Coaching for Leaders

Bonni Stachowiak: Teaching in Higher Ed

Bonni is the host of the Teaching in Higher Ed podcast, Dean of Teaching and Learning and Professor of Business and Management at Vanguard University, and my life partner. Prior to her academic career, she was a human resources consultant and executive officer for a publicly traded company. Bonni is the author of The Productive Online and Offline Professor: A Practical Guide*.

Listener Questions

Tony asked our opinion on his plan to have the team provide feedback to each other directly.

Lean wondered about alternatives to the nine box talent mapping framework that some organizations use.

Qasim noted that leadership can sometimes feel thankless and asked if we had any rituals to help minimize this.

Resources Mentioned

FeedForward: Coaching for Behavioral Change by Marshall Goldsmith

What Is the 9-Box Model? by Brian Anderson

Warning: This Is Not Your Grandfather’s Talent Planning featuring Kim Scott

Related Episodes

How to Get Way Better at Accepting Feedback, with Sheila Heen (episode 143)

How to Process Your 360 Feedback, with Tom Henschel (episode 341)

Your Leadership Motive, with Patrick Lencioni (episode 505)

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Kirstin Ferguson: Head & Heart

Kirstin Ferguson is a company director, columnist, keynote speaker, and executive coach. Beginning her career as an officer in the Royal Australian Air Force, Kirstin has held roles that have included chief executive officer of an international consulting firm, and acting chair and deputy chair of the Australian Broadcasting Corporation. She has sat on boards of both publicly-listed and privately-listed companies for more than a decade.

Kirstin has a PhD in leadership and in 2021 was named one of Thinkers50’s top thinkers to watch. In 2023, she was appointed a Member of the Order of Australia for her significant service to business and gender equality. She writes a weekly column on leadership and work in the Sydney Morning Herald and The Age, and is also a contributor to the Australian Financial Review and to Forbes. She is the author of Head & Heart: The Art of Modern Leadership*.

It’s often apparent when someone else doesn’t a read a room, but much harder to see it in ourselves. In this conversation, Kirstin and I discuss how we can do a better job of either literally or figuratively reading the room. Plus, we explore several of the actions leaders can take to do a better job at being more proactive at moving beyond their own perspective.

Key Points

Memory is different than perception. A study by Adrian de Groot shows that chess grandmasters reply more on the former for reading things quickly.

Perception is an ongoing process vs. something any of us arrive at.

A study of medical residents shows four ways we tend to approach situations: stalled, fixated, adaptive, or vagabonds. Vagabonds in particular look at a wide range of possibilities, but don’t fully explore or rule out paths forward.

Zoom out to seek broad input. That’s especially important when the stakes are high. Also important is to get perspective outside of your industry. Reading books from different disciplines is one starting point.

Leaders needs to also recognize that people in the room are reading you as well. There’s an element of partnership that shapes how the room moves forward.

Resources Mentioned

Head & Heart: The Art of Modern Leadership by Kirstin Ferguson

Head & Heart Leader Scale by Kirstin Ferguson

Interview Notes

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

Related Episodes

How to Start Seeing Around Corners, with Rita McGrath (episode 430)

Leadership in the Midst of Chaos, with Jim Mattis (episode 440)

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

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Emily Field: Power to the Middle

Emily Field is a partner at McKinsey & Company. She works with leaders to shape data-driven organizational strategies designed to achieve business objectives, establish talent management as a distinctive advantage, and secure the human resources function as a driver of business value.

Emily has worked with companies across industries, leading initiatives to transform the way organizations work. She puts particular emphasis on helping to establish a talent-first approach, instilling a high-performance culture, and adopting effective people-analytics approaches. She is the co-author along with Bill Schaninger and Bryan Hancock of Power to the Middle: Why Managers Hold the Keys to the Future of Work*.

As anybody who’s worked in middle management can attest, it’s one of the hardest jobs you’ll ever have. Too often we take middle management for granted, but organizations that learn how to better support middle managers can leverage their power and expertise to do a lot of good. In this conversation, Emily and I highlight the challenges of middle management, the unique value the middle managers bring to organizations, and the steps senior leaders can take to better support middle managers.

