The Remarkable Leadership Podcast

I've found that almost all of the successful people that I know, have met or even have read about have at least this one thing in common: They have a positive perspective. And while this can mean that they are sometimes optimists, it isn't necessarily the same thing.

There are 10 positive emotions and when you express them, you open your mind to greater learning and better relationships. Scientifically, positive emotion expands our mental capabilities. Lisa Zigarmi is an organizational psychologist and leadership coach working with Fortune 500 companies and author of #Positivity at Work. Lisa and Kevin discuss positive psychology, esp. as it related to leadership. Leaders can create a culture for their people to flourish by simply helping them find meaning in their work as it relates to their team, their division, and the organization. She feels that emotion needs to be legitimized in the workplace and leaders need to make space for people to express emotion. When we forbid feelings, we see only part of the picture. Leaving them out of decision-making, judgment and interaction is not only impossible, but it's also imprudent. Discrediting feelings in business blocks access to growth, meaning making and sustainable results.

Chris Dyer is the founder of G2 and the author of The Power of Company Culture. He joins Kevin to discuss lessons learned on his path to founding his own company. Chris has spent years researching what drives profits and productivity in a variety of corporations. He recognized that many leaders were intentional about NOT doing certain things. You need to know your limitations (and ask for help) and leverage your strengths.

It is my personal belief and a major organizational philosophy of ours that you cannot be a successful leader over a long period of time without having an OTHERS Focus. And when I use this term, the topic often turns to Servant Leadership – are they one and the same? Check out today's episode to find out what Servant Leadership really means and how your focus can truly change your results and your life.

Five generations are in the workplace today and 40% of Americans have a boss younger than they are. What does this all mean for those of us closer to retirement? What are you going to do in the second stage of your career? Chip Conley is the author of Wisdom @ Work: The Making of a Modern Elder and Airbnb Strategic Advisor for Hospitality and Leadership. Chip and Kevin discuss a fast-changing workplace due to technology and the youth of today have the benefit of being "digital natives". With that said, wisdom can be shared. Throughout the rapid change, we still remember that the need to understand humans is timeless. Chip tells us what it means to be a modern elder and capitalize on the qualities gained through experience, like good judgment and emotional intelligence.

Culture. Is it the current buzzword? How important is it to your organization? Karen Jaw-Madson is the principal of Co.-Design of Work Experience and author of Culture Your Culture: Innovating Experiences @Work. She was frustrated by all the talk surrounding the importance of culture yet found that most organizations did not have an intentional process to create their culture. She shares with Kevin the journey to create the book and how she purposely did not want it filled with case studies. She explains the Design of Work Experience and through this framework leaders, teams, and employees across the board can create a culture to fit their context.

I am sharing a lesson today from one of my favorite books by Og Mandino, The Greatest Miracle in the World. In this great book, there is an incredibly powerful sentence that all leaders can learn from: Use wisely your power of choice. Listen to this episode to learn how you can use this power to be more effective and more successful.

Goals and goal setting. Much has been written about this topic; from importance to how to write the tasks and action items. Biagio 'Bill' Sciacca is the author of Goals Book: Embracing Personal Responsibility in an Age of Entitlement. Biagio not only does consulting, he has taught at the university level since 1982, and, recently, took a full-time academic post at Penn State University, where he lectures in Micro and Macro Economics, Marketing, Leadership, Strategic Management and Interpersonal Skills in Business. His first attempt at the book resulted in a lot of blank pages, where the reader was supposed to fill in their goals. He realized that this might not be helpful and takes a different approach to goal setting and encourages us to think about habit formation.

In my company, I allow my employees to choose their own job title. I of course, did the same. And I know that I did a pretty decent job when I picked mine because when I tell people what it is, I almost always get comments on it. But this video isn't about my title, well not entirely. It's about one very important word in my title… POTENTIAL And in this episode, I have two very important questions that leaders need to ask about potential in order to get great results.

