Partnerships and Possibilities Podcast

By Diana Larsen and Sharon Buckmaster

What's Partnerships and Possibilities Podcast about?

Partnerships and Possibilities is a podcast about leadership in organizations. Listen in as Sharon and Diana discuss issues of leadership at all levels.

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Partnerships and Possibilities Podcast episodes:

05.28.2015
S6E7 The Soft War On Diversity
“It’s not just enough to get people in the pipeline. You have to make it worthwhile to get them to stay.” In what ways does your organization seek and hire a diverse workforce? In what ways does it convince them to...
04.14.2015
S6E6 Decisions, Decisions
“A team is more than just the sum of a bunch of individual contributors’ thinking together. A team’s primary work is learning together and making decisions.” What makes a team? How do you become an effective member of a team? And...
03.17.2015
S6E5 Haven’t We Heard This Before?
“We’ve been making these issues [of women in the workforce] explicit at least since ’70s. Forty-five years is a long time to talking about the same stuff.” How are you pushing to expand the discussion? How are you seeing others come...
12.18.2014
S6E4 Virtual Teams, Real Challenges
“There is not much that is specific to a virtual team, that couldn’t apply to almost any team.” Are you on a virtual team or managing one? What challenge does your virtual team face? How have you worked to solve them?
10.28.2014
S6E3 The Different Faces of Leadership
“Everybody is saying we need to strive for servant leadership, but nobody seems to know what that looks like.” What is your style of leadership? What kinds of leadership have you observed in colleagues? Which have been most effective for particular...
10.17.2014
S6E2 Revisiting Influence
“We’ve been ranging over a lot of current topics lately, and for so many of them we feel we’ve visited them before – everything old is new again. Here is what we’ve been finding out about influence and how we’ve...
10.02.2014
S6E1 The Gender Meritocracy
“At one point during the ‘Women in Agile’ presentation, a man sat down to join the mostly female audience. One of the presenters thanked him for participating. He replied, ‘Don’t thank me – I have a daughter!’” What are you seeing...
03.07.2014
S5E9 Work With Us
“When I see inequity, here is how I’m responding to it, here’s how I’m trying to shift the behavior, both in myself and in creating the conditions to shift it in others.” What are you seeing in your organization relating...
02.28.2014
S5E8 Who Needs ‘Em?
“Do we need managers? It depends.” What role(s) do managers have in your organization? How are managers viewed in your place of work? What does the staffing structure look like?
02.21.2014
S5E7 Old Wine and Gatorade
“Technological and philosophical progress happens because it builds on the work of previous folks …we’re all part of a continuous stream.” What are your thoughts? Are “new” ideas repackaged “old” ideas?
02.14.2014
S5E6 Competition
“There are people who fundamentally believe that competition is the way to get the best out of people, and there are people who fundamentally believe that the spirit of collaboration is the way you that you get the best out...
02.07.2014
S5E5 Retrospectives for the Rest of Us
“Retrospectives help us define and examine a body of work, what we can learn from it, and what that tells us about going forward and then choosing those next steps to move forward.” What would be useful for you to learn...
01.31.2014
S5E4 Tethers & Widgets
“There is a cost to setting up a system where people feel less connected to your company.” Have you had any experiences with the untethered office? What are your thoughts on this evolving workspace concept?
01.24.2014
S5E3 Welcome Aboard
“The mission and the culture need to be embedded in every single process that touches a prospective employee.” Have you observed a company or do you know about a company that you think does a fabulous job of finding good people...
01.17.2014
S5E2 The Learning Organization
“Do the thing to learn the thing.” Do you work in a learning organization? Has it been effective in building your capabilities and enhancing your work processes?
01.10.2014
S5E1 Playing by the Rules
“Simple rules need to be scalable and generalizable, they have to be action-oriented, and they’re always stated in the positive.” Has your organization, team or group incorporated simple rules? What impact have simple rules had on your group’s coherence?
11.08.2013
S4E8 Mentor, Coach, Sponsor
“A mentor helps you understand how to navigate your organization, a sponsor helps advocate for you, and a coach is there to help you develop both the skills and the thinking acumen to be able to perform well.” Have you been...
11.06.2013
S4E9 Change from the Middle
“The more things change, the more our objections to change stay the same.” – Bill Taylor Are you a middle manager whose organization has gone through a change? What was your role in this organizational change? What challenges and/or successes did...
11.01.2013
S4E7 The Top Leaders
As a leader can you acknowledge what is going on with the people that you’re dealing with, do you see them? Do they feel seen when they are with you? Seeing each other in a real way, and making that...
10.25.2013
S4E6 The Top Workplaces
“Some of the highest performing companies in the country have the culture thing figured out, they nurture their internal brand as a strategic asset that stimulates a strong external brand.” – Ted Sickinger If you work in a place that you...
10.18.2013
S4E5 The Gender Zeitgeist Part II
“You cannot be a good contributor if you never look away.” Have you read any of the recent articles published in the September 2013 issue of the Harvard Business Review? Where do you agree and where do you take issue?
10.11.2013
S4E4 The Gender Zeitgeist, Part I
“There’s a lot in the zeitgeist right now that’s looking at the differences between how men and women lead, how those differences in leadership style, whether done by a man or a woman, impact people’s ability to get things done...
09.20.2013
S4E1 Be Human
I think that we have a culture, right now, a business culture, a larger social culture that has so much rigidity around scarcity and fearfulness and a lot of the negative parts of being human and we’re not very much...
08.23.2013
S4E3 Aitch Arr
HR typically has been set up in the past and has been staffed by people who saw it as their role to protect the organization… but there is another whole set of function that support the strategic role of HR…...
08.23.2013
S4E2 Blame the Consultants
