Innovating Leadership, Co-Creating Our Future

Customers today expect the brands they deal with to deliver outstanding and seamless digital experiences. If your brand is failing to thrive, you need to take what is core to your value proposition and adapt it, perhaps significantly, for a world filled with customers who have digital at the center of their lifestyle. Howard Tiersky joins Maureen to discuss his experiences in assisting large organizations in winning digital customers.

AnneMarie Hayek joins Maureen to share about her new book, Generation We. In this book, she joins forces with thousands of Zs to tell their powerful story—one that impacts all of us. From new ideas on capitalism, politics, and climate change to education, gender, race, and work, AnneMarie explains how Gen Z thinks, what they envision, and why we should be hopeful. Zs are not naïve idealists. They're hardened realists with a bold vision for how we can transition, re-create, and progress. Generation We is your invitation to see the future they will create as it's unfolding.

In today's episode of BCI's Distinguished Sales Leader Series, we're going to focus on the shift to using data science to drive our decisions in the areas of hiring, training, coaching, and onboarding. Marcela Pineros and Joe DiDonato join the show today to share how data can help pinpoint areas that need to be addressed at a more granular level, and how that shift in thinking can help you raise your sales team's revenue and profit contributions in a drastically shorter period of time.

You have a Yes! that aligns your purpose and unique contributions with the impact you can generate and the experience you can have, which is yours to choose. Your Yes! always generates net-positive value and your No! always generates net-negative value—your choice. Jim Ritchie-Dunham joins Maureen to explain the science behind our Yes!

In the past, to move up the corporate ladder and succeed at the top, you simply had to set goals, motivate the troops, delegate to underlings, and groom a successor. Now, if they are leading a team chances are that they are managing a kaleidoscope of people from a variety of cultures, across a range of ages, all of whom are wired together 24/7. These changing demographics and structures have led to a seismic shift in terms of the tools needed to successfully manage and grow within a company: charisma and strategic thinking abilities now matter less than qualities such as vulnerability and relatability. Jeffrey Hull joins the show to discuss the research he has done on the art and science of leadership in a changing world that is featured in his book, Flex.

The COVID pandemic crushed sales for many businesses...but not at AVI Systems. When building a world-class sales team, an organization needs to implement a formal sales process proven to improve sales performance. This formal sales process is like the back office for sales. Joe DiDonato (BCI) and Don Mastro (AVI Systems) join host Maureen Metcalf to discuss their experiences, as well as the case study they wrote about what Don did to get his AVI Systems team through the pandemic -- and then skyrocket sales. This is part 2 of a 2-part series.

Sophisticated assessments, data, and software are giving CEOs and managers within any organization or industry detailed insights into human behavior. As CEO of The Predictive Index, Mike Zani has witnessed firsthand how the application of data and science can impact, and completely change, the way we function in our professional lives. In his new book, THE SCIENCE OF DREAM TEAMS: How Talent Optimization Can Drive Engagement, Productivity, and Happiness, Zani details a data-driven approach to talent strategy that makes hiring, motivating, and managing people more efficient and effective than ever. Mike joins the show to share his research on how to build a dream team.

The COVID pandemic crushed sales for many businesses...but not at AVI Systems. When building a world-class sales team, an organization needs to implement a formal sales process proven to improve sales performance. This formal sales process is like the back office for sales. Joe DiDonato (BCI) and Don Mastro (AVI Systems) join host Maureen Metcalf to discuss their experiences, as well as the case study they wrote about what Don did to get his AVI Systems team through the pandemic -- and then skyrocket sales.

Conversations about meaning and purpose at work are very old and very new. Spirituality proves a lens for those discussions. Workplace spirituality helps us understand issues such as fulfillment, engagement, purpose, leadership, and more. However, it also increases worries about values conflicts and how well organizations handle that. Paul Gibbons joins me today to discuss the spirituality of work and leadership for leaders and organizations.

As the second part of this interview, the discussion with Allison Duquette of CampusLogic and Joe DiDonato of Baker Communication continues with Maureen, going deeper into the ways Allison integrated assessments in both her current sales team, selection of sales managers, and new hires. Assessment tools boost the efficacy of hiring the right candidate for the job...yet most managers still hire by gut feeling. That's a mistake Allison overcame, and in so doing, learned assessments can make the difference between firing someone, and figuring out where they can thrive.

