The New Leader with Ian Daley

"When you are a leader or a manager, you are on stage."

Are you leading in a startup environment? Then this episode of The New Leader Podcast is for you!

Today our special guest is Alisa Cohn, and we're chatting about her latest book, "From Start Up To Grown Up: Grow Your Leadership To Grow Your Business"

Alisa's clients include Venmo, Squarespace, Etsy, Novartis and more. She was named the #1 start up coach in the world at the 2019 Thinkers50 MG100 Coaches Award. Alisa regularly writes for Inc., Forbes, HBR, and has been featured in BBC, Bloomberg, NYTs and many other outlets. She has great energy and sharp insights!

In this episode, you'll learn:

• How to manage yourself using practical ways to control your self-doubt, and build upon your motivators
• How to manage your team by leveraging the power of delegation and positive feedback, to build the right culture
• How to manage the business by creating a vision for success, clear goals, and a dashboard for accountability. And much more!

Self-Awareness Matters

The first person you lead everyday is yourself, so you have to first deal with your person and be aware of your own strengths and weakness, when are you at your best or worst, et cetera. Having that awareness will help you develop what you need to develop to be a better leader.

Leading with authenticity

When I think about authenticity, I think people want it because they want to feel that connection with another person. The chinks in the armor, the vulnerability, is what helps people connect with you, relate with you, and therefore makes it easier for them to get behind your mission even when the chips are down.

Going back to basics

Everybody experiences some level of self-doubt, impostor syndrome, those kinds of things. So you need to think about the way you manage your own psychology. It’s true for all leaders and that’s also true for startup founders, because there’s a lot of ups and downs in a startup, so you got to think about how do I manage myself for the long-term?

That comes down to some of the basics: eating, sleeping, not drinking too much alcohol, fitness and stress relief, as well as giving yourself tools to combat impostor syndrome and negative self-talk.

Links and Resources

Connect with Alisa: LinkedIn, Twitter, Website

From Start Up To Grown Up: Grow Your Leadership To Grow Your Business by Alisa Cohn (book)

What Got You Here Won't Get You There by Marshall Goldsmith (book)

Leadership Challenge by James M. Kouzes and Barry Z. Posner (book)

You know those moments when you're chatting with someone, and it's so interesting that time just flies by? That's how I felt when speaking with Whitney Johnson!

In today's episode "Smart Growth: How Managers Can Grow Themselves, Their People, and Their Business" Whitney talks about her brand new book, Smart Growth, and how new managers can use it to create a breakthrough in 2022.

Whitney was named one of the top ten most influential management thinkers by Thinkers50 in 2021, and is CEO of Disruption Advisors, a tech-enabled talent development company. She is an award-winning author, a LinkedIn Top Voice (1.79M followers), and she frequently writes for both HBR and MIT Sloan Management Review. 

In this episode, you'll learn:

• The framework known as the S Curve of Learning, and how to apply it meaningfully in your own development
• How to navigate through the three phases of growth (Launch Point, Sweet Spot, and Mastery)
• How to use the S Curve Insight Tool to develop and grow your people
• How this piano-playing music major ended up on Wall Street (cue Working Girl theme song)... and a lot more!

The S-Curve of Learning

Slow-fast-slow is how you grow. And when you understand the emotional arc of your growth, then you’ll be able to increase your learning and growing capacity as well. That’s what we call the S-Curve of learning.

The Influential Role of the Manager

The first thing that you want to really examine is do you actually want to be a manager?

I meet lots of people who say I’m good at motivating people and inspiring people, but I’m not good at the day to day of managing people, and that’s okay. You want to know that before you get into the job because you have a lot of influence on people, and so you want to make sure you’re up for that kind of job.

Managing People Who Have Mastered Their Job

People start becoming bored once they mastered something because they are no longer challenged. So for your people who are already very good at their job, what will make them grow is when you give them a new challenge.

From that point on, growth may seem slower, but they’ll be able to unlock new levels in their professional journey.

Links and Resources

Connect with Whitney: LinkedIn, Twitter, Instagram, Website, Email, Disrupt Yourself Podcast

Smart Growth: How to Grow Your People to Grow Your Company by Whitney Johnson (book)

The Female Advantage by Sally Helgesen (book)

How Women Rise by Sally Helgesen (book)

Creativity, Inc. by Ed Catmull and Amy Wallace (book)

"Do not let other people dictate your path."