“It’s how we respond to the changes, it’s how we think about them, it’s how we interact, how we deal, how we cope, how we make meaning of the change that makes the difference.” What are you doing to influence change...
06.28.2013
S3E9 Leaning In
“It’s really about stepping into your power, and believing that you have more power than many women typically do.” Have you read Lean In? Or have you experienced some of the issues discussed in today’s podcast? Maybe someone you know, a...
06.27.2013
S3E8 “What if...?”
“The meetings you do have you want them to be a good use of everybody’s time but there is also ‘do we really need to have a meeting every single time?’” If you have other techniques in helping meetings really work...
06.18.2013
S3E7 Effective and Efficient Meetings
“ More often the same person who is convening the meeting is expected to lead and facilitate it. Leading it is making sure the right content is being covered, and introducing the content, facilitating it is making sure the discussions...
05.24.2013
S3E6 Learning Lean, Part II
“It is not only new information coming in all the time that needs to be learned. But old assumptions are being challenged, so everything we thought we knew and could be put on the shelf and rely on, those are...
05.17.2013
S3E5 Learning Lean
“Lean is about being accessible to and more influenced by the voice of the customer and having the flexibility to adapt and adjust as you move along.” Have you participated in a lean start-up process? What was your experience?
05.10.2013
S3E4 The Star
“In a team situation, having a star performer becomes a threat and an opportunity. If a person is a star performer, their job is to spread their skills around to other members, to mentor and pair with people so other...
05.09.2013
S3E3 Know Thyself
“Using self-awareness and self-knowledge for self-management seems to be key in becoming an effective leader.” What instruments have you experienced that have been helpful to you? When has really good self-awareness and self-knowledge helped you self-manage as a leader? If you’ve...
04.25.2013
S3E1 The Secret Club
“Membership in the secret club carries with it the need to behave in certain ways that may not be your personal inclination. My advice would be to get some experience to get a clear-eyed understanding of what it looks like...
04.24.2013
S3E2 An Inquiry into Questions
“Leadership really comes from the nature of the questions you ask rather than the statements that you make.” What questions have been particularly powerful for you? What questions have you asked or have been asked that have made a difference in...
03.12.2013
S2E9 Simple Rules
“One of the guiding thoughts about simple rules is that not only are they pretty short and action oriented by starting with a verb, but they are also generalizable and scalable so that they can help you in many different...
03.12.2013
S2E8 The Complexity of Change
“How can a leader be an innovator or expect innovation in their own organization if they’re not willing to experiment with the idea of innovation about what leadership is and how you do it?” How is leadership defined in your organization?...
03.06.2013
S2E7 Our Changing Views of Change
“To really accept that the world and change are emergent is to accept a kind of stance that says ‘I really can’t know the future and I really can’t do a whole lot to prepare for it’ and that makes...
02.15.2013
S2E6 Leading through Negotiation
“You can’t really be a good negotiator if you can’t hold boundaries …And to hold the boundary you have to be able to see it, you have to be able to perceive where the boundary lies.” What kind of negotiations are...
02.08.2013
S2E5 Asking for What You Need
“We become somehow acculturated to making do with what we’re given rather than asking for what would make things better.” What are some of your negotiation experiences? What tips did you garner from those interactions? What has helped you or hindered...
02.01.2013
S2E4 Missing the Mark
“If we admit that we can continually improve, we somehow think we’re admitting we’re not enough right now. And I don’t think of it that way, I think we are doing the best we can right now, and we can...
01.28.2013
S2E3 The Vulnerable Leader
“Vulnerability is really about allowing ourselves to be seen… there are ways of being seen a little more clearly in places that actually helps and helps other people and helps the situation.” What kind of strategies do you use to help...
01.19.2013
S2E2 Welcoming Women
“The need to have more women involved in software development, since women are at least half of the consumers of software development … does give us some differences in perspectives, although there are some conversations about how we might characterize...
01.13.2013
S2E1 Stories We Tell About Ourselves
“Stories can be very powerful, [but] it’s not enough to just have a story to tell, it has to have relevance, it has to have meaning, to you personally, you have to tell the story sincerely, [and] with authenticity” What is...
11.15.2012
S1E9 Power and Politics
“Politics is really how we get things done – it’s the networks, it’s the interactions, it’s who talks to who, who influences who.” What kinds of power and politics have you seen in your organization? Have you seen positive use of...
11.08.2012
S1E8 The Persuasive Leader Part II
“If you use the credibility that comes with your job title, once, and then people discover that it really wasn’t authentic then you’ve broken trust and trust is difficult to restore once broken.” How do you use your credibility and what...
11.02.2012
S1E7 The Persuasive Leader
“Effective persuasion becomes a negotiating and learning process through which a persuader leads colleagues to a problem’s shared solution” – Jay A. Conger, PhD, Professor and Author Have you experienced persuasive leadership? How does the discussion on persuasion resonate with your...
10.25.2012
S1E6 Power and Influence in Organizations
“Our influence is a source of power; the way we influence is unique to each of us.” What is your unique source of influence and how are you using it in your organization? When have you needed to reach out and...
10.18.2012
S1E5 Stories of Leadership
“Once you define a problem differently, it opens up different solutions and the possibility then of influencing the patterns becomes much greater because there are different places you can touch the problem that you might not have thought of otherwise.” What...
10.04.2012
S1E4 A New Role for Leaders
“Leaderful organization…It’s collective because it involves lots of people and it disburses the leadership throughout. It’s collaborative and it’s compassionate…”
09.28.2012
S1E3 Courage
“The essence of leadership; it’s about who you are and being clear about your values.”

