Coaching for Leaders

Dolly Chugh: A More Just Future

Dolly Chugh is a social psychologist and management professor at the New York University Stern School of Business where she teaches MBA courses in leadership and management. She was one of six professors chosen from thousands at NYU to receive the Distinguished Teaching Award in 2020 and one of five to receive the Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Faculty Award in 2013.

She has been named an SPSP Fellow, received the Academy of Management Best Paper award, and been named one of the top 100 Most Influential People in Business Ethics by Ethisphere Magazine. Her first book, The Person You Mean to Be has received rave praise from Adam Grant, Angela Duckworth, Liz Wiseman, Billie Jean King, and many others. She is the author of A More Just Future: Psychological Tools for Reckoning with our Past and Driving Social Change.

All of us know that we will be challenged by others. Sometimes how we see ourselves limits what we could do to change our behavior. In this conversation, Dolly and I discuss how we can do better and the mindset and actions that will help us move forward.

Key Points

There’s no such thing as bad weather, only unsuitable clothing.

Nostalgia feels good to many of us, but can get in the way of us seeing the “ands” in situations and experiences.

When we are challenged, especially in the context of identity, our tendency is either to deny, distance, or dismantle.

Feeling of guilt and shame are indicators that there is an opportunity to change. The goal is not to avoid them, but to use them as a starting point for different behavior.

Use values affirmations to give you a booster shot to prepare for the inevitable challenges ahead. These affirmations will help you respond in a more healthy way for everyone.

Resources Mentioned

Dear Good People newsletter by Dolly Chugh

TED talk: How to let go of being a "good" person -- and become a better person by Dolly Chugh

The Person You Mean to Be* by Dolly Chugh

A More Just Future* by Dolly Chugh

Interview Notes

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Related Episodes

The Way Managers Can be Champions for Justice, with Minda Harts (episode 552)

How to Help People Engage in Growth, with Whitney Johnson (episode 576)

How to Solve the Toughest Problems, with Wendy Smith (episode 612)

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Daphne E. Jones: Win When They Say You Won't

Daphne E. Jones has 30 years of experience in general management and executive level roles at IBM, Johnson & Johnson, Hospira, and General Electric but began her career as a secretary. At GE, she served as Senior Vice President for Future of Work, Senior Vice President & Chief Information Officer for Product Engineering, Imaging, and Ultrasound, and as Senior Executive & Chief Information Officer for Global Services, all of which composed a $13 billion segment of GE Healthcare.

She serves on the board of directors for AMN Healthcare, Inc., Barnes Group Inc., and Masonite International Corp. She is the recipient of numerous domestic and international awards and recently started a company that teaches leaders how to prepare to serve on boards. She is the author of Win When They Say You Won't: Break Through Barriers and Keep Leveling Up Your Success*.

In this conversation, Daphne invites us to look at ourselves through the lens of a product, just as others will view us. We discuss the three critical elements of how stakeholders view you. Plus, Daphne and I explore the steps you can take to improve how you’re perceived through the different lenses that stakeholders see us through.

Key Points

Stakeholders are crucial for your success and it’s helpful for you to view yourself in their eyes (and yours) as a product.

Three elements are key: performance is doing your job well, image is how people describe you, and exposure is who knows you.

When you get radio silence in the context of happenings inside of your organization, that’s an indicator you are underexposed. Caution: you can also be overexposed.

Map your stakeholders in the context of their influence in your work and their interest in how it supports their own objectives.

Mentors will make suggestions of things you should try. Find the part that will work for you and move on the advice.

Resources Mentioned

Win When They Say You Won't: Break Through Barriers and Keep Leveling Up Your Success* by Daphne E. Jones

To receive a free workbook, send receipt of your book purchase to [email protected]

Interview Notes

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Related Episodes

How to Deal with Opponents and Adversaries, with Peter Block (episode 328)

What You Gain By Sponsoring People, with Julia Taylor Kennedy (episode 398)

How to Support Women of Color, with Minda Harts (episode 506)

The Art of Mentoring Well, with Robert Lefkowitz (episode 599)

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Join Coaching for Leaders Plus to accelerate your learning, build your confidence, and invest more fully in developing others. Activate your membership by Friday, February 3rd to receive the inaugural membership of $100 USD annually.

Jennifer Garvey Berger: Unleashing Your Complexity Genius

Jennifer believes that leadership is one of the most vital renewable resources in the world. She designs and teaches leadership programs, coaches senior teams, and supports new ways of thinking about strategy and people. In her three highly acclaimed books, Unlocking Leadership Mindtraps, Simple Habits for Complex Times (co-authored with Keith Johnston), and Changing on the Job, she builds on deep theoretical knowledge to offer practical ways to make leaders’ work more meaningful and their lives more fun. She has worked with senior leaders in the private, non-profit, and government sectors around the world with organizations like Novartis, Google, KPMG, Intel, Microsoft, Wikimedia, and the New Zealand Department of Conservation.

