Investhuman

A lot of time is wasted every day, every week, every month, every year, on the "people" issues that get in the way of being productive. If everybody was more open and authentic from a place of self-assuredness, the workplace would be much more effective and efficient. In this episode, you’ll hear from our panel and Dr. Laura Gallaher on how to communicate in self-accountable and self-aware way. 

Leadership has always been important but it’s more important than ever before.  Through LearnLoft’s work and research with their Welder Leader Program, they’ve uncovered what the most effective leaders do differently.  “They simultaneously use high levels of “love” and “discipline.”   In this episode John will take us into a deeper understanding of how leadership IS for everyone and how organizations can think differently to facilitate this in their employees, in order to achieve success for both the individual and the organization.

Storytelling has become the most effective part of internal and external customer gain. On this episode we explore how to communicate your story and how the power of story can be used for leadership efficacy in order to better lead your teams and position your product.  

In previous episodes of this podcast we’ve covered a bit of the historical implications of women in leadership and the need for us to stop waiting to be facilitated. This episode's guest, Terri Lewis, helps us to dive deeper into the topic of Women in Leadership. Terri encourages women to take up their crowns. Set aside some of our societal fears and just be the right person for the right opportunity. This episode 17 covers preparation to receive the right opportunity and do well in it. 

**To our dear listeners, Please excuse some of our noise blunders due to technical difficulties in this episode. The content was just too good not to share it with you!** Organizational silence can be detrimental to an organization’s success. Some may assume employee silence means everything is running smoothly. However, culture, morale, creativity, and innovation are negatively impacted in organizations that are not encouraging employees to share their feedback. In this podcast, we discuss organizational culture, causes of workplace silence, signs of a culture of silence, and propose key strategies for shaping cultures of voice.  

Verifiable evidence of managers’ impact on their department's productivity and contribution to profit derives from frequent, qualitative use of two macro skills - Leadership and Nurturing.  Leadership satisfies intrinsic motivators while nurturing satisfies extrinsic motivators. Employees positively reciprocate when their needs are being met. That's engagement!  Managers' needs usually differ from employees’ needs. In some cases, this discrepancy leads to insensitivity in manager and employee interactions. So, what’s the solution? That’s the focus of this podcast where we discuss the need to measure satisfaction, provide feedback, develop management macro skills, and assign accountability; and how all of this can generate profit from lower payroll costs.  

In this episode Jeff will take us through an exciting podcast giving us a view of the future of work and on demand employment. The discussion will help both individuals and organizations begin to prepare for much of what’s ahead as it relates to the shift in work that we are currently experiencing as generations change and technology gives that extra boost forward. Some of the things we will cover include, break in lifetime employment contract; the key changes facing business today; and what a future state looks like for companies, worker and society. We also cover who makes the best on demand workers and the importance of your labour equation as it relates to companies making the best hiring decisions. As a bonus on this episode we get some great advice from Jeff about failure and the importance of a coach to the growth of leaders.

Organizations often focus on connecting with employees’ extrinsic motivators but often find it difficult to connect with employees’ intrinsic drives. On this podcast, we look at intrinsic motivation and propose strategies for tapping into what truly moves employees intrinsically for enhanced organizational performance. Some of the topics we cover include moments of impact, the bottom up approach, and intrinsic sprinting.

One could say, conversations are like air, no one needs to tell you how breathe – and no one really has to tell us how to engage in conversations, right? It’s mainly talking, a little bit of listening (lol). But in fact, conversations are critical to building all of our relationships. In this episode Michael will enlighten us about not only the importance of effective conversations, but how we can build trust and therefor stronger relationships, by having better-quality conversations.

In this ever changing environment many jobs are either ceasing to exist or going through some sort of revamp. As well many new job types are rapidly appearing in the job market. This makes it difficult to find talent prepared for a specific job. So how do we prepare talent to be ready for the jobs in our organization before they even enter our pool of potential talent. In today’s session we will discuss with Jean-Philippe (J.P.) Michel, developing talent before they are in the door.

