Team Anywhere Leadership Podcast

Today our guest is Scott Shute, head of mindfulness and compassion, at LinkedIn. Scott is the author of, The Full Body Yes. Scott’s vision is to change work from the inside out, and his mission is to mainstream mindfulness and operationalize compassion for the 3.3 billion workers in the world.  

In this episode, you will discover the mindset and practices of companies that are 14 times more profitable than the standard S&P average, by spreading mindfulness and compassion at work.  

What is Compassion and Where Does a Lack of Compassion Come From?
Compassion is awareness of others, a mindset of wishing the best for them, and then the courage to take action. 

The antonym of compassion is your inner critic. We allow our inner critic to run rampant inside our heads, triggering our fight or flight response. Our amygdala, formerly used to ignite that fight or flight response that kept us safe from predators, is now used in less extreme situations. Today, this response might go off during times when our kids are arguing in the next room while we are on a Zoom call. 

 Our inner critic is driven by fear. Our inner critic focuses 99% of our energy on the 1% of our life that is hard or wrong. Scott calls this pothole management. There could be 1000 miles of perfect road and one pothole, and we will spend 99% of our time concerned about that one pothole. 

Because of our inner critic, we don’t spend any of our time on the 999 miles of perfect road. 

A Compassionate Leadership Mindset
The most important asset we have is our people. What we know is when our people are at their best, the company is going to be at its best. 

Thinking you need to project confidence and be feared by your employees is outdated - and ineffective - thinking. Inside this old approach, leaders told their employees what to do, and their employees did what was said without questioning it in fear of getting replaced.  

That world is gone. 

The power has shifted from the company and its leaders to the employees. Employees today have more power in where they work, and who they work for, more than ever before. The best people write their own tickets to the best companies. If you want to be successful as a leader, you must treat your employees as the most valuable resource you have. 

Compassionate Leaders Focus on Authenticity - Be Human
People don't want to work for a robot. Being human allows your employees to see that you are just like them rather than feeling a sense of separation. There is typically a sense of separation where employees can't identify or connect to their leader when the leader is seen as too perfect, or has a facade of perfection. When perfection is presented, employees believe they can not achieve that perfection, leading to despair and defeat. 

If leaders deeply know themselves, they can then know other people. Compassionate leaders have a mindset of kindness that enables them to wish the best for others. 

Compassionate Leaders Communicate Clear Purpose & Values
Strong leaders have a clear purpose, centered values (individually and organizationally), and clear communications-- and they never deviate from that. They repeatedly share where the company and team is going and why it’s important. 

Compassionate Leaders Have the Courage to Take Action
Compassionate leaders have courage to take action for themselves and others. They declare that they are going to do the hard things for themselves, which allows them to then do the hard things for others.
Compassionate Teams
In Google's Project Aristotle, researchers discovered that the number one factor in building a high performance team was psychological safety. 

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Have you ever wondered how to make your workspace more effective and more tailored to your individual ambition?  

On today’s podcast we are delighted to have Susan Meier, a branding genius and acclaimed artist, and Hallie Burton, a world renowned lifestyle photographer. Together they created  Workspace Studio, a website featuring the world’s most beautiful and productive workspaces.  They share with us how to develop your home workspace so that it reflects who you are, emboldens your productivity, and enhances your creativity.

Many people are being much kinder to themselves when it comes to designing their home workspace compared to their office. Most of us weren’t allowed to fully make our work space represent ourselves in the office. Working from home is a different experience because you have full control of creating a space that compliments you, your needs, and your expression. It’s a place where you can feel the most comfortable.

#1 Get Creative in Creating a Room of Your Own

Many people who work from home struggle to find a way to create a room of their own. With the onset of the pandemic, our homes went from the places that we leave in the morning, to the places we stay at and use all day and night. Most people don’t have a dedicated home office, making it even more difficult to find this room of their own. 

Even if it's not an actual room, do your best to get creative. Figure out where you can create, carve out, or re imagine that space where you can close the door and form a physical boundary that shows you are working. Establishing this room of your own allows for physical privacy, and both surface and wall space. 

#2 Make Organization Mobile
Being organized inside your home workspace can be a real challenge, especially if you’re sharing that space with different people and for different activities throughout the day. For example, you may be using your kitchen table as your desk during the day and then have to transition to clearing the surface for dinner making in the evening.

In situations like this, Hallie and Susan recommend creating a work tote. The work tote is a mobile organizer that you can take to the space you need to work and move around as needed. 