All too often it's the organizational norms that are preventing the company and it's people from growing. Change is rapid and relying on best practices or the playbook can be dangerous for the company and your career. Geoff Tuff is the co-author of DETONATE: Why—And How—Corporations Must Blow Up Best Practices (And Bring a Beginner's Mind) to Survive. Geoff and Kevin discuss the DETONATE mindset, some typical best practices and why they need to be disrupted for next-generation thinking. Further, leaders at all levels need to look at what drives human behavior because that is where the change happens.

While the title of this post might have you thinking about the HVAC in your home, let me assure you that's not what this is about. In today's episode, I'm talking about the filters that you see the world through as a leader – what they are and then how to change them.

Drew Dudley believes we should consciously create moments of leadership. He is the founder of Day One Leadership and author of This Is Day One: A Practical Guide To Leadership That Matters. Drew joins Kevin to talk about leadership and personal growth. We need to celebrate moments of compassion and generosity every day; not just look at leadership in blocks of time. Regardless of your role, leadership moments happen all the time and begin at the same place for everyone, Day One.

Our lives are busy – both at work and at home – and it's easy to live in reality but not always easy to actually "see" what your reality is. And as leaders, this is a really important distinction. In today's episode, I'm asking three questions to help leaders "see" their reality so that they can be more successful.

Don't start with the problem. Think about your vision and where you want to go. Steve Shallenberger shared results of his research into what sets apart high achieving individuals in Becoming Your Best: The 12 Principles of Highly Successful Leaders. That research also led him to discover that most organizations did not have an approach to solving problems. Most leaders want their employees to bring solutions instead of problems, yet there is no process. This led him to co-write The Transformation Challenge. Steve shares stories and examples of his proprietary Six-Step Process to transform any challenge or problem. As listeners of the Remarkable Leadership Podcast, he is offering a quick start guide to help walk you through the process. You can e-mail Steve at [email protected] and mention this podcast.

Every week for the last several years, my remote team has shared a weekly report with updates and pertinent information for the other teammates. And while this report has changed over the years, there is one component that has been consistent: What have you learned this week? And last week, I shared a very valuable lesson in my report that will help all leaders: When I read more, I think better. There is absolutely no doubt that there is a connection between being a reader and being a more effective leader. So today, I'm asking you about your reading habits…

Donna Hicks, author of Leading with Dignity: How to Create a Culture That Brings Out the Best in People joins Kevin to discuss the role of dignity in leadership, relationships, and negotiations. Donna was at the table at many conflict discussions, including Israel/Palestine and Northern Ireland. What she found was that there was another conversation at the table that was non-verbal and emotional. She shares with Kevin that few of us understand the role dignity plays in leadership and when we don't respect dignity, there are trust and conflict issues. Leaders need to walk the talk and we all need to understand how vulnerable we are.

As this releases on July 3rd, people in the U.S. might be thinking about freedom as we prepare to celebrate Independence Day. But independence doesn't only apply in early July. Leaders can and should be thinking about independence and what it means in their teams and at work.

Feedback is as a skill that helps people get better. Margie Mauldin found that she was either a cheerleader or silent and wasn't good at providing feedback, in part because she didn't understand the elements of effective feedback. Through research, observation and interviews she created the Feedback Revolution: Building Relationships & Boosting Results. This book was desinged to enhance your skill set in an enjoyable, inviting and above all, practical way. At the end of the day, you want your people to improve and they want to improve. Margie shares her thoughts about ending the negative stigma associated with feedback and truly make it a tool.

In these Remarkable TV episodes, I answer questions; you ask questions; we consider questions; there are a lot of questions. In this episode, I am proposing a question that all leaders need to ask themselves.

