Leadership Impact

The end of an era! In this special “end-isode,” Kari and Paul look back not only on this season in which we’ve explored trust, but on the past one-and-half years of Leadership Impact. For full shownotes: https://grangernetwork.com/48

Sooner or later, all of us will experience betrayals in life. The key isn’t going to the ends of the earth to avoid betrayals altogether. That will never happen. Rather, the key is in learning how to respond to betrayals when they do happen. In this episode, Kari and Paul show how an inability to recover from betrayals poisons our relationships and takes away our ability to act going forward. On the other hand, knowing how to powerfully accept and bounce back from betrayals enables us to move through life with more confidence, more creativity, and more trust. For full shownotes: https://grangernetwork.com/47 🎙️🎙️🎙️ Podcast production and marketing by FullCast

When we think of a “betrayal,” we often think of an earth-shattering, personally-devastating, stabbed-in-the-back sort of deception. But betrayals come in all shapes and sizes. And failure to acknowledge and deal with the “little betrayals”—such as routine gossip at the water-cooler—can have a huge effect on the state of trust in our organizations. In this episode, Kari and Paul discuss how to spot these minor betrayals, and how to deal with them early on and effectively. For full shownotes: https://grangernetwork.com/46 🎙️🎙️🎙️ Podcast production and marketing by FullCast

How often do we think we are on the same page with our colleagues—only to find out a little (or a lot) later that we had our wires completely crossed? Unclear agreements are incredibly common. In fact, one could say that most of the agreements that we make at work are at least partially unclear. And these unclear agreements don’t just lead to poor performance and inefficiency—they also erode trust in a big way. In this episode, Kari and Paul show you how to design your agreements so that everything is crystal clear, nothing slips through the cracks, and trust is maintained from start to finish. For full shownotes: https://grangernetwork.com/45 🎙️🎙️🎙️ Podcast production and marketing by FullCast

Moods are everywhere! We are always in one mood or another. In a way, they are the background tone of our existence, the lens through which we see the world. In this episode, Kari and Paul look at which moods support trust and which make trust all but impossible to sustain. Although moods have an outsized effect on our daily lives, we are not at their mercy. No matter what mood we find ourselves in, we can always cultivate a new one, one that sets us up for trusting relationships. For full shownotes: https://grangernetwork.com/44 🎙️🎙️🎙️ Podcast production and marketing by FullCast

We often think of trust as a binary -- either you have it, or you don’t. Either it’s there, or it isn’t. Like a light switch, we think trust is either “on” or “off,” with nothing in between. This extreme view of trust leads to some extreme behaviors. With a single violation, we can easily write off the possibility of trusting a person ever again. In this episode, Kari and Paul explore a more nuanced approach to trust that serves us in building lasting, authentic, trusting relationships. For full shownotes: https://grangernetwork.com/43 🎙️🎙️🎙️ Podcast production and marketing by FullCast

Whenever we get stuck in a downward cycle of distrust, even the smallest perceived slight can appear as an existential threat to our existence, and the faintest provocation can send us up the wall. In this episode, Kari and Paul show how building trust with others often relies on shifting our perspective on the “small things” in life and avoiding the tendency to blow everything out of proportion. What’s the secret to making that shift? Well, it has little something to do with “potatoes and Van Goghs”…listen to find out more! For full shownotes: https://grangernetwork.com/42 🎙️🎙️🎙️ Podcast production and marketing by FullCast

Feedback. Many of us cringe at even the thought of giving it—let alone receiving it. But navigating feedback is an absolutely critical skill for maintaining the health of our relationships and our organizations. When we sit on our feedback and refuse to share it, we sow the seeds of distrust. In this episode, Kari and Paul show how we can develop our capacity for giving and receiving feedback so that we actually look forward to those conversations as opportunities for alignment and co-creation. For full shownotes: https://grangernetwork.com/41 🎙️🎙️🎙️ Podcast production and marketing by FullCast

“Fake it till you make it.” That’s advice we often hear for how to step up our game at work. But as it turns out, when it comes to building trust, that advice just doesn’t work very well. Why do we often feel so compelled to pretend there’s trust when there isn’t. We do it in order to be polite, because we don’t want to ruffle any feathers with our colleagues (and certainly not our bosses!). Instead, we slowly create a poisonous environment where real issues can’t be addressed and resentments build. But there is another way—a way to be direct when it comes to conversations for trust, without burning bridges. In this episode, Kari and Paul we explain how. For full shownotes: https://grangernetwork.com/40 🎙️🎙️🎙️ Podcast production and marketing by FullCast

Distrust often starts innocuously enough. A bit of gossip. A smidge of dissent. But as the saying goes, “When it rains, it pours.” Before you know it, a snowball effect takes hold, and the whole organization can easily become engulfed in cynicism, antagonism, and territorial bickering. In this episode, Kari and Paul discuss how to intervene before our organizational cultures spiral into a cycle of distrust, and how to maintain more productive moods of curiosity, ambition, and collaboration instead. How do we intervene in this way? First, we must recognize that trust is built through conversation, and learn how to have those conversations more effectively in creating a positive spiral of trust throughout our organizations. For full shownotes: https://grangernetwork.com/39 🎙️🎙️🎙️ Podcast production and marketing by FullCast

We are living in frightening, unprecedented times. Now more than ever, it’s easy to fall out of trust—with society, the government, the financial markets, and more broadly, with the prospect of a brighter future. In this episode, Kari and Paul remind us that trust is ultimately a choice, and underscore the importance of choosing trust amidst the tumult. Choosing trust opens us up to wondrous possibilities, no matter the circumstance. Instead of suspiciousness, we can choose generosity. Instead of isolation, we can choose connection. Instead of fear and anxiety, can choose a commitment to what matters most, and devise inventive ways of fulfilling that commitment. For full shownotes: https://grangernetwork.com/38 🎙️🎙️🎙️ Podcast production and marketing by FullCast

