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Brain Chatter

Brain Chatter

Derek Conrad Brown

In Brain Chatter, we interview organizational leaders in diverse industries and roles at the intersection of Leadership, Workplace Culture, Profit, and Sustainability. Each offers insights into how they effectively lead themselves, their teams, and their organizations through all the ‘daily noise.’ What works and what doesn’t? What are key questions to ask? What leadership skills are most vital? What are the most valuable lessons they’ve learned? Brain Chatter is a production of Ken Chapman and Associates, Inc. www.LeadersCode.com For episode notes visit www.BrainChatterPodcast.com

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Top 10 Brain Chatter Episodes

Goodpods has curated a list of the 10 best Brain Chatter episodes, ranked by the number of listens and likes each episode have garnered from our listeners. If you are listening to Brain Chatter for the first time, there's no better place to start than with one of these standout episodes. If you are a fan of the show, vote for your favorite Brain Chatter episode by adding your comments to the episode page.

Many company leaders are asked to serve on boards of directors, whether with nonprofits or for-profits of various sizes. There are many questions and issues to consider before saying yes and after saying yes. It is always an honor to be elected to boards, and it allows someone to have far-reaching positive impact beyond their normal job or company. Board service comes with fiduciary responsibilities and can include personal liabilities and reputation risk.
In this episode, Laura Gregory, an experienced attorney and now a management consultant associate with KC&A, explores the spectrum of questions we should ask and issues we should evaluate related to board service.
Our leadership is important to nonprofits all around us- industry associations, local youth sports leagues, homeowner associations, school booster organizations, chambers of commerce, hunting clubs, civic clubs, etc. And our leadership can also have far-reaching positive impact on job-creation and economic opportunities with for-profit boards of small, medium, or large companies, whether closely held or publicly traded.
Laura provides a series of questions and concerns to consider before saying yes, as well as a series of responsibilities and methods to maximize your impact and usefulness on a board after saying yes, including when to stop serving. She also offers a list of strategies to measure your success in board service, as well as specific, critical, and costly mistakes to avoid.
EPISODE RESOURCES:
> Laura Gregory on LinkedIn
>Laura Gregory Bio
>US Bar Associations' Directories
>West Alabama Community Foundation
>Eagles Wings
>Weekly Leadership Quotes on LinkedIn

Brain Chatter, a podcast where we listen past the daily noise and explore topics at the intersection of leadership, workplace culture, profit, and sustainability.

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How are current high school students being prepared for the US workforce at a time when employers are desperate for qualified workers? What are the students' pathways and options? Are schools getting the input from local industry about what those companies need most in foundational skills as well as developed skillsets? Do schools want involvement from local employers?
This episode takes an in-depth look at current high school education and workforce preparation with someone on the front lines. Grayson Lawrence is principal of Winterboro High School in rural Talladega County, Alabama. Grayson explains what College and Career Readiness means on a practical, measurable level and what it looks like for the students, educators, and future employers.
Winterboro High has been a recipient of of the "National School Change Award", presented to six or fewer schools nationwide annually as a joint program of the National Principals Leadership Institute and The School Superintendents Association. It recognizes schools that have significantly improved, such as Winterboro, which has raised graduation rates from around 60% to close to 100%, among numerous other gains. And, 100% of Winterboro graduates leave school with a personalized career plan mapping out what steps to take to achieve their personal goals.
EPISODE RESOURCES:
> Winterboro High School website
>Grayson Lawrence on Twitter
>Winterboro High on Twitter

Brain Chatter, a podcast where we listen past the daily noise and explore topics at the intersection of leadership, workplace culture, profit, and sustainability.

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Nisha Patel explores what it takes to populate an organization with problem solvers and how to be one. Problems at work are most often negatively associated with stress. Repeatedly, however, problems prove to be gates of opportunities for career catapults, entrepreneurial ventures, and other rewards for those who can leverage creativity, calculated risk, and resilience to solve them. And yet, that only happens in an organization that knows how to find, hire, develop, and empower proactive problem solvers. This podcast episode delves into the how-to of this desired strategy and outcome.
Nisha is the Director of Wellness and Administration at UAB Heersink Medical School. Previously, one of her roles was as Chief of Staff for the Medical School Dean and CEO of the UAB Health System. UAB is one of Alabama’s two largest employers. She has an undergraduate degree from Middle Tennessee State University, an MBA from UAB and a Masters in Healthcare Administration from UAB. She has also gone through Lean Six Sigma Green Belt for Healthcare certification, as well as being a part of UAB’s Innovation Academy.
EPISODE RESOURCES:
> Nisha Patel on LinkedIn
>UAB Heersink School of Medicine, Office of Wellness
>Wall Street Journal, As We Work Podcast: The Value of Being Invaluable at Work
>Alchemy: The Surprising Power of Ideas That Don't Make Sense
>Brené Brown

Brain Chatter, a podcast where we listen past the daily noise and explore topics at the intersection of leadership, workplace culture, profit, and sustainability.