Long-term success is dependent on continuous learning, yet we often find that we get in our own way. Dr. Bradley Staats, author of Never Stop Learning: Stay Relevant, Reinvent Yourself, and Thrive, joins Kevin to discuss dynamic learning, both personally and organizationally. Brad describes not only a framework to help you become more effective as a lifelong learner, he discusses how you can help your team continue to learn. You must create the space for questions and thought-sharing. Further, he outlines an exercise you can do to continue to open yourself up and learn

While we're here… We really ought to… Before you know it… We've all been on projects or task forces or teams where scope creep completely derails our initial plans, our progress and our success. And as leaders, scope creep WILL happen unless we are truly intentional in addressing it beforehand. Check out this episode for tips on handling the inevitable scope creep in your organization

You have the choice to take your career seriously. Mary Abbajay is the author of Managing UP and joins Kevin to discuss how leaders, at any level, can develop strategies so you win and your boss can win. Managing Up is not about sucking up. Managing Up is about relationships, leadership, and followership. Mary shares information about different boss types and real-world examples to bridge the gap and collaborate.

In this episode, we dive further into lessons I mentioned in a previous video: setting clear and mutually understood expectations.

Tom Peters is known for many things, including being one of today's greatest business minds. His first book, In Search of Excellence: Lessons from America's Best-Run Companies (with Robert Waterman) was published in 1982 and may be considered the beginning of business books. Today he joins Kevin to share stories from his journey over the past 36 years and how we can use that information today. Further, he discusses his latest book, The Excellence Dividend: Meeting the Tech Tide with Work That Wows and Jobs That Last. AI is everywhere and Tom suggests that nothing will beat a dedicated workforce and a commitment to high-quality service or products. In this episode, Tom shares his thoughts about 1. The tech tsunami. 2. Relationships. Additional Leadership Resources Book Recommendations: The Score Takes Care of Itself: My Philosophy of Leadership by Bill Walsh with Steve Jamison and Craig Walsh War in 140 Characters: How Social Media Is Reshaping Conflict in the Twenty-First Century by David Patrikarakos Learn more about Tom Peters. Learn more about The Excellence Dividend. Get our free report: The Secrets of Becoming a Remarkable Leader Sign up for our free video training series, 13 Days to Remarkable Leadership. Get your free copy of my inspiring e-book, 101 Ways to Unleash Your Potential.

Through research, assessments, interviews, and personal experience Elena Botelho and Kim Powell found that there are 4 behaviors successful CEO's and leaders exhibit and share their work in a New York Times bestseller entitled The CEO Next Door: The 4 Behaviors That Transform Ordinary People into World-Class Leaders. Elena joins Kevin to discuss the behaviors and some of the myths about organizational leaders. For example, leaders are willing to make a decision and thereby willing to make mistakes. These are secrets of professional success that you can use at any stage of your career.

Chris McGoff states that darkness is not the opposite of light but is the absence of light and just waiting for the light. As such, any person can stand up a peak performance culture. He is the author of "Match in the Root Cellar: How You Can Spark a Peak Performance Culture". This book is unique in that it is broken into two parts. The first is the story of a CEO and her team—all based on real people— and how together they achieved a peak performance culture at their company despite the odds. The second part is a straightforward guide to reference for quick answers when developing your company's culture. Chris and Kevin discuss culture in organizations and what we will and won't tolerate.

Reflection is an important part of moving forward. Host Kevin Eikenberry is in the guest seat today to 'reflect' on two years of podcasts. He shares information for want-to-be podcasters, technology challenges (we've all had them) and guests he would like to have. Further, he touches on the evolution of his questions and segments, and the action items he has taken from the past 100+ guests. Kevin's book recommendation for this episode is to go back to any previous guest and read what they are reading.

In June my newest book, The Long-Distance Leader: Rules for Remarkable Remote Leadership, was released! And to celebrate this occasion, in this episode, I am sharing some of my best ideas from the book for leaders (or future leaders) of remote teams.

Research shows us that creativity is not for a select few. 40% of the population has the same creative potential. So, who becomes the next big tech genius, author, producer…? Allen Gannett, author of The Creative Curve: How To Develop the Right Idea, At the Right Time, shares the truth about creative success. Allen explains the mechanics of what he calls the "the creative curve" – the point of optimal tension between what is familiar and what is new. Creative people don't just consume content, they are deliberate. As a bonus, Allen shares some tips if you find yourself on The Wheel of Fortune.