To be competitive in business over the next decade, it will not only be necessary to optimize the body for physical and mental health purposes, but it will additionally be necessary to ensure that cognitive optimization is also a major focus. The human today is simply not equipped to handle the deluge of data that is coming nor the constant upskilling requirements that are inevitable. Dr. JJ Walcutt joins Maureen to share about Accelerate, a program that gets businesses starting on the right track toward building a culture of brain health, growth, and effectiveness.

Assessments can provide fresh insights into the strengths of your top sales performers -- and ways to build those strengths in the rest of your team. Joe DiDonato of Baker Communications Inc. and Allison Duquette of CampusLogic discuss with Maureen the real-world use of assessment tools with the sales team...along with the refreshing surprises encountered along the way! This is the debut of a special sales-team-focused miniseries, the Distinguished Sales Leader, co-produced by the Innovative Leadership Institute and Baker Communications Incorporated.

Change is now a constant in all organizations. Is there a way to make it easier? Jake Jacobs joins the show to discuss his new book and how leaders can use the concept of leverage to achieve faster, easier, better results related to all change work they are doing in their organizations -- at the individual, team, or organizational levels. He will share practical actions leaders can take to achieve these much sought-after, but seldom accomplished goals.

The leadership journey can be a challenging one with unseen challenges that ruin reputations. Skilled people can be left wondering what went wrong if they don't have effective sponsorship. These challenges are even more pronounced for underrepresented people in leadership roles. Ricky Robinson and Keith Powell of C-Certs will talk about the importance of having a sponsor and of being sponsor-ready.

In The Self Help Book: 6 Practical Ways to Never Stop Growing, author and coach Jared Graybeal outlines six practical ways to live a life of constant growth while avoiding stagnation or burnout. Confidence. Competence. Clarity. Character. Connections. Commitment. This short, insightful guide is filled with inspiration and encouragement and is designed to give you the perspective you're looking for, no matter what's going on in your life. Jared joins the show to discuss his new book and how listeners can begin to be reenergized to never stop growing.

Emerging Industries often lend a new twist on businesses, they allow the opportunity to relook at old practices and can lead to innovation in the business sector. James joins the show to discuss his recent venture into an emerging industry and how looking at an emerging industry can provide new challenges as well as possibilities in new solutions.

Several of the Innovative Leadership Institute's certified facilitators joined the show to share how they have taken the concepts that they learned from a 9-month program and applied them to their business functions. Tom Grote and Christoph Hinske joined Maureen to discuss how they have extended the program content and built a values-based systems mapping that helped shape both of their professional and personal journeys.

We see lots of articles on the future of work but little about the future of leadership. As work changes, leadership must also change to ensure organizations can meet their objectives. It is essential for leaders to innovate how they lead to keep pace, but what does that mean? Greg Moran joins the show to explore the changes leaders need to make in how they think about and perform the essential work of leadership.

Technological advances are putting quality jobs out of reach for workers who lack the proper skills and training. We need a roadmap for a new workforce education system to rebuild America's working class, tackling inequality by equipping our workers for twenty-first-century jobs. We need to train more workers more quickly, using innovative methods. William and Sanjay join the show to share various ideas on the new roles of community colleges, employers, governments, and universities need to take in workforce education, as well as new education technologies that may be adapted to deliver such training.

Women (and men) face unhealthy stress and anxiety on a daily basis - it's a wonder they're still standing. Too few of us have stress tools powerful enough to put stress to work for us so we can enjoy the journey. Once you've learned how to be mentally tough, you will use stress to your advantage. It becomes your superpower! Colonel Deb Lewis joins the show to share her experiences and how you can learn to effectively use stress to your advantage.

Deep tech described capabilities that were impossible yesterday, barely feasible today, but tomorrow will be so pervasive it will be hard to imagine life without it. We're in the early stages of the digital age, and understanding how deep tech is disrupting the world is no longer a competitive advantage, it's a matter of survival. Eric Redmond joins Maureen to discuss his new book, Deep Tech: Demystifying the Breakthrough Technologies That Will Revolutionize Everything.

