The Lead Up Podcast

On this episode of the Lead Up Podcast, Mike goes through the 4 ways to Quit Losing Talent, which happens to be the name of his new book. His book is available at quitlosingtalent.com

In 2021, 57.6% of employees turned over, with 89% of managers believing it was due to money, but in reality, 88% left for different reasons, meaning these losses potentially could have been stopped. 

To get more in-depth information on all these strategies and more, grab a copy of Quit Losing Talent at quitlosingtalent.com

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On this episode of The LeadUp Podcast, Mike is joined by Bill Eckstrom of Ecsell Institute and Ecsell Sport who is here to talk about coaching and how people can improve their coaching to help businesses, sports teams and education facilities thrive.

After a look at Bill’s background, he talks about the 4 growth activities leaders need to practice, which are stated in his book, The Coaching Effect. He highlights two things; What you do and how well you do it. Bill also explains that good leaders will do one on one meetings, give written feedback, have consistent team meetings, and work with people on career development. These things are nothing special, but vital to be good at. 

Bill also talks about growth rings, which are a model for understanding how environments impact our growth. We have three rings: stagnated, chaotic, and order environments. Ideally, we want to be outside the order environments, as growth only occurs in a state of discomfort and unpredictability creates discomfort.

Bill lists for us some of the ways we can look at ourselves as leaders;

Finally, Bill talks about what the best coaches do differently from everyone else. He explains that they let the people on their team know they care about them as individuals, which is the most critical thing, and also they create a psychologically safe environment. 

You can check out  Bill’s book, The Coaching Effect on Amazon, as well as all other major book retailers. You can also check out Ecsell Institute and Ecsell Sport online, as well as Bill’s personal website, billeckstrom.com. 

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On this episode of the Lead Up Podcast, Mike challenges you to start thinking and stop living in learned reactions. 

Mike starts with his favorite Edison quote; “5% of people think, 10% of people think they think and 85% would rather die than think.”  He then puts it into the context of the 21st century in how people often do the same things with different results. 

He explains that our whole developmental life, we’re taught what to think rather than how to think. We’re conditioned to think about other people in a certain way, we follow the crowd and comply.

He shares how our reactions in all circumstances come from our internal programming and conditioning. If you get to a leadership role, and you haven’t worked on changing your thought process, you’re just reacting to the outside world and using the same practices you learned years ago. We need to upgrade our thinking and upgrade our behaviors. 

Finally, Mike takes us through how emotions and actions are connected and where the end goal comes into the process.

If you enjoyed this episode be sure to leave a five-star review so that Mike can continue to find ways to add value to people so that they can add value to other people! 

Links and Contact Information:

Website: www.harbourresources.com

Email: [email protected]

On this episode of The Lead Up Podcast, Mike is joined by Dr. Stephen Beeson. Stephen gives us an insight into his background as an aspiring musician and how one conversation changed the trajectory of his life so that he ended up in the leadership side of healthcare helping other physicians and clinicians practice excellence.

Stephen tells us how he had no intentions of going to college until one conversation at dinner with his uncle, who was a neurologist, about the day in the life of a physician. This conversation sprung the beginning of Stephen’s medical career as he spent the summer working with his uncle and ended up falling in love with the practice. Years later Stephen was offered a leadership role and decided to take the opportunity to help capacitate clinicians to be extraordinary for their patients in a way that gives them joy and meaning within their workplace.

Mike and Stephen speak about the importance of leadership and how leadership is the soil in which people grow. Stephen explains how our engagement, satisfaction, and burnout probability are heavily influenced by how our organization is being led. He shares how he works with people to get rid of their victim thinking by constantly engaging their conscious mind to be better for their patients and colleagues.

They also discuss how defiance is the first stage of change. Stephen gives some tips for leaders to use to re-engage the human side of health care:

They talk about the importance of having meaning and joy within your work and the workplace. Stephen expresses how often times if our work is too stressful and not fulfilling we end up taking those negative feelings home and disrupting our home lives and how we treat the people around us. 

Stephen believes that the development of skills to create behaviors and moments to drive meaningful outcomes is an incredibly powerful instrument and you can read more about this belief through his books Practicing Excellence: A Physician's Manual to Exceptional Health Care and Engaging Physicians: A Manual to Physician Partnership.