#3 Keep it Simple
Keep your workspace simple, even if that means spending 15-30 minutes at the beginning and end of your day to simplify your workspace. Organization and simplicity allows you to be more flexible, open and creative. 

#4 Personalization is Key
Personalizing your space creates a portrait of you. Use small, meaningful items such as artifacts or mementos to ground you and provide talking topics in Zoom meetings.  Think about adding items that have meaningful stories for you. 

For example, a special seashell from a special trip, pictures of your family, or a wood carving made for you can add meaningful richness to your environment. These items are reflections of you and should be key elements inside your home workspace. 

Another idea that can help you personalize your workspace is adding things that will help improve your ability to work, foster a creative zone, or provide a spot to rest. For example, Hallie loves having a thermal mug warmer because drinking tea is an important ritual in her working day.

#5 Add Nature Elements
Hallie and Susan recommend that most workplaces contain greenery. You can add natural elements into your workspace such as flowers, leaves, and succulents. Adding elements of nature helps create a relaxing atmosphere.  

See the full summary here: https://tinyurl.com/ytpr8v9d

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In today’s episode, we interview entrepreneur, leader, and CEO of Aquila Capital Partners, Mark Watson.  Mark shares that the key to success for remote leaders is to understand the importance in clearly communicating the vision and having outcomes based conversations that progress towards relevant KPi’s.

Since we are not physically together, our conversations must be outcome based. On a remote team, leaders spend more time in the leadership role versus the management role. Just like Rear Admiral Grace Murray Hopper said, “you lead people, you manage things,” successful remote leaders spend more time leading their remote teams towards their vision and mission. 

The outdated management style that focuses on closely managing the activities of remote employees during the time on the clock can be detrimental to achieving success. When leaders shift to outcomes based conversations their team members gain more autonomy, feel more trusted, and produce better outcomes. 

Communication with Remote Teams
Successful remote leaders are very strategic in their use of communication. A few years ago, leaders wanted everyone in the office because they wanted to make sure everyone was working. Working from the office gave an added level of security to leaders so they could ensure everything was running smoothly.

During the pandemic, when all teams were operating remotely, leaders lost that reassurance they once had in the office. The leaders that had a tendency to micromanage in the office shifted to virtual micromanagement.

For some companies, this led to a plethora of virtual micromanagement tactics that has hindered their success. Remote employees began to endure entire workdays in front of their Zoom cameras and - for some - every keystroke on their computers being tracked. What these companies did is apply outdated micromanagement tactics (meant for managing “things”) and applied them to people. 

Successful Leaders Make Synchronous Time Valuable
At the beginning of the pandemic, leaders were having one hour Zoom meetings just to have one hour Zoom meetings. Employees were experiencing Zoom burnout on a whole new level. Because of this, leaders now need to focus on making synchronous meetings quick, valuable and to the point. Additionally, leaders and their remote teams need to leverage the right communication avenue for the right conversation, which at times can be hard to identify.

Virtual Meetings Need to Be Focused and Short
Successful remote leaders think about what is really going to move the needle on their goals when they are in a virtual meeting. Inside weekly standup meetings, each person on the team reviews what they’re working on. This is meant to keep everyone updated and not micromanage a team member's every move. These short standups allow team members to understand how their work supports desired goals.

Keeping these discussions short, crisp, and to the point makes a real difference in valuing the time of your remote team members. In the office, these meetings used to take an hour but they only needed to take 20 min max. The same is true for your remote meetings. By focusing on relevant KPIs, outcomes and vision, successful remote leaders help their remote teams identify their goals, and then let the employees figure out how they are going to achieve those goals. 

Remote leaders must shift their mindset and language in virtual meetings. Instead of asking, “what did we accomplish today?,” they should ask, “Are we on our timeline to achieve our goals?” Even a simple shift in asking a new question like this produces greater results with remote teams. Leaders then should leave all other work and less relevant conversations for asynchronous communication; for example, DM’s, emails, or phone calls. 

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Can you teach collaboration, empathy, creativity and transparency in the virtual world? Sure, you can teach it but it won't change behavior. To change your behavior you and your team must immerse yourselves in creative experiences. On today's podcast, Dr. Fred Mandell and Harvey Seifter, founders of Futures that Work, demonstrate how to build the competencies required to succeed in the two dimensional zoom world by engaging our team in the three dimensional worlds of art and science.