Jennifer also supports executives one-on-one as a leadership coach. Over the last decade, she has developed the Growth Edge Coaching approach. She supports clients to find their current growing edge and then make choices about how they want to develop. She teaches coaches around the world transformational and developmental coaching approaches in her Growth Edge Coaching certification series. Jennifer speaks at leadership and coaching conferences, and she offers courses for coaches at universities all over the world. She is the co-author with Carolyn Coughlin of Unleash Your Complexity Genius: Growing Your Inner Capacity to Lead*.

In this conversation, Jennifer and I discuss the reality that most of us don’t like uncertainty. That makes experimenting with new ideas and actions in complex environments very challenging. We uncover several practices that can help us benefit from experimentation in the midst of complexity and grow from these experiences.

Key Points

Complicated situations are hard, but have a clear answer (such as how to send humans to the moon). In contrast, complex situations are dynamic; yesterday’s answer may not work tomorrow.

Most of us really dislike complexity, to the extent that that people with terminal diseases are happier than those who will likely recover.

Step-by-step approaches don’t work in very complex situations. Instead, take action through thoughtful experimentation.

When experimenting, release your attachment to outcomes.

Lean into humility and don’t shy away from endings. Putting end dates on experiments helps us move forward — and sometimes remove what isn’t working.

Resources Mentioned

Unleash Your Complexity Genius: Growing Your Inner Capacity to Lead* by Jennifer Garvey Berger and Carolyn Coughlin

Interview Notes

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Related Episodes

Essentials of Adult Development, with Mindy Danna (episode 273)

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

Help Your Brain Learn, with Lisa Feldman Barrett (episode 513)

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Wendy Smith: Both/And Thinking

Wendy Smith is the Dana J. Johnson Professor of Management and faculty director of the Women’s Leadership Initiative at the Lerner College of Business and Economics, University of Delaware. She earned her PhD in organizational behavior at Harvard Business School, where she began her intensive research on strategic paradoxes—how leaders and senior teams effectively respond to contradictory, yet interdependent demands. She has received the Web of Science Highly Cited Research Award for being among the 1 percent most-cited researchers in her field and received the Decade Award from the Academy of Management Review for the most cited paper in the past 10 years.

Her work has been published in such journals as Academy of Management Journal, Administrative Science Quarterly, Harvard Business Review, Organization Science, and Management Science. She has taught at the University of Delaware, Harvard, and Wharton while helping senior leaders and middle managers all over the world address issues of interpersonal dynamics, team performance, organizational change, and innovation. She is the author with Marianne Lewis of Both/And Thinking: Embracing Creative Tensions to Solve Your Toughest Problems.

In this episode, Wendy and I discuss the dangers of either/or thinking and how that tendency limits our effectiveness. We explore how to shift to both/and thinking in order to resolve the most challenging problems. Plus, we share key tactics that will help us do this in more practical ways.

Key Points

Framing a decision as an either/or will often minimize short-term anxiety, but limits creative and innovative long-term possibilities.

While easy to see both/and opportunities for others, we’re likely to approach things as either/or when it’s ourselves. An outside perspective from someone who’s not emotionally connected is helpful.

Changing the question we are asking is the most powerful to navigate paradoxes.

Moving up a level when facing tough decisions can help us see the big picture.

Consider shifting from “making a choice” to “choosing” in order to lead us towards better outcomes.

Resources Mentioned

Both/And Thinking: Embracing Creative Tensions to Solve Your Toughest Problems* by Wendy Smith and Marianne Lewis

Interview Notes

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Related Episodes

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

How to Win the Long Game When the Short-Term Seems Bleak, with Dorie Clark (episode 550)

The Leadership Struggles We See, with Muriel Wilkins (episode 559)

How to Quit Bad Stuff Faster, with Annie Duke (episode 607)

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Jorge Alzate

Jorge Alzate is a senior R&D manager at PepsiCo, an active leader in Toastmasters, and an alum of the Coaching for Leaders Academy. In this conversation, Jorge and I discuss what brought him to the podcast, how he utilized the Academy to help his career move forward, and the critical nature of courage for leadership growth.

Key Points

One action a day (the blue marbles for Jorge) is the way to create a new habit that can develops into a skill.

Accountability is key to move us forward, even if it does not feel comfortable in the moment.

Courage is the ability to act in spite of fear — and almost always necessary before confidence.

