The Mind Takeaway Podcast

In this episode, we speak to Kevin Watson, an award-winning business coach who works with leaders to enable them to reach their full potential, overcome challenges and help take their careers to the next level. He is passionate about making a difference, allowing and encouraging leaders who want to create and sustain meaningful change.

He combines a supportive, results-focused approach with the practical tools acquired throughout his career that span 17 years as a coach and over 25 years in retail, notably as part of the senior team responsible for the transformation of Selfridge into the iconic retailer it is today.

Timestamps:

03:03How Leadership is not a position It is a choice, taking people from one place to another through the power of influence and fellowship.

08:10 Empowerment is not something you have to give or can control. Employees are empowered as soon as they start their journey with your company.

14:02 What keeps larger, more established organisations from facilitating a more human-centric leadership approach?

17:20 Why are companies still sitting on their hands and trying to control their employees regarding working-from-home policies, and why they may not be here in the next five years?

25:47 We grow through chaos and uncertainty but forget that we are innately curious and try to avoid it.

27:23 The pros and cons of planning far ahead in the future and setting concrete goals.

32:43 If we all set up an organisation right now, what skills and awareness would we be looking for in our employees?

34:30 Leadership is knowing what is getting in the way of people doing their best work.

35:30 We can all be better at Self Leadership and take responsibility for change rather than blaming others or putting all responsibility on one person.

DID CURIOSITY REALLY KILL THE CAT?

The more curious we are about the world and other people, the more our reward is new information, insights and opportunities.

Timestamps and Takeaways

☞ Why curiously opens the door to hearing and seeing something new that you didn't know before?

☞ Becoming more curious as a leader will allow you to listen to your people, resulting in better engagement and collaboration.

☞ You can cut through your fixed views and biases when you become more interested in your surroundings and other people.

☞ If you have a fixed viewpoint or hold onto a specific outcome, you block creative ideas from taking shape and limit your access to new information.

☞ Being more curious can help you navigate uncertainty and help prepare for opportunities.

Exploring Regenerative Leadership

“Regenerative leadership is about rewilding boardrooms and companies, and that’s not about bringing in animals and letting wolves run riot.”

It’s about bringing back some of the natural innate abilities all humans possess and re-introducing a more human-centric leadership approach.

☞ Being of service by creating a safe and inclusive environment

☞ Showing up authentically

☞ Being vulnerable and permitting other people to do the same

☞ The act of replacing the old dogma or paradigms of leadership and embracing new and forgotten leadership skills

☞ Knowing that people are already empowered and that they do not require permission, only encouragement

☞ It’s about self-leadership and ownership

☞ Fostering our natural human qualities, such as creativity, emotional intelligence, our sense of community

☞ Allowing failure as a natural part of the learning process

☞ We are all capable of being thought leaders

☞ Listening to understand, by I hear, see and value you.

By doing all of the above, people will start to bring out qualities (from within) that they didn’t even know they had, which kick-starts empowerment and fosters a great work culture.

If you are looking for 1:2:1 Executive coaching, want to develop your leadership skills through one of our programs, improve your team's performance, get more creative or strengthen your business relationships, then check our website at:

https://www.themindtakeaway.com ⁠ or drop us an email at ⁠[email protected]⁠ for more details.

In this episode, we speak to Sejal Thakkar. Dubbing herself "Chief Civility Officer", Sejal is not your average employment law attorney! Her more than fifteen years of experience advising clients, human resources personnel, and legal counsel regarding sound, standard employment practices uncovered a need - and personal passion - for bringing more proactive, relevant, and impactful workplace training programs to her clients and their teams. Her highly experiential customised workshops tailored to executives, managers, and individual contributors bring the courtroom to the training room in an interactive, engaging environment favouring human stories over compliance checklists.

Timestamps:

2:59 Sejal explains her journey from Defence Attorney to building cultures of civility and inclusion

4:28 Why organisations need to take a more proactive approach to address workplace harassment and microaggressions.

