Interested in being a guest? Email us|info@trainingunleashed.com

Building connections with Dr. Michelle Johnston

In this instalment of the Training Unleashed podcast, host Evan Hackel sat down with Dr. Michelle K. Johnston to discuss the shift in leadership style from a “command and control” style to one based on building connections with yourself, your style of communication and your organization.

What Is the shift in Leadership that Michelle Has Identified?

Michelle noticed this change in leadership style when she realized that executives who were still using a “command and control” style were getting pushed out of organizations and were no longer valued.

The New Leadership Is About Connection, Connection, Connection

Michelle’s research found that leaders who were getting pushed out had failed to establish a deep connection with the people on their teams. Their teams didn’t trust them. Their teams thought they were inauthentic, sometimes fake. They wondered, who is this person?

They couldn’t tell because their leader was putting on a professional act by trying to look like what a leader should be. And she saw that today’s most effective leaders are all about connection.

Michelle’s Deeper Levels of Connection
Connect with Yourself

Michelle describes this step as “giving yourself permission to be who you really are.” She stresses that to become connected to yourself, you need to engage in a lot of self-reflection. Spend a lot of time owning your story. Who are you? Where are you from? What is a significant life event that made you who you are today? What did you learn from that? How did it shape you? Also ask, what are your superpowers? What are your strengths? Do you really understand yourself?

When you are comfortable in your own skin, you can bring your “whole self” to your work and your teams. Only then can you really connect with others.

Connect to Your Communication Style

Michelle has developed a self-assessment tool about identifying and owning your communication style. She includes it in her new book The Seismic Shift in Leadership: How to Thrive In A New Era Of Connection.

Owning your communication style means asking questions like . . .

  • Who am I?
  • How do I “show up” as a communicator?
  • What are my defaults?

As she went through this assessment, Michelle determined that her greatest strengths lay in being a nurturing coach and a facilitator. But she had been suppressing those natural skills because she believed that if she wasn’t a “command and control” leader, people wouldn’t take her seriously. It took courage, but over time she was able to develop a leadership style that allowed everyone to connect to her and to grow and learn from each other.

“And so I had to take that huge risk to go in and do things differently that were more me and felt authentic,” Michelle told Evan. “And once I did that, then I was connecting with those around me. So that’s that second level of connection with your team.”

Connect to Your Organization

Michelle interviewed 18 business leaders from around the world and helped them deconstruct and understand their connection to their organizations. She had them talk about their successes and their failures, for example. And she has them explore questions like these:

• How do I most successfully connect to our organization?

• Am I able to align people with the organization’s goals?

• How does my calendar help me align and support your organization’s goals?

• How do you create an environment of psychological safety and trust in each other?

About Our Guest

Dr. Michelle K. Johnston is a management professor, executive coach, and leadership expert helping leaders achieve results through meaningful connection. She is an award-winning professor studying leadership and business communication, and her research has shown a clear link between a team’s effective communication and its positive financial performance. Michelle is a celebrated keynote speaker presenting at conferences and events nationwide. She received her PhD in communication from Louisiana State University and was named to the prestigious 100 Coaches group, which consists of the top executive coaches around the world. Michelle serves as the Gaston Chair of Business at Loyola University New Orleans where she teaches in the graduate and undergraduate programs in the College of Business. She lives in her beloved city of New Orleans, Louisiana, with her daughter, Elizabeth.

2022-10-26T10:03:39-04:00October 26, 2022|

Inspiring an organization with Tony Martignetti

In this Training Unleashed podcast, host Evan Hackel interviewed Tony Martignetti, Chief Inspiration Officer at Inspired Purpose Coaching, trusted advisor and leadership coach. They discussed the critical role that inspiration plays in helping companies succeed.

Why We Need to Be Not Just Motivated, But Inspired

Inspiration is the tool that keeps leaders motivated. It is the fuel that helps us center on what Tony calls “Our soul’s purpose.”

How do we identify that fuel? Tony says it is as simple as identifying what “lights us up” in our lives and our companies.

How to Inspire Everyone in Our Organizations

Tony says one key is to identify what is inspiring the people we lead.

The clues to where that organization lies can often be found in the stories that people tell about achievements that make them proud. Those stories have a plotline that contains what Tony calls “flashpoints” – those moments that taught them lessons that they then brought back into the real world and used to create change.