Many people were waiting to get to the other side of this pandemic, hoping the virtual world would become less relevant and that we would get back to “normal.” But the reality is, we're not going to get back to that ever again. Because of that, there is a premium in developing the kinds of skills and communication to be effective in a virtual world. Because we're moving toward a hybrid world, we don't exactly know what the balance is going to be. And we have found that the arts continue to be a incredibly engaging, three dimensional experience in a two dimensional medium,

One downside to the virtual world is that it is 2-dimensional. The 3-dimensional world is where the art experience thrives. But is it possible to bring the richness of the 3D of the arts into virtual team building? Bringing the arts into virtual team building is very powerful, because it begins to help people appreciate that the world that we're entering into, is going to be an interplay between three dimensions in two dimensions.

What is Art-Based Learning?
When teams engage in arts-based learning they begin to change the way they collaborate. The teams that spent a few hours of arts based learning exhibited dramatically more emotionally intelligent behaviors like try mutual respect, transparency, openness to new ideas, all of these kind of key elements for collaboration. Results in innovation

Benefits of Arts-Based Learning
Through experimental research, Fredd & Harvey discovered that the Arts have a very powerful and unique impact on creativity, collaboration, emotionally intelligent behavior, innovation and resilience. Arts based learning taps into the creative expression and potential that every human has. When people experience art, it triggers the same neural circuitry that triggers empathy. Additionally, Arts based learning can change a culture, organization and language. 

6 Arts-Based Virtual Team Building Activities

1. Suminagashi - The Japanese term refers to “floating ink.” Suminagashi is the process of marbling plain paper with water and ink to transform it into something vibrant and colorful.
2. A Music Experience- Put your team inside the music, teach them to perform and have them perform a musical experience. Learn the connection between music performance and collaboration.
3. Poetry - Have your team work together to write poems. Tap into their creative writing skills. 
4. Drawing - Have your team members draw a picture together.
5. Theatre - Have your team act out a scene in a play or perform improv. 
6. Dance/ Movement - Have your team participate in a dance or other movement such as a Yoga or Tai Chi class. 

Tips for Leaders for 2021

1. Visit a museum
2. Compose a poem
3. Draw a self-portrait 
4. Walk in the woods without your cell phone and breathe deeply. 
5. Ask yourself, What is different about today? And why does that matter? 
6. Every morning ask yourself, What am I grateful for today?
7. In the evening before going to bed, repeat and reflect. 
8. Listen to a different kind of music. 
9. Observe a child 18 months or younger playing 
10. Eat a slice of pizza beginning with the crust and working toward the tip.  

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Despite the return-to-office plans, remote work is here to stay, and leaders are searching for remote work culture ideas to help build strong teams. As the founder of DistantJob, a company that finds global remote talent, and author of Surviving Remote Work, Sharon Koifman has over a decade of experience finding, hiring, and creating great remote cultures. Sharon shares that his success has been based on a clear definition of culture, building trust and caring about remote workers' mental health.

The Truth: Remote Work is Here to Stay

Nearly all of the research out there is showing that remote work provides greater productivity and is preferred by many workers. According to SloanMIT research, remote work has created happier and more independent people. Coco-cloud research shows that people are 77% more productive and 23% are willing to work more hours if they can work from home. Additionally, 23% of people would prefer a lower wage if they could work from home. Remote work is becoming a necessity, and leaders need to figure out how to continue to strengthen their remote culture, and adjust their leadership style to support their remote workers.

How to Keep Remote Company Culture Alive

Clearly Define & Declare Remote Company Culture
Even after 14 months of working remotely, people are still having a hard time understanding what a remote culture even is. Leaders need to have a clearer definition of what a remote culture is in the first place if they are going to be successful at building it.

Remote Company culture is about creating connection. Culture in the remote world is your connections between you and the company, between colleagues, and between clients and employees. A clearer definition of remote culture allows leaders to prioritize what is needed to shape the culture going forward

After the clear definition of company culture has been created and agreed upon, it should be shared and role modeled in the early stages of growth—whether in person, virtual, or hybrid. However, as the company grows, so does the culture. The culture is a living, breathing organism that eventually shifts its power from the leader to the employees. Eventually, other people, your culture champions, will begin to take charge of defining and declaring the culture. This will empower the company to create and support a healthy remote culture that becomes embedded in all organizational processes; including, hiring, personal growth, completion of work, and engagement.  

3 Ideas to Strengthen Remote Culture 

Donut App

One idea that Sharon personally uses is an app called Donut. With Donut, he has 1-on-1’s with each person on his team. With the Donut app, remote companies can connect serendipitously for virtual coffee, peer learning, DEI discussions, and more.

