I believe that being intentional about your personal leadership brand and how you are authentic to your personal purpose and values is critical to great leadership. Harrison Monarth, Executive Coach and NY Times Bestselling Author, agrees, and I was inspired by his HBR article on the topic to invite him to share his wisdom on the Greatness podcast. This is not about disingenuous manipulation. It is about deeply understanding your values, what you stand for, and understanding if this is indeed how people are experiencing you as a leader. Harrison shares amazing tips for understanding and conveying your personal brand. 

Suicide has impacted so many of our lives and I'm saddened by the high rates of suicide in the construction industry. In Australia, someone in the construction industry commits suicide every other day, and workers are eight times more like to die by suicide than by a job site accident. Brad Parker, CEO New South Wales (Australia) of Mates in Construction, joined the Greatness Podcast to discuss their great work in the industry to create "mateship" and normalize conversations about mental health.

Do you know a gender diverse person in the construction industry? You may have seen my earlier LinkedIn post about the amazing Evelyn Lai, Site Engineer for Nacap, A Quanta Services Company. Evelyn participated in a recent leadership panel I facilitated at the Australian Pipelines and Gas Association annual conference and shared their experiences of being a gender diverse person in our industry. I immediately realized that this was a story I wanted to share more broadly with the construction industry. I really appreciate Evelyn taking the time to join the Greatness Podcast and candidly share their journey. Understanding how we create an industry where all people feel they belong is critical for our sustainability. 

Everyone needs to listen to this Greatness podcast with Vanessa Bennett, neuroscience expert, coach, and speaker. Why? We have learned more about the brain in the last five years than in the history of humankind and that knowledge is invaluable to us all. Vanessa shares concrete tips about how to "optimize your cognitive energy" in a way that allows you to improve your mental health and your performance, and avoid burnout. Our brains hate ambiguity, and even anticipating a difficult conversation creates stress. It's not enough to learn about our brains. The key is to build new habits that reduce stress and help us lead happier, healthier lives.

Delegation is a challenge for many leaders at all levels. I believe delegation is a critical skill because those who do not delegate drown in low-priority tasks. Author and consultant Shanna Hocking joined the Greatness Podcast to share tips on what to delegate and how to delegate from her insightful HBR article on the topic. She explains practical actions to take to improve your ability to delegate, including understanding your "why" that keeps you from doing it.

Do you sometimes feel like you are failing at everything? Not juggling fast enough? Not prioritizing your health? Danielle Dobson, author of Breaking the Gender Code, joined the Greatness Podcast to share the insights she gained through dozens of interviews and research on why many  women have these feelings. Danielle shares that women often work "the triple shift" - paid work, domestic work, and emotional work. She encourages each of us to build our own code, not just around the gender code, but also around the class code, the race code, all the "codes" that influence our thinking. Danielle shares great advice for how we "decode" and "recode" to help us all build resiliency and avoid burn-out.

Concrete examples of how artificial intelligence (AI) is helping organizations accelerate performance are quite helpful to me. I was completely blown away by a CURT presentation by TD Industries Vice President Jamie Dabbs and Barry Nelson, Founder and CEO of FactorLab, describing how they used an app to collect 500,000 daily planning conversation videos, then analyze 90,000 of these videos. The output, understanding things like what words and phrases truly engage crews, and how to then train superintendents to be more effective in leading safety conversations, resulted in a significant improvement in the safety results of this company. This is a must-listen as they describe the steps it took to enact this significant change and embrace cutting edge technology.

How do we attract more women into construction, and specifically into the trades? And keep them? Jennifer Wilkerson, Vice President of Innovations and Advancements for the National Center for Construction Education and Research (NCCER) joined the Greatness Podcast to share the results of a recent research, In Her Own Words: Improving Project Outcomes, that explores why we need more women in the trades (currently we have about 4%) and how we build the inclusive industry that will help them thrive. The research involved 29 focus groups, 176 interviews with tradeswomen, and 770 surveys; and discusses specific actions we can all take such as stressing zero tolerance for disrespectful behavior and properly fitting PPE.

Is your organization developing an AI strategy? If not, you should be. Dr. Sarah Buchner, Founder and CEO of Trunk Tools, started out working in the trades in construction, and now is driving artificial intelligence (AI) innovation and practical implementation. It's mind bending for me to think about how millions of pages of construction documents can be loaded into an AI application that allows you to ask a question, like "What is the paint specification for Room 83, Level 4" and receive an immediate answer. I firmly believe that, regardless of your industry, creating and executing an AI strategy is essential to future success. Sarah shares many practical tips that are applicable in any industry.

I admire people who consider themselves to be "servant leaders", and John Foong, Chief Commercial Officer of Domain and former Google executive, exemplifies this concept. John recently joined the Greatness Podcast to share his leadership experiences including his passion for unleashing the best in others and leading the change necessary to enable long-term success. John's ideas about why you are not doing anyone any favors if you keep someone in a role they are not suited to, and how to maintain a lens of curiosity about your employees, are spot on. We also delved into the topics of digital transformation and AI, how the technology of today is not going to get us to tomorrow. One key idea John shared is that the challenge as a leader is not to solve problems, it is to overcome the blindspots and determine that the problems exist.