Coaching for Leaders

Zach Mercurio: The Power of Mattering

Zach Mercurio is an author, researcher, and speaker specializing in purposeful leadership, mattering, meaningful work, and positive organizational psychology. He teaches a course with past guest Simon Sinek on how leaders can show everyone how they matter. He is the author of The Power of Mattering: How Leaders Can Create a Culture of Significance*.

When you ask people what mattered in their careers, few cite the bonus, or the stock options, or the employee of the month award. What they do talk about are the times they were remembered, supported, thanked, and seen. In this conversation, Zach and I discuss how to do that better.

Key Points

When people are asked about when they mattered, they recall small moments of being remembered, helped, thanked, or seen.

The behavior of a leader accounts for half of the increased feelings of mattering and meaningfulness at work.

Rather than identifying with a person’s behavior, identify first with the person.

Look for the positive traits in a person or identify something that you love.

Music is the space between the notes. In our informal interactions, we have the choice to turn against, turn away, or turn towards.

Leaders who notice people well consistently follow three steps: observe, note, and share.

Resources Mentioned

The Power of Mattering: How Leaders Can Create a Culture of Significance* by Zach Mercurio

Interview Notes

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

Related Episodes

Start With Why, with Simon Sinek (episode 223)

How to Shift Behavior for Better Results, with Mitch Warner (episode 690)

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

Expert Partner

Are you noticing people communicating in such a way that feels boring or robotic to stakeholders – or perhaps just losing them in the data? David Hutchens, one of our expert partners, helps leaders and organizations develop a more human, engaging voice through the power of storytelling.

To discover more about how his work may support your organization, get in touch on our expert partners page.

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Jeff Wetzler: Ask

Jeff Wetzler is co-Founder of Transcend, a nationally recognized innovation organization, and an expert in learning and human potential. His experience spans 25+ years in business and education, as a management consultant to top corporations, a learning facilitator for leaders, and as Chief Learning Officer at Teach For America. He's the author of Ask: Tap Into the Hidden Wisdom of People Around You for Unexpected Breakthroughs in Leadership and Life*.

We place our organizations at risk when we miss stuff. Often, the things we miss aren’t what we don’t know. Instead, they are the assumptions we don’t even question. In this conversation, Jeff and I explore the practices that work to find what’s missing.

Key Points

Hidden feedback cues:

Repeated questions or suggestions about seemingly small details.

Increased involvement in tactical decisions.

Unexpected decreases in engagement.

Benefits of curiosity:

When We’re Curious About People, They Like Us More

Curiosity begets curiosity.

Curiosity creates empathy.

Curiosity makes us more resilient.

Curiosity sparks:

What might I be missing?

How else might someone interpret the situation?

How might I be impacting them?

What can I learn from this person?

Resources Mentioned

Ask: Tap Into the Hidden Wisdom of People Around You for Unexpected Breakthroughs in Leadership and Life* by Jeff Wetzler

Ask Approach

How to Recognize “Hidden Feedback” (Harvard Business Review) by Jeff Wetzler

The Curiosity Coach In Your Pocket (Psychology Today) by Jeff Wetzler

Related Episodes

How to Inspire More Curiosity, with Shannon Minifie (episode 520)

How to Help Others Be Seen and Heard, with Scott Shigeoka (episode 654)

Make it Easier to Discuss Hard Things, with Jeff Wetzler (episode 679)

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Scott Anthony Barlow: Happen to Your Career

Scott Anthony Barlow is CEO of Happen To Your Career and host of the Happen to Your Career podcast. His team and him are focused on helping people find the work they love. He’s also the author of the book, Happen to Your Career: An Unconventional Approach to Career Change and Meaningful Work*.

You’ve been laid off, or someone close to you is navigating that reality right now. A lot of the first things we think to do after a layoff are wrong. In this episode, Scott and I explore what to avoid…and more importantly, where to begin anew.

Key Points

Most people underestimate the time it takes to make a transition to the next, right position.

Submitting tons of applications, networking everywhere, and telling everyone that you’re looking feels productive, but is often either incomplete or a waste of time.

Give yourself the space to grieve. Spend time with the people who care about you.

This didn’t happen to you, it happened for you. Whether objectively true or not, this mindset will help you be intentional about next actions.

Hyperfocus your targeting by creating a master resume and also considering backdoors to opportunities.

Decide when to hire help by using math – how much will expertise help speed up the process and/or help you land a higher salary?

Resources Mentioned

Happen to Your Career: An Unconventional Approach to Career Change and Meaningful Work* by Scott Anthony Barlow

Interview Notes

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

Related Episodes

Craft a Career to Fit Your Strengths, with Scott Anthony Barlow (episode 424)

How to Nail a Job Transition, with Sukhinder Singh Cassidy (episode 555)

How to Respond When You Get Triggered, with Sally Helgesen (episode 620)

Expert Partner

In this midst of a layoff? Feeling stagnant in your current role? Scott Barlow and his team may be able to help as official partners of Coaching for Leaders. To discover more about how his team can support you, get in touch on our expert partners page.