Disruption to the norm, unexpected events, uncertain times are things many of us are facing during this worldwide pandemic. We have seen jobs lost, companies forced to rethink how they have done business and how they can continue to stay in business. Leaders are daily faced with tough decisions on how to lead in this new and different environment. Sean Castrina joins the show to discuss his story of overcoming a setback, how he has gone on to start multiple new businesses, and the leadership lessons he has learned from his experiences.

The world has witnessed three-step functions in technological change: mechanization, electrification, and computerization. These industrial revolutions led to massive increases in productivity and thus we need far fewer workers. With each of these technological breakthroughs, the power balance between companies and workers shifted heavily to companies. The abuses of that power by companies instigated employee unrest. Counterbalancing forces rose to constrain companies' power, eventually prompting unions, regulation, and the social safety net to bring stability to the relationship. As we enter the fourth great leap forward in technology with robots and AI, we face the first services revolution. The power balance will again shift massively to companies as new technologies drive productivity increases in the service industry, much as the last three industrial revolutions transformed manufacturing. Jeff Wald joins Maureen to discuss his book, The End of Jobs, and what the future of work is.

Diversity recruiting and retention has become a hot topic and yet, many organizations don't yet understand the nuances of recruiting and how to navigate the complexities of retention and ensuring candidates and organizations create the best experiences and mutual success.Eric Douglas Keene joins Maureen to discuss changes occurring in the world of diversity recruiting.

Everyone can be creative in their own way. Creativity skills can be learned and developed. The creative process is iterative. Most of the time we fail many times before we succeed. We learn from those failures and approach the next experiment with new information and an improved understanding. Jeff DeGraff joins Maureen to share how you can tap your individual creativity.

Coaching skills are not just for the life coach or the executive coach, they are every leader’s secret weapon. Managers can become the leaders that are needed when they understand how to use coaching skills that put the development of their team as the top priority and multiply their impact. Want to move from managing your team to leading your team? Coaching skills are the key. Jonathan Reitz joins Maureen to share how managers can move toward leading by learning some simple coaching behaviors.

In a world of work-from-home and so much of our personal interaction being digital, we need to understand what we are conveying by digital body language. Today, Erica Dhawan joins the show to share findings from her newest book – Digital Body Language – which decodes the new signals and cues of effective collaboration and teamwork in a digital-first human workplace. Listeners will learn to investigate and improve their own digital body language so that they can support a silo-breaking, trust-filled environment at their places of work. Listeners will understand that the language and punctuation we use across all mediums requires that we be careful, conscious and considerate, and always mindful of how our recipients might respond.

Business today is more competitive than ever and staying ahead requires you to make tough calls, face hard choices, and work through conflict. But productive conflict is so rare. Why? Because productive conflict requires a different mindset, new skills, and repeatable processes, none of which come naturally. Liane Davey joins Maureen to discuss building a productive conflict culture.

Research has shown that diversity at every level of leadership leads to a more successful organization. The show today has 2 segments. In the first segment, Dr. Christopher Washington of Franklin University in Columbus, Ohio will join Maureen to discuss the importance of J.E.D.I. (just, equitable, diverse, and inclusive environments) S.P.A.C.E. (supportive, purposeful, accountable, collaborative, and evaluative practices). The second segment will be with Valrie Grant, the Managing Director of GeoTechVision and one of the five 2020 WE Empower UN Sustainability Development Goals Challenge Awardees. She will discuss the importance of diversity, equity, and inclusion at every level of leadership, including the board room.

How can we change the way conversations about diversity, equity and inclusion are progressing to move towards productive, inquiring, learning experiences, and ultimately creating a more just and equitable workplace and society? How can we understand the effects outside of work events have on people of color within work? Laura and Courtney join Maureen to share insights from their work and to encourage leaders to be examining and understanding the racial barriers and how they can remove those.