What do astronauts, Olympic champions, and Nobel laureates do differently that allows them to achieve at such a high level? My guest today is Dr. Ruth Gotian, and she will reveal the four attributes common to all high achievers - and how you can build this into your life!

It was clear from the minute I met Ruth that she was passionate and committed to studying excellence, and helping others benefit from it. Ruth is the Chief Learning Officer and Assistant Professor of Education in Anesthesiology at Weill Cornell Medicine, and shares some fascinating insights.

In this episode we chat about her new book, The Success Factor, and you'll learn:

• How passion and purpose serve high performance (and why it matters)
• Why perseverance is a hallmark of high achievers worldwide
• The power of a strong foundation and what it means for YOU (don't miss this one!)
• How informal, continuous learning creates a huge advantage
• And a lot more!

High Achievers Learn Continuously

The last thing that all high achievers do – the astronauts, Nobel prize winners, CEOs, et cetera – is they’re continuously learning, and they’re learning through informal means. They’re not sitting in a classroom.

We’ve all heard that billionaires like Warren Buffet and Bill Gates read three to eight hours a day. That’s fabulous, but it’s not reading that made them billionaires. It’s opening their mind to new knowledge. And the high achievers, what they’re able to do is take ideas from different industries and re-imagine them and use them in their own industries.

High Achievers Have Rest Days, Too

The other thing that surprised me is how much these high achievers protect their down time. It was very important to them because they realized later on in their career that their rest days are as important as the work days. That in order for the work days to be productive, you must have the rest days.

Success as Defined By Dr. Ruth

The definition of success changes based on who you ask and based on rank and gender as well. That’s something to consider. But for me, there are certain markers that we can look at to determine whether the person is “successful”.

First is they would have made a fundamental paradigm shift through their work. Their work is so extraordinary that it lead other people to change the way they do things and perhaps, how they think about things.

Two, as they were moving up through the ranks, they lift other people up with them so it’s not just about them.

Links and Resources

Connect with Mark: LinkedIn, Twitter, Instagram, Website

The Success Factor by Dr. Ruth Gotian (book)

The Power of Pressure by Dane Jensen (book)

A Higher Standard by by Ann Dunwoody (book)

My guest today is Mark A. Herschberg, author of The Career Toolkit - Essential Skills For Success That No One Taught You. Mark received his BSc in Electrical Engineering and a MEng from MIT, and has been a MIT instructor for the last 20 years.

Have you ever encountered workplace skills you were told were important, yet no one helped you develop them? Mark's book helps you master these vital skills that can yield outsized returns for your career and your income.

In this episode you'll learn:

• The powerful effect of career planning, and how to construct an actionable career plan now
• How to effectively communicate with people from any background
• How ethics can guide you through common challenges you are sure to face at some point
• Mark's reflective lessons as a new manager....and more!

How to Get to Your Dream Role

For any role that you want in the future, dream role or anything else, you can’t just hope to wind up there. You have to recognize that it’s a step by step process. You’re going to have your plan, and it’s going to have checkpoints along the way.

So when you look at that dream role which is probably five/ten years out, to get there, ask yourself, what are the intermediate steps along the way and how can you achieve each one of those steps? Because you can’t just take that one giant leap - you need to plan it out step by step.

How to Combat Unethical Behavior

There are a few different things you can do, but the main ones are first, “keep records”, because having records will help avoid ‘he said, she said’ situations.

Second is to speak up. Don’t do so alone if you can have others come in, because if you have an issue, other people probably do as well.

Third, you want to shine the light. Making people more aware [about the problems within your company] is going to help ameliorate the problem or at least bring pressure for those who are involved in it to reconsider their actions.

Managing Introverts vs. Extroverts

One thing we need to be more cognizant of as managers is that we are extrovert-oriented in many of our in-person interactions. Extroverts tend to spring into action immediately while introverts like to think first before doing anything.

So we need to acknowledge that we have different styles of engaging and then create a channel for each person to bring their personal capabilities through their preferences.

Links and Resources

Connect with Mark: LinkedIn, Twitter, Instagram, Facebook

The Career Toolkit Socials: Facebook, Instagram, Twitter

Link by Author (book)

The Career Toolkit by Mark A. Herschberg (book)

The Career Toolkit App

My guest today is Paul Preston, CEO of TechNL, an organization that represents NL's advanced tech sector, where local companies are punching well above their weight globally. Paul is a former director at the Conference Board of Canada, and holds a BComm and MBA from Memorial University. He is passionate about the east coast tech scene and it shows!

