It's Not Personal

In this final episode of season 2, Ken and Seth discuss the value of touching into our own ambition and our relationship to it. Perhaps you have something inside of you that wants to be expressed, and it's important that you take the time and the energy to express that thing. Toxic ambition is about thinking that you're inherently a better human being than someone else. Positive am

In this episode, Ken and Seth talk about the value of feedback and how it can change your life. The three types of feedback that are most common are appreciation, coaching, and evaluation. It's so important to be clear on what you want to hear and how you want to hear it. Thanks for the Feedback, by Douglas Stone and Sheila Heen. The gift of feedback is when you can be specific and

What if you could manage your worry and the worry of your team more effectively by both planning and trusting that you will figure it out? The ability of leaders to meet the worries and concerns of their teams with compassion and a sense of purpose makes the difference between a team that is built on self trust or one that's based on fear and control. Ken and Seth talk about how le

We can train ourselves to be more comfortable with discomfort and get more out of our own experiences and the experiences of those around us. Being a leader means being uncomfortable most of the time. If you are avoiding that discomfort or if you're trying to manage your team away from discomfort, then you're going to create problems for yourself and others. In this episode, Ken an

In this episode Ken and Seth talk about the value of accepting that a career does not have to follow a straight path. Perhaps, it's even better if it doesn't. Ken shares how many of the successful people he works with in IT don't even have a computer science background. As a leader, you can provoke your team to think different about their own career path and how they might be able

In this episode, Ken and Seth talk about the importance of treating your teams, your employees, and your managers like adults so that they behave like adults. When we treat people like children, they tend to behave like children. When asked why he's willing to let his team decide whether to work remotely or come into the office, he says, "I have a fundamental principle, I only hire

How do you feel about conflict? What does it mean to be a "tough boss?" How do we hold ourselves accountable and why?It's important to bring feedback to people that removes the personal out of it. Why? It's because when we feel judged, we tend to shut down. Even so, it's crucial that leaders see the people who worked for them. The more you see them, the easier it is to motivate the

Can we find the fun and the spontaneity in our work? What would it look like if people were willing to use a little playfulness in their job? Ken shares how he uses humor and playfulness with his group, and how these things help to create engagement and develop relationships. Sometimes little things like turning presentation slides into a game of finding little hidden jokes for his

Can we be in competition with each other while also wanting each other to be successful? Want does it take to create a culture that celebrates the pursuit of excellence without the pursuit of the ego? In this episode, Ken and Seth talk about the value of healthy competition in an organization and the negativity of unhealthy competition. When your sense of success is dependent on th

Culture is basically just a set of behaviors and expectations that we have for the people in our organization. In this episode, Ken and Seth talk about how you can influence culture and motivate change even in a hybrid situation. When we are aware of the anxiety that we have about whether our teams are actually doing the work, we can get much clearer about the ways that we want to