Resources Mentioned

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

Winning Conditions: How to Achieve the Professional Success You Deserve by Managing the Details That Matter* by Christine Hofbeck

Related Episodes

Leadership Through Consistency, with Joseph Getuno (episode 490)

How to Build Confidence, with Katy Milkman (episode 533)

How to Protect Your Confidence, with Nate Zinsser (episode 573)

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Patrick Lencioni: The 6 Types of Working Genius

Patrick Lencioni is founder and president of The Table Group, a firm dedicated to protecting human dignity in the world of work, personal development, and faith. Pat’s passion for organizations and teams is reflected in his writing, speaking, executive consulting, and most recently his three podcasts, At the Table with Patrick Lencioni, The Working Genius Podcast, and The Simple Reminder.

Pat is the author of twelve best-selling books with over seven million copies sold. After twenty years in print, his classic book The Five Dysfunctions of a Team remains a weekly fixture on national best-seller lists. He has been featured in numerous publications, including the Wall Street Journal, Harvard Business Review, USA Today, Inc. magazine, and Chief Executive magazine. He is the author of The 6 Types of Working Genius: A Better Way to Understand Your Gifts, Your Frustrations, and Your Team.

Many of us have heard the invitation from Jim Collin’s book Good to Great to get the right people on the bus. But once the right people are on the bus, how to do you find the right seat for each person? On this episode, Pat and I discuss how to utilize the Working Genius model to find the right work for the right team members.

Key Points

When addressing burnout, the type of work someone does is more significant than the volume of work.

Three stages of work are present for almost every team: ideation, activation, and implementation.

A cup of coffee in an excellent thermos can stay hot an entire day — that’s true of us when we’re aligned with our working geniuses.

Finding the right work for a team member is far easier than finding the right person culturally. Before you look elsewhere, be sure they are in the right seat.

To fill gaps in your team’s geniuses, you can hire, borrow, or find people where competence will suffice for now. Resist the temptation to immediately jump to hiring.

Resources Mentioned

The 6 Types of Working Genius assessment

The 6 Types of Working Genius: A Better Way to Understand Your Gifts, Your Frustrations, and Your Team by Patrick Lencioni

Interview Notes

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Related Episodes

How to Get the Ideal Team Player, with Patrick Lencioni (episode 301)

How to Lead an Offsite, with Tom Henschel (episode 377)

The Mindset Leaders Need to Address Burnout, with Christina Maslach (episode 609)

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Dave Stachowiak: Coaching for Leaders

The podcast is taking a few weeks pause over the holidays, with new episodes returning on January 9th.

Next Academy Application Opening

The Coaching for Leaders Academy will open for new applications again in March, 2023. To receive an invitation when applications are available, visit the Academy page.

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Ram Charan: Leading Through Inflation

Ram Charan is a bestselling author, teacher, and world-renowned advisor to CEOs and other business leaders of some of the world’s best-known companies. His work is often behind the scenes and focused on highly sensitive and fate-making issues. Fortune magazine published a profile of Ram in which it called him “the most influential consultant alive.” His book Execution, lauded for its practicality, spent more than 150 weeks on the New York Times bestseller list.

Ram’s energetic, interactive teaching style has won him several awards, including from GE’s famous Crotonville Institute and Northwestern. Ram was elected a Distinguished Fellow of the National Academy of Human Resources and was named one of the most influential people in corporate governance and the board room by Directorship magazine. He has served on the Blue Ribbon Commission on Corporate Governance and serves or has served on a dozen boards in the U.S., Brazil, China, India, Canada, and Dubai. He is the author with Geri Willigan of Leading Through Inflation: And Recession And Stagflation.

In this conversation, Ram and I explore the changing macroeconomic environment and what leaders can do to address it. We discuss the importance of managing cash well and how pricing decisions can be made effectively. Plus, we discuss the critical nature of partnerships throughout the supply chain — and where the opportunities may be in the midst of challenge.

Key Points

Inflation consumes cash. Cash management is the number one risk to an organization during this time.

The way to get ahead of the curve is to be predictive vs. reactive. This may be a time the existing business model needs to change.

Inflation creates an illusion of growth. It’s important to adjust for this in all reporting and planning.

Work with all sides of the value chain. Help customers deal with rising costs while also working closely with suppliers. Regular communication is essential.

Smaller, regular price adjustments are better than less frequent, larger increases. Resist the temptation to offer less for the same price.

Resources Mentioned

Leading Through Inflation: And Recession And Stagflation* by Ram Charan and Geri Willigan.

Interview Notes

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Related Episodes

Improve Your Financial Intelligence, with Joe Knight (episode 244)

How to Approach Corporate Budgeting, with Jody Wodrich (episode 355)

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

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