Define & Build Trust

Most leaders think that they need to define and build trust with their team so that they can trust their team. But Sharon challenges leaders to think about trust the other way around. The question isn’t whether the leader can trust the employers; rather, the question is whether employees can trust the leader. As a leader, are your employees comfortable approaching you when they don’t understand something? 

See blog for full summary.

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In today’s episode we interview Dr. Annemarie Spadafore where she shares the leadership type that has best thrived in the pandemic, and how these leaders are now approaching return-to-office conversations. Annemarie is the managing principal of Powerlab, executive coach and author of, There is Only I in Team, scheduled to be published in December of 2021.

The type of leader that is thriving in the new dispersed work environment focuses on personal responsibility, takes the time to know themselves better, consistently assesses their boundaries, remains obsessively curious, and leads with a partnership approach. 

This Type of Leader Thrived Through the Pandemic
Successful Leaders leveraged the quietness of being at home to re-prioritize.  Leaders discovered their motivations by focusing on their strengths and how to utilize their strengths to best work alongside their employees.

They Took the Time to Know Themselves
Annemarie explains that most leaders live under a “layer of dust,” covering them from their awesomeness. During the Covid separation, successful leaders spent time removing that dust and gaining awareness around their strengths and priorities. 

They Focused on Personal Responsibility
Successful leaders began to focus more on personal responsibility and recognize that they can only fully control themselves. They realized that they can’t force others to do things ‘their way’ and instead began to create spaces where entire teams and individual team members could take their own responsibility for defining their future work.

They Consistently Assessed Boundaries
Due to the pandemic, there have been many boundary violations that typically wouldn’t have occurred.  With good intentions, leaders even put themselves into positions of giving personal advice. The most insightful leaders reviewed their boundaries and found a balance between being supportive, and allowing their employees to make their own personal decisions. 

They Were Obsessively Curious
Unfortunately, we have a much lower tolerance in the workplace for accepting people than we do in our personal situations. Traditional leaders tend to impose policies, procedures, and other structures to manage the behaviors of others. During the upheaval of the pandemic, most processes were abandoned as teams tried to just get the work done. The more effective leaders realized that the best approach was to step back, zoom out, and be curious. 

They Led With a Partnership Approach
In Annemarie’s work over the past year, the most successful leadership style has been a partnership approach where leaders and their direct reports work in tandem. The partnership approach flattens the power curve and helps teams take real ownership for results. 

Identifying What Works Best for Your Return to Office Plan
As leaders brainstorm with their teams in creating their “return to work plan,” they should consider asking:

• What do I want to achieve? 
• Where are my strengths? 
• How do I play to my strengths? 
• What am I capable of achieving in this new environment?

In turn, leaders should encourage their team members to consider the same questions so everyone can bring their best selves to the future of work. 

Return to Office Conversations For Your Team

Inside the planning phase of each company’s return-to-work plan, leaders have a real opportunity for holding coaching conversations with their employees. Leaders have a natural tendency to treat everyone the same for the sake of fairness. Yet, over the past 14 months, leaders have had to treat each employee's personal situation differently. This still needs to continue during this renewal period. 

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On today’s podcast, we interview Bert Sarkkinen, founder and owner of Arrow Timber Framing. Inside this episode, he shares with us that the secret to creating committed virtual teams is to embrace humility in leadership. As leaders practice humility, they’ll place a greater emphasis on listening rather than speaking and be more open to experimenting. 

Brett emphasizes that Humble Leadership is more about listening than speaking. Additionally, humble leaders should spend more time asking questions uncovering what’s in other people’s heads rather than spending time communicating what they are thinking. Humble leadership is more about just simply trying things and improving with each iteration  rather than trying to create the perfect masterpiece the very first time. 

What is Humility?
Dr. Robert Hogan defines humility (in leadership) as the ability to be willing to admit mistakes, share credit, and learn from others. Humility in leadership is the magnet that grounds leaders from their egotistical state. It is perhaps the most important characteristic for engaging others and fostering communication and results. 

2 Main Beliefs Inside The Humble Leader
Leading humbly is acknowledging that 100 brains is better than one. Humble leaders intentionally avoid the spotlight and move the spotlight to their teams. Humble leaders make decisions and take action based on three main beliefs. 

Belief #1 You Don’t Know What Someone Else is Thinking, So Listen More Than You Speak

The humble mindset lies in believing that you really don’t know what someone is thinking. Humble leaders spend more time discovering what others are thinking rather than assuming that they know. The only action a leader can take is to listen more so all ideas are heard, put on the table, and considered for action. 