What's Partnerships and Possibilities Podcast about?

Download our free app to listen on your phone

Partnerships and Possibilities Podcast episodes:

S6E7 The Soft War On Diversity

S6E6 Decisions, Decisions

S6E5 Haven’t We Heard This Before?

S6E4 Virtual Teams, Real Challenges

S6E3 The Different Faces of Leadership

S6E2 Revisiting Influence

S6E1 The Gender Meritocracy

S5E9 Work With Us

S5E8 Who Needs ‘Em?

S5E7 Old Wine and Gatorade

S5E6 Competition

S5E5 Retrospectives for the Rest of Us

S5E4 Tethers & Widgets

S5E3 Welcome Aboard

S5E2 The Learning Organization

S5E1 Playing by the Rules

S4E8 Mentor, Coach, Sponsor

S4E9 Change from the Middle

S4E7 The Top Leaders

S4E6 The Top Workplaces

S4E5 The Gender Zeitgeist Part II

S4E4 The Gender Zeitgeist, Part I

S4E1 Be Human

S4E3 Aitch Arr

S4E2 Blame the Consultants

S3E9 Leaning In

S3E8 “What if...?”

S3E7 Effective and Efficient Meetings

S3E6 Learning Lean, Part II

S3E5 Learning Lean

S3E4 The Star

S3E3 Know Thyself

S3E1 The Secret Club

S3E2 An Inquiry into Questions

S2E9 Simple Rules

S2E8 The Complexity of Change

S2E7 Our Changing Views of Change

S2E6 Leading through Negotiation

S2E5 Asking for What You Need

S2E4 Missing the Mark

S2E3 The Vulnerable Leader

S2E2 Welcoming Women

S2E1 Stories We Tell About Ourselves

S1E9 Power and Politics

S1E8 The Persuasive Leader Part II

S1E7 The Persuasive Leader

S1E6 Power and Influence in Organizations

S1E5 Stories of Leadership

S1E4 A New Role for Leaders

S1E3 Courage