PeopleFirst! with Morag Barrett

Welcome to SkyeTeam's People First! In this series, we explore the people side of successful business and careers. We all have a story to share, a leadership journey that we are experiencing.

We'll be interviewing authors, business leaders, thought leaders, and people like you to uncover the latest ideas, resources, and tools to help you become more effective at work - and in life. As it turns out, the secret is cultivating winning relationships. Business is personal, and relationships matter!

So, sit back, and grab a coffee as Morag and Heather Younger discuss "Caring Leadership!"

Chapter Layout:
0:00 - Open
2:58 - What Did You Want to Be When You Grew Up?
4:08 - Pivot Point
8:54 - New Book
11:11 - Meet People Where They Are At
13:56 - Safety Leadership
15:17 - Am I Seen As A Caring Colleague?
18:14 - Feeling Heard
20:05 - Power in the Pause
22:08 - The 9 Behaviors
24:59 - Do It At Work, Do It At Home
29:04 - The Crucible & Wrap

Links:
Website: http://theartofcaringleadership.com/
Book: https://amazon.com/Art-Caring-Leadership-Leading-Organizations/dp/1523092149/ref=sr_1_3?dchild=1&keywords=caring+leadership&qid=1614564135&sr=8-3
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/heatheryounger/

Transcript:
- [INTRO] Welcome to Skye Team's, "People First with Morag Barrett."

You know, when you meet people where you just click? Where it seems that your thoughts and ideas are aligned? Well that's how I feel about Heather Younger. Heather's my guest this week on "People First", and she is a best-selling author, international speaker, consultant, adjunct organizational leadership professor and a facilitator who has rightly earned her reputation as the employee whisperer. And as a champion for positive change in the workplace, communities and in our world at large, Heather founded Employee Fanatics, a leading employee engagement and leadership development consulting and training firm to inspire others by teaching the kind of caring leadership that drives real business results. Heather hosts a weekly podcast "Leadership with Heart." I was just watching a phenomenal episode with Garry Ridge from WD-40 and Chester Elton, which also uncovers the drive for leaders from all over the world and all walks of life to be more emotionally intelligent leaders. Her book, "The Seven Intuitive Laws of Employee Loyalty" hit the Forbes' must-read list and is a go-to source for HR professionals and organizational leaders seeking insight into their organization's dynamics. And she has a new book coming out this year, this week, "The Art of Caring Leadership: How Leading with Heart Uplifts Teams and Organizations." Heather, welcome to "People First." I'm excited for our conversation.

Thank you. Thank you. I'm very excited. This is awesome. Oh, and by the way, I actually have a podcast. You probably don't know this. So my "Leadership with Heart" podcast plays weekly. So it does play weekly, but it's an audio podcast on all platforms. And then my live show, I wish I could tell you it was more more frequent than it used to be. That live show is kind of an extension of the podcast where I try to bring on people I already spoke with or new people that still are exhibiting some of those caring tendencies so.

Either way, both very well worth listening to. What I love about the new technology is that they're not a "one and done" because those YouTube videos, those audio podcasts they are there forever. And so whenever you find yourself with five minutes I encourage you to listen to Heather's podcast. It is inspiring, it's uplifting. But more importantly, I mean, I was making notes, Heather. I love the conversation with Gary and Chester and we'll come back to that in a moment. But as ever on "People First" this is about the leadership journeys that we are all on. And the reality that it's rarely a straight line from A to B. In my case, it's a little bit of a crocheted, knotted tangled web that I've woven and as I mix my metaphors. But I want you to flash back to when you were a little girl and the teacher goes, "Right, Heather, what do you want to be when you grow up?" What was your answer?

Well, it's going to be funny. So just get ready. I wanted to be a model and a singer. A model and a singer. Okay.

And I don't do either.

Not even for fun in the shower?

Yeah, in the shower, in the car, there's some singing going on. My kids, some of them are like, I really love your singing. And some of them are like, mom, can you stop? So yeah.

It was funny.

It wasn't my calling.

I took an hour out of the day yesterday, we're going to talk about caring leadership but it was an opportunity for me to care for myself. And I joined Elliot Maisie's Empathy Concert. And we had three or four professional musicians and artists and performers from Broadway singing. And it was just wonderful to deta...

Welcome to SkyeTeam's People First! In this series, we explore the people side of successful business and careers. We all have a story to share, a leadership journey that we are experiencing.