Cash Keahey works with new and emerging leaders and is often asked what personality types make the best leaders? It's a difficult question at best and he didn't have the data to provide a solid answer. So, he took his interest in politics and studied successful presidents based on the assessments of 120 presidential historian-experts and accompanying analyses and authored Eight Leader Types in the White House: Discover and Leverage Your Oval Office Leadership Style. Cash used the Myers-Briggs/Jungian personality theory to develop his leadership types. We all demonstrate these styles depending on our view of the world and we evolve. He suggests we find our leadership type and jump to that presidential chapter in the book to learn more about our strengths and blind spots.

I am starting this episode with a very important question for leaders. Commitment or compliance: WHICH do you want? And your answer to that question will make all the difference to which you will actually get. Check out the video to learn more.

Statistics show that we spend more time with the people we work with than we do with our family. Todd Palmer, CEO of Extraordinary Advisors and author of The Job Search Process: Find & Land a Great Job in 6 Weeks or Less, discusses servant leadership and taking care of those that take care of you. He tells Kevin that there are fewer people working than 40 years ago, yet not enough people for jobs. Leaders need to be thinking about their talent search and the opportunities their companies offer. Todd also offers a bonus to listeners of the Remarkable Leadership Podcast

In leadership, there are a couple of types of problems or challenges: there are skill problems and there are habit problems. And in today's episode, I am sharing some ideas with you that will help you to address the habit problem of how to listen more and listen better.

Early in his career, Carter Cast sat in a tough meeting with his supervisor and learned a hard truth about himself. He says it derailed him for a time and then led to the research to understand what impeded the career progress of talented people. Carter is very candid with Kevin about that meeting and shares his research and about his book, The Right (and Wrong) Stuff: How Brilliant Careers are Made. Carter believes we must understand our own vulnerabilities to work around or manage them, so we don't sabotage our future.

It's inevitable that there will be "silos" in organizations – groups that operate individually and separately from the rest of the organization. And unfortunately, this can often lead to the "Them vs. Us" syndrome. And as leaders, we need to be breaking down barriers between project teams, groups and departments so that we can be more inclusive and therefore more successful. In today's episode, I am giving you five pieces of advice to help you and your organization be more inclusive.

You are not alone if you are feeling overwhelmed by the changing workplace. Not only do we have more generations working side by side, we also have colleagues working a time zone away. Wayne Turmel, Kevin's co-author of The Long-Distance Leader, joins Kevin to dig deeper into the book and share his thoughts about remote leadership. Results from their research suggested that 60% of managers feel like they don't know what they are doing when it comes to remote working. Yes, the work is getting done and at what cost? Because we can't rely on real-time, face-to-face communication when people work from home or the other side of the world, leaders need to change how they think, act and communicate

When we do something with intention, it's something that is on purpose, planned and conscious. And intentional leaders are simply better leaders. So today, I'm giving you four things that you can do right away to be more intentional starting today.

Leadership is about behaviors. Martin Lanik a Ph.D. in industrial/organizational psychology and author of The Leader Habit had an a-ha moment years ago after he read a study that said more money was being spent on leadership development, yet there was less confidence in leading. As a scientist, he researched 800 leaders to come up with 22 core leadership skills and the micro-behaviors that leaders possess. In the Leader Habit, Martin shares 5-minute exercises that can turn anyone into an effective leader

While I mention Performance Reviews in the title of this podcast and throughout the audio many times, that is NOT my biggest focus today. Today, I am talking about coaching and giving four specific pieces of advice to help you focus more on the coaching and less on the performance review.

Former CEO of Dollar General and now author, Cal Turner Jr., joins Kevin to talk about the family business. His father and grandfather founded Dollar General and his new book, My Father's Business: The Small-Town Values That Built Dollar General into a Billion-Dollar Company. chronicles how the small-town values with which he was raised helped him guide Dollar General from family enterprise to national powerhouse. A solid family relationship is vital to the success of a family company, especially during challenging times. However, Cal would also argue that relationships and serving others are the basis for any organization.