Key Points

Middle managers often have less power and control than the people who report to them. This results in them not feeling like they are set up for success.

The “player-coach” model of managers doing individual contributor work can be useful, but it’s critical for organizations to be mindful that the work is uniquely suited for a manager to do.

Rather than promoting the best middle managers out of their roles, promote from within. Reward top middle managers who decide to make their positions a destination, not just a waypoint.

As technology and AI changed the nature of work, middle managers are uniquely qualified to know how to best rebundle jobs and redistribute talent.

A key question for senior leadership to answer: What do we want middle managers to be doing?

Resources Mentioned

Power to the Middle: Why Managers Hold the Keys to the Future of Work* by Emily Field, Bill Schaninger, and Bryan Hancock

Interview Notes

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

Related Episodes

How to Multiply Your Impact, with Liz Wiseman (episode 554)

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

The Questions to Help Figure Out Hybrid and Remote Work, with Jim Harter (episode 646)

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David Rogers: The Digital Transformation Roadmap

David Rogers is the world’s leading expert on digital transformation, a member of the faculty at Columbia Business School, and the author of five books. His previous landmark bestseller, The Digital Transformation Playbook, was the first book on digital transformation and put the topic on the map.

David has helped companies around the world transform their business for the digital age, working with senior leaders at many of the largest corporations and he's been featured in The New York Times, The Financial Times, The Wall Street Journal, and The Economist. In his newest book, The Digital Transformation Roadmap*, David tackles the barriers behind the 70% of businesses that fail in their own digital efforts and offers a five-step roadmap to rebuild any organization for continuous digital change.

Most of us have heard that leading change requires highlighting a problem, deciding on a clear vision, and then cascading that vision down. In this conversation, David and I discuss how those actions alone often result failed outcomes. Instead, we highlight what a shared vision really is and how we can do a better job of helping the entire organization respond better to change.

Key Points

Most digital transformations fail because they focus too much on technology and not enough on the actual organizational challenges.

Selling a problem is negative urgency. It’s important as a component of change, but insufficient alone. Successful change leaders also embrace positive urgency.

A north star helps leaders and their organizations get clear on the “why” instead of simply the “what.” Once defined, thoughtful debate on measurement brings alignment and empowerment.

It’s a mistake for vision to only come from the top. Vision should exist at every level.

Avoid thinking about vision as cascading down. If anything, vision should be cascade up. How conversation happens at each juncture will define how well this works — or doesn’t.

Resources Mentioned

The Digital Transformation Roadmap* by David Rogers

The Digital Transformation Playbook* by David Rogers

David Rogers on Digital newsletter

Interview Notes

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

Related Episodes

How to Pivot Quickly, with Steve Blank (episode 476)

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

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

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Jacob Morgan: Leading With Vulnerability

Jacob Morgan is a trained futurist and one of the world’s leading authorities on leadership, the future of work, and employee experience. He speaks in front of tens of thousands of people each year and his content is seen over a million times annually. He is the best-selling author of five books: The Future Leader, The Employee Experience Advantage, The Future of Work, and The Collaborative Organization. He speaks at over 50 conferences a year including TED Academy which is one of the largest TED events in the world.

Jacob provides advisory and thought leadership services to organizations around the world. He has created tons of educational videos and articles found at Great Leadership With Jacob Morgan and host of the Great Leadership with Jacob Morgan podcast. He’s the author of the new book, Leading With Vulnerability: How to Unlock Your Greatest Superpower to Transform Yourself, Your Team, and Your Organization.

Most of us have heard that we should show vulnerability, but we don’t necessary know how to do this in the workplace. In addition, many leaders mistakenly show vulnerability without connecting it back to leadership. In this episode, Jacob and I explore where leaders go wrong, discuss how to do better, and demonstrate exactly what real vulnerability sounds like.

Key Points

Vulnerability + Leadership = Vulnerable Leadership. While this equation may seem obvious, many leaders mistakingly lean into vulnerability without also articulating leadership.

Vulnerability without leadership can land awkwardly and potentially calls to question your credibility as a leader.