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Tom Henschel: The Look & Sound of Leadership

Tom Henschel of Essential Communications supports senior leaders and executive teams. An internationally recognized expert in the field of workplace communications and self-presentation, he has helped thousands of leaders achieve excellence through his work as an executive coach and his top-rated podcast, The Look & Sound of Leadership.

Have you been told you should take more initiative? Or, perhaps you’ve been telling that to someone else? Either way, this conversation with Tom Henschel will outline three key steps to help you get started.

Key Points

Three steps to taking more initiative:

Think and talk about your work. Ideas come through conversation.

Execute on your idea. Feel the fear and do it anyway.

Communicate what you’ve done.

Initiative is often in the eye of the beholder.

Imagine a scale that goes from bold to cautious. There’s probably room for you to be at least 5% bolder.

Feeling like you are waiting on others may be an indicator to take initiative.

To calibrate where you land, ask yourself: “What’s my typical pattern?”

In correspondence, consider asking fewer questions and making more statements.

Place yourself in situations where you’ll need to show initiative.

Resources Mentioned

The Look & Sound of Leadership podcast by Tom Henschel

Feel the Fear…and Do It Anyway* by Susan Jeffers

Related Episodes

Leadership vs. Management (The Look & Sound of Leadership, episode 166)

5 Strategies for Dealing with Narcissists (The Look & Sound of Leadership, episode 239)

How to Answer “Tell Us About Yourself” (The Look & Sound of Leadership, episode 250)

How to Talk So People Understand You (The Look & Sound of Leadership, episode 254)

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Jon Fogel: Punishment-­Free Parenting

Jon Fogel is a husband, a father of four, and a parenting educator. His goal is to teach how to parent more effectively, with less stress and more success by combining modern neuroscience, developmental psychology, counseling, and positive, gentle parenting wisdom. He is the author of Punishment-­Free Parenting: The Brain-Based Way to Raise Kids Without Raising Your Voice*.

Most of us aspire to lead well in every area of our lives, not just in the workplace. A key place for leadership with many of us is with our kids and the other young people in our lives. In this conversation, Jon and I discuss how to raise kids without raising your voice.

Key Points

Consequences and punishment are not the same thing, even if the words are used interchangeably.

Our kids want us to like them. They are not giving you a hard time; they’re having a hard time.

Punishment doesn’t “teach kids a lesson.” More often, it crowds out higher-level thinking, and children are unable to remember what they were being punished for.

Rather than imposing retribution, help children surface the natural and logistical consequences of their behaviors.

Get curious, not furious. Often, there’s a perfectly rational reason that children are acting the way they are.

Children are great imitators. So give them something great to imitate.

Resources Mentioned

Punishment-­Free Parenting: The Brain-Based Way to Raise Kids Without Raising Your Voice* by Jon Fogel

Jon Fogel on Instagram

Interview Notes

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

Related Episodes

How to Reduce Drama With Kids, with Tina Payne Bryson (episode 310)

The Way Into Better Conversations About Wealth, with Kristin Keffeler (episode 606)

Supporting Return to Work After Maternity Leave, with Danna Greenberg (episode 639)

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Qasim Ijaz

Qasim Ijaz is the director of cybersecurity at a leading healthcare organization, overseeing detection, incident response, vulnerability management, purple teaming, and cybersecurity engineering. With a strong background in offensive security and risk management, he has helped organizations strengthen their defenses against evolving threats. He is also a dedicated educator, mentoring professionals and sharing his expertise at conferences such as BSides and Black Hat.

You don’t need to go far in the news these days to find out that another organization was hacked. Data breeches are a nightmare scenario for both leaders and the people they support. In this episode, Qasim and I explore what your team and you can do to be a bit more prepared.

Key Points

Use multi-factor authentication, passphrases, and a password manager.

Freeze your personal credit reports. Do this for free directly with Experian, Equifax, and TransUnion.

Leaders in bigger roles (executives, CEOs, board members) are larger targets for hackers due to their access and also their ability to occasionally side-step organizational guidelines.

It’s the non-technical pieces of a cyber response that organizations are least prepared for.

Conduct incident response and disaster recovery tabletop exercises to uncover vulnerabilities before an attack.

Regardless of organizational policy, employees will use AI. The best prevention assumes the inevitability of human behavior and works with it to improve systems.

