ideate: Co-Create Ideas and Form Testable Hypotheses.

Prototype: Start Small, Learn Fast.

Test, Learn, and Adapt: Make Iteration a Leadership Habit.

Access Monica’s detailed guide (PDF download)

Resources Mentioned

Monica Chartier on LinkedIn

Related Episodes

The Way to Make Struggles More Productive, with Sarah Stein Greenberg (episode 569)

How to Prevent a Team From Repeating Mistakes, with Robert “Cujo” Teschner (episode 660)

How to Lead Engaging Meetings, with Jess Britt (episode 721)

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Vanessa Druskat: The Emotionally Intelligent Team

Vanessa Druskat is an associate professor at the Peter T. Paul College of Business and Economics at the University of New Hampshire. She advises leaders and teams at over a dozen Fortune 500 and Fortune Global 500 companies and wrote the best-selling Harvard Business Review article (with S. Wolff) on emotionally intelligent teams that has been chosen many times for inclusion in HBR’s most valued articles. She is the author of The Emotionally Intelligent Team: Building Collaborative Groups that Outperform the Rest (Amazon, Bookshop)*.

It’s easy to assume that a good start for a great team is getting the smartest people together. That does help, but it’s not the critical factor in whether a team performs. In this conversation, Vanessa and I discuss why the word belonging makes such a difference.

Key Points

Raw talent of the individual and their own interpersonal skills don’t predict team performance.

Belonging is critical for team performance. Leaders often miss this because they already feel like they belong.

Team members understanding each other is the first and most critical norm.

Beginning meetings with check-ins or gallery walks helps people understand each other, even if it’s not discussed extensively.

Inviting people to bring everyday objects to illustrate a more complex point helps make understanding accessible.

The leader sets the tone, but it’s the interaction between team members that makes the difference.

Resources Mentioned

The Emotionally Intelligent Team: Building Collaborative Groups that Outperform the Rest (Amazon, Bookshop)* by Vanessa Druskat

Interview Notes

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Related Episodes

How to Engage Remote Teams, with Tsedal Neeley (episode 537)

Team Collaboration Supports Growth Mindset, with Mary Murphy (episode 695)

How to Help People Connect at Work, with Wes Adams (episode 735)

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Scott Keller: A CEO For All Seasons

Scott Keller is a senior partner at McKinsey, where he coleads the firm’s global CEO Excellence work within the Strategy & Corporate Finance Practice and serves as a global leader in the Organization Practice. He’s a New York Times bestselling author and trusted advisor to boards, CEOs, and senior leadership teams, with whom he guides multiyear, enterprise-wide transformations that shape the future of institutions. His colleagues and he are the authors of the new book, A CEO For All Seasons: Mastering the Cycles of Leadership (Amazon, Bookshop)*.

One of the most critical phases of taking on the top job is what you do at the start. Whether it’s stepping into the role as president, general manager, executive director, owner, or CEO, starting well can make all the difference. In this conversation, Scott and I explore how to begin in the best way possible.

Key Points

One-third to one-half of new CEOs are considered to be failing within eighteen months of taking the role. Many wish they’d handled the transition differently.

New CEOs enter a reality distortion field of many bosses (the board), no peers, and ultimate accountability for everything. The best CEOs guard against this by not making it about them.

Ask questions that aren’t about you, but the organization. Instead of, “How will I know if I’m successful?” ask, “How will we know if we’re winning?”

Beginning with a listening tour is essential. People will tell you things when you’re new that they’ll never say two or three years later.

Create a fact-based, one version of the truth. Once you know it, keep to a single narrative for everyone.

Err towards complete candor in the toughest realities. Prepare intensely for moments of truth, when they need to happen.

Set clear boundaries and stay extremely disciplined. Your narrative and first moves should guide how you frame these.

Resources Mentioned

A CEO For All Seasons: Mastering the Cycles of Leadership (Amazon, Bookshop)* by Carolyn Dewar, Scott Keller, Vikram Malhotra, and Kurt Strovink

Interview Notes

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Related Episodes

How Top Leaders Influence Great Teamwork, with Scott Keller (episode 585)

How to Genuinely Show Up for Others, with Marshall Goldsmith (episode 590)

How to Start a Big Leadership Role, with Carol Kauffman (episode 617)

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Neil Ghosh: Do More Good

Neil Ghosh is a seasoned executive whose expertise spans the nonprofit, government, philanthropic, and private sectors. With 30+ years of experience, he has successfully launched and scaled both nonprofit and for-profit ventures, building teams, business models, partnerships, and strategies to drive impact and support vulnerable populations in more than 50 countries. His book is Do More Good: Inspiring Lessons from Extraordinary People (Amazon, Bookshop)*.

There are many differences in the world today, and those differences influence leaders just like everybody else. That’s why Neil Ghosh has this invitation for us: “Never let age or ideology come between learning and growth.” In this conversation, Neil and I explore how we can lean in on great leadership through our common humanity.

Key Points

In anyone we know, we can always find one positive attribute that we can learn from.

Never let age or ideology come between learning and growth.

The Dalai Lama reminds us to offer compassion and kindness, regardless of whether the recipient is in need.

Give back without expecting fanfare. Help people get what they want through peer mentoring.

Use your platform to promote unity and to be an advocate for others.

Befriend people who have different views. Join or start a book club that intentionally selects books from diverse viewpoints.

Resources Mentioned

Do More Good: Inspiring Lessons from Extraordinary People (Amazon, Bookshop)* by Neil Ghosh

Interview Notes

Download my interview notes in PDF format (free membership required).

Related Episodes

How to Connect with People Better, with Charles Duhigg (episode 670)

Turning Down the Temperature on Outrage, with Karthik Ramanna (episode 711)

How to Bring Out the Best in People, with Donna Hicks (episode 724)

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