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Brain Chatter - Communication: Everybody’s Friend and Foe
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01/26/21 • 37 min

Deborah Boswell, communication consultant, coach, and author, examines the practical side of effective communication in the workplace. Ask your peers and direct reports, 'do we do a good job with communication here?' How do they respond? Are you surprised? Ineffective communication costs organizations big money while it also costs trust in leadership. What's the fix? How many moving parts are there to just one sentence communicated from one person to another? How can we each do what we can to communicate better? And what does Deborah advise about the new 'great debate' about cameras-off vs cameras-on in virtual meetings and why?
EPISODE RESOURCES:

Brain Chatter, a podcast where we listen past the daily noise and explore topics at the intersection of leadership, workplace culture, profit, and sustainability.

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Brain Chatter - Why I Want Disagreement On My Team
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09/28/20 • 37 min

Kelly Caruso, the first CEO of Shipt under Target, wants constructive disagreement on her team. How does disagreement lead to better outcomes? How can true diversity of thought be cultivated? What is the most important question she asks? What happens when a leader prevents or quashes constructive disagreement? How do you show others that constructive feedback is safe and appreciated? What's the difference between constructive and destructive disagreement?
Kelly answers these questions and also discusses:
Where the end of innovation begins. Why a leader should go back and thank those who spoke up and offered a differing perspective that led to change. How she and Shipt have responded to COVID-19.
EPISODE RESOURCES:

Brain Chatter, a podcast where we listen past the daily noise and explore topics at the intersection of leadership, workplace culture, profit, and sustainability.

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Brain Chatter - Through The Looking Glass
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01/14/21 • 44 min

Dr. Ken Chapman discusses the imperative of accurate self-reflection in organizational leadership and success. In fact, at the heart of almost every leadership issue in an organization, is the lack of accurate self-reflection on the individual level.
What is practical self-reflection? Why is it important? What are best practices? What tools and strategies are helpful? How do you self-reflect accurately without doing so neurotically? How can one help a leader who is unaware of their own deficit or avoidance of self-reflection? How often is failure at self-reflection by leaders tied to failure in overall business success?
Dr. Ken Chapman founded Ken Chapman & Associates, Inc. (producer of this podcast) almost 40 years ago. He has since worked on 4 continents in over 500 electric generating stations, foundries, manufacturing facilities, corporate headquarters, banks, nonprofits, and more. He is the author of 5 books, the mostly widely distributed of which is The Leader's Code. He is a graduate of Emory University and Colombia University.

EPISODE RESOURCES:

We'd love to hear your feedback on the podcast, as well as topics you'd like us to explore in a future episode. Email [email protected]

Brain Chatter, a podcast where we listen past the daily noise and explore topics at the intersection of leadership, workplace culture, profit, and sustainability.

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Tom McNany walks us through the role of organizational culture in adoption outcome (success or failure) of new technologies that transform an organization. Rolling out a new technology that changes how business is done is stressful and difficult for all involved. Whether it is an ERP system, manufacturing execution systems, warehouse and inventory software systems, or otherwise. Very rarely on the leader's mind before such a major undertaking is this question: "Is my workplace culture prepped to support this all the way through to success?" But to not first address that question can be perilous and costly.
Tom outlines the keys to success that lie within successful adoption- and they all reside in the culture of the workplace. He delves into how vital it is to proactively answer the 'why' questions for all stakeholders. Why are we doing this? Why is it important? As well as painting a clear impact picture of how successful adoption will matter to each individual. At the heart of successful adoption is also: consistent messaging from all levels of leadership, accountability, and trust. All of these together result in mutually beneficial results.
What was at the heart of some digital transformation blunders and failures Tom has observed? Leadership wasn't bought in. Different messaging from leaders. Buy-in and trust were never earned from employees. The impact or end result was never communicated to all stakeholders or in a relevant 'this is how this impacts you' method.
Tom makes the case that to drive change, you have to have a strong culture with respected leaders in place.
MORE ABOUT TOM:
Tom is the Vice President of Information Technology at Flow Control Group. He and his wife Kim live in greater Charlotte, NC. They have two daughters.
Tom serves on the board of directors of Queen City Robotics Alliance and on the board of advisors of NC TECH.
Tom is an accomplished transformational IT leader who has an in-depth industry knowledge of global manufacturing, supply-chain management, and distribution systems. He has proven experience and success in driving business forward with IT led initiatives, system implementations and strategic management. He is a results oriented leader in all aspects of enterprise-wide technology systems and staffing, including strategic planning, enterprise infrastructure and architecture, project portfolio management, application development, and re-engineering business processes.
EPISODE RESOURCES:
> Tom McNany on LinkedIn
>Flow Control Group
>Queen City Robotics Alliance
>North Carolina Technology Association (NC TECH)

Brain Chatter, a podcast where we listen past the daily noise and explore topics at the intersection of leadership, workplace culture, profit, and sustainability.

