Level Up - A Leadership Podcast

"Don't just think positive thoughts.  Feel positive feelings."  This is just one of many golden nuggets of wisdom I gained from my conversation with Dana Garnett, a conflict management strategist and professional mediator.   Dana is an insightful conflict expert who helps businesses and teams clear the deepest rifts to working in harmony fast. Founder of The Mindful Strategy she applies her vast business and life lessons learned to help improve business and social dynamics. In this episode, we explore what causes conflict to exist - both in individuals and on teams.  She shares her insights on the elements of a successful team and how conflict arises when one or more of those elements is not in sync with the others.How does taking someone else's position actually help you?  What's the harm in leaders ending conflict with "let's agree to disagree"?  Can leaders actually get better at managing conflict or is it something you troubleshoot when it comes up? Let's dig in.  Your conflict management strategist is dialed in.

Jack York is a successful leader who self-describes as a "mediocre CEO".  A co-founder of the senior living technology company, iN2L, Jack is the prototypical Head + Heart leader that we talk about.  In this episode, Jack shares some of his own story, insights into how to lead a startup business, and what's next for him.  The episode spans topics like: Launching a technology product into a wary senior living industryThe tough early years of leading an organizationWhere he would focus between Product, Sales or Team when launching a businessHow cancer affected his perspective on lifePreparing your personal finances and expectations of profitabilityHis upcoming road show and reality TV show focused on storytellingThanks to Jack for joining me for this conversation and for his great advice to our starting organization, Bella Groves.  

Executive Directors lead the day to day work within a senior living community.  In my opinion, this is a cornerstone role for any leader in our industry.  Whether it is a career-long role or a pivotal experience along your career journey, the E.D. is the heart and soul of our profession. In this episode, I share some practical tips on how to prepare for and find the right Executive Director role.  Despite better intentions, most companies merely set up E.D.'s to babysit the business - giving these leaders what amounts to daily checklists, weekly meetings, monthly quotas, quarterly assessments, and annual performance reviews. For the aspiring leader who wants to make lasting change (or at least attempt it), I share my thoughts on the following concepts: Build your relationship management skillsChoose your leader, not the company/jobSignal your commitmentGain an understanding of financial statements and key data

There are two critical components of having high emotional intelligence: inward facing (self management) and outward facing (social management).  In this episode, I share three practical tips on how you can build your self-awareness and self-management skills.Grow Your Emotions VocabularyOrient Yourself to Empathy as a Skill and Not a FeelingCreate and Write Down Specific (S.M.A.R.T.) Goals Related to Building Emotional IntelligenceI also explore the difference between sympathy and empathy. This distinction is a beginning step to building your skills in empathy, which leads to better social (relationship) management skills. 

Sean is a turnaround guru.  In his wide ranging professional experiences in helping distressed companies to restructure and turnaround, he has observed lots of organizational patterns that may have contributed to tough times.In this second part of our epic conversation together, Sean and I discuss: A therapy metaphor for adopting a turnaround mindsetHow to develop a coalition on your team to get ideas heardAn argument for in-person work (vs. remote) to facilitate healthy friction on a teamWe also dig into Sean's questions about the senior living industry at 25 min. 31 sec.How has senior living been disrupted in the last 15-20 years (pre-COVID)? Making senior living a service and not just a place.An idea for a senior services marketplace.Summary of episodes 1 and 2 in one sentence: the best time to face disruption is as a healthy company when you have all the resources to address it.

Sean is a turnaround guru.  In his wide ranging professional experiences in helping distressed companies to restructure and turnaround, he has observed lots of organizational patterns that may have contributed to tough times.In the COVID era, just about every company experienced elements of turnaround.  In this first segment of a two-part episode, Sean shares some of his insights and advice to leaders to draw lessons from our collective experiences during the pandemic, how to avoid pitfalls and ways to watch for warning signs within their own organizations that things may be headed south.

“Purpose transcends ego.” This was one of the many quotable quotes that came from the discussion between James and Anna Hall, the Chief Purpose Officer for Connected Living and the inventor of the Purpose Equation.  In this episode, James delves into the topic of purpose and how it relates to greater leadership effectiveness.Anna also shares some of her techniques by walking James through his own purpose equation. This is sure to be an episode that you bookmark for you to return to more than once.  How do you define your purpose?  Do you lead in a way that invites the people on your team to live within their purpose?  Vulnerable insights ahead. Let's dig in.

Why do people go to websites?  It's probably not to see an advertisement of your company.Advertisements are inherently disruptive.  They are designed to interrupt what you are doing (i.e. watching TV) to pay attention to your company or brand.  Content Marketing is a magnet that draws interested people to content that will actually help them.  In other words, advertisements are the "hype" and content marketing is the "help".  Whether you are a solo-entrepreneur or a large company, you will NOT generate trust or demand without a solid content marketing strategy.  A subset of content marketing, according to guest, Andy Crestodina, Co-Founder and CMO or Orbit Media, is thought leadership.  Thought leadership always makes strong assertions, and you can be certain that someone will disagree with you.  Andy believes that thought leadership takes courage and that it isn't for everybody.  But, if you feel comfortable enough to stand out on that branch - a little exposed - I hope this episode can help you to feel a little more strategic and confident.  Your industry needs your voice.  Make it count.

James reunites with managers from the first community where he was an Executive Director to recall and revisit what elements of their leadership culture made the team special.  Does culture correlate to performance?  How does an interview signal the culture of the leader and the team? How do you get an entire group of people to buy in to and contribute to a positive culture? In this episode, we take a look behind the curtain to ask the central question about culture and its relevance in business - does culture impact performance?

Monte Pedersen enjoyed a 35-year career in hospitality management before deciding to form his own leadership and training firm focused on Strategy Execution Management.  In this episode, James and Monte discuss some basic concepts of strategy formation, execution, and how it all ties to taking care of the people who make up your company. Key takeaways offered in this episode will help leaders to examine their own company's strategy execution and their role in creating a culture around accountability to one another.  Get out your pen and notebook!  This episode has a lot of nuggets of wisdom throughout.

I discuss the value of having a leadership model with serial entrepreneur Josh Crisp, the CEO and Founder of Solinity Senior Living, Solinity Marketing, and the co-creator of Bridge The Gap Senior Living Podcast (among many other ventures).In this episode, I delve further into motivations for the podcast and also share the leadership model I developed to self-guide my professional growth in both emotional intelligence and business intelligence.  It also became the foundation for how I led teams in senior living businesses and how I coach executives today.The MBAR Model, which stands for Motivations, Behaviors, Activities, Results, is simple but has provided profound insights on the interrelated connection between our "why" and our goals.

This podcast is for mission driven leaders who want to level up their own abilities, skills, and mindset to create powerful relationships. Host, James Lee, shares some of his guiding principles of life that inspired him to create a podcast to document his own learning journey and share it with other mission driven leaders who believe that self-improvement is the best way to serve the people you love.