Timothy Clark introduces us to a hot and overlooked topic in leadership development – psychological safety. Tim defines the four stages of psychological safety and makes the case for why leaders need to develop this skill, which he argues few have mastered. He offers two suggestions for leaders to create an environment needed for innovation to occur, describing the two skillsets that leaders need to navigate to foster that environment. He describes two scenarios where psychological safety was missing in the leader and the impact this had on the teams, concluding with advice to HR leaders. Timothy R. Clark is founder and CEO of LeaderFactor, a consulting, coaching, and training organization. Dr. Clark is an international authority in the fields of psychological safety & innovation, large-scale change & transformation, and senior leadership development. He is the author of Epic Change: How to Lead Change in the Global Age (John Wiley/Jossey-Bass), Leadership Bones (Bradmore Road Press), The Employee Engagement Mindset (McGraw-Hill), Leading with Character and Competence: Moving Beyond Title, Position, And Authority (Berrett-Koehler). His new book, The 4 Stages of Psychological Safety: Defining the Path to Inclusion and Innovation (Berrett-Koehler) was released in March 2020. He is also the developer of the EQometer emotional intelligence assessment. URLs: https://www.ajoconnor.com/HRstudio/podcasts/Tim-Clark http://bit.ly/HRSP-Tim-Clark

In common with most leaders, Jonathan Raymond struggled to shift from technical skill-based leadership to people leadership. In this episode, he shares his personal journey and how it has shaped his philosophy and work today. He discusses trust and how to build it, the importance of authenticity, and how to listen while paying attention to the context. He outlines two tools that help provide feedback – The Accountability Dial™ and ‘four corners of impact,’ concluding with advice to HR leaders.

Jonathan Raymond is the Founder & CEO at Refound, a people training company that teaches people how to have human conversations at work. He applies what he has learned over a twenty-year journey as an executive, entrepreneur, team leader, and leadership trainer, throwing his heart, mind, and soul into numerous culture change projects. In his latest book, Good Authority — How to Become the Leader Your Team is Waiting For; he offers new ideas and inspiration you can put into practice.

URLs:

https://www.ajoconnor.com/HRstudio/podcasts/Jonathan-Raymond

http://bit.ly/HRSP-Jonathan-Raymond

Ora Nadrich raises the alarm on the impact of stress that is taking its toll on our business and personal lives. Hear Ora explain what mindfulness is and why it’s important. Learn several easy to implement techniques to help you manage people and stressful situations and to become more productive. HR leaders will benefit personally from this episode, as well as gain insights into HR's role in supporting others. Ora Nadrich is Founder and President of the Institute for Transformational Thinking and author of Live True: A Mindfulness Guide to Authenticity. She is a certified life coach and mindfulness teacher who specializes in transformational thinking, self-discovery, and mentoring new coaches as they develop their careers. https://www.ajoconnor.com/HRstudio/podcasts/Ora-Nadrich

Oscar Trimboli joins us from Sydney, Australia with a great interview, full of actionable tips for HR leaders. Tune in to find out what one thing organizations should do before doing employee engagement surveys. He discusses when it’s important to stop listening which is as important as when to start, and how to get continuous employee feedback (versus ad hoc listening tours). Oscar takes us through the five levels of listening and highlights the level most people struggle with; how to move from a distracted listener to a deep and impactful listener; and three things HR leaders can do to explore what’s left unsaid. Oscar Trimboli is on a quest to create 100 million Deep Listeners in the world. As a former marketing director at Vodafone and Microsoft, Oscar has always been passionate about the importance of listening to his customers and using the gift of listening to bring positive change in workplaces and the world. Indeed, if public speaking was the skill of the 20th century, Oscar believes that in the 21st century it’s time to learn how to listen. URLs: https://www.ajoconnor.com/HRstudio/podcasts/Oscar-Trimboli http://bit.ly/HRSP-Oscar-Trimboli

Chris Meroff shares his leadership aha moments and how they led him to prioritize employee fulfillment as a way to ignite employee passion. He explains that fulfillment is a product of alignment, and he introduces the concepts of employee success planning and defining purpose to achieve alignment. He favors “employee services’ over “human resources,” pointing out that he wants to serve employees in his organization. Along with his generational perspectives (the loyalty of boomers has been replaced by the quest for fulfillment demanded by millennials), Chris offers a fresh perspective on how HR can back to what that department was intended for - to resource the human beings in your company. Chris Meroff has spent more than 25 years supporting leaders in education at both the campus and district levels. Through his work in 17 states and across thousands of school districts, he’s seen firsthand the frustration administrators feel when their efforts don’t produce the alignment they desire. Never content to sit on the sidelines, he’s made a career of testing new leadership ideas to see what works—and what doesn’t—in service-oriented leadership. His business, Alignment Leadership Consulting, exists to teach leaders how they can boldly pursue a workplace culture that prioritizes employee fulfillment. URLs: https://www.ajoconnor.com/HRstudio/podcasts/Chris-Meroff