In this episode you'll learn:

• What's happening in NLs hot tech sector and what's ahead in the future
• How new leaders (and non-tech folks) can tap into the career potential of the tech sector
• What companies are changing the game
• Paul's biggest lesson as a new manager....and more!

Setting Up Clear Expectations and Accountabilities

If you become too friendly without giving your team members or employees a clear picture of what the goals are, what you expect from them, and what their responsibilities are, things can become complicated later. And it will be frustrating for you as a leader and for everyone else you’re leading because you did not make the expectations and accountabilities clear to them in the beginning.

Getting Into The Tech Industry

As much as we call it the tech sector, half the jobs are not actually tech jobs. There’s marketing, accounting, sales, customer success, business development, et cetera.

That’s one thing we want to demystify to people is that you don’t need to have a software development or coding background to get into the tech industry. There are other roles that are needed in this industry that people outside of this industry can definitely get into.

The Slow Path to Success

As a young person, you want to achieve so much especially in your career, but sometimes you just have to stick somewhere and learn, build a base of knowledge and gain an experience set.

Links and Resources

Connect with Paul: LinkedIn, Website, Twitter, TechNL Twitter

Malcolm Gladwell books

Elon Musk: Tesla, SpaceX, and the Quest for a Fantastic Future by Ashlee Vance (book)

Atomic Habits by James Clear (book)

Speed of Trust by Stephen Covey (book)

The Long Game by Dorie Clark (book)

"How we navigate our highest-pressure moments has a huge impact on the overall trajectory of our lives, both in terms of how successful we are and how much we enjoy the journey along the way."

My guest today is Dane Jensen, author and CEO of Third Factor, a company that helps people become better coaches, more resilient performers, and more collaborative teammates. Dane has deep expertise in navigating pressure, having worked with high performers in elite sport, academia, business, and government.

He is also a keynote speaker, instructor at Smith School of Business, Queen's University as well as an affiliate faculty member at UNC. In today's episode, we explore Dane's excellent new book, The Power of Pressure: Why Pressure Isn't the Problem, It's the Solution.

You'll learn to:

• Understand the “pressure equation” of importance, uncertainty and volume
• Escape the traps of pressure with effective tools and tactics
• Be ambidextrous so that you can handle pressure both in peak pressure moments and over the long haul
• Utilize the most important preparation tip I've ever heard, and more!

What Makes Us Feel Pressured

Pressure is really a function of three things: importance, uncertainty, and volume. The first thing that has to be there for us to experience pressure is importance.

The importance that we have assigned to the outcome is directly correlated to the pressure that we feel in a situation. If you don’t care about the outcome, it’s not going to create pressure.

Dealing With Everyday Pressures

We need to be able to connect with importance to be able to push through the daily grind. I need to have a really good answer to the question ‘why am I doing this’? Why is this important to me? Why am I putting in the time, effort, and energy for this?

The answer to those questions will be a very crucial source of energy in the long haul.

A More Effective Tool Than Willpower

People sometimes feel like all they need to do is to will themselves to focus and say ‘no’ to distractions, but that’s not realistic. It’s a losing battle if you’re only relying on willpower to say ‘no’.

It’s more effective to remind yourself of your principles, act on them, and create a structure that allows you to make decisions without relying on willpower.

Links and Resources

Connect with Dane: LinkedIn, Website, Twitter

The Power of Pressure by Dane Jensen (book)

The Courage to Be Disliked by Fumitake Koga and Ichiro Kishimi (book)

My special guest is Bonnie Cochrane, Managing Director & GM, Huron Consulting Group Canada. In her current role, Bonnie focuses on supporting North American healthcare organizations in creating and sustaining health system outcomes.

She started her career as a critical care nurse, before moving into progessive leadership roles with Merck, CNIB, and the NL Centre for Health Information. Bonnie holds a MSc in Community Medicine & Population Health from Memorial University, and hails from my hometown of Mt. Pearl, Newfoundland!

In today's episode, you'll learn:

• How to find "fuel for the positive", so your passion and enthusiasm stay alive
• Why understanding your own values as a leader helps you become more purposeful
• When facing difficult conversations, why it pays to employ a mindset of "we are here to get this right, not to be right"
• The power of walking everyday, and more!

