Since we are starting the week with a holiday, I thought we could do something a little different. I have interviewed a lot of fascinating guests over the years ranging from the CIO of IBM to the Chief People Officer at McDonald’s to the CHRO at Allstate and many, many others. And towards the end of most of my interviews I ask the guest to give us some advice in the area of their expertise. We have received a lot of great advice over the years and so I thought it would be fun to compile a full episode of advice from past podcast guests. I hope you find it interesting and helpful, there are some great tips and thoughts in these clips.

The first clip is from my interview with bestselling author Jon Gordon. Our conversation for this episode revolved around his newest book, The Power of Positive Leadership. The section that I chose from this interview was when Jon gave us 3 key principles to focus on from his book in order to help us be more positive leaders and transform our organizations.

His three key points were, talk to yourself instead of listen, focus on the fact that we create our world inside out, not outside in, and the importance of grit.  

The second clip I chose for this week is from David Deming, the Professor of Public Policy, Education and Economics at the Harvard Graduate School of Education and a Faculty Research Fellow at the National Bureau of Economic Research. In our conversation we talked a lot about the future of education, the current economy and skills needed for employees of the future. He had advice for both leaders and entry level employees.

One piece of advice he gave to leaders was, “don’t be afraid to take a chance on somebody who doesn’t come from the standard background but who could potentially be a good fit for a position that you’ve got going on. Because I do think that in this world of constant technological change and uncertain measures of employee productivity, it’s easy for good people to fall through the cracks”

One topic that is really timely at the moment is privacy and security in our increasingly connected world. So I chose a clip from my interview with Dr. Alissa Johnson (aka Dr. J), the Chief Information Security Officer at Xerox. In the clip you will hear her tips and tricks on how to protect ourselves in this connected world. As she mentions in the clip, the advice may seem simple, but they are all things most people are not currently doing.

I also chose a few clips with advice on people analytics because it is another hot topic nowadays. The two clips that I chose are from Natalie McCullough, the General Manager of Workplace Analytics and My Analytics at Microsoft and David Green, the global director of people analytics solutions at IBM Kenexa Smarter Workforce.

Part of Natalie’s advice was to, “really start on this journey with a sense of transparency and growth mindset. So, approach the data with the very open question of “what can I learn from this data?”. A bad way to start is to start with a fairly defensive mindset, which I’ve also seen.”

David gave some advice that was simple and straight to the point. “In terms of how can organizations get on with this...I mean honestly, just start”, David said, “Read up on it, be inspired by what other people are doing, don’t copy them necessarily, but be inspired.”   

When I interviewed Seth Godin, author of 18 bestselling books, speaker and founder of altMBA he gave us advice on what entry level employees can do to bring more passion into their careers and be more successful at work.

He said, “I think it’s really important that we get this perspective and begin to take responsibility, that we never, ever say, “Well, I have student loans and a family to support and bills to pay, therefore, I will sacrifice my life and my future by doing braindead work that I don’t believe in, half-assed and waiting it out”. Because what are you waiting it out for? When will you stop waiting it out?”

Other clips that I included in this podcast mashup are from the Chief People Officer at McDonald’s, the Co-CEO at Gensler, the Senior Economist and Team Leader of the Labor Market Trends and Policy Evaluation Unit at the ILO, author of The Coaching Habit, and author of MegaTech: Technology in 2050.