For all show notes, please visit https://www.ajoconnor.com/HRstudio/podcasts/Melanie-Katzman. Melanie Katzman discusses the importance of connecting with others to personally build a foundation of trust and what organizations can do to build that trust in their culture. Katzman has found that connecting with others as humans is the solution to almost any workplace conflict, a topic she touches on in this podcast. HR leaders will pick up actionable advice on how to connect with others, as well as an important message for HR leaders about how to bring about change, starting with you. Dr. Melanie Katzman is a business psychologist, advisor, and consultant to the world’s top public and private companies, government agencies and nonprofits. She is the founder of Katzman Consulting and a founding partner of the social enterprise Leaders’ Quest. Katzman was a Senior Fellow at The Wharton School’s Center for Leadership and Change Management and cocreated/hosted the show “Women@Work” on SiriusXM Satellite Radio. She has been featured in the Financial Times, New York Times, O Magazine, South China Morning Post, Vanity Fair, and on ABC-TV, CBS-TV, and Lifetime. She lives in New York City.

https://www.ajoconnor.com/HRstudio/podcasts/Paul-Smith

Business storyteller, author, and leadership speaker Paul Smith explains the 'art and the science' behind leadership storytelling, a skill all HR Leaders can and should develop to successfully influence others. In this episode, Paul shares ten important stories that all leaders need to be able to tell, followed by two that HR leaders, in particular, need to have at their disposal. Paul explains the key elements of a successful story and eight questions each story should answer. He concludes with examples. Learn how to tell stories and serve your organization by coaching your leaders to uncover stories for internal stakeholders and external customers. Paul Smith is one of the world’s leading experts on organizational storytelling and one of Inc Magazine’s Top 100 Leadership Speakers of 2018 He’s the bestselling author of several books, including Lead with a Story, Sell with a Story and Parenting with a Story and a 20-year former executive at Procter Gamble His work has been featured in The Wall Street Journal Time Forbes and Fast Company among others.

For this episode's show notes, please visit http://bit.ly/HRSP-Tristan-Kromer

Innovation expert Tristan Kromer connects the dots for HR Leaders between the company innovation strategy and the role that HR can and should play. He discusses the importance of an experimentation mindset and culture, offering practical suggestions that HR can leverage.

As a lean startup coach and founder of Kromatic, Tristan works with teams and leaders to apply lean startup principles and build innovation ecosystems.

Tristan has worked with accelerators and innovation leaders in dozens of countries from Nest’UP in Belgium to Fast Forward in Palestine. He has worked with companies ranging from early-stage startups with zero revenue to established businesses with >$10M USD revenue (Kiva, Cancer Research U.K., TES) to enterprise companies with >$1B USD revenue. (Unilever, Salesforce, LinkedIn).

Tristan regularly speaks, appears on panels, and gives workshops internationally with organizations such as the Stanford Center for Entrepreneurial Studies & D-school, Global Product Management Talks, Lean Startup Machine, General Electric (GE), and more.

For all show notes, please visit http://bit.ly/HRSP-Elay-Cohen.

Our guest this week is Elay Cohen who joins HR Studio Podcast to discuss his work enabling employees and organizations in order to accelerate business growth. Elay explains the critical role that HR can play in facilitating organizational success by focusing on "role-based" versus 'one size fits all programs.' He argues that HR leaders can be part of the strategic business conversation by coming to the table with an enablement-first mindset for modern learning. He explains why and how to accomplish this. Listen in to hear Elay's perspectives on engagement versus enablement, the importance of digital transformation in accelerating change, and the importance of personalized learning aligned to business goals and metrics. Elay Cohen is Co-founder & CEO @SalesHood, a Sales Enablement Platform. He has been recognized as Top Innovative "Mover and Shaker" in sales leadership by Entrepreneur magazine and he is a two times author and former SVP of sales productivity at Salesforce, where he introduced training and coaching programs that accelerated the company's growth from a $500-million business to an enterprise worth more than 3 billion. Elay is on a mission to modernize how companies enable their people in a business environment that is undergoing a digital transformation with advances in video, mobile, cloud computing, and even microlearning. His latest book is Enablement Mastery: Grow Your Business Faster by Aligning Your People, Processes, and Priorities.

For all show notes, please visit http://bit.ly/HRSP-Tony-Saldanha.

What does digital transformation look like in today’s large companies, and how can HR drive this transformation? Tony Saldanha joins us to explain what digital transformation means and how it will impact every employee. He discusses the critical role that HR Leaders need to play – personally and professionally. Tony Saldanha is the president of Transformant, a consulting firm specializing in assisting organizations through digital transformations. Tony ran both operations and digital transformations for Procter & Gamble’s famed global business services and IT organization in every region of the world. He served as vice president of global business services’ next-generation services. Tony is an advisor to boards and CEOs on digital transformation and a sought-after speaker. He is a globally awarded industry thought leader and author of Why Digital Transformations Fail: The Surprising Disciplines of How to Take Off and Stay Ahead.

For all show notes, please visit https://www.ajoconnor.com/podcasts/Charles-Fred. Stress can have a significant impact on organizational performance. How can company leaders and HR best deal with it? Charles Fred is a best-selling author, entrepreneur, and 2019 Chair of the Association for Talent Development. He has devoted nearly four decades of his life to discovering new ways for professionals to acquire the skills necessary to compete in industries undergoing major transformations. Charles is a pioneer in the e-Learning industry, and his best-selling book, Breakaway, is credited with introducing the new framework for organizational learning. His latest book, The 24-Hour Rule: Leading in a Frenetic World, presents research following the impact of stress on organizational development and how quickly stress can spread when enabled with technology. It also introduces the ‘discipline of pause’ as a required leadership competency.