Out Of The Comfort Zone

We will cover three marketing topics. First, are consumers, and employees, entitlement? How can we tell and how can we respond? Second, what does it mean to be strategic? Third, what can you learn from the US presidential address about marketing yourself?

Are you clear about your career goals? Are your direct reports clear about their goals? Are you thinking about a career move? Or, do you need to coach a team member on making a career move? If so, tune in to hear some of the things to be thinking about (and coaching your team on) from creating a mission statement to identifying opportunities.

Having executive presence in a meeting, in a talk or in a sales pitch involves how you craft the message plus the way you deliver that message. If you need a way to work through exactly what your message is and how to say it, tune in for a brilliant road map.

Whether you are networking, dining with clients or senior leaders, making small talk or just trying to leave others feeling more comfortable in your presence, the way you interact leaves a lasting impression. How can you make small talk with anyone? How can you graciously except a conversation at a networking event? What is appropriate etiquette? What are the skills for leaving others more comfortable in your presence?

In a world driven by performance, to perform at your best, you need enough sleep with particular qualities. Contrary to popular myth, recent research shows that all of us need 7 to 8 hours of sleep to be at our optimum level of performance. Tune in to hear what you can do to improve the quality and quantity of your sleep so that you feel more relaxed and refreshed and can achieve your best performance.

People are regularly asked to lead teams where members are located in different countries, to work on a task force with peers from different countries or to take an ex-pat assignment in a different country. While you may be an expert in some of the content of your role, you won’t be an expert in the subtle ways of working in an unknown culture. What are the common mistakes to avoid? How can you understand what other cultures expect from you? What can you do to get the best from your colleagues around the world?

Typically, somewhere in your career, a boss will say you need to raise your visibility and value, your profile, to get to the next level. Most people don’t know what to do – if they did they would be doing it. How can you raise your visibility with key stakeholders? How can you think about the value you bring to your organization and insure others see that value? Tune in to hear about 7 accelerators for your visibility and 3 areas of value.

Organizations often say our competitive advantage is our people. According to my guest, the competitive advantage is the relationship between people – and that is what defines the culture. So, how can a person improve the relationships between people? Tune in to here a few of the top 15 things you can do.

Corporate social responsibility and corporate sustainability are currently hot topics. Millennials are choosing to work for companies that care about the greater picture, not just the bottom line results. What is sustainability, really? How can you be more sustainable without breaking the bank? Why does it matter anyway? What can you as an individual leader do, even if your corporation doesn’t have a big program or a big budget? Tune in for the discussion.

What defines and creates culture in an organization or even in a team? How can you as a leader impact – or even change – the culture of your group?

If you want to engage people, be seen as authentic, improve your communication, pitch your ideas or lead without being the expert, we have the answer. Tune in to learn a simple method that allows you to say less and get people to listen more in any situation.

As you reach the point in your career where you have been promoted to a role that requires you to lead outside of your expertise, your success depends in part on how well you learn to work with differences and how open-minded you can be to different perspectives. It’s a point of discomfort and it’s the point at which you have to stretch beyond the ways you have worked up to this point. How should you think about differences in styles, work patterns and perspective? How does emotional competence impact your ability to be open-minded? How can you think about and even assess differences?

Innovation can involve big ideas, whole new products and totally new processes. Equally, innovation happens in the many small things we think about, improve and question every day. As it turns out, both types of innovation matter a great deal to an organization’s success. So, what can you do as an individual or as a leader within an organization to be more innovative? How can you think about the future in a more productive way? My guest believes anyone can learn to be innovative. Tune in to hear some of the 63 small things, the nuggets, you can do at any level to be more innovative, more future-oriented.

The challenges of leading multiple generations at work is top of mind for most leaders. Between the supposedly retiring Baby Boomers, Generation X waiting in the wings, the new entry Millennials and now Generation Z on the horizon, organizations are struggling with how to navigate the different needs and expectations of all generations. As a leader, what do you need to know about Millennials and the new Generation Z? What do you need to know and do to keep young talent engaged? Tune in to find out how.

How do you connect with people who just are not “easy” conversationalists? How do you have a conversation with someone, especially when it’s a “tricky” subject, like politics or something else that bothers you? How do you stop avoiding those topics without damaging relationships? What can you do to be more persuasive with people? Tune in to find out how.

There is no leading if people are not following. What does it take to inspire people to follow you? What is it that encourages people to willingly abandon their immediate agenda and follow your agenda, maybe even taking a “hit” for you? Tune in to learn what distinguishes the best from the rest as well as to learn how you can improve your ability to inspire, regardless of your current level of responsibility or competence.

Listening – all of us know it’s important and all of us don’t do it well. Between multi-tasking, meeting team needs along with manager expectations and preparing your message let along doing the day-job, we don’t feel we have time to listen. However, have you ever thought about what you lose by not listening properly? If you trying to improve engagement, influence or emotional intelligence, then listening becomes more mandatory than you may have appreciated. How do you know you are listening well enough? That’s the topic for today – when does listening really matter and how can you get better at it.

Brands are still as highly relevant today as they were decades ago to build reputation and growth. What makes a great brand and how do brands evolve? More importantly, how can you take this framework for brand management and apply it to your personal brand? Tune in for answers to both your company brand strategy and your personal brand strategy.

If you don’t have a clue how to think about your career, your interests, what you should do or should do next, this is the show for you. Tune in to find out how to define your purpose, create a strategy and build a plan to land your ideal role. The process works for anyone: someone just starting their career, someone who is mid-career and someone who wants to shift careers.

Given how important trust is for business, collaboration, partnerships and leading, we spend far too little time thinking about how trust is created. It turns out that being a “trustworthy” character, doesn’t matter as much as you might think it does. Tune in to learn what really makes a difference in building trusted relationships and in getting people to take your advice or follow you when you are not the expert.