We'll be interviewing authors, business leaders, thought leaders, and people like you to uncover the latest ideas, resources, and tools to help you become more effective at work - and in life. As it turns out, the secret is cultivating winning relationships. Business is personal, and relationships matter!

So, sit back, and grab a coffee as Morag and Alaina Love ask the question, "What's Your Passion & Purpose?"

Chapter Layout:
0:00 - Open
1:23 - What Did You Want to Be When You Grew Up?
2:09 - What flavor of Doctor?
6:21 - Navigation
10:25 - Ramifications
12:17 - Passion & Purpose
15:25 - This Isn't Everything
17:40 - Archetypes
21:12 - Fix Me
22:40 - Living Your Passion
24:48 - Inclusion
29:38 - Leading You
31:05 - Final Thoughts & Wrap

Links:
Website: https://thepurposelink.com/
Book: https://www.amazon.com/Purpose-Linked-Organization-Passionate-Leaders/dp/0071624708/ref=sr_1_1?crid=3AN6ODHXCEBU6&dchild=1&keywords=the+purpose+linked+organization&qid=1611423155&sprefix=purpose+linked+org%2Cfashion%2C192&sr=8-1

Transcript:
- [INTRO] Welcome to Skye Team's People First with Morag Barrett.

So welcome to the latest episode of People First, where we explore the leadership journey that has brought our guest from where she was to where she is and we'll take you to where she's going. And my guest this week is Alaina Love who is the CEO of Purpose Linked Consulting and the co-author of the Purpose Linked Organization: How Passionate Leaders Inspire Winning Teams and Great Results. Alaina describes herself as a recovering HR executive, an executive coach, a global speaker and a leadership expert. And she's passionate about everything, well everything to do with passion. And her passion archetypes, and we'll learn more about archetypes, are builder, transformer and healer which is most apt. And I'm also honored to call Alaina a friend and a fellow member of the Marshall Goldsmith 100 Coaches. So Alaina, welcome to People First.

Thank you so much. It's such a pleasure to be with you today.

This is going to be such an interesting conversation because your journey has been windy and windier than many. But as with every episode, I always start with the origin story. So when you flash back to when you were a young girl, you're in elementary school, the teacher comes up and says, Alaina, what do you want to be when you grow up? What was your answer?

I wanted to be a doctor. That was my answer. I remember in grade school, reading this book about Elizabeth Blackwell, who was the first woman doctor. And just falling in love with her story. And since I've read, someone's written another book about her and her life and how her journey came to be. But I remember reading about it and thinking to myself, I want to be that, I can do that. And so that's where I began my journey and it's sort of stayed on a path of healing, but not in quite the way I expected when I was seven years old.

Okay so medicine and being a doctor, that's a broad spectrum in and of itself. So what flavor of doctor did you want to be and what flavor of doctor do you end up being at the beginning of your career?

You know, it's really interesting. I ended up studying medical technology originally, when in my undergraduate studies which is a field that basically has you doing all of the research studies on a patient when a patient comes into a hospital, the laboratory studies, clinical chemistry hematology, microbiology, that sort of thing. And that was great preparation. It led me to getting into Tufts University School of Medicine up in Boston. And I went to med school there. And while I was in school, my initial thoughts were I think I really like hematology cause I loved solving problems. I didn't know whether I wanted to do that, oncology, forensics but it was sort of all that investigative, you know interesting forms of medicine for me that were, I thought fascinating. And I thought, you know I'm not quite sure what this is going to turn out to be but I'm just going to going to go on this ride and explore all of these fields of medicine as I'm a student and start to figure it out. But I knew that I deeply loved the connection with patients. So it was going to have to be a field where I felt like I had daily close patient interaction and it wasn't just, it was definitely for me, it wasn't surgery. I wasn't going be a body and fender person, go in and fix something and I'm done. I needed a longer-term connection. But during my first year of medical school, my sister passed away. And that happened in the spring of my first year. And I came home from medical school that summer. And the day after I got ho...

Welcome to SkyeTeam's People First! In this series, we explore the people side of successful business and careers. We all have a story to share, a leadership journey that we are experiencing.

We'll be interviewing authors, business leaders, thought leaders, and people like you to uncover the latest ideas, resources, and tools to help you become more effective at work - and in life. As it turns out, the secret is cultivating winning relationships. Business is personal, and relationships matter!