The challenge, he states is to find meaning in those flashpoints and to use that meaning to inspire and move forward.

Why Everyone in an Organization Should be Inspired

It is important for the leader to be inspired. But that is not enough. Real change and growth will only occur when everyone in the organization becomes inspired. Getting that to happen is the leader’s greatest challenge.

“It starts by really connecting with people and understanding what’s driving them,” Tony explained to Evan. Getting that to happen begins when you consider what brought those people to your company.

“Everyone has their own things that they’re driven by,” Tony states. “But you have to start by painting them a picture and giving them a scene that shows why you are all there.”

A Special Offer

Tony encourages you to contact him at Inspired Purpose Coaching and to schedule a complimentary 30-minute session with him. There is no obligation. “From there, we can see if we are a good fit,” he explains.

About Our Guest

Tony Martignetti is a trusted advisor, coach, experience creator, author, podcast host, and speaker. He brings together over 25 years of business and management experience, formal training, and extreme curiosity to elevate leaders and equip them with the tools to navigate through change and unlock their true potential.

He loves guiding people to find clarity in their lives so they are energized, fully present, and unstoppable. When leaders unlock their potential and lead from a place of inspired purpose, they impact and inspire everyone around them. He has dedicated himself to helping people live inspired lives.

Learn more at Inspired Purpose Coaching.

2022-10-14T10:48:55-04:00October 14, 2022|

Building an empowered workforce with Lee Caraher

Lee Caraher is the founder and CEO of Double Forte, a national public relations and digital media agency, best-selling author of The Boomerang Principle: Inspire Lifetime Loyalty from Your Employees, and recent guest on the Training Unleashed podcast where Lee shared her proven strategies for building an empowered workforce with host Evan Hackel. Lee is an expert on managing the media, leading people, building an empowered workforce, and a communication ninja.

We know you will profit from every big idea Lee and Evan discussed.

One of the big ideas: there is a disconnect when training executives and their teams separately

The training that many companies give their senior managers doesn’t work. Why? Lee explains the flaw in training senior managers and their teams as two-fold.

One issue, according to Lee, is that many companies send their leaders to off-site training programs, where experts give the leaders big ideas. But when those executives return to their companies and start to explain all those new ideas, their teams respond with, “What are you talking about? What is this new language you are using?”

That is the first disconnect.

Another disconnect occurs when top executives never take the training that is being delivered to their employees. They think they’re too busy. Or perhaps that the training is beneath them. And when nothing changes, the executives think the people in their organizations are resisting.

One solution Lee proposes is for executives and their teams to attend training together. In that way, everyone can determine how they can move forward together. And cooperation becomes the focus.

A Special Offer

This is the best offer EVER!

Lee explains, “One of our goals at Double Forte is to help women and people of color become more noted as experts in their fields . . . not to make them experts, but to take people who are already experts in their field and have them get noted for it.”

Double Forte is on a mission to train 5000 accomplished women managers to be spokespeople for themselves and their companies… they are halfway to reaching their goal.

The offer: Lee explains, “We can’t go in and do an eight-hour session with everybody who wants to do this. But we can do a two-hour training session or two and a half hours, with you and your team for free if you are a nonprofit. If you are a business, it’s not free. But we will show you exactly what to do to get quoted by the media, because when that happens your star rises, your income rises, your gravitas rises, and you have many more options in your career.”

To take advantage of the offer: connect with Lee at [email protected] for more information about the offer and to make sure you and your team are a right fit for their mission.

About Our Guest

Lee Caraher is a CEO, best-selling author, and sought-after speaker. Founder and CEO of Double Forte a national PR & Communications firm in San Francisco, New York, and Eau Claire, Wisconsin, Lee is an acclaimed communication strategist known for her practical solutions to big problems. Her company works with companies big and small that are making a difference in their categories.

Lee’s the author of Millennials & Management based on her experience with failing and then succeeding at retaining Millennials. Her second book, The Boomerang Principle helps companies create high producing, positive work cultures that employees want to return to – a critical factor in sustainable businesses.

Lee has a reputation for building cohesive, high producing teams who have fun together at the same time. She is a straight talker who doesn’t hold too many punches, although she does her best to be pleasant about it. Her big laugh and sense of humor have gotten her out of a lot of trouble.