7:00 Why is there so much willful blindness when it comes to breaches of compliance?

9:30 What are microaggressions and how they show up in the workplace?

13:42 How self-awareness with a willingness to address your blind spots is a good starting point for addressing diversity and inclusion in the workplace

17:00 The importance of leaders creating spaces with openness, transparency and creating a culture where people can speak freely without the fear of retaliation.

21:00 We explain how toxic work environments often come to bear.

26:23 The importance of training and developing middle managers in Cultural Awareness and Diversity because that's who employees go to first.

31:09 Did you know that around 75% of people don't even report their complaints and often suffer in silence?

32:05 What to do if you experience harassment or face discrimination?

35:29 What are the challenges of working from home and remote leadership

37:28 If no one is complaining and people aren't getting forward with difficulties, there are no problems, but people are not feeling psychologically safe to come along.

40:16 The importance of having customised programs and training instead of off shelve one size fits all Diversity and Inclusion solutions

In our fifth micro episode, we share some insights we gained from supporting leaders and professional musicians with creativity.

Takeaways and Timestamps

If you are looking for coaching, want to develop your leadership skills, improve your team's performance, get more creative or strengthen your business relationships, then check our website at:

https://www.themindtakeaway.com 

or drop us an email at [email protected] for more details.

Paul Hanford is a Berlin-based music culture writer and podcaster, originally from the UK.

His Arts Council of England awarded podcast Lost and Sound is about meeting music people with real vision and looks at the culture that inspires them. The show combines interviews with legendary artists like Peaches and Thurston Moore with up and coming artists from emerging cultural scenes around the world.

He’s written for WIRED, Beatportal, Huck, Mixmag, WePresent, Boiler Room, Somesuch Co, Crack, Highsnobiety, Borshch Magazine, Wire, Dazed, DJMag and Little White Lies. Plus curated music for events at Tate Modern, Tate Britain, The Victoria and Albert Museum, Somerset House and Top Shop.

From 2015 to 2018, he presented the weekly new music show on Hoxton Radio and the music news on London Live TV. Before this, he was Head of Music for London based event company Secret Cinema.

Back before this, at the very dawn of this millennium, he was part of indie electronica act Brothers In Sound, who released three EPs and an LP with Regal/Parlophone Records, before releasing two electronic LPs as Sancho for Superglider and then Seed Records.

Paul also tutors Cultural Theory at music academy BIMM and workshops for the Berlin-based charity organisation Open Music Lab which helps teach music to people who’ve experienced being refugees.

Listen to Paul’s Lost & Found Podcast and connect with him here: www.lostandsoundpodcast.com

Main Takeaways

Paul explains how the lockdown has given everyone, including artists a chance to slow down, reflect and have some safe care time.

How hearing the Pixies and Navanna in Six Forth changed Paul’s life and he felt part of some movement, he did not feel before.

Paul reflects on the lack of comradery due to the Covid Pandemic what this does to our soul.

45:06 How 2020 has been exciting in some ways, due to a culture shift in addressing diversity and how we need to start listening to all the different voices we might have not listened to before COVID.

46:45 Quite often something feels really good when you combine two different things together might not be new things, but the way they come together feels fresh and new!

How making art doesn’t have to be painful, but remember when you do face challenges, get frustrated or experience writer's block, that it’s totally ok and part of the creative process.

36:51 The same people who are in a position to pull the plug on creative funding for artists and institutions are the very same people who will complain in the future that we do not have many cultural outlets left after the COVID Pandemic ends.

58;14 How our creative ideas have always been around and they just can come through us, if we let them

64:41 Paul is kind enough to share his creating writing process and you might be surprised with what hen has to share.

Saying "I'm not sure what to do" as a leader and including your people in finding solutions can forge deep human connections within your team. It can also lead to creative answers you thought not impossible had you tried to solve things independently.

We can all be scared of not knowing, and it feels like a vulnerable place to be when we don't have all the answers, but it's an authentically human experience and the source of all insights and innovation.