Love What You Do

We spend all our lives at work so I always held true to the 80/20 rule - if I can love my work 80% of the time and realize that 20% of the time, I just have to suck it up and do it, then I can be a very happy camper. And I am purposeful about recognizing that.

Aiming For Organizational Success

As leaders, we want to be high performers and do well with our teams, but at the end of the day, it is our task to help our organization reach its highest potential. If you come into that job with the mindset of moving towards organizational goals, I can almost guarantee you that you can find yourself moving forward as well. You’ll have far greater growth and more opportunities if you look at leadership with organizational success as your goal.

Dealing With Complex and Emotional Conversations

When I’m in a situation where I’ll be facing complex, highly emotional, and high-risk conversations, I plan endlessly. I script, I re-script, I roleplay in my mind, I recite my script out loud so that I can hear myself saying these very important keywords. I think through all the what if’s and in doing so, I avoid getting off into unnecessary land mines of sensitive issues, et cetera.

Links and Resources

Connect with Bonnie: LinkedIn, Website, Twitter, Email

Leaders Go First by Bonnie Cochrane (research article)

Hardwiring Excellence by Quint Studer (book)

Leaders Eat Last by Simon Sinek (book)

Aaand we're back in session! Our new episode with Dorie Clark is now available, "How to Be a Long-Term Thinker in a Short-Term World."

Dorie is a Columbia and Duke university business professor, an HBR author, one of the Top 50 business thinkers in the world (Thinkers50), and is rated the #1 Communication Coach in the world (Marshall Goldsmith Leading Global Coaches Award). Today's episode is not one to miss!

Dorie's latest book, "The Long Game: How to Be a Long-Term Thinker in a Short-Term World" launched this week, and we get the inside track on how you can make a life-changing breakthrough. We also chat about Dorie's own career as a people leader, and the lessons she learned along the way.

In today's episode, you'll learn:

• How being seriously open to learning can change your trajectory
• Why "thinking in waves" makes sense in a fast-paced world
• How to create and protect your time, so you can take your career and life to the next level (hat tip to Dave Crenshaw and Paul Graham!)
• Dorie's biggest lesson as a first-time leader, and more!

If you find this episode valuable, please rate us on Apple Podcasts!

Playing The Long Game

I think there’s something really admirable about people who play the long game. True respect is owed to people who are willing to make the sacrifice of doing the work and putting in the effort even when there’s no instant gratification. You can actually make a significant gap between you and your competitors when you do this, but only very few are willing to make that journey.

It’s Okay To Not Know Everything

So often as adults, we get used to being really proficient at things. It becomes very rare, as you get older, to be bad at something that we think of as important to who we are.

For any of us who are in the professional life, if you’re trying to move up the ladder, you don’t really want to say, “I don’t know how to be a leader,” or, “I’m not so good at communicating.” But the truth is there is still a lot to learn.

So I think that being open to that fact and accepting that it’s okay to continue learning is powerful and will help you in the long run.

The Value of Long-Term Thinking

We need to be setting long-term goals because whether or not we end up with those goals, you want to be directionally correct in your course. So you’d want to be aiming towards something because that process of orienting yourself to it will lead you closer to what you want and in a better place than you would’ve been if you had totally left it to chance in a jellyfish fashion.

Links and Resources

Connect with Dorie: LinkedIn, Website, Instagram, Twitter, Facebook

The Long Game by Dorie Clark (book)

’The Long Game’ Strategic Thinking Self-Assessment

My growth and my development is at its highest point when I’m being pushed beyond where I think I could go. – Tristan Cammaert

Hi everyone! Welcome to today’s show. Today we talk about the value of continuous learning and staying curious in your life and career with Tristan Cammaert. Tristan is a seasoned leader who has held various executive-level roles at RBC, currently at Earnst and Young.

We also discuss:

• The importance of team diversity, building trust and being aligned to one strategic vision
• Getting out of our comfort zone
• Supporting the next generation of leaders
• Finding your why
• Servant leadership
• Having a vision, and a lot more.

Click that play button to listen! Don’t forget to subscribe and rate us on Apple Podcasts!

I do have the voice in my head that’s telling me “Stay where you are” on occasion, but I also will pause and take a step back and say, “Where do I know that I’d truly been at my best? Where have I been the happiest and most fulfilled in terms of my work?”