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Brain Chatter - A Playbook for Success: Tim Duncan
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11/23/24 • 18 min

KC&A's David Stanfield explores the life and career of one of the NBA all-time greats, Tim Duncan (San Antonio Spurs). The focus in this episode is on the 'walking the talk' examples Tim Duncan provided throughout his basketball career, by focusing on wins for the whole team and other teammates, cool-headed calmness, sharing credit, being coachable, accepting accountability and mentorship, and showing gratitude to teammates, fans, family, and coaches. All the while, consistently being humble.
EPISODE RESOURCES:
>Connect with David Stanfield on LinkedIn
>David Stanfield Bio
>Tim Duncan Stats on ESPN
>Biography of Tim Duncan on Wikipedia
>Tim Duncan's Retirement Letter (on Sports Illustrated)
>Air Alamo article referenced in episode
Basketball sound effects used by authorization of https://uppbeat.io

Brain Chatter, a podcast where we listen past the daily noise and explore topics at the intersection of leadership, workplace culture, profit, and sustainability.

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Anthony Orlowski, is the Executive Vice President, Plumbing Group of McWane, Inc. In this role he has overall responsibility of the AB&I Foundry and Anaco-Husky facilities in California, Texas-based Tyler Pipe & Coupling plants, and the Sri City, India, Coupling plant, which combined account for more than 1,400 team members manufacturing drainage, waste and venting products for the commercial plumbing industry.
In this episode he shares his experiences with workplace safety. And it may not be what you expect. Where does safety begin? Whose responsibility is it to own an individual's safety? What's the ultimate cost to you and others of not being honest when it comes to safety? What are key questions related to safety to ask a prospective manager when you're preparing to hire for a position? How do you position yourself and your team to learn from bad decisions? How do you instill the telling of the correct story into the workplace culture?

Resources:
>
Anthony Orlowski's Bio>Connect with Anthony on LinkedIn

Brain Chatter, a podcast where we listen past the daily noise and explore topics at the intersection of leadership, workplace culture, profit, and sustainability.

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Brain Chatter - The Power of Thankfulness
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11/25/20 • 45 min

Dr. Isabel Scarinci, Vice Chair for Global and Rural Health in the Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology at UAB, psychologist, and polio survivor, discusses The Power of Thankfulness. How powerful is a genuine sense of thankfulness in our daily lives with co-workers, friends, and family? How does expressing thankfulness change our relationships with others? How can we make authentic thankfulness habitual? What is the science behind gratitude? And how does daily meditation on thankfulness impact our sleep?

This episode is a conversation with Dr. Isabel Scarinci who survived polio as a child in Brazil. That experience led her into a life of service to others. As a child, between surgeries she went door-to-door with her mother encouraging complete strangers to vaccinate their children against polio. Her efforts prevented untold other children from suffering. Now she works as an administrator and psychologist in cancer prevention with one of the world's leading cancer centers and medical schools. She is a leader in three major efforts to eradicate cervical cancer:
1- Operation Wipeout, an effort to eradicate cervical cancer in an entire US State (Alabama).
2- An effort between the Rotary Club of Birmingham, O’Neal Comprehensive Cancer Center, Rotary International, Rotary Clubs in Guatemala, and the national government of Guatemala to eradicate any type of cancer (in this case cervical cancer) from an entire country for the first time in human history.
3- She has been appointed by the US White House to lead a workgroup to determine how to create a nationwide cervical cancer prevention strategy across the entire United States.

EPISODE RESOURCES:

We'd love to hear your feedback on the podcast, as well as topics you'd like us to explore in a future episode. Email [email protected]

Brain Chatter, a podcast where we listen past the daily noise and explore topics at the intersection of leadership, workplace culture, profit, and sustainability.

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FAQ

How many episodes does Brain Chatter have?

Brain Chatter currently has 31 episodes available.

What topics does Brain Chatter cover?

The podcast is about Management, Podcasts and Business.

What is the most popular episode on Brain Chatter?

The episode title 'Critical Mistakes to Avoid if You Serve on a Board of Directors (For-Profit or Nonprofit)' is the most popular.

What is the average episode length on Brain Chatter?

The average episode length on Brain Chatter is 35 minutes.

How often are episodes of Brain Chatter released?

Episodes of Brain Chatter are typically released every 36 days, 11 hours.

When was the first episode of Brain Chatter?

The first episode of Brain Chatter was released on Jun 17, 2020.

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