Humble leaders avoid giving tons of information to their teams right away for the sake of “saving time.” Humble leaders practice the “listen more than you speak” by allowing their team to work on projects at their own pace. As the team hits roadblocks, humble leaders give them the information they need, slowly, along the way. This approach offers more opportunities for the team to be open to learning, rather than getting flooded with information when they aren’t ready to receive it.

To practice this, for your next project, instead of leading and directing the meeting, take a step back and instead ask your team the following questions. 

• What are we trying to do?
• What is important here?
• How should we go about this?

Belief #2 Misunderstandings Happen

The Humble leader understands that messages between the leader and listener can be misunderstood. As leaders and teams develop, their paradigms change. During this time of transition, messages are often misunderstood. Humble leaders recognize the importance of constant dialogue to align intention with consequence and to clear up misunderstandings. 

See blog for full summary.

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Leaders around the globe are in the midst of creating their return to work plan during the COVID-19 pandemic, requiring both vigilance and flexibility to navigate uncharted territory. Inside today’s episode, we have a brilliant conversation with Rachel Casanova, on things to consider when approaching your back to work plan.

This reboarding phase is something that we will all experience together. During this period, it’s vital for your entire staff to be authentic and open about identifying and understanding the needs of returning to work through three perspectives: the business, the individuals and the team members. 

When it comes to this return to work plan, no one has the answers. The best approach is to look at everything moving forward as a two week sprint. Prior to COVID, the idea of businesses making decisions in two week sprints was unheard of. Yet over the past year, companies have found short, temporary, and flexible decision-making to be the only way to move forward.

Make Your Return to Work Plan a Prototype

Make your return to work plan a prototype. Bring your staff in for a day to figure out where the issues are. Then, define how you want to invest your money and what solutions you need to create. The idea behind a prototype is to do first, and then strategize, rather than strategizing first and then do. Your company can work out the issues just like you did a year ago when everyone went fully remote. It’s time to recognize that the next step back is going to be messy and none of us have the answers. 

Focus on Authentic Communication

The expectation for authentic communication continues to grow. As the leader, be clear on sharing what you know and don’t know. The return to work plans require tough conversations.

Instead of trying to come up with the return to work plan on your own, bring the conversations to your leadership team and your employees. Have everyone share what they think is important in regards to the back to work plan. After sharing what you think is important, ask your team: Why would this work? Why wouldn’t it work? What did we forget? Spend time having conversations around imagining what this new plan is going to look like. 

Review Your Return to Work Plan Through Three Lenses: Business, Team, and Individual

Individual Needs: Overcoming FOGO

At the individual level, there is a new fear employees are facing called FOGO, the fear of going out. In crafting your return to work plan, focus on helping your employees overcome the fear of going out. When it comes to balancing the needs of the employees versus the needs of the company, don’t overlook issues involving specific, valid needs. For example, many people are still caregivers and have specific reasons for wanting to continue to work from home. Leaders can give employees help in navigating the path to going back to the office. 

When crafting your return to work plan, ensure the experience of coming back to the office is worth it. Think of your employees as the customers: What would make their return great? What would make coming back to the office comfortable? Remember we’re re-onboarding Corporate America. Do something that makes your employees’ lives easier. Imagine that everyone is almost like a new employee. They haven’t seen their desk or the office in over a year. What are you, as the employer, going to do to make coming back to the office easier and better?

Read the full summary inside our blog.

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Storytelling is one of the most in-demand and underrated skills for leaders to discover in 2021. In this week’s podcast, we interviewed Yamini Naidu, economist turned master business storyteller. The new hybrid and virtual workplace will be new, challenging and definitely a more emotional game. The greatest leaders and managers will engage their workforce through masterful storytelling to create new relationships, and create a new future and culture. Every leader today is now further away from their employees and will need to leverage storytelling to bring their employees together.

Why Business Storytelling is Important
Storytelling helps us reach this meta-modern world and it helps us stay connected with each other. Stories are the Velcro on people's brains, nothing else will stick. So whether you work with products, services, teams, stakeholders, or you're pitching your work the most powerful way to do that any activity is through storytelling.

Personal Storytelling Versus Business Storytelling
Think of personal storytelling and business storytelling as a continuum. Business storytelling because you always have to have a purpose and a message. Business story telling gives leaders a new kind of power. Hard power is when leaders are direct, task focused and in a directing role. Soft power is when the leader’s power is focused on collaborating and being cohesive. The new power,  storytelling power offers leaders a different type of power in that it connects people to a story in a ways that solidifies a message and creates engagement.