So, sit back, and grab a coffee as Morag and Dr. Michelle Johnston discuss the seismic shift in leadership!

Chapter Breakdown:
0:00 - Show Open
1:39 - Origin Story
6:06 - Learn the Hard Way
11:23 - You, Me, We
12:01 - Compassionate Connections
16:36 - The Pizza Guy
18:58 - Pandemic Disconnection
20:57 - Three Levels
29:13 - Learn More & Wrap
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Website: https://michellekjohnston.com/

Welcome to SkyeTeam's People First! In this series, we explore the people side of successful business and careers. We all have a story to share, a leadership journey that we are experiencing.

We'll be interviewing authors, business leaders, thought leaders, and people like you to uncover the latest ideas, resources, and tools to help you become more effective at work - and in life. As it turns out, the secret is cultivating winning relationships. Business is personal, and relationships matter!

So, sit back, and grab a coffee as Morag and Dr. Jen Goldman-Wetzler discuss how to free yourself from conflict!

00:00 Open
00:08 Intro
01:50 Origin Story
03:11 What Is Conflict?
05:08 Patterns
06:33 Breaking Patterns
09:49 Do Patterns Change With The Situation?
11:16 Happy Ending
15:30 Dealing with Emotions
24:58 Little House on the Prairie
27:22 Where to Find You & Wrap

Links:
https://jengoldmanwetzler.com/
https://www.linkedin.com/in/jen-goldman-wetzler/

Transcript:
- [INTRO] Welcome to SkyeTeam's "People First" with Morag Barrett.

Welcome to this week's "People First" and the theme for our conversation this week is conflict. One of my pet topics because it is a topic and an environment I try to avoid. But my guest this week, Dr. Jen Goldman-Wetzler is the CEO of Alignment Strategies Group. She is the premier New York based consulting firm that helps CEOs and their executive teams optimize organizational health and growth. But the key here is that she is the author of "Optimal Outcomes," which I can see on the shelf behind you Jen. "Optimal Outcomes; Free Yourself from Conflict at Work, at Home, and in Life." See, the secret to success. I can't wait to learn more. And this book was selected as Financial Times' book of the month. She's a keynote speaker for Fortune 500 companies, public institutions and leading startups including Google, Harvard Law School and the United Nations. Ooh, I'm looking forward to some stories about that Jen. And a former counter-terrorism fellow with the US department of Homeland Security. She has a PhD in social organizational psychology from Columbia University and has taught conflict freedom at Columbia for a decade. Jen, welcome to "People First."

Thank you so much. It's great to be with you.

Well, as I said as somebody who personally avoids conflict wherever I can, sweep it under the carpet, pretend it never happened, I am looking for some words of wisdom from you as we go through our conversation. But as ever I want to start with the origin story. So when you were a little girl, I don't know. Were you sitting there imagining that you were going to become a counter-terrorism fellow? What did you want to be when you grew up?

I was not dreaming about being a counter-terrorism fellow. I was very interested in design, in interior design and architecture. I loved looking at houses and I grew up in a like a little red apartment building at the end of a long street in Riverdale, in the Bronx, in New York. And so, looking at houses and, you know, designing rooms was a fantasy to me. It was not something that was part of the day-to-day for me. And so that really, you know today what I do is I design organizations. I design lives, I help people design their own work lives, their own personal lives, their own organizational structures and so, you know, that's how I think that there is some connection there from what I love to do as a kid.

Okay, that's also, I was trying to think, well the most I can think of as conflict for interior design was arguing over paint colors and trying to decide is this little swatch going to look fabulous when I do the whole wall? So thank you for that. Well, let's start with the basics, conflict. What is conflict? How do you define conflict?

Yeah, well, people have so many different ways of defining what is conflict and what is conflict resolution? You know, the interesting question to me has been how do we, why am I talking about conflict freedom as opposed to resolving conflict? So, to answer your question one way to define conflict is simply say when people who are interacting with each other have different points of view or different interests that don't seem to be reconcilable. And over the last 40 years, we've had a lot of research and a lot of practice come out about how to resolve that kind of conflict. And a lot of that has come, has been about win-win negotiation. And the idea that even if we, our positions are different if we get underneath those positions and look at what are the interests that each person involved has, the reasons why we want what we want, it can be easier to come to a win-win solution. My work is all about what to do when that kind of process fails, when that win-win negotiation just doesn't work. We've seen again, over the past many decades, time and time again, whether you look at the international r...