If you enjoyed this episode be sure to leave a five-star review and subscribe to the podcast so that Mike can continue to add value to people and you don’t miss an episode. 

Links and Contact Information:

Website: https://www.mikeharbour.net/

Email: [email protected]

Guest Website: https://practicingexcellence.com/stephen-beeson-md-bio/

On this episode of The Lead Up Podcast, Mike shares the three questions you need to know the answer to in order to execute excellent leadership. He kicks this episode off by sharing a quote by the publisher and writer Elbert Hubbard ~ ‘The line between failure and success is so fine that we are often on the line and do not know it. How many a man or woman has thrown up their hands at a time where a little more effort, a little more patience, would’ve achieved success. A little more effort and what seemed hopeless failure may turn to glorious success.'

Grab a pen and paper and take some notes because this is a powerful episode and you’re going to have some great takeaways from it! 

The three questions we as excellent leaders need to know the answer to are;

How many times have you been so close to succeeding and it just seemed that overcoming failure was impossible? Mike shares with us how there have been periods in his life where he felt like throwing in the towel because success felt too dark and unachievable. Failure is ok! Sometimes in order for us to achieve the success we desire in life we have to learn from others and also learn from our past selves too. Mike states that excellence is getting just a little better each day, month, and year. He encourages you to spend time reflecting on the year, learn from your success and design the way forward so the next year is your best year ever. 

So, what is on your quit list? Sometimes we want certain things in life but we are unwilling to give up the things that are holding us back from achieving our desires. Make note of what you truly want, is it better performance out of your team? Is it more results? More revenue at the end of the year? Now think about what you need to quit in order to have these things. You might need to quit avoiding difficult conversations with employees. You cannot be afraid of the emotional baggage or the potential outburst these difficult conversations may have because the more frequently you hold these conversations, the lower the outburst will be. He mentions how maybe you need to quit wasting time. Are you being busy but not productive? If so, head over to https://www.mikeharbour.net/daily-compass to grab a free copy of Mike’s daily productivity guide. A good leader knows when to quit and start. In order to create the results you want in life, you need to quit doing the easy things and intentionally put more effort into the hard things, and start today! 

Mike highly recommends creating a dream board not only for yourself but also for your team. Follow these easy steps involved with dream boards to positively impact your leadership;

He also recommends that you create a priority list – and prioritize what makes it onto your priority list! If you focus on 1 to 3 tasks a day, you will accomplish 1 to 3 things. However, if you try to focus on 4 to 10 things you’re only going to achieve 3 things. Even more so, if you focus on 10+ tasks to be accomplished in one day... you’ll achieve 0! He tells us that there is no such thing as multitasking. Sure you can chop and change between one task to another, but you cannot truly focus on two things at one time. Prioritize your time and the tasks you need to achieve one day at a time. 

Mike’s goal for this podcast is really to help you gain power in your life so that you can positively increase your influence on those that you lead. Mike reminds you that success is easy, but it’s not simple. Be sure to reach out to Mike through [email protected] for any assistance. Let him know if there are any topics you would like him to speak more about!

Don’t forget to share this episode and other episodes you found helpful with the people in your life who can also benefit from this podcast. And leave a review on your favorite streaming platform – let us know what you think! Subscribe so that you will get alerts and not miss an episode!

 Check out our latest book Quit Losing Talent.

On this episode of The Lead Up Podcast, Mike is joined by Karin Hurt and David Dye. Karin and David speak about their book Courageous Cultures which you can find here. This book is a practical user guide that allows leaders to create a culture for their teams. Mike mentions how culture is everything and how culture eats everything else for breakfast so it’s extremely important that you create the right culture for your team. 

Karin and David provide us with an insight into their lives before courageous cultures and how they both have the practical experiences that aided them to write this book. Karin and David talk about why having a courageous culture within your team is so important as it can lead to breakthrough results and will enable you to create intensive connections and trust with your team. 