Lee is active in the community and currently serves on two nonprofit boards. A graduate of Carleton College, Lee is currently running her company from home whilst we all wait to see how the pandemic shakes out (and is happy that she finally has something relevant to share from her Medieval History degree).

2022-09-29T10:39:29-04:00September 29, 2022|

Identifying leadership opportunities with Kimberly Gerber

In this Training Unleashed Podcast, our host Evan Hackel interviewed Kimberly Gerber, CEO of Excelerate and executive coach. We know you will benefit from Kimberly’s no-holds-barred insights into what many leaders do both right and wrong as they strive to build successful organizations. Here are some of the leadership opportunities that came to the surface in the interview.

Leadership Opportunity: Hire and Promote the Right People

Often, leaders hire the wrong people for the wrong jobs. But Kimberly points out that just as often, companies hire the right people and place them in the wrong jobs.

Why do company leaders make this mistake? One reason is that executives who are interviewing tend to over-prioritize the personal connection they feel with candidates.

Kimberly also observes that hiring executives are prone to evaluate internal candidates by looking at the jobs they have performed in the company and overlook the fact that internal candidates could have a “whole other background” of skills that they could bring to the new role.

Leadership Opportunity: Retain the Right People

Kimberly told Evan that in the wake of Covid-19, many companies are simply not doing enough proactively to retain their talent. Companies need to get their most important employees on employee incentive and reward programs, so they will not want to leave.

Leadership Opportunity: Connect Personally with Employees

According to Kimberly, another reason people leave is that the leaders fail to invest in them on a personal level. “People want to know that a leader has your back . . . is investing in you from a mentoring perspective . . . is taking the time to craft a career plan for you and providing opportunities for you to grow your skillset. Those are the leaders that people will hang around for.”

Leadership Opportunity: Build Trust

Loyalty results when people trust that a leader will give them the opportunities to keep growing and simply to feel good about collaborating with him or her. Kimberly stated, “When people feel that way, they think, `I’ll stay with this company, even though I might be leaving money on the table.’” Evan agreed and noted that while people like money, it is usually not the most important motivator to follow a leader and give their utmost to an employer.

Leadership Opportunity: Invest in Great Training

Kimberly observed that leaders should take the lead in having their organizations provide inspiring training to their people. Doing so does more than teach people skills, it demonstrates that a company is making a committed, long-term investment in every member of the team.

A Special Offer

Kimberly Gerber invites all members of the Training Unleashed community to take the Promotability Assessment that you will find on the Excelerate website.

About Our Guest

Kimberly Gerber is the founder of Excelerate, an innovative executive development firm specializing in helping leaders prepare for and succeed in C-level roles. For 30+ years, she has helped transform the impact of 1500+ leaders across 100 companies.

The creator of several innovative leadership development programs, Kimberly helps senior leaders create strategic vision, build strong cultures, elevate leadership presence, and finesse communication to strengthen their impact on teams and organizations.

Kimberly and her team at Excelerate have provided more than 38,000 hours of coaching, training and strategy work, helping her executive clients master the five elements of successful executive-level leadership—boosting a 94% client promotion rate and a 100% client re-hire rate. Her focus of candor and kindness is designed to help her clients become the best version of themselves.

2022-09-22T15:29:41-04:00September 22, 2022|

Being a Chief Everything Officer with Richard Shaull

 

Richard Shaull is co-founder and CEO of a company called Unleashed CEO. Richard has helped hundreds of businesses implement the right systems and teams, enabling them to rapidly scale.

In a recent Training Unleashed Podcast, Richard and host Evan Hackel discussed Richard’s exciting idea that what companies need today is what he calls Chief Everything Officers –leaders who practice the ability to wear many hats at once and unleash the power of their associates.

What It Means to Be a Chief Everything Officer

Richard told Evan that this new kind of executive – a Chief Everything Officer – is someone who sits in an executive seat in a company but finds themself wearing many more hats than they anticipated. They’re spinning more plates than they feel like they can keep going at any one time and putting out fires all the time – forced to live in what Richard calls “a reactive state.”

“None of us wants to own that identity,” Richard told Evan. “But if we’re honest with ourselves in a moment of self-reflection, we’d say, `Yeah, I’m playing Chief Everything Officer. In any moment I could be Human Resources Officer or whatever the need may be.’”