Welcome to SkyeTeam's People First! In this series, we explore the people side of successful business and careers. We all have a story to share, a leadership journey that we are experiencing.

We'll be interviewing authors, business leaders, thought leaders, and people like you to uncover the latest ideas, resources, and tools to help you become more effective at work - and in life. As it turns out, the secret is cultivating winning relationships. Business is personal, and relationships matter!

So, sit back, and grab a coffee as Morag and Brad Montgomery talk about emotions drive engagement!

Chapter Layout:
0:00 - Open
1:48 - Origin Story
3:49 - Pivot Point
6:00 - Trips & Stumbles
8:11 - Receive Feedback
11:44 - Happiness Is...
16:38 - Applications
17:52 - Common Sense
20:36 - MBWA
23:04 - Contact Info & Wrap

Links:
Website: https://www.bradmontgomery.com/

Transcript:
- [INTRO] Welcome to Skye Team's People First with Morag Barrett.

My guest this week on People First is my friend and colleague Brad Montgomery. Brad is a certified speaking professional. And if you don't know what that means stay tuned and you will learn. But ultimately Brad teaches people to use happiness to boost productivity, creativity, innovation and profits. He turns typical meetings into transformational events using the power of happiness. And he's a pretty funny guy. And if you are unsure, he has been able to make audiences, across 50 States and on four continents giggle his clients include Microsoft, Verizon, the FBI, yep, that one, the CIA, yep, that one too and the IRS, you mean the IRS has a sense of humor, Brad? I love it, I love it. Anyway, audiences of meeting planners describe Brad as authentic. He's a real human a funny guy on stage and off. And I am excited to share his leadership journey with all of us today. Brad, welcome to People First.

And the crowd goes crazy.

I don't know, I really should have a laugh track going or you should maybe you could have hit that button for us.

That will do, it still goes boom.

I'll say, it's nice to be... I've got my little graphic going, I'm sorry. I forgot that it comes up, Morag I'm so glad to be here.

Well, I'm excited for the conversation and as we're there three People First episode, Brad, I'm always a little bit nosy and a little bit curious about everybody's origin story, 'cause of course we see you, the Brad of today, the successful keynote speaker Hall of Fame speaker no less.

Oooh!

And it's easy to lose sight of the wee lad you once were. So when you were a wee lad back in elementary school, the teacher said, "Brad, what do you want to be when you grow up?" What is your answer?

I wanted to be a larger lad

A larger lad.

So in fact, I'm... In a second I'm going to walk behind the camera and grab a prop. 'Cause it's visual, baby! I wanted to be the... Not just the owner of an ice cream parlor. I wanted to be the owner of a chain of ice cream parlors. 'Cause I thought that was so cool.

It would be. So can I ask what's your favorite ice cream color, not color, flavor?

Well, I can tell you what, it's not, it's not vanilla and I'll tell you why it's not. I love my wife, my wife is a vanilla with chocolate sauce woman, that's what she wants and I like variety. So the key is variety, It's about... It's really has nothing to do with the vanilla it has to do with, Oh, for Christ's sake. Can we get something else?

So when I was little at my granny used to buy Neapolitan in a block, it was... It was the vanilla, strawberry, chocolate, also with all the additives and you had to fold the box down and she would slice it and put it between little wafers, and I thought that was the height of luxury. But I have to say, I do like my sort of caramel waffle cone, mix with a bit of chocolate in there too. Well, there you go.

My experience with Neapolitan, is it the strawberry is always left over. People are scooping out those vanilla and chocolate and the strawberries left.

Well, I know, I didn't like the chocolate 'cause it was... It was always fake chocolate. So very important leadership journey in terms of ice cream flavors and how that has either emotionally scarred us or shaped us into the leaders that we are today. So tell me what was the pivot point that then took you from aspiring ice cream parlor leader, to professional speaker and Hall of Fame?

My like so many of us Morag, my line is not straight. So I got out of... I did magic tricks in college, so my summer job was being a magician at a Renaissance fair, and oh, I have stories about that.

Go on then. And then after college I thought, Oh I'll do... Honestly, I'll just master magic, I'm pretty good at it, I'll master it in a year, and then I'll go to law school, like my dad, and that'll be that. And then of course, when you're 21, you'r...