David and Karin are focused on human-centered leadership and share some of their top tips for us as leaders to use to create a positive leadership culture; 

Leaders navigate the narrative and create clarity so it’s important as leaders that we define the following with our teams so that they feel engaged and important;

It is also extremely important that we as leaders encourage our teams to share their ideas and don’t back away from difficult conversations. David states that they wrote this book because they were seeing a consistent pattern when with their clients. Leaders asked ‘Why aren’t more people speaking up and why are they not sharing their ideas, why do I have to discover a good practice?’ and their teams were saying ‘Nobody wants my ideas, the last time I spoke up I got in trouble, nothing happens anyways’. David states that 40% of people lack the confidence to share an idea and that is why it is vital for us as leaders to understand that people hang onto past negative experiences and that we as humans underestimate the benefit that comes from sharing ideas.

Karin and David share some tools we as leaders need to do in order to create a space for our team to share their ideas;

They also, speak about systemizing courage and how the secret to success is in the system. David states that if we can systemize courage, it will help remove some of those fears. Karin and David talk about the power of one leader. If we as leaders are sharing our ideas, asking for ideas in safe spaces, engaging openly, honestly, and vulnerably with our teams we can expect to see the same in return.

For more information visit; Let's Grow Leaders where you will find a weekly blog and all the other information you need. 

David has a podcast which you can find here. 

Karin hosts a live show, Asking for A Friend, on LinkedIn which you can find here.

On this episode of The Lead Up Podcast, Mike discusses all things growth. He shares four very important workouts we need to do as leaders that will help us continue to move to that next level. He takes us through each of these workouts and explains how they help us personally and as leaders. 

‘If one advances confidently in the direction of his dreams, and endeavors to live the life which he has imagined he will meet with a success unexpected in common hours. "~Henry David Theroux

The four workouts we as leaders need to do are:

Mike explains how pull-ups aid us in our leadership. It can be really hard when we face resistance and how initially our body weight is against us but we have to face the pain and focus on the end goal. In business, there will be times when we get knocked down and we have to pull ourselves back up. We need to learn from and use the resistance we felt to strengthen us for the next time we get knocked down.  We can build our resistance by listening to this podcast, or other great leadership podcasts. You need to find a podcast or a mentor that will pull you up and help you expand your ability to do more.

Secondly, we need to practice pull-ups. Mike navigates us through how pull-ups contribute to our leadership. Pushing towards our goals as leaders requires a strong core. We need to know who we are, what our abilities are, and what we stand for. We cannot get pushed by the winds of change. We must focus on the results we are after because there will be times when we feel like giving up but if we push for our purpose – we will make a positive impact as leaders.

Mike speaks about interval training and how pushing ourselves to a limit, holding the limit for some time, and then resting will improve our leadership. He encourages us to use our PTO’s! Take time to rest, recharge, energize and then push hard to stretch yourself and your team. This podcast is designed to help you expand and become better at influencing others so that you have a more positive impact on the world which is something we need in today’s society.  Mike talks about how recording a podcast episode for 114 days in a row forced him to learn how to get better.  He said it was worth it even though it was very hard to continue at that pace.

Finally, he takes us through the process of stretching ourselves, mentally, vocationally, physically, and emotionally. Stretching helps keep our muscles from locking up. He explains how we cannot give what we don’t have so we need to be stretching our capacity. You simply cannot challenge your team to stretch if you are not practicing this. Mike mentions how lack of stretching is causing dissatisfaction within the workplace as people are being hired to do a job and then left there but people have desires and purpose within them that need to be exercised. People need to be more and do more and have more so we as leaders need to ensure we are stretching so that we can then encourage our teams to stretch. 

Mike encourages you to make note of the four important workouts we as leaders need to practice so that we can reach our goals and fulfill our dreams. He is working on his Quit Losing Talent and you can find some more information about this here; Quit Losing Talent. Mike encourages you to share your thoughts about this episode and podcast through your favorite listening platforms and also share this podcast with a colleague, friend, family member, or anyone who will benefit from the episodes.

Links and Contact Information:

Website: https://www.mikeharbour.net/

Email: [email protected]

On this episode of the Lead Up podcast, Mike is joined by Vincent Brown who has over 35 years of experience in the diversity and inclusion sector, words which were rarely, if ever, used when he started.

After Vincent gives us a look at his background and how he got into this field, he explains to us the difference between the de-segregation movement and the inclusion movement and why we changed from one to the other in the last several decades.

Vincent also talks about the importance of getting to know the people across the table from us. He tells us it takes 7 seconds for our brain to make judgments on people but we need to be able to see under this. We can do that by sharing our stories openly and being comfortable asking people to share their own stories.