Go beyond just admitting a mistake; share what was learned from that mistake. In the same way, talk about personal challenges for the purpose of connecting, creating trust, and relating to others.

Ask yourself this question as a starting point for ensuring you are also leading: “What’s my reason for sharing what I’m about to share?”

Vulnerability for leaders is not the same as it is for everybody else.

Resources Mentioned

Leading With Vulnerability: How to Unlock Your Greatest Superpower to Transform Yourself, Your Team, and Your Organization by Jacob Morgan

Great Leadership With Jacob Morgan

Interview Notes

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

Related Episodes

Use Power for Good and Not Evil, with Dacher Keltner (episode 254)

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

The Four Storytelling Mistakes Leaders Make, with David Hutchens (episode 553)

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Activate your free membership for full access to the entire library of interviews since 2011, searchable by topic. To accelerate your learning, uncover more inside Coaching for Leaders Plus.

Bonni Stachowiak: Teaching in Higher Ed

Bonni is the host of the Teaching in Higher Ed podcast, Dean of Teaching and Learning and Professor of Business and Management at Vanguard University, and my life partner. Prior to her academic career, she was a human resources consultant and executive officer for a publicly traded company. Bonni is the author of The Productive Online and Offline Professor: A Practical Guide*.

Listener Questions

Lisa asks about the best ways to hold others accountable when you don’t have positional authority.

John wonders about our perspective on dealing with narcissists in the workplace.

Patrick is curious how we might (or might not) mediate a conflict between two employees.

Priya notices the focus on underperforms in organizations and asks how this tendency might get shifted a bit.

Resources Mentioned

The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People* by Stephen R. Covey

The Success Factor* by Ruth Gotian

The 6 Types of Working Genius* by Patrick Lencioni

Related Episodes

How to Handle a Boss Who’s a Jerk, with Tom Henschel (episode 164)

How to Influence Many Stakeholders, with Andy Kaufman (episode 240)

How to Benefit From Conflict, with Susan Gerke (episode 263)

How to Lead Meetings That Get Results, with Mamie Kanfer Stewart (episode 358)

How to Lead and Retain High Performers, with Ruth Gotian (episode 567)

How to Help Team Members Find the Right Work, with Patrick Lencioni (episode 610)

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

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Jim Harter: Culture Shock

Jim Harter is Chief Scientist for the Workplace at Gallup. He has led more than 1,000 studies of workplace effectiveness, including the largest ongoing meta-analysis of human potential and business unit performance. He's the bestselling author of 12: The Elements of Great Managing, Wellbeing: The Five Essential Elements, Wellbeing at Work and the #1 Wall Street Journal bestseller It’s the Manager.

Jim has also published articles in many prominent business and academic journals. He's also the author now of Gallup's book with Jim Clifton titled Culture Shock: An unstoppable force is changing how we work and live. Gallup’s solution to the biggest leadership issue of our time*.

Virtually every professional team is navigating some aspect of return to office and how that works best for their organization. In this conversation, Jim and I highlight the key findings from Gallup that have emerged in the data since the pandemic started. Plus, we explore the questions that managers can ask in order help this transition work better for everyone.

Key Points

Managers should consider these key questions to help employees and teams move towards smart autonomy:

Which parts of your job can you do best at home?

Which parts of your job can you do best at the office?

When have you created exceptional value for our customers?

When do you feel most connected to our organization’s culture?

In addition:

Less than 5% of people in the United States worked from home in 2019. Today the number is six times larger and nearly seven in 10 full-time employees in the United States prefer some type of remote work arrangement.

Number of days in the office is important, but matters less than other factors. Most associated with high levels of employee engagement is the practice of a work team deciding together (the option companies used the least).

Splitters and blenders represent two different ways of approaching work and the populate tends to divide equally on this preference (even across generations). Knowing where people land will help engage them better in the workplace.

Managers account for 70% of the variance in team engagement. A key habit for a manager is one meaningful conversation per week with each employee.

Less important is the time of interaction and more important it the quality. Smaller amounts of time discussion recognition, goals, and strengths can be more impactful than more time that doesn’t do this.

