Grow and lead for all of us

Conflict

A Comedian Interviews Me About My Work

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This one is really fun.

Stand-up comic Rosie Tran interviewed me for her Out of The Box Podcast. She did a magnificent job asking questions, and is one of the most positive (i.e. not depressed or narcissistic) comedians you’ll run across.

That may be why I felt very relaxed during a conversation that covered important topics like managing emotional triggers and building healthy relationships with others.

In fact, I swore more than a few times–kind of like I typically do in life.

Take a listen. I think you’ll enjoy it.

Here is the interview.

Episode 26: Help Me Understand, A Jedi Leadership Trick [The Amiel Show]

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Ready for a very short, very practical episode of The Amiel Show?

Last week, before my interview with Pamela Weiss, I introduced a new feature to the podcast: The Jedi Leadership Trick. It’s ten minutes or less of practical wisdom you can put into action immediately. We looked at one called Two Feet, Five Breaths.

This week, let’s try something different. The Jedi Leadership Trick is the episode.

I call this one Help Me Understand. Have a listen!

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READ: Episode 29: The 5-Point Relationship Health Scale, A Jedi Leadership Trick [The Amiel Show]

Episode 21: Ba Luvmour On Parenting 8-12 Year-Olds [The Amiel Show]

Episode 21: Ba Luvmour On Parenting 8-12 Year-Olds [The Amiel Show]

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When you’re with 8-12 year-olds, ask yourself, ‘Am I building trust in this moment?’

–Ba Luvmour, headmaster of Summa Academy in Portland, OR   Tweet this quote

[Update: in July 2017, Ba’s school, Summa Academy, suddenly closed. It was a shock to our family and others.  The way Ba and the other administrators handled the ending fell short of what we wanted and expected given the closeness of our relationship the prior four years. It hurt. Still—and this is the main point I want to make—our family continues using the parenting practices we learned at Summa and continue to see positive results from them. There’s good stuff in here!]

Leadership is about your life as a human being. It encompasses all of you. That’s why I’ve chosen this week to focus the podcast on parenting.

In particular, parenting 8-12 year-olds.

This is a crucial stage in children’s lives, yet almost nobody talks about it with wisdom and rigor.

That’s why I reached out to Ba Luvmour. A pioneering educator and author, Ba is a man of big ideas and enormous practical experience. He talks a big game–and delivers. I know this because our older son is a student at Summa Academy, an independent school in Portland, Oregon for kids ages 4-14 where Ba serves as headmaster.

Ba2

 

One big reason we chose Summa Academy is that it knows children’s interpersonal lives inside and out. To give a simple example, what do you do when your child refuses to do something you ask? According to Ba, it’s not helpful to answer that question in a vacuum. First, you ask: what stage of development is this child in the midst of–and what are the nourishments and toxins of this stage?In two years, our older son will turn 8.

So I asked Ba to give me a sneak preview of what to expect at this stage, which Ba calls FeelingBeing. What’s specific challenges do kids this age face socially and emotionally? What kind of relationship do they need with you to thrive? What mistakes do many parents make–and how can you avoid them?

Ba bring enormous enthusiasm, wisdom, and love to this interview. He offers specific tips for handling common situations–what I call conversational practices.

I promise that you will learn something new from this conversation. And I hope you’ll share it with friends.

Highlights

  • 4:15 What a camping trip can do for an 8-12 year old’s social bonds and feelings of adventure
  • 14:00 How to help an 8-12 year old identify what they think is unfair and understand why
  • 20:00 What to say–and not say–about divorce to children at this age
  • 23:00 Why losing friendships at this age can produce grief and loneliness–and how to work with this
  • 27:00 Why it’s not helpful to tell a child, “Hey, it’s OK. You’ll make new friends.”
  • 33:00 The long term cost of using rewards and punishments
  • 42:00 Stop talking about winning and losing. Start asking kids to describe their experiences in detail
  • 46:45 How watching Star Wars can subvert a 5-year-old’s imagination

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[Read more…] about Episode 21: Ba Luvmour On Parenting 8-12 Year-Olds [The Amiel Show]

Episode 16: Julie Daley on creativity in leadership [The Amiel Show]

Episode 16: Julie Daley on creativity in leadership [The Amiel Show]

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Imagine that:

  • Creativity isn’t something “other” people have
  • Creativity is much broader than art–or even new ideas and products
  • Creativity isn’t just about you. It’s about what you create with other people
  • Creativity isn’t even just about creativity. It’s about being skilled in emotions, difficult conversations, and leadership

Many people consider these a stretch. Not Julie Daley, who teaches Creativity in Leadership at Stanford and helps women become a force of nature through her company, Unabashedly Female. Julie sees these as starting points for guiding people to access their creativity in leadership and the rest of life.

