What is the biggest indicator of teacher success? It is probably not what you are assuming. Listen to my conversation with Scott McCue, Dean of Sposato Graduate School (and my cousin) discuss his experience developing and training teachers. Whether you are in the academic or corporate world, he provides insightful and valuable ideas for creating a culture of feedback. He is also a kind, articulate, and thoughtful person.

Bio: Scott McCue is the dean of the Sposato Graduate School of Education. He worked as founding Head at Boston Preparatory Charter Public School from 2002-2012.  Before founding BPCPS, he taught History at the Academy of the Pacific Rim Charter School and in the New York City Public Schools.  He has a Master of Arts in Teaching from Teachers College at Columbia University and A.B. from Harvard University.

When you realize what your kid’s whining jag or tantrum triggers in you, you are in a much better place to respond. Understanding where your stuff ends and your kid's stuff begins involves slowing down and recognizing your own reaction. Listen to Dr. Rachel Barbanel-Fried (known as Dr. RBF) share insights and data around the value and benefits of meditation and breath. She is a smart and approachable psychologist who makes this seemingly impossible stuff seem almost achievable.

Bio: Dr. RBF is a Clinical Psychologist and Optimal Performance Consultant based in Newton Centre, Massachusetts. She consults with executives and organizations looking to elevate performance and reach new levels of success in the workplace and beyond. She also sees individuals, couples, and families in a therapeutic setting who are looking to move forward towards growth, change, and healing. To learn more about Dr. RBF’s background, education, and services check out her webpage https://drrbf.com/about/.

Listen to my conversation with friend and film editor Celia Beasley about her recent 11 month long trip from Madagascar to Columbia with her two children and husband. She shares some powerful insights around giving kids more latitude, using empathy to limit whining, and why riding on a scooter in Sri Lanka is the perfect time to discuss the birds and the bees. Celia is dynamic and thoughtful and makes me feel like a big wimp.

Celia Beasley is a film editor based in Seattle her recent credits include SADIE, directed by Megan Griffiths and OUTSIDE IN, directed by Lynn Shelton. Her website is: celiabeasley.com. To learn more about Celia’s trip you can find her blog including posts and videos from her kids at http://btfwa.blogspot.com.

When the Bosnian War started in 1992 Tijana Dwight was 15 years old and living in Sarajevo. She was uprooted from her home, spent two years in a refugee camp in Slovenia, and ultimately moved to Los Gatos, CA. Her refugee journey reflects her positive perspective, self-reliance, and love of all math classes. Hear about her experience volunteering at a refugee camp in Greece in 2017 and gather ideas for how to support refugees today.

Bio: Tijana Dwight lives in Santa Clara, CA with her husband and two children. She spent 13 years at PayPal in Large Enterprise Product Marketing and is currently focusing on her family during their children’s most precious years.

We’re talking about feedback. Listen to difficult conversations expert and executive coach Debbie Goldstein discuss the power of coaching. Despite the fact that she doesn’t like being introduced as an expert or a master coach she is incredibly adept at listening closely to executives and students alike to help them raise awareness around themselves and their strategic choices. Learn about the concept of “doubling” and why it is so important to give people a safe “sandbox” in which to play. Debbie is a partner at Triad Consulting and teaches at Harvard Law School and Harvard Graduate School of Education. She is also an awesome, warm, and smart person.

Bio: 

Debbie is a Principal and the Managing Director of Triad Consulting Group. She teaches negotiation as a faculty member at Harvard Law School and Harvard Graduate School of Education. She has also taught at Tufts University School of Medicine and was an adjunct professor at Georgetown University Law Center for many years.

Debbie’s varied clients include Merck, Chanel, Brigham and Women’s Hospital, Capital One, Barclay’s, Honda, Standard Bank, Shell, Boeing, General Mills, MetLife, PricewaterhouseCoopers, Citigroup, Prudential and Proctor & Gamble.  She has addressed students and alumni at Duke’s Fuqua School of Business, University of Denver, Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government, Harvard Medical School,  Dartmouth’s Tuck Business School and Harvard Business School.  Her work often takes her internationally: to Dubai, where she worked with government leaders; to Ethiopia, where she worked with the Members of Parliament; and to Cyprus, where she taught public policy students from across the globe.  

She coaches senior executives through difficult decision making and managing critical relationships, and has helped mediate family business disputes.  In the public sector, she founded and ran a free legal aid clinic called LINC (Legal Initiative for Children) for the patients at Massachusetts General Hospital’s Chelsea outpost.  She has been a featured guest on NPR, and her writing has appeared in the Boston Globe Magazine,  the Management Information Exchange Journal, and the Harvard Business Review.

Debbie is a graduate of Williams College and Boston College Law School.  After college, Debbie lived in Chicago chasing (and catching) her dream of becoming a jazz vocalist.  

Rather than focusing on “presence” and “confidence”, speaking expert Scott Stiefvater explains that when your intent is to be in service to the listener you are better able to connect than when trying to protect your own ego. Consider ideas like the fact that listeners are much less concerned with what you know and more interested in how you make them feel. Take a deep dive into what is actually happening when you speak from the swing of the sentence, the activity of the discussion, and the inner world of the speaker. Gather key tips like: the importance of vocal tone to be in line with the sentence and how you can sound more warm when speaking. My favorite take-away - the listener’s mind is not linear and when you intrude by introducing a linear narrative people struggle to process the idea. The solution? Have more impactful conversations.

Bio: Scott Stiefvater coaches senior and emerging leaders to become masterful communicators on stage and in the boardroom. To learn more, contact him at [email protected].

We’ve been getting empathy wrong. If used well empathy can improve the ROI on marketing and communications, employee retention, the brand, ability to connect with customers, and recruiting numbers to name a few. Listen to my conversation with Michael Ventura, CEO of the design and strategy studio Sub Rosa, to learn why he developed the design process Applied Empathy and wrote the book by the same name. Listen to stories including how Applied Empathy enabled GE to improve cancer detection by 10% through mammography exams while also making patients feel more comfortable and eager to schedule their next appointment. This guy is super interesting and smart.

Bio: Michael Ventura is Founder & CEO of Sub Rosa, Author of Applied Empathy. In Michael’s own words: “I’m a problem solver at heart. I like to help remove obstacles that stand in the way of getting people where they want to go. I've tried to build my career in the service of helping those I interact with to be better than they were yesterday. Slowly but surely, this practice has grown into the beautiful creature it is today. I’m not sure where it’ll go next, but I’m happy to discover whatever destiny presents along the way.”

Listen to Nina Lorez Collins, Author and Founder of the Group “What Would Virginia Woolf Do?” share her story of creating a group now comprised of 26,000 women over 40. Learn about the power of normalization and honesty to help bring people together. Consider the concept of “reinvention” as people get older and the pressure associated with that idea. You will be captivated by Nina and her path of self-exploration.

Bio: Nina Lorez Collins has had a long career in book publishing, first as a scout and then as an agent. In 2013 Nina completed both a life coach certificate and a Columbia University Masters in Narrative Medicine. She has been consulting and writing since then. Nina’s interests—issues around transition, loss, separation, end of life, how women in particular tell stories—have come together in the creation of a closed online community for women over 40 called What Would Virginia Woolf Do? now also the title of her book, which was published by Grand Central in 2018. Following is a New York Times Article describing her group https://www.nytimes.com/2018/03/28/style/should-i-join-what-would-virginia-woolf-do-facebook-group.html.

Nina is currently at work on a memoir about her mother. She has four children, lives in Brooklyn, and is a trustee of the Brooklyn Public Library.