It has always been when I am pushed and when I’m outside of my comfort zone.

Most companies and individuals are able to talk about the ‘what’ and sometimes they get to the ‘how’, but they’re very rarely actually able to articulate the ‘why’ – why are we doing what we’re doing.

As a leader, you’re not supposed to be bossing people around. You’re supposed to be in service of the team that you have. Your job is to actually really help bring your team together, but you are in service to them, as opposed to being directive.

Make sure you hire and grow and manage from a diversity perspective – diversity of thought, not just in terms of gender, race or age.

100% - don’t stop learning. Make sure that you remain curious. There’s a whole bunch of ways you can do that – consuming videos, podcasts, books, etc.

Don’t try and boil the ocean – stick with one or two things that worked for you.

Links and Resources

Connect with Tristan: LinkedIn

Start With Why by Simon Sinek

Leaders Eat Last by Simon Sinek

Ten Percent Happier by Dan Harris

A lot of people say, “I’m comfortable with investing in people and paying them market rates and all this kind of crap” – I think that’s bullshit. A lot of people tell themselves that, but in practice they don’t, and they really don’t do it unless they have funding. – Ross Andrew Paquette

Hi everyone! Today we talk about making tough calls to grow your business with Ross Andrew Paquette. Ross is the Founder, Chairman and CEO of Maropost. The company was founded in 2011 and has grown to become a fully unified customer engagement platform designed to provide a single solution for all areas of business—across marketing, commerce, service, and more.

We also discuss:

• How he grew his company without raising funding,
• Going against the status quo,
• Creating a framework around your growth,
• Investing in the right people early on, and more.

Click that play button to listen! Don’t forget to subscribe and rate us on Apple Podcasts!

In the early stages of the company, I did a lot of things on my own, which I’m always very happy that I did. Being a company that didn’t take any funding, we didn’t have the ability to hire a VP of Sales, VP of HR – every VP-of-everything wasn’t an option.

By having to get involved in all those areas, I gained an understanding of not only what it takes to build and grow a business but an appreciation for what’s required to accomplish those roles, and an understanding of how things operate.

I don’t have a finance or marketing background, but I very much understand those roles. I had to go out and generate leads as a marketer; I had to go manage our customer billing from a finance perspective. I had to do a lot of those tasks at a time when we were actually quite large – we had six people in the organization doing about 7 or 8 million in revenue.

I believe a big part of us being able to get there was taking the time to really learn all those areas, as opposed to saying, “We’ll just go hire somebody for that and I’m just the overseer of everything that’s happening today.”

I don’t think I really appreciated the fact that if I invested maybe $10,000, $20,000, $30,000 a year or more, I would get a significant increase in the quality of the individual. It was more like, “This person just needs to do this job, what’s the least amount of money I can pay to get that job done?”

But then I never considered, “I paid that person $60,000, but if I paid $90,000, I wouldn’t have to deal with issues 1-10.” I’m paying on one side or the other.

A lot of people say, “I’m comfortable with investing in people and paying them market rates and all this kind of crap” – I think that’s bullshit. A lot of people tell themselves that, but in practice they don’t, and they really don’t do it unless they have funding.

Where I see a lot of organizations get into trouble is they make these decisions – pandering or as I would call it, “being held hostage”, which is a more dramatic version of that. They bring in people under a certain pretense, and I think most organizations are very transparent about that.

This is what you’re going to get for benefits, this is our office, these are the perks, the package – all of those things are quite clear. But then people come in and it’s like, “OK, well why don’t we have bean bag chairs? Why don’t we have Starbucks coffee? Why don’t we have these office upgrades? Why don’t we have standing desks? Why don’t I have a wide-screen monitor?”

The list goes on. And I feel like organizations sort of get into this circular approach of pandering or being held hostage by everybody where they feel like, “OK, we have to do this.” But what if you really can’t do that?

There’s a cost to all of these things. If you can’t afford to do that today, but you end up having to do it because you’re worried about people leaving or acquiring new talent and such, what is that going to mean for the future of your business?

Links and Resources

Connect with Ross: LinkedIn Instagram

https://www.maropost.com/

Simplify: How the Best Businesses in the World Succeed by Richard Koch and Greg Lockwood

Asana

Quickbooks

Salesforce

Office 365