Out of the Comfort Zone
There is no growth in comfort and no comfort in growth. Business today typically values and promotes leaders for their subject expertise. Leaders who have command of the details and execute based on knowledge and experience are highly respected. However, to grow as a leader you have to get out of your comfort zone – that means learning to lead without just being the expert. Learn to gain the trust and respect of a team that might know more than you do. Get comfortable with ambiguity and with not having all the information. Develop the skills and confidence to lead in a different way.
For female leaders, subject expertise is usually the source of their confidence. Learning to lead outside your comfort zone is one step for breaking through the glass ceiling.
The show’s purpose is to give you tips on how can you develop the capability to lead – to get out of your comfort zone?
Episodes
576 episodes
Surviving the Aftershock with Caroline Stokes
The shock forces are coming from all directions and they are powerful. How ready are you as a leader to navigate not just the shocks but also the aftershocks? What do you need to do to be mentally, emotionally and socially prepared?
Making Decisions in an Uncertain World with Haywood Spangler
There is never enough data to be certain any given decision is a good one or not. The more senior you become, the harder it is to be sure. Data is incomplete and unclear, there are competing interpretations, and advice goes in different directi...
Wired on Wall Street with Tom Hardin
Sometimes the choices we make work out brilliantly, for the “greater good”. Sometimes the choices we make do not work out so well. And sometimes those choices are a slippery slope that puts you making more choices you never expected to make. It...
Keeping Your Team Engaged with Nick Smallman
A Nightmare Scenario: You have a massive project to deliver, you and your team are just barely managing the tasks, and an important team member resigns unexpectedly. It’s more common than you might think. So what can you do to make ...
Jolts That Leave You Wanting to Quit with Anthony Klotz
One day, something happens and you snap. Maybe you loved your work yesterday, but today you are ready to just walk away. Maybe it’s a new manager you are not happy with, maybe it’s some other change, maybe your colleagues are leaving. ...
Calming Your Brain in an Always On World with Shaady Harrison
You think you can handle the stress in your life. Your team will tell you otherwise because they live with the consequences. As a leader, you cast a long shadow that destroys the team’s productivity. An off-handed comment by you bec...
Leading at Edge of Familiarity with Amy Clark
Breaking out of your comfort zone is breaking away from the need to know everything about the work your team is doing. It is also about breaking away from the familiar, the known, the day-to-day and facing that edge of uncertainty. How do you d...
Hidden Project Drivers with Kursten Faller
AI will force us to be “more human or be obsolete”. So what does it mean to be more human as a leader and still drive results, get great performance, keep a team engaged and motivated? Especially in a world that is driven by project after proje...
Understanding the Impact of Your Past with Ilona Cepelakova
To lead well, you must maintain some degree of emotional balance. Otherwise, people stop wanting to tell you the things you most need to know and they stop creatively solving problems just to name two consequences. Sometimes though what is caus...
Thriving & Feeling Alive at Work with Aoife O’Brien
Thriving at work sounds like a pipe dream. The question for the day is what you can do as a manager to create the conditions for each of your team members to feel that they can truly thrive at work.
High-Altitude Leadership with Chris Clearfield
Too often leaders create more problems for themselves and for the team by being the one who solves problems, is in the middle of KPI’s, juggling multiple priorities. It’s a well-intentioned trap but a trap nevertheless. How can you get out of i...
Speaking Out, Speaking Up and Collaborating with Betsy Kauffman
Suppose you are charged with a challenge and you know there are obstacles that are not being addressed. How can you speak out to your leaders without risking it all? How can you encourage your team to speak up to you? How can you get your peers...
Men (and Women) at Work with Jennifer McCollum
Women are struggling at work for a host of known reasons: volume overload, creating visibility, responsibilities outside work and much, much more.However, men are struggling too for a host of unexplored reasons including expectations abo...
How People First Leads to Strong Results with Josh Block
We often talk about the importance of caring for your employees – leaving them feeling that they matter more than for just the output they produce. In this episode, we hear from one of the few leaders who has built a strong business really putt...
How to Know Yourself with Natalie Pickering
The better you as a leader understand your personal drivers, preferences, values and the story you hold about what it means to lead; then, the better you will be at working with a range of people and getting the best from them. Knowing yo...
Path to Inspiring Leadership with Bruce Mayhew
Leading requires that you not only get out of your comfort zone and lead without being the expert but that you also learn to build trust with people you don’t necessarily appreciate immediately. Those micro-cultures make all the different in te...
Leading and Winning in Races Around the World with Conrad Humphreys
Sometimes we can learn a lot about leading a business team by stepping outside the business world and examining a successful sports team. In sports, if you want to win at the top level, there are so many things you have to do well beyond just t...
Leading Gen Z: Strategies, Insights, and Connection for Modern Leaders | Jackie Cooper
Many managers/leaders are stressed, frustrated, and sometimes even angry when they think about what the youngest generation is expecting from their careers. However, the experiences of Gen Z are not like generations before. Therefore, to ...
Leading Across Cultures: How to Manage Global Teams | Dean Foster
If you are leading a team, most likely you have team members in different countries with different cultures, traditions and expectations about what you should do as a manager. What do you need to know to be effective with a different culture? W...
Your Best Meetings Ever: Strategies, Mindsets, and Tools for Effective Collaboration | Rebecca Hinds
Meetings are using an enormous amount of time with little reward. Too many meetings creates overload, stress, no time to think, long hours to make up the work that couldn’t get done because of meetings. There has to be a better way to coordinat...
Delegation Mastery: The A-B-C Method Every Leader Should Know | Stefan Feuerstein
Every leader, to create leverage and to achieve more impact, must be able to delegate successfully. So few know how. They either over direct or instruct or they dessert, ditch abandon and hope all goes well – it rarely does. There is a better w...
Navigating the Executive Team with Gina Jardine
I have watched several high performing leaders take two steps up in their career at once, land themselves on the executive committee and find that they are not prepared for the challenges of operating at that level. The fallout is not good for ...
Impact, Empathy, and Body Language with Martin Brooks
Body language may convey more about you and your message than the words you say. How then can you use body language to grab and sustain attention? How does body language help you build relationships and show empathy? What can body language tell...
Leadership and Values with Robert Glazer
Leaders do need to understand their core values because these values drive behavior, relationships and decisions. Having clear values gives a bottom line for making tough decisions. Clear values help you know when to say no and stand your groun...
Managing your Team: Your Questions Answered with Wanda Wallace
Good management is one of the hardest skills to master. In over thirty years of coaching experience, host Dr. Wanda Wallace has seen many leaders – and their team members – struggle. What is the team really motivated by? Which task will create ...