Trust is the foundation of some extremely important business issues. From retention to employee engagement to Customer satisfaction and productivity - you likely won't be satisfied with any of these unless there is trust. And in order to have more trust in the workplace, we have to understand a few things about it. Check out today's episode to learn how you can foster more trust in your own workplace.

Kelly Roach believes you need to start from where you are. She is the host of the top-rated podcast Unstoppable Success Radio, CEO of Kelly Roach Coaching, and author of Unstoppable: 9 Principles For Unlimited Success In Business & Life. These principles are lessons learned from the trenches and from industry leaders and came about to help find the balance between financial success with freedom and flexibility.

Too many leaders get caught up in the power. I'm certain that you've met at least one or two, maybe even worked for one… "It's my way or the highway." Sound familiar? And while it's not always that strong, there are many subtle ways that we as leaders focus on the power of leadership. Check out today's episode for some easy-to-implement advice for focusing on the influence rather than the power.

Research has shown that the same receptors fire in our brain when people are introduced to changes in social systems (like organizational change) as when we are in pain. It's no wonder that 65% of business fail at organizational change. Barbara Trautein, Ph.D. joins Kevin to discuss change intelligence. She recognized we have tools to manage change and tools to develop leaders. She also realized that we were missing the tools to develop change leadership. She is the author of the best-selling book Change Intelligence: Use the Power of CQ to Lead Change that Sticks and originator of the CQ System for Developing Change Intelligent Leaders and Organizations.

At the end of last year I wrote a blog post titled, Eight Ways to Be a Better Leader in 2018. And in today's video, I am focusing on just one of those ways, specifically: More Productivity Less Place. From The Episode: Read the blog post here. Get free resources and order your copy of The Long-Distance Leader here.

Mark Miller is the Vice President of High Performance Leadership at Chick-fil-A Inc. or "The Chicken", as he affectionately refers to it. He is also a best selling author, by accident according to Mark, and joins Kevin to discuss top talent. He recently released Talent Magnet: How To Attract And Keep The Best People. In discussions with organizational leaders, Mark found that finding and keeping good people had become the number one issue. Through not only qualitative data, but based on extensive research Mark conducted with Aon, he discovered that what keeps and attracts top talent is different than what attracts and keeps typical talent. In this episode, Mark disusses 1. The difference between talent and top talent. 2. Three things top talent want. 3 Social media in leadership.

Don't worry – today's episode has nothing to do with running and really nothing to do with sports! What I'm talking about today is helping leaders break barriers – their own and those of their team. From This Episode: Learn more about and listen to episodes from The Remarkable Leadership Podcast here.

Not all mistakes are created equal. Skip Prichard is the President & CEO of OCLC, a global nonprofit computer library service and research organization. He is also the author of The Book of Mistakes: 9 Secrets to Creating a Successful Future. Through observation and research, Skip shares stories of mistakes we make that limit our potential. You have the choice to decide how you reach and where you want to go. In this episode, Skip focuses on 1. Standing out vs. blending in. 2. Surrounding yourself with the right (or wrong) people.

If you have kids or if you were ever a kid (and I'm guessing you can answer at least one of these affirmatively??), you have asked or been asked this question before: What did you learn today? And while this is a very valid question, as you'll notice in the title of this blog post, it's not the question I am talking about in the video. Instead of a REVIEW question, I am talking about a PREVIEW question. From This Episode: Learn more and sign up for the 13 Days to Remarkable Leadership video series here. Sign up to receive emails about new Remarkable TV episodes here.

Gary Brackett went from an undrafted free agent to football captain and Superbowl champion. Post football, he is a community leader and entrepreneur. How did someone 5'10" and 230 pounds get to these positions? He played from the neck up and joins Kevin to talk about consistency and repetition. Lessons he learned on the playing field transfer to his role as the owner of Brackett Restaurant Group and founder of The Impact Foundation. He shares the importance of continuing to read, learn, train and invest in yourself to make your next "quarter" better.