Even before Covid-19, employees were reporting record rates of burnout and stress with Gallup studies showing only 15% of employees fully engaged at work. Now with workers stuck behind screens, grasping for focus and suffering from the real mental challenges of prolonged social isolation and anxiety, organizations are in need of well-being development for their employees. It is essential for today’s workplaces to provide well-being support for employees, as well as traditional professional development. Supporting the long-term mental health of your team can mean the difference between an engaged, collaborative and productive organization or one riddled with toxicity and turnover. With 71% of U.S. office workers either curious about or already practicing meditation, now is the time to signal your long-term support for employees, and bring in the neuroscientifically proven benefits of contemplative practices, like meditation. Peter and Rich join the show to discuss mindfulness.

Gender inequality around the world has many facets: archaic laws that codify sexism, male control of joint income and household assets, exclusion from governance, trafficking and violence against women, denial of education and adequate health care, and gender segregation in the workforce, to name a few. The Gender Equality and Governance Index (GEGI) taps into some of the world’s best datasets to analyze gender discrimination on a global scale, using five critical “pillars”: governance, education, work, entrepreneurship, and violence. The Index covers 158 countries and provides a compelling perspective on the status of gender inequality across the planet. It allows policymakers, the business community, and civil society to pinpoint specific areas for improvement and to learn from best international practices. Today, Amanda and Augusto join me to discuss the index results for 2020 and how we as leaders can implement changes for the good of all.

As a society, we face a dramatic loss of trust in each other and our institutions. This reduction in trust impacts everything from people's inability to come together to solve problems to an escalation in mental illness and suicide. MaryJo will share her experiences with struggle and how it can impact your ability to build trust.

Mark Shapiro, President and CEO of the Toronto Blue Jays, joins Maureen to share his approach to effective leadership and discuss how this approach positioned the Toronto Blue Jays to navigate the challenges they faced and the solutions they implemented so that the game could go on, and finally, the leadership insights learned. Through this conversation, Mark’s comments and perspective illustrate the best of effective leadership.

Universities and medical schools do a wonderful job preparing their students for medical procedures but the often-missed crucial element to great healthcare that is missed in this training is leadership training. Neil joins Maureen to share his experiences and how we believe the leadership framework we’ve developed can be used to build the leadership skills needed by medical staff to make our healthcare system stronger.

Every entrepreneur dreams of expanding their business from around the corner to around the world. While today those dreams look doubtful, hope can be found from the story of a CEO who managed to do so despite decades of economic downturns, near bankruptcy, and constant change. Robert joins the show today to share insights and lessons learned from his experience taking Dunkin Donuts from 100 shops to 6,500 outlets. These lessons are also captured in his new book, Around the Corner to Around the World: A Dozen Lessons I Learned Running Dunkin Donuts.

During the last year, we have seen dramatic change and Futurist John Peterson tells us we will see more change in the next decade than in all of human history. If this is even directionally correct, we need to prepare board members to lead through this range of complex changes. Helle Bank Jorgensen, CEO of Competent Boards, joins Maureen to discuss her Future Boardroom Competencies report.

What is the purpose of business in the 21st century? And what are the values and skills needed by business leaders in this new era of stakeholder value? Keith joins Maureen to discuss these emerging topics and share his experience.

Theory U blends systems thinking, innovation, and leading change from the viewpoint of an evolved human consciousness. Otto’s first book sold over 100,000 copies and to put that in context, the average self-published book sells 250 copies, and the average traditional book sells 3,000 copies in its lifetime. Otto joins Maureen to discuss his latest book: The Essentials of Theory U: Core Principles and Applications, a book that meets a crucial need during this point in history in helping us bring necessary changes to our foundational systems from a place of deep consciousness and perspective-taking from all key stakeholders – including the future as a key stakeholder.

The need for system leaders, system literacy, and collaboration are more important than ever. The field of ‘awareness-based systems change’ is growing, and there are many very accessible ways to engage. Darcy joins Maureen to discuss that taking a more holistic, or systems approach, does not require a Ph.D. in Systems Dynamics - anyone can become a systems thinker and have a positive impact on the systems in which they work and live.