Transform Bland Company Events into Captivating Experiences
When Leaders share personal stories, what they are doing is called micro storytelling. Macro storytelling is when storytelling happens across an organization. Leaders can think larger, go beyond a focus on individual stories and think about storytelling in areas like their brand promise or employee value proposition. 

How to Make Storytelling An Experience for A Company Retreat or Event

1. Provide a list of framing questions.
2. Break leaders or people into groups and get them to share their experiences and answers to the questions you provided. 
3. Do stop lights. In stop lights, everyone takes a pause at sharing, and share across the groups.
4. After all the groups have shared their highlights, ask the group as a whole, what should share across the organization?

Storytelling can be used in collaboration with planning events because every time we bring stakeholders together, we want to create an experience. So how can you create experiential moments at your next event? There's nothing more experiential than storytelling. Think about setting up your event like a campfire, with small break out sessions dedicated to storytelling in a unique way. 

Elements of Business Storytelling
Before you even start to craft a story, begin with the end in mind. What's the purpose? What's the message of the story? And then think about your audience? Who is this story going to serve? 

 Business Storytelling Requires Three Elements

1. Have a Clear Sequence. 
   • What is the simple structure of your story?  Make sure you continue to engage your audience. At the end, you do a very subtle, elegant landing on the message. 
2. Be Specific. 
   • Many business skills require abstract, conceptual and big picture thinking, the opposite of specificity. Crafting a story is the opposite of that. 
   • When you are specific, you do two most powerful things in storytelling, you create emotion, and you paint a picture. 
3. Test Your Story on Three Elements
4. Is the story personal? 
5. Don’t just call anything a story.
6. Always find the human.

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Today on the podcast we interview Nick Petrie, Author of Work Without Stress: Building Resilience for Long-Term Success. Whereas many teams fail under stress there are certain teams that build resilience and can actually thrive under stressful conditions. Nick shares with us the secrets of how hybrid and virtual teams confront today's turbulence, focus on strengthening their relationships, looking for new opportunities and reframing to take advantage of the disruptions in today's new work environment.

Responding to Hardship Differently

Everyone initially has the same response when faced with a difficult experience. At first, everyone has a big drop off, and their typical levels of functioning and results go down across the board. Meanwhile, after the initial hit of hardship, people begin to respond in different ways. 

• Some People Struggle to Recover At All: The Crisis Phase
• Some People Partially Recover or Recover, But Come out of Hardship Looking Exactly the Same: The No Change Phase
• Some People Not Only Bounce Back, They Become Anti-Fragiles: The Opportunist Phase

The Widening Leadership Gap

The Poor Performing Leaders are Struggling Even Worse

In the office, if you didn’t have good one-on-one meetings with your people before, that was bad. If you’re not doing it now, it’s disastrous. The same is true for a leaders’ practices. The ties that were weak have dwindled and died in the remote setting; people are not meeting anyone from other departments, and they are not meeting in the cafeteria at lunch. There are even many people who joined in the last year and who have never actually met someone from their company in person.

The Strong Leaders Are Feeling Better Than Ever Before

The strong leaders are feeling closer to their teams than ever before. Strong leaders have built deeper connections and ties with their teams. These leaders are getting their teams to think strategically about what their networks need to look like across the organization. These leaders then create intentional plans for people to interact to build these relationships. 

Research on Stress & Resiliency: Is Stress and Tension the Same?

Why is it that two people can go through the same event and one person gets stressed and overwhelmed but the other person is fine? Events don’t equal stress. There is a difference between pressure and stress and we usually put them together like they’re the same thing. 

Pressure is defined as an external demand in your environment. When people ruminate on the pressure, they convert the pressure into stress, which impacts their health and well-being. Leaders need to distinguish these two terms, and come up with strategies that prevent rumination to build resilience.

The Redefining Mindset: A Phase of Re-Exploration in Leadership

Many Leaders reach a level of success where they find themselves asking, “is this all there is?” These leaders have accomplished everything they thought was going to make them happy, but they still don’t feel fulfilled and begin to burn out.

This phase can mimic a mid-life crisis. Nick helps leaders see where they are on these developmental stages. By discovering what this phase is, leaders often feel relieved. They realize they’re not losing motivation, they’ve just moved to a new developmental stage as a leader and adult.  

An In-Person 360˚ Assessment? 

Nick recommends that leaders dedicate time to seek in-person 360˚ Feedback.  Learn more inside the episode or read the full summary on our blog.

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