Resources Mentioned

Culture Shock: An unstoppable force is changing how we work and live. Gallup’s solution to the biggest leadership issue of our time* by Jim Clifton and Jim Harter

Interview Notes

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

Related Episodes

Gallup Findings on the Changing Nature of Work, with Jim Harter (episode 409)

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

Effective Hybrid Team Management, with Hassan Osman (episode 570)

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Jacqueline Farrington: The Non-Obvious Guide to Better Presentations

Jacqueline Farrington has over 20 years experience as a change maker, empowering leaders and their teams to spark transformation and innovation through communications. Known for her direct, yet supportive and science-backed approach, Jacqueline works with senior and board-level leaders as the founder and president of Farrington Partners. She blends her experience in the performing arts, vocal pedagogy, communications, psychology, and organizational and executive coaching to help her clients find unique communication solutions.

Her clients include multinationals such as Amazon and Microsoft, as well as startups and nonprofits. She proudly served for many years as TEDxSeattle’s Senior Speaker Coach, where she sourced, vetted, and prepared speakers for yearly sold-out audiences. She was thrilled to see several speakers from that event move on to the global TED stage. In addition to teaching at Yale, she has lectured and taught at the London Business School, Rutgers University, and Imperial College. Jacqueline in the author of The Non-Obvious Guide to Better Presentations: How to Present Like a Pro (Virtually or in Person)*.

We all know we should practice before a big presentation, but how you practice makes a big difference on whether you just feel more prepared…or actually are. In this episode, Jacqueline and I explore how to rehearse so you perform better.

Key Points

A presentation is a performance. Just like any performance, how you rehearse is critical for your success.

Great presenters look relaxed and natural and unrehearsed because they have practiced over and over again.

Internalizing your talk is like driving home. You know the route so well, you can take any turn you want and still arrive at the same house.

Use a memory palace to recall point during your presentation. This also provides and easy path to adjust timing and content when changes inevitably come.

Create controlled stress for yourself during rehearsals. This surfaces where to get better and also helps you respond more effectively when actual stresses come up when presenting.

Review your work objectively to decide how to improve your message. It’s helpful to think about watching a recording of someone else so that you can better surface what to change.

Resources Mentioned

The Non-Obvious Guide to Better Presentations: How to Present Like a Pro (Virtually or in Person)* by Jacqueline Farrington

Interview Notes

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

Related Episodes

How to Engage With Humor, with David Nihill (episode 245)

The Way to Influence Executives, with Nancy Duarte (episode 450)

The Way to Make Sense to Others, with Tom Henschel (episode 518)

3 Better Ways to Start a Presentation (Dave’s Journal)

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Lesson 5: What’s one thing you’d suggest?

Getting feedback from others is never easy. In this lesson, discover a question that will make it more likely you’ll get the feedback that will help you move forward.

Academy Applications Close Friday, September 8th

The Academy is an intimate cohort of participant leaders who work personally with me to accelerate their leadership development and organizational results. Discover more and submit your application by Friday, September 8th.

Resources

Feedforward: Coaching For Behavioral Change by Marshall Goldsmith

Related Episodes

How to Get Way Better at Accepting Feedback, with Sheila Heen (episode 143)

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

The Way to Get People Talking, with Andrew Warner (episode 560)

How to Help People Speak Truth to Power, with Megan Reitz (episode 597)

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Lesson 4: What’s the next step?

Indicators can help keep you determine if you’re on the right track. This lesson shows how to create these indicators and why they are critical for your success.

Academy Applications Close Friday, September 8th

The Academy is an intimate cohort of participant leaders who work personally with me to accelerate their leadership development and organizational results. Discover more and submit your application by Friday, September 8th.

Resources

How to Get Traction With a New Habit

Related Episodes

Getting Things Done, with David Allen (episode 184)

Six Tactics for Extraordinary Performance, with Morten Hansen (episode 337)

Making Challenging Subjects Fun, with Ainissa Ramirez (Teaching in Higher Ed)

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Activate your free membership for full access to the entire library of interviews since 2011, searchable by topic.