“Great leaders are great learners” is often quoted but how can leaders implement this into their very hectic day? Ron has created a year-long leadership development guidebook that offers day-by-day instruction in short excerpts to provide leaders with knowledge and practical application ideas. Ron joins the show to discuss his new book “Daily Leadership Development,” his lifetime achievement award and his views on the current state of leadership.

As a political scientist, Matt studies democracy – its evolution, and particularly how democracies decline. He shares his perspective on the rise of populism across the world, how that leads to un-democratic leaders, then answers the question, “Is American democracy a brittle twig or a supple bamboo?” He offers solutions, too; every strong democracy in history thrived on disparate points of view – and leaders who welcomed diverse opinions.

Among our greatest leaders are those driven by impulses they cannot completely control - by lust. Lust is not, however, an abstraction, it has definition. Definition that, given the impact of leaders who lust, is essential to extract. Barbara joins the show today to discuss her views on leadership education, what it takes to build highly effective leaders and her new book Leaders Who Lust.

We are addicted to prediction, desperate for certainty about the future. But the complexity of modern life won’t provide that; experts in forecasting are reluctant to look more than 400 days out. History doesn’t repeat itself and even genetics won’t tell you everything you want to know. Today Margaret joins the show to discuss her new book, Uncharted, How to Navigate the Future, in which she drew on a wide array of people and places, to look at long-term projects developed over generations that could never have been planned the way that they have been run.

There has been a lot written about leadership for the present day, but the world is changing quickly. What worked in the past won’t work in the future. We need to know how to prepare leaders who can successfully navigate and guide us through the next decade and beyond. How is leadership changing, and why? How ready are leaders today for these changes? What should leaders do now? To answer these questions, Jacob interviewed over 140 CEOs and partnered with LinkedIn to survey almost 14,000 of their members around the globe to see how CEO insights align with employee perspectives. Jacob joins the show to share insights he gained from this research.

Sustainability is now a business-critical issue. Those companies and industries that don't embrace it will be left behind. In fact, we are already starting to see signs of this. Trista and Donald join the show today to discuss their new book “Leading Sustainability: The Path to Sustainable Business and How the SDGs (Sustainable Development Goals) Changed Everything,” which is the culmination of 18 months of research from around the world. In their research, they have found that bold leadership and innovation are two key common elements that enable the success of sustainability strategies and actions.

We are facing unprecedented changes in our world today. These changes range from geopolitical changes to the impact the pandemic has had on everything from how we work to technology acceleration and corresponding need to change leadership. Today Christopher Washington joins Maureen to discuss the top seven Leadership Trends for 2021 and Beyond.

Thriving during a crisis is a challenging feat for any leader. Aline Kamakian shares with listeners not only how she encountered the difficult decisions that many faced in the hospitality industry due to the pandemic but she was also forced to deal with the destruction of one of her restaurants during the massive blast that occurred in Beirut, Lebanon, in August of 2020. Aline joins the show to share her story, how she adapted to the crises her business endured and advice for leaders she has gleaned from her experiences.

Mindsets are the most foundational element for why leaders do what they do. Unfortunately, most leaders are not conscious of their mindsets, and their negative mindsets wreak havoc on their effectiveness. Ryan Gottfredson joins the show to discuss his new book “Success Mindsets: The Key to Unlocking Greater Success in Your Life, Work and Leadership” and what leaders can do to awaken to their mindsets and develop Success Mindsets, so they can unlock much more effective leadership.

The COVID pandemic has elevated a long-overlooked narrative: we ask A LOT of the nurses, doctors, and frontline medical staff who shepherd our communities in times of public health crisis. And while they are required to step into unknown, high-pressure + high-stress work, we do not equip them with the same tools for resilience and recovery that we do for professional athletes and elite military units. Brian Ferguson joins the show to discuss how Arena Labs is focused on pioneering what they call High Performance Medicine in order to bring those same tools, training, and technology to frontline medical teams.

A change mindset is here to stay. Implementing change takes high energy, an abundance of patience and extreme flexibility. United States Navy Rear Admiral Deborah Haven, Retired joins the show to discuss her experience in leading change and working in an uncertain environment as well as the lessons she has learned that can be translated to situations all leaders face.