When it comes to building trust, we often turn it into a waiting game. “I will get around to trusting her…but she needs to prove herself first.” “Why should I re-engage with him if he’s the one who messed up to begin with?!” In this episode, Kari and Paul show how these justifications rarely yield desired results, and usually sabotage the outcomes we are out to achieve. Instead of sitting back and waiting for trust to just happen, we must learn to take a more proactive stance by extending a “Window of Trust.” This doesn’t mean we trust blindly. It does mean we muster the courage to make the first move, in a way that positions us to break through the gridlock and forge a new pathway.   For full shownotes: https://grangernetwork.com/37 🎙️🎙️🎙️ Podcast production and marketing by FullCast

When it comes to trust, people are prone to “either/or” thinking. Either “I trust you 100%” or, once that trust is compromised in any way at all, “I can never trust you again!” In this episode, Kari and Paul show how this simplistic way of thinking precludes the possibility of real, lasting trust. Instead, we must begin somewhat counter-intuitively: by recognizing from the outset that human beings make mistakes and that betrayal is possible (if not probable). And yet—we can choose to trust anyways, knowing that in the event trust is broken, we have the tools to engage that conversation authentically and rebuild what was lost. For full shownotes: https://grangernetwork.com/36 🎙️🎙️🎙️ Podcast production and marketing by FullCast

Blaming. Complaining. Gossiping. Justifying. Avoiding. Defending. So often, these harmful behaviors seep into our everyday interactions at the office. As leaders, we do our best to head off these bad behaviors at the pass. But what if they’re all merely symptoms of a larger, more central problem? In this episode, Kari and Paul discuss how a lack of trust is that common problem at the heart of so much daily dysfunction, and why it can be so hard to recognize it as the culprit. Finally, Kari provides a novel definition of trust as something that we do—a choice that we make—as opposed to something that simply exists. By making that choice to extend trust, we generate extraordinary possibilities that would have otherwise proven impossible. For full shownotes: https://grangernetwork.com/35 🎙️🎙️🎙️ Podcast production and marketing by FullCast

We’re back! Welcome to Season Three of the Leadership Impact podcast. In this “teaser-isode,” we set the stage for this season’s topic: building and sustaining trust. So many of us think of trust as a luxury—it would be nice to have it, the thinking goes. But if we don’t get it, we can still get on with the business of getting stuff done. But therein lies the mistake that wreaks havoc on so many organizations. Trust is more than a “nice-to-have”! Trust is a necessary condition for success. Without trust, our big-ticket outcomes and wildly important goals don’t stand a chance. Building trust, then, isn’t a “soft skill” as many assume. It’s perhaps the most reliable predictor of hard, tangible business outcomes. In Season Three, Kari and Paul will guide you through restoring trust when it’s lost, and keeping it when it’s there. For full shownotes: https://grangernetwork.com/season-three-teaser/ 🎙️🎙️🎙️ Podcast production and marketing by FullCast

This season flipped the script on traditional thinking, causing a fundamental shift in the way we relate to accountability. In the old paradigm, accountability was about explaining what went wrong; it was something to avoid; something that took up time at work; it was either the thing that missing or the thing we were subjected to; and it caused lots of suffering in organizations. Out of listening to this season’s episodes, a new orientation accountability has emerged that is empowering; one that’s about creating the future; one about partnership; in fact, it opens a whole new paradigm of how we can interact with others. Join Kari Granger and Paul Adams as they share highlights, provide recommendations, and reflect on Season Two. With an eye towards the future, Kari and Paul invite the audience to provide feedback on the podcast and suggest topics they would like to see covered in Season Three of Leadership Impact. For full shownotes: https://grangernetwork.com/34 🎙️🎙️🎙️ Podcast production and marketing by FullCast

For many, performance reviews are nothing more than an end of year obligation that devolves into uncomfortable conversations about performance gaps and compensation. However, if we structure them to take us step-by-step into aligning with one another in four key areas, performance reviews become a treasured opportunity for both colleagues and a huge opportunity to leverage performance toward a shared vision. Join Kari Granger and Paul Adams as they dissect how organizations can utilize performance reviews as a tool to acknowledge contribution, identify the relevant domains of evaluation, assess performance impact, and partner for future development.  For full shownotes: https://grangernetwork.com/33 🎙️🎙️🎙️ Podcast production and marketing by FullCast

“It’s not my job!” When silos run workplace dynamics and the “not-my-job” mantra leaves projects disconnected, the likely culprit is the “hierarchy mindset.” For many organizations, a hierarchical structure is a good fit, but the mindset of having to operate out of a little box on an organizational chart, can limit creativity and innovation, starve collaborations, and keep projects from crossing the finish line on time and to the company’s quality standard. Join Kari Granger and Paul Adams as they examine an alternative way of relating to our positions and coordinating actions -- no matter how your company is structured. For full shownotes: https://grangernetwork.com/32 🎙️🎙️🎙️ Podcast production and marketing by FullCast

Like curiosity, loyalty is another key to accountability. This may seem counterintuitive -- afterall, isn’t our loyalty to others what makes holding them to account difficult in the first place? Actually, we have a choice. We can be loyal to a person’s shortcomings (and suffer the impact). Or, we can choose to be loyal to a person’s capacity to grow and learn. We can be loyal to the mission we set out to accomplish together. We can be loyal to our their ability to reckon with