Leadership and leadership development is important to every organization’s success. In this podcast session, we’ll explore the relationship between leadership and pain. Some of the things we explore during this session are what are pain thresholds, why is it important to know our pain thresholds, and what are some painful roles of leadership?

We’re seeing a change with enrollment in undergraduate and graduate degrees with 65% being women. We’re also seeing a changing workforce, with more than half of the workforce today being comprised of women managing organizations. Join us as we discuss how this shift in demographics is impacting the workforce and how organizations can aptly prepare. During this podcast, we also explore female leadership as an asset for sustainability and profitability and propose strategies for empowering women in impacting communities and the world at large.

Organizations today, are spending an average of just over $700 per learner on training and development. Increase the numbers of employees requiring some form of training and that cost sky rockets quickly. Yet, the impact of those learning experiences is rarely measured beyond the “how was the training experience” perception shared by learners. In this podcast, we discuss strategies for maximizing learning transfer and measuring training and development impact.  

Coaching is a powerful leadership development tool not leveraged as often as it should be. During this podcast episode, we explore key issues to engage employees through coaching, elements necessary for successful coaching, and benefits of coaching.

Organizational culture is a key driver of success. It impacts how leaders lead, office design, what is expected of people, and, ultimately, the experience people have with the organization. However, organizations rarely think about culture as a strategic tool and design the culture they wish to have. Rather, they do one-off projects like a leadership development class or introducing a new benefit and hope things get better without any metrics assessed as part of the design and with no overarching goal for change. Best practice organizations measure various aspects of their culture and strategically design how they should be. They do this in the context of the organizations history, identity, and strategies. In this podcast, we discuss what culture is and why it’s important, strategies for measuring organizational culture, and cultural change and adaptability strategies.

With tremendous experience as a leader and successful entrepreneur within a predominantly male dominated field, the construction industry, Deborah discusses what attracted her to the field and to what she attributes her success. During this session, we also explore the root of unconscious bias and how to uncover it within gender bias, the role mentorship plays in women entrepreneur and leadership development, and the changing landscape of the past, present, and future for women entrepreneurs.

The world has an ever growing fear of change and the devaluation of human workers. It is true, technology is rapidly gaining on us and helping organizations to function we as humans normally do. So how can we prepare for this? In this episode, Geoff will discuss’ with us what humans have that robots don’t and what makes it the critical skill to the economy of today and tomorrow. You’ll gain some key insight on how to prepare individuals and companies for this highly technological world of work. You’ll also here Geoff’s insight on what impact this all has on innovation, creativity and the way teams work.

Given the growing diversity in our workforce, it’s important for organizations to devise strategies to leverage diversity and foster inclusion for creativity, innovation, and overall profitability. In this episode, we explore what “diversity and inclusion” has meant in the past and how it’s definition is shifting in the workplace today, the concept of covering, and powerful inclusive and “ally” behaviors leaders can embrace to help drive this movement.

Listening is a pervasive part of everyday life both at home and at work. We spend more time listening than we do talking, and listening is the critical component to effective communication. Yet when it comes to skill development, listening tends to take a back seat to flashier aspects of communication—like presentation skills. This podcast focuses on effective listening techniques and gaining a better understanding of the message that is being conveyed. In this podcast participants, will gain some insights to help answer the following: How well do I prepare, monitor, and correct my concentration so that I stay focused? How well do I build a complete and accurate understanding of the speaker’s message? Do I listen to others as I would have them listen to me? What are my strengths and areas for improvement as a listener? Additionally, how can I become a better listener?

There are so many corporate trainings but they only scratch the surface and then everything goes back to the way it was. There has to be a follow-up system to engage people in getting the most out of any training. Do fewer training topics with a series and built in follow up. If you are going to say something is important to the organization then management has to be willing to allow people to dedicate time to re-enforcing it. In this episode we cover budgets and training; training curves; information overload; millennials and training; effective training in SMB’s; and building trust through training.