The Indigo Podcast

The marvel cinematic universe, or MCU, comprises 29 films that together have pulled in $27.432 billion in total revenue. And industrial and organizational psychologists Gordon Schmidt and Sy Islam argue that there's plenty that we might learn from these films. In fact, they go deep into this topic in their book, Leaders Assemble: Leadership in the MCU. Tune into this great conversation about how we might learn about leadership from popular culture, and more specifically, from superheroes.

Links and Other Information

Leaders Assemble! Leadership in the MCU (Amazon)

More about Sy: Twitter, LinkedIn, website, ResearchGate

More about Gordon: Twitter, LinkedIn, ResearchGate

Popular culture blog posts:

• What Should Matthew Be Doing? A Job Analysis for being a Raven
• Hidden Figures, Hidden Talent
• Building Wakanda for Team #SIOP
• Job Analysis of an SNL Host
• Parks and Recreation: A Workplace Sitcom for your IO, OB, or HR class
• May the Fourth of Networking Be With you

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Few ideas in business are as commonly discussed as leadership. Just think about all of the business books and articles and videos and bits of advice–all dealing with this topic. And sometimes with common ideas we forget what exactly we're talking about. We're going back to the basics and talking about what is leadership, actually? In this episode, we discuss:

• What are we talking about when we talk about leadership
• What do we know about leadership and how it works
• How we each make progress in our leader development journeys

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The Vincent William Baran Day of Service is named after Ben's son, who died in a tragic accident in November 2020. The mission of the Day of Service is to bring joy, passion, empathy, and love to the world through an annual day of in-person service. In this episode, Ben and Chris discuss how everyone can get involved in the 2nd Annual Vincent William Baran Day of Service, which is set for Saturday, Sept. 24, 2022, with additional opportunities on Sept. 23 and 25. The Vincent William Baran Day of Service will be an enduring, annual event, with the vision of it becoming one of the largest days of focused volunteer activity in the United States. For complete details and registration, visit https://www.mightyvincent.org Check out Mighty Vincent on Facebook and Instagram All episodes of The Indigo Podcast Like The Indigo Podcast on Facebook Follow The Indigo Podcast on Twitter

When organizations hire managers they tend to look for experience in a similar role, or someone that might be able to take the team or organization to a higher level or a different strategic place. It's rare to come across hiring teams that select managers on a "does not drive their team crazy basis." And there are few management issues that people complain about as much as this one: micromanagement. We discuss:

What is micromanagement?

Why does it occur and what happens when it does?

How to deal with micromanagement from three perspectives: as a senior leader wanting to ensure it's not happening, as a leader who wants to be a good leader, as a subordinate who is being micromanaged.

Links and Other Information

Related episode: Bad Bosses–The Technical Expert Who Fails at Leadership

Tavanti, M. (2011). Managing toxic leaders: Dysfunctional patterns in organizational leadership and how to deal with them. Human Resource Management, 2011, 127-136. Click here

Alvesson, M., & Sveningsson, S. (2003). Good visions, bad micro-management and ugly ambiguity: Contradictions of (non-) leadership in a knowledge-intensive organization. Organization Studies, 24(6), 961-988. click here

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What would you do if you had everything you wanted? What if you didn't have to work and your life was perfect? What then? In this episode, we unpack our thoughts regarding:

• What does it mean to have "made it" in life and society?
• Why there's more beyond the struggle of life and why that matters
• How all of us might start or continue that journey and make the world better

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A lot of what people know about leadership and organizations is based only on their own thoughts, observations, and maybe some pop psychology books. In our experience, much of what we hear people saying about leadership is just wrong. In this episode, we discuss:

- How learning about leadership through unthoughtful observation doesn't work

- How we might think about our leadership as a product that we need to iterate based on evidence based practice

- Implications for leaders, individuals and organizations

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Human resources (HR) does important work and has the potential to be a powerful force for organizational capability. At the same time, HR is rife with examples of non-evidence-based thinking. Quite simply, there are some big topics–like hiring–in which many HR professionals don't know what practices are supported by research and which ones aren't. In this episode, we discuss:

- The "research-practice gap" and why it matters

- Measurement of this gap and how it shows up in HR

- Implications for all of us

Links and Other Information

Fisher, P. A., Risavy, S. D., Robie, C., König, C. J., Christiansen, N. D., Tett, R. P., & Simonet, D. V. (2021). Selection myths: A conceptual replication of HR professionals' beliefs about effective human resource practices in the US and Canada. Journal of Personnel Psychology, 20(2), 51–60. Click here

Rob Briner's article, "The Basics of Evidence-Based Practice"

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Erik Helzer is an associate professor at the Naval Postgraduate School in Monterey, California, and he specializes in three facets of practical wisdom: ethical behavior and moral judgment, self-knowledge, and personal agency and adjustment. He joined us for a wonderful conversation, in which we discussed behavioral ethics and moral psychology, along with implications for all of us.

Links and Other Information

Helzer, E. G., Cohen, T. R., & Kim, Y. (2022). The character lens: A person-centered perspective on moral recognition and ethical decision-making. Journal of Business Ethics, 1-18. Download

Why the Past 10 Years Have Been Uniquely Stupid: Article in The Atlantic by Jonathan Haidt

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We recently released an episode about Joe Rogan. Some people HATED it. To be fair, some people liked it too. Since releasing that episode, we've thought a great deal about what we said, and we thought it was important enough–for you, our listeners, and because of the importance of the topic itself–to revisit this conversation. In particular, we'd like to explore some of the strongest reactions we got to the episode. These included:

- Why did you guys even do this episode given your focus on business and relationships and organizations?

- Are you saying Rogan should be canceled?

- You both must really hate anyone who listens to Joe Rogan!

We hope you stay tuned–especially if you hated our first episode on Joe Rogan–and let us discuss further.

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The Saga of Joe Rogan: podcast episode on The Daily

Happy belated Valentine's Day! Check out our episode on workplace romance.

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Joe Rogan has almost 12 million subscribers on YouTube and a gigantic podcast audience. He's also at the epicenter of an evolving controversy that has to do with his content, his platform, and his exclusive deal with Spotify. In this episode, we discuss Joe Rogan and his role in the media landscape. Links and Other Information

Why is Joe Rogan so Popular? Article in The Atlantic

Spotify CEO Addresses Joe Rogan Controversy (CNN)

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