When you have conversations with others, are you trying to win? Trying to defend a position?

Then, perhaps, you might be stuck.

In this Great Conversation with social researcher and author Michael McQueen, we learn what is is to be Mind Stuck, and how we might discover a new way to see and be seen.

This impacts you personally, professionally, and, in the end, influences the course of our organizations and our world. 

We create tools. The tools help us off load burdensome tasks as well as act as highly leveraged fulcrums to expand our energy and minds. These tools have helped us create. They have helped us build. They have helped us cure disease. They have helped us mitigate threats, from both human and animal.

And now we have artificial intelligence. However, many of the implementations are failing because we are deploying management and process thinking from the industrial age.. Ironically, in the era of the machine we have become one.

Our great conversation with Brian Evergreen, author of Autonomous Transformation: Creating a more Human Future in the Era of Artificial Intelligence, is enlightening as we pause to consider our next steps on our path to value; as individuals, businesses, and the world.

We are all on the journey of becoming. And we hope and pray, that at the end of the journey we are whole. For all of us that means being loved for who we are. And to get there, we need to establish trust in ourselves and in others.

Trust. Could it be the foundation of everything we touch? Are we not all builders? And if so, wouldn’t we want to build all the relationships we have in this life on top of a platform of trust? And wouldn’t it make sense if that same platform that builds those relationships would be the fuel that drives innovation and change within the organizations we live and work in every day?

This is a great conversation that holds nothing back. This is not an easy fix; especially if you do not have a roadmap. This conversation is about that roadmap that will create the scaffolding that will help you build a beautiful business and a beautiful world.

Words are an attempt to articulate reality. The reality that was yesterday. The reality that is today. And the reality that is tomorrow.

Words can be a weapon. They can bully, demonize, and destroy.

Words can embrace, energize, and elevate.

If these bookends are true, then what is the area in-between that seems to be moved by one or the other?

I have a great conversation with Chris Westfall, author of Leadership Language where we attempt to uncover the nuances of language that describe our internal journey as well as our impact on others. We learn that words matter. And our conscious use of them can help raise others up and moving in a positive direction. In the end, the observation and measurement of leadership is about how you show up and constructively influence those around you.

Chris urges us not to see leadership as conceptual. It is not an information exchange. It is not technique. It is about an understanding of oneself. And then authentically showing up for and with others.

The book is fast paced, pithy, and real. This great conversation may change what conversations you will have with yourself and others.

Enjoy.

Lives of quiet desperation. We have been pulling on the quote from Thoreau for awhile in our great conversations. Our great conversation on the Future of Work with this dynamic and inspirational leader may provide you the nudge to seize this moment to recognize your impact on others and help create an engaged culture of impact and purpose with your team.

Whenever you attempt to capture knowledge it is useful to understand that it is a snapshot in time. Very little of what we learn will survive as true given the unique nature of change. However, it is a platform for growth as long as you have access to the real time experiences of change that are occurring. We explore this idea in this great conversation with a security consultant attempting to create a bridge between the rear view mirror and the road ahead. The conversation applies to any market anywhere. Enjoy the conversation. 

Imagine being tasked to develop a first class talent and organizational management platform for one of the most respected companies in the Fortune 100. A company with a vision, mission, values, and goals that is highly respected in the industry, with a CEO who looked to his leaders to articulate those things in a very specific way.

And now you have been with this company for 20 years. You have worked for 4 different CEOs and 5 different Human Resources executives. Everything has changed and nothing has changed. You still have a rapidly growing need for the best people, in the right seats, doing the right things.

It took a very special person to take on this challenge. One that had an academic background in Organizational Psychology, a consulting background in strategic change management, and a practical background as a global corporate executive.

The man is Allan Church, Ph.D. who is currently the Founder and Managing Partner of Maestro Consulting. I sat down with him and had a great conversation about the nature of leadership, talent management, and organizational change.

I was able to hear about the Great5, a program that was in response to his CEOs admonition that people remembered compelling slogans. It stood for the core dimensions used throughout all the work the company does when assessing and developing future leaders. The dimensions are imbedded in the Great5 competency framework articulating the top five competencies needed to go from being a good leader to a great leader. They are:

• Growth reflects a person's curiosity and ability to learn from novel situations by constantly pushing outside their comfort zone and helping others to learn and develop.

• Relationships involves building and maintaining trusting relationships across organizational boundaries by modeling integrity, transparency, and authenticity and being respectful and inclusive of others.

• Execution is the energy, enthusiasm, and inspiration an individual brings to motivate others to action and to accomplish ambitious goals, and it is simplifying complexity to drive quality results.

• Agility involves adapting a person's style and approach to an ever-changing business environment, managing pressure, and embracing and championing change to drive transformation.

• Thinking reflects how an employee brings in and uses external insights (business, customer or consumer, industry, global), thinks creatively, and takes a long-term and holistic perspective to make informed decisions.

And this was just one of the many innovations Allan was able to cultivate and lead.

We also had a great conversation around the measures that matter to the CEO and the executive team. One of the most compelling examples of this, is the incredible journeys of the leaders that went through the program resulting in 16 former executives becoming Fortune 500 CEOs.

What does it look like to create a path to value? What does that really mean?

I have been having great conversations for over 20 years that have informed my physical leadership events and my podcasts. I have pursued people who have ideas that might change their market and perhaps change their world. I have taken the position of learner within these conversations. I don’t interview, I consume.

It has been an incredible journey. The physical leadership events would average 150-350 attendees and, before the pandemic, were taking place across the United States. Then we pivoted to the podcast and have been recognized as being in one of the top 1% of podcasts today.

But I have never had someone ask about my role as founder of The Sage Group and author of our value transformation methodology called “The Path to Value”.

In this great conversation, I turn over the learning to Dr. Daniel Hallak, who connects human capital with strategy and execution to create organizational value. Daniel is one of my recent interviewees and based on his expertise, is highly interested in how The Sage Group extracts insights from our research to create a highly differentiated and strategic business plan that creates value for the owner and the stakeholders.

I must admit, I was a little bit nervous. My clients know I like to stay behind the scenes helping them create the strategy as well as execute it with and through their people.

Since we take a whole company approach, I shed light on the efforts to improve a company’s silos of excellence through subject matter experts without such a strategy. For those of you who focus primarily on those silos, this is not to dismiss you. It is simply that your subject matter expertise is best leveraged with an overall strategy in place.

For those who specialize in selling companies. This is not to dismiss you. You have your place and your value. But for my clients, by the time they get to such an event, the value has already been expressed, and the identification of the future buyer has been understood. We stay focused on the value that is realized and how it can be sustained through our people, processes, and tools within the new acquirer’s organization. People are too important to allow them to become mere expressions on a spreadsheet.

I urge you to hear me: This is my path. There are many paths to the mountaintop. This is the one I have chosen, and now am expressing through this great conversation.

Your path to value and your expression of success is one of the most important journeys you will ever be on. I am honored I have been able to walk your path to value with so many of you.