Listen to the entire podcast to hear Richard’s tips that people can use to help build a mindset that a Chief Everything Officer needs.

A Power Tip from Richard

When asked for one tip for the audience, Richard answered, “Establish a daily practice of silence and stillness where you reflect on who you want to be and what you see. I can’t tell you how impactful that practice has been in my life as a leader. I get away from my phone and my email and use that time to set an intention.”

A Special Offer

Richard invites you to visit Unleashed.ceo, to use all the resources there, and to schedule a complimentary call about your leadership with a member of his team.

About Our Guests

Richard Shaull is Co-Founder and CEO of Unleashed.ceo. After playing Chief Everything Officer in several of his own businesses nearly killed him, Richard made it his mission to ensure other business owners didn’t go through the same struggles alone. Much of what he’s accomplished is attributed to his ideology of “standing on the shoulders of giants.”

Richard has helped hundreds of businesses implement the right systems and teams, enabling them to rapidly scale. Outside of helping companies reach unbelievable growth, Richard is also a proud husband and father of two girls, and a man of deep spiritual conviction. He is also a connoisseur of craft coffee and cooking.

2022-09-09T18:28:00-04:00September 9, 2022|

Unlocking the power of purpose with Mark Mears


Mark Mears is the founder and Chief Growth Officer at Leaf Growth Ventures LLC, a consulting firm that helps companies focus on strategic planning and execution. Mark is also author of the new book The Purposeful Growth Revolution: 4 Ways to Grow from Leader to Legacy Builder.

In a recent Training Unleashed Podcast with host Evan Hackel, Mark talked about using the power of purpose to revitalize your company and unlock new levels of success.

Mark believes that successful businesses are purpose-driven. But his insights go deeper than that. “Companies should understand that employees or team members do not want to just be an employee ID number. They want to feel like they’re part of the process, that they’re making a difference, that they’re connected to something that’s bigger than just pulling a shift, clocking in and out and getting paid every other week. They don’t want that anymore. They have put up with it for years – we all have.”

He continues, “And so, the great repurposing has given us a pause for employers to look and say, `Let’s look at this pragmatically. We’ve all heard that our people are the most important and valuable resource on our balance sheet or, `Our people make the difference.’ But how can we make those words more than just an empty set of platitudes? We’ve got to put the meat on the bones. We’ve got to say, okay, how are our people the most important? How can we listen more deeply than we’ve listened before to really understand what and who is most important in their lives?… We’ve got to get this right. And that’s why I call it the Purposeful Growth Revolution, because not only is it circular, but there is this uprising in the people, and we must recognize that they’re mad as hell. They’re not going to take it anymore.”

Make sure you listen to the entire episode to hear more about unlocking the power of purpose in your organization.

A Special Offer

Visit https://www.markamears.com/free-book-chapters and sign up to receive free chapters from Mark’s book The Purposeful Growth Revolution: 4 Ways to Grow from Leader to Legacy Builder.

About Our Guests

Mark Mears is Chief Growth Officer at Leaf Growth Ventures LLC, a consulting firm that helps companies focus on strategic planning and execution. Mark is also author of the new book The Purposeful Growth Revolution: 4 Ways to Grow from Leader to Legacy Builder.

During his 30+ year career serving in a variety of executive marketing and leadership positions – spanning both agencies and brands – he has gained a unique and well-rounded perspective working for or with GROWTH brands such as PepsiCo/Pizza Hut, McDonald’s, Frito-Lay, JCPenney, NBC/Universal and The Cheesecake Factory among many others. His personal experiences, along with Best Practice observations of others he admires, led him to develop L.E.A.F. – a proven model to help maximize the full GROWTH potential of Individuals, Teams and Brands — founded upon 4 ‘revolutionary’ and purposeful processes: L.eadership, E.ngagement, A.ccountability & F.ulfillment. L.E.A.F. Growth Ventures can help achieve your stated GROWTH goals – whether you desire to grow an emerging brand, or reignite growth in a mature brand.

2022-08-23T11:22:49-04:00August 23, 2022|

Building your company’s wellness with Tarin Calmeyer

Because the health of your company is built on the wellness of every person who works with you, employee wellness programs are one of the smartest investments you can make.

But what kind of employee wellness programs work best? Which offer your company the biggest ROI? And how do you engage your employees to take part in them?

In a recent Training Unleashed podcast, our host Evan Hackel asked Tarin Calmeyer those questions and more. Tarin is CEO of Remote Team Wellness, a company that develops and delivers wellness programs for variety of successful companies.

According to Tarin, the benefits of implementing a wellness program in your company are endless. “Obviously, healthier employees are more productive. They work harder. They are happier to do the work that they’re engaged in and more motivated.”

Tarin provides some great, simple and effective steps you can follow to start building wellness into your company’s daily behaviors. “It’s a matter of inspiring people to [build wellness into their day,] while they are working, in the best way they can.” Tarin continued, “because having another thing to add to your plate and learn to do is just stressful at this moment in time.”

If you are committed to building a top-performing company, we know you will want to spend time watching this motivating – and very different – episode of Training Unleashed.

A Special Offer

Tarin would like you, a member of our Training Unleased community, to engage in a short meditation she created for starting every day with focus and energy. You can find it at InsightTimer.com.

“It is a short meditation that can be used to create space, focus, and clarity in your mornings – or anywhere throughout the day,” Tarin Says. “But I really love using this practice in the morning because it is a breathing practice. It’s a great way to check in with yourself and your body just as you’re starting your day.”

About Our Guests

Tarin Calmeyer is CEO of Remote Team Wellness, a corporate wellness company that focuses on developing and delivering remote wellness programs for companies. By blending technology with leading teachers, Remote Team Wellness promotes organizational wellness by fostering team building. The results include reduced workplace stress and healthier workplace environments.

Prior to founding Remote Team Wellness, Tarin was a leading international coach specializing in yoga, meditation, and overall wellness. She has collaborated with forward-thinking companies that value and prioritize the wellness of their workplace. And she has taught thousands of people around the world to implement simple, mindful techniques that result in monumental lifestyle changes. Find out more about how virtual wellness can benefit your team at www.remoteteamwellness.com

2022-08-16T13:28:26-04:00August 16, 2022|

Mastering the art of change leadership with Nancy Murphy

Evan Hackel recently sat down with organizational change consultant Nancy Murphy to discuss a topic that is on everyone’s mind these days: How can effective leaders bring about change in their organizations during these remarkably challenging times?

Nancy, Founder and CEO of CSR Communications, is a trainer, speaker, advisor, and mentor with a passion for teaching leaders of established organizations how to make change stick.

According to Nancy, the key to making change stick is by shifting our approach from managing people to leading people.

“Let’s stop talking about managing change because that implies that change is something that is predictable, controllable, linear, and logical . . . that you’re in certain stages for predictable periods of time and that if you have the right checklists, everything is going to be easy. As I said earlier, organizations are made up of people and people are messy, emotional humans. And especially when it comes to change, there are emotional triggers that make it hard. So, we can’t manage people. We can manage things, but we can’t manage people. We need to lead people.

“And so, the first mistake organizations make is to approach change as a purely scientific process, as though it’s a predictable, linear, manageable thing. Implementation of change might have some of those checklists, but we really need the change leadership first.”

If you are leading your organization through a process of change, you will want to listen to the entire episode of Training Unleashed with Nancy Murphy.

A Special Offer

Nancy invites you to access the free publications and resources you will find on the CSR Communications resource page. In our view, they are terrific!

About Our Guests

Nancy Murphy is Chief Executive Officer of CSR Communications. She is an entrepreneur, former intrapreneur, trainer, speaker, advisor, and mentor helping mission-driven organizations and socially conscious businesses achieve their next big initiative to rapidly expand their impact.

“I founded CSR Communications to help organizations move beyond grand gestures and bold statements, to organizational change that sticks,” Nancy says. “I’ve spent my career saying what others are afraid to – and learning to say it in ways that others will listen. From challenging stereotypes of girls in my Catholic school more than 30 years ago, to my first job after college convincing nonprofits to engage youth volunteers, or my role as board chair of a global nonprofit transforming the way we do international development, I’ve experienced the challenges of leading big change within established organizations. I’ve learned lots of lessons, developed techniques that work — and I’m willing to share them with others. I’ve worked with global nonprofits, foundations, Fortune 100 companies, local governments, and federal agencies.”

2022-08-04T12:46:09-04:00August 4, 2022|
Go to Top