If you are looking for coaching, want to develop your leadership skills, improve your team's performance, get more creative or strengthen your business relationships, then check our website at:https://www.themindtakeaway.com 

or drop us an email at [email protected] for more details.

In this episode, we speak to Simona Spilak, a Leadership Coach and Career Growth Strategist. She is helping leaders to accelerate their careers by exploiting the power of their uniqueness.

Simona is the founder of SimonaSpilak.com, an online coaching community. Over the last 20 years, she has helped thousands of clients transition careers, become entrepreneurs, and scale their businesses rapidly.

On top of that, she runs her consulting agency for major corporations, is a lecturer at the International Business Economics Faculty, and is a regular speaker at regional conferences in Europe. Simona lives with a deep passion for helping others to enjoy the same entrepreneurial freedom that she has.

Want to make effective decisions faster? 

Simona shared a downloadable bundle, including a video lesson & a workbook - “4 Techniques for Decision Making” with the listeners of the Mind Takeaway Podcast.

Link to the Decision Making free bundle: https://www.simonaspilak.link/simona-spilak-4-techniques-for-decision-making/

Connect with Simona:

Website: www.simonaspilak.com

FB: https://www.facebook.com/simonaspilakcom

LI: https://www.linkedin.com/in/simonaspilak/

IG: https://www.instagram.com/simonaspilak/

YT: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCvztWFSrBItltFNAkqPzWJA

Timestamps:

02:16 When considering a career change passion is not everything, we need to look into four areas: what you love to do, what you are good at, what you can be paid for and what the world needs.

05:30 How changes are a driver towards personal and professional growth.

07:30 The first step when thinking about your dream career is to start looking at your long term aspiration; the vision of who you would like to become, what would you like to be, who are people around you, etc.

10:30 Often, we are held back by a lack of awareness of our capabilities and limiting beliefs.

13:15 Taking small incremental steps and getting help is crucial to overcoming setbacks and achieving your professional dreams.

14:40 Having a coach or a mentor means someone who can help you open the doors you haven’t seen before.

17:03 Why you should not be afraid to start from scratch because there is value in having a clear mind when beginning to plan a new direction in life.

19:50 The possibilities grow when you are willing to be vulnerable and take steps, even when you can’t predict the future.

24:00 How to deal with failure, disappointment, Covid and losing a job?

34:00 We all have our path, and we need to be working on that uniqueness instead of comparing ourselves to others.

40:58 Simona shares a personal story; one of the reasons why she left the environment she was working in and why she embarked on her entrepreneurial journey.

Did you know that there is no growth or diversity without embracing the differences in your relationships?

In the third of our micro episodes, we share what we noticed by supporting our clients with their business relationships.

Takeaways

➡ Why do most relationships break down, and what to do about it?

➡ How can working in relationships not be the best course of action?

➡ Why listening to understand each other holds the key to lasting relationships?

In this episode, we speak to Nir Bashan, a world-renowned creativity expert. He has taught thousands of leaders and individuals around the globe how to harness the power of creativity to improve profitability, increase sales, improve customer service and ultimately create more meaning in their work.

He has worked on numerous albums, movies, and advertisements with famous actors and musicians ranging from Rod Stewart to Woody Harrelson. His work on creativity has won a Clio Award and was nominated for an Emmy.

Connect with Nir:

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/nirbashan/

Email: [email protected]

The Creator Mindset: https://www.nirbashan.com/colored-section-1

Timestamps:

06:24 Did you know that creativity can be applied to any aspect of your businesses?

11:30 Without creativity, humans would still be animals

14:11 How innovation is about looking at your products and services in a new and exciting way

18:02 Covid or any crisis can be a call to action to drive meaningful change

19:09 What stops us from being creative?

27:34 We all need to feel psychologically safe in order to get creative and drive innovation.

28:13 You can relearn how to use your creativity so it is repeatable and scalable?

33:20 Anyone, not embracing creativity is limiting their potential to make more money, be more effective or coming up with the next great amazing thing.