Open, Honest, and Direct: Stories from Powerful Leaders on What It Takes to Unlock Your Team’s Poten

Starting something is easy; sustaining it is hard. Building team habits and consistent follow-up are crucial yet challenging. How do we create a work environment where companies thrive because of their leadership, not despite it? Joining us today is Deb White, former people executive at Peloton, Nike, and Williams-Sonoma. From sales floor to L&D leader, Deb crafted Peloton's global learning strategies, excelling in large-scale facilitation and behavior change. In this episode, we explore Deb's journey and her strategies for creating sustainable change across diverse and remote environments. Discover practical steps for long-term success in leadership and talent development.

In the latest episode host Aaron Levy sat down with Vice President of Human Resources at Backstage, Stephanie Trindade. Stephanie navigated through her unexpected transition from a criminal justice career into the realm of people management, driven by her strong desire to make a positive impact on others. She emphasized the integral role that people have within organizations and highlighted the value of clear communication from senior executives to entry-level employees in understanding the company's core values and culture.

Join us as we dive into the world of virtual team building and authentic leadership with Heidi Scott, Ph.D, VP of Learning and Development at Salary.com. Discover brain-centric techniques for boosting creativity, the secrets of million-dollar meetings, and how to align project objectives with business goals. And listen as Heidi talk about the power of curiosity, humility, and servant leadership in driving peak team performance.

How can you grow confidence and encourage top performance in your company’s people? Can constructive conversations bring about true authenticity in your workforce? Tom Bromwich didn’t start off in the gaming industry, but now as the Head of People Development at Kwalee, he brings his own leadership journey to his role.  On this episode of Raising the Bar on Leadership, Tom and Aaron explore how to pick up the good tactics of mentors, while developing your own leadership style. Tom explains how personal and company values are crucial to team harmony as well as how to honor the experience of more senior leaders as newer leaders are being developed.

In today's episode, David Kaus, VP of HR at Catalyte, is a human resources professional and servant leader that is passionate about increasing the effectiveness of organizations and maximizing employees’ potential. In his roles, which have ranged from his current position managing over 700 employees to an Instructional Designer, David collaborates with business leaders to create and implement strategic and tactical plans to meet company objectives and growth initiatives, develops and tracks HR metrics to identify process improvement, organizational development, and employee engagement opportunities and helps employees and managers navigate ambiguity in fast-paced and changing environments.

In this episode, we are joined by Wanda Lee Florestine, Director, Outreach (People Development & DEI) at GRID Alternatives, a nonprofit on a mission to transition to clean, renewable energy by making renewable energy technology and job training accessible to underserved communities. In addition to that powerful work, Wanda is an author and in the process of publishing her second book; if that doesn't keep her busy enough, she does DEI training & workshops in her local community.

In this episode, we welcome Barr Moses, the Co-Founder & CEO of Monte Carlo, a data reliability company and creator of the industry’s first Data Observability Platform. Barr and I discuss the importance of speed; not just speed for the sake of moving fast, but focused, intentional speed. We talk about how it’s helped her grow and scale Monte Carlo and how she’s put structures in place to help her team move at speed and take the time to reflect, reevaluate, and move forward even faster. Lastly, Barr leaves us with probably the most important nugget of all about authenticity. You’ll have to listen to the end to hear that one.

Matt is the CEO and Co-Founder of Clockwise and AI-powered scheduling app built to help teams and people make time for what matters most before Clockwise. He helped build RelateIQ, a company acquired by Salesforce for 390 million. He was previously a front-end software engineer. A civil litigator and a founder of a variety of software startups. Matt holds a BA from Dartmouth and a JD from UPenn in Philadelphia. In today's conversation, we talk about the challenge of moving from an individual contributor to a manager of people, of going from getting instant gratification to delayed gratification as you lead others, and how to best maximize your time during that transition.

On today's episode, we are joined by Aidan McCullen. Aidan is a change consultant and works with organizations to improve how they collaborate and create the environment for change. He is the Host and Founder of The Global Innovation Show, a speaker, board advisor, author, and a reinvention expert.

In today’s episode, Keturah McCottry, Director, Learning and Development at Radancy, the leading cloud-based talent acquisition software provider intelligently solving the most critical challenges for enterprises globally and delivering cost-efficient outcomes that strengthen their organizations, shares the importance of being open to change, her key tool to GSD, creating and then letting go so projects can spread their wings + more.