He explains that we can often exclude people by not allowing them to belong. Vincent describes diversity as a noun, inclusion as a verb, and belonging as an outcome and how it can benefit many businesses. He uses his own company which he sold to Goldman Sachs as an example, which he can trace back the success of it to diversity.

He finishes off by telling us that leaders need to be responsible for inclusion and diversity and they need to be able to discuss these topics with the rationale of their head, the care of their heart, and the action of their hands. 

You can get a copy of Vincent's book, Intrinsic Inclusion here, and connect with him on LinkedIn.

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Thanks for listening!

On this episode of the Lead Up Podcast, Mike is joined by Bert Thornton and Sherry Hartnett, the authors of High Impact Mentoring, who are here to give you everything you need to know about the book as well as the best types of mentors and mentees.

Bert is the Former COO of Waffle House and was instrumental in helping build the company into a recognizable name around the country. His developmental leadership style is one every leader needs to embrace and learn from as you are building your team of leaders.

Sherry has built an award-winning Executive Mentoring program for the University of West Florida and the Pensacola area and has helped students interested in business and leadership truly grow into leaders ready to enter the job market. Her program and processes are a must need in every company in America today.

Bert speaks about some of the most important things when interviewing, such as attitude, energy, appearance engagement, demeanor, and body language, all of which leave a lasting impression on the interviewer, even in a technological world where meetings may not be in person anymore. Sherry adds to this by saying she would expect the younger mentee to reach out and call the older more experienced mentor, rather than texting or emailing them.

Bert explains that to force mentees out of their comfort zone, you first need to make sure they can be there and are open to your advice, which then allows you to figure out what the mentee needs. Sometimes this can be something different from what they think, pushing them out of their comfort zones. 

Later on in the podcast, Sherry talks about the top 5 things which mentees are looking for out of their mentors, which are;

From his time at Waffle House, Bert talks about how they have 44 people sitting in the wings waiting to take a leadership role, which helped Waffle House grow to the size it is today, by having these people trusted with leadership roles. It also helps raise the work level of the people currently in those leadership roles. 

Moving towards the end of the podcast, Sherry shares the 7 steps to begin building a program which are outlined in their book in more detail. 

Mike finishes by asking about the importance of giving back to the community and mentoring. Bert explains a successful life is about adding value to people and to see your help directly impacting a life is incredibly rewarding. He is often asked what is the silver bullet of life and that is to hang around the right people, but the gold bullet is to hang around the right people and have a mentor while doing it.

You can grab a copy of the book yourself which is available at highimpactmentoringbook.com, on Amazon, Barnes and Noble, Apple Books, and Book Logics. Also, keep an eye out in the near future for Sherry’s brand new mentoring course coming soon!

If you enjoyed the podcast please be sure to subscribe and leave a 5-star review so that you help us spread the word and grow bigger and better!

Thanks for listening!

On this episode of the Lead Up Podcast, Mike is joined by Bob Dent, the vice president and CEO of 3 hospitals and 32 years of experience, to share his wisdom and advice on how he runs his hospitals.

Bob talks in great detail at the beginning of the show about the challenges leading in general, and being a new leader during Covid-19 brought as he took the position just before the pandemic started. He goes on to talk about what he calls relentless leadership, saying you don’t have to have the answer, just always be there.

Mike asks Bob about how people who are people pleasers or problem solvers shift away from that mindset, as well as asking about staff who are afraid to speak up and share an idea that they may have. 

Bob shares some great advice to any fellow CEO’s or leaders on the financial side who may never have had clinical experience previously, and talks about some of the methods he uses to help these leaders, such as taking them on rounds of the hospital to help them understand the issues better. 

Mike asks Bob what he has done to put a focus on the health and wellbeing of his team, to which Bob replies with an impressive list of initiatives that are helping his staff deal with the extra pressures which have been brought on by this pandemic. 

Bob finishes off with his three-pointers for executive leaders, which are emotionally positive, be self-empowered, and be fully engaged.

You can find Bob on LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter, or if you want to get in touch with him directly, you can email him via [email protected]. 

If you enjoyed the show, please be sure to subscribe give it a 5-star review so we can grow and spread our message to more people around the world! Thanks for listening!