Resources Mentioned

Recommended password managers: 1Password, Apple password app, Proton Pass

Critical Security Controls by the Center for Internet Security

Resources for Small and Medium Businesses by the Cybersecurity & Infrastructure Security Agency

2024 Data Breach Investigations Report by Verizon Business

Related Episodes

Dumb Things Smart People Do With Money, with Jill Schlesinger (episode 396)

Where to Start When Inheriting a Team in Crisis, with Lynn Perry Wooten (episode 603)

How to Use AI to Think Better, with José Antonio Bowen (episode 689)

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Andrew Brodsky: Ping

Andrew Brodsky is an award-winning professor, management consultant, and virtual communications expert at the McCombs School of Business at The University of Texas at Austin. He is an expert in workplace technology, communication, and productivity, and serves as the CEO of Ping Group. He is the author of Ping: The Secrets of Successful Virtual Communication*.

We’ve all heard the well intended advice that having interactions in person is always best. And that being as close to perfect as possible is ideal. Turns out, not always. In this conversation, Andrew and I explore how adapting to the context of tough situations can help you show up in a way that’s helpful for the other party and for you.

Key Points

In virtual interactions, what feels authentic to you may not seem authentic to the person you’re interacting with.

While video is best for being present, it may not be best when your underlying emotions could leak into a situation.

Surface acting helps us all land with the other party more authentically. Audio only can help this land better.

If using a less rich medium to communicate (i.e. email instead of a conversation) it’s helpful to explain why you made that choice.

People who appear perfectly competent may not be as likable. Consider surfacing blunders that aren’t central to the core expertise of your work.

We often default to the medium that works best for us. Consider what will land best with the other party.

Resources Mentioned

Ping: The Secrets of Successful Virtual Communication* by Andrew Brodsky

Interview Notes

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

Related Episodes

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

How to Make a Better Impression on Camera, with Mark Bowden (episode 643)

How to Grow From Feedback, with Jennifer Garvey Berger (episode 713)

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Paul Akers: 2 Second Lean

Paul Akers is the founder and president of FastCap, a product development company specializing in woodworking tools and hardware for the professional builder. Through a series of twists and turns he discovered Lean and the Toyota Production System (TPS) which was instrumental in propelling FastCap as an example of Lean manufacturing and culture, now followed by thousands of companies around the world. He is the author of 2 Second Lean: How to Grow People and Build a Fun Lean Culture at Work & at Home*.

We often add more in order to make a system better. The opposite tactic is often more useful: making things simpler. In this conversation, Paul and I explore how to make worker better by starting small.

Key Points

Your pride will blind you to what you most need to learn.

Begin by addressing the things that bug you. Lean is about making things simpler.

Instead of batching, consider one-piece flow. This helps you improve as you go.

Set the standard at 2 seconds to try something new. Anybody can achieve that.

Start in the bathroom. Showing respect in the place everybody visits sets a standard for the rest of the organization.

To make something stick, (1) set the expectation, (2) inspect the expectation, (3) reinforce the expectation.

Resources Mentioned

2 Second Lean: How to Grow People and Build a Fun Lean Culture at Work & at Home* by Paul Akers

Example of 2 second lean in practice

Interview Notes

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

Related Episodes

How To Create Joy At Work, with Richard Sheridan (episode 122)

Engaging People Through Change, with Cassandra Worthy (episode 571)

How to Change the Way You Think, with Ari Weinzweig (episode 592)

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Joel Pérez: Dear White Leader

Joel Pérez is an executive and leadership coach, speaker, and consultant who is passionate about helping leaders and organizations achieve their goals and develop a posture of cultural humility. He has over twenty years of experience in higher education, serving in various key leadership roles. He is the author of Dear White Leader: How to Achieve Organizational Excellence through Cultural Humility*.

We could all get a bit better at bringing a dose of humility into our work. Inside organizations, cultural humility starts with how leaders show up each day. In this episode, Joel and I examine three shifts that will help us better empower others.

Key Points

While humility starts with an individual, it must move beyond them to improve the organization.

Maintain high standards while avoiding perfectionism by discussing how mistakes get handled in advance.

To prevent a sense of urgency from rushing a bad decision, consider who’s missing from the conversation.

Listen, ask curious questions, and say thank you when receiving criticism.

Criticism doesn’t need to be addressed in the moment. Consider reflection, other data points, and responding more in a future interaction.

Resources Mentioned

Dear White Leader: How to Achieve Organizational Excellence through Cultural Humility* by Joel Pérez

Dear White Leader website

Interview Notes

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

Related Episodes

The Starting Point for Inclusive Leadership, with Susan MacKenty Brady (episode 584)

How to Use Power Responsibly, with Vanessa Bohns (episode 551)

How to Discover What People Want, with Tiziana Casciaro (episode 565)

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Dave speaks with Brooks Bradford, an alum of the Coaching for Leaders Academy, on how he got intentional about motivating people – and himself – towards an important vision. Applications to the Coaching for Leaders Academy will close on Friday, March 14, 2025. Visit the Academy page for details and to apply.