Julie-Daley

 

Episode Highlights

  • 6:00 Julie guides me to access my own creativity–live
  • 15:00 The man who used Julie’s class to decide whether to propose marriage
  • 23:00 How judging others keeps their ideas from coming forth fully
  • 28:00 What you can do to work with your inner critic
  • 32:00 How to see with your heart…or your toe
  • 35:00 How a single conversation can ignite you to feel more alive
  • 37:00 What creativity teaches us about difficult conversations
  • 51:30 What leadership from a place of love is like
  • 55:00 What Julie is personally practicing to grow as a human being

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[Read more…] about Episode 16: Julie Daley on creativity in leadership [The Amiel Show]

Episode 9: Tim Fort On Leadership And Integrity [The Amiel Show]

Episode 9: Tim Fort On Leadership And Integrity [The Amiel Show]

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The most I laughed in graduate school was in a class on Business Ethics.

Does that surprise you?

It sure blew my mind. After all, ethics has a reputation for being part tranquilizer, part antagonist. If it doesn’t put you to sleep with simple axioms, it rankles you through coerced thinking.

Right?

Not in our classroom that term at the University of Michigan. It was more like that famous shot of adrenaline to the heart in Pulp Fiction? Every hour we spent together was filled with rancorous debate, frank stories, and unexpected laughter. This wasn’t just because we had a great teacher and a bunch of characters in the room. What made our conversations so engrossing–and fun–is that we had a safe space to rigorously and respectfully air our differences–not only with each other, but within ourselves. To challenge each other’s assumptions, bring undiscussable topics into the light of day, and wrestle with the complexity that underlies every single business situation–if you know where to look.

Two decades later, I invited the teacher of that class, Tim Fort, now at the Kelley School of Business at Indiana University, to join me for a conversation.

Tim Fort cropped

In Episode 9 of The Amiel Show, Tim Fort and I discuss:

  • Why it’s important and difficult to know which virtue to use in which situation
  • What we can learn about trust and business ethics from Star Wars and football marching bands
  • How integrity is neither simple nor idealistic but a practical confrontation with a complex world
  • How organizations can make it easier for people to speak candidly about difficult issues
  • What leaders can do to deliberately practice high integrity behavior on the job
  • What Tim is personally practicing to develop as a human being

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[Read more…] about Episode 9: Tim Fort On Leadership And Integrity [The Amiel Show]

Resolving Conflict: The One Thing You Need To Know [Ask Knockman the Magnificent]

Resolving Conflict: The One Thing You Need To Know [Ask Knockman the Magnificent]

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It’s that time, friends. Knockman the Magnificent is here to answer your questions.

If you’re over 30, you may recall Carnac the Magnificent, the Eastern mystic on The Tonight Show who could divine unknown answers to unseen questions. He looked like Johnny Carson but wore a turban. His trick was to hold hermetically sealed envelopes up to his head and “ascertain” the answers to the unseen questions within.

Knockman the Magnificent is similar. He provides answers to important questions and aims for your funny bone. But there are three differences:

Knockman pic

  1. The questions come from you, not a sealed envelope, and are about real issues and concerns
  2. Unlike Carnac, Knockman is a genuine mystic. He is inspired by the great 18th Century Jewish mystic, Nachman of Breslov, who believed each person has the potential to be virtuous and happy
  3. Unlike Carnac, Knockman is a pragmatist interested in producing useful results

Here is your first chance to ask Knockman a question, and he will give you his answer in a special episode of The Amiel Show.

What’s one thing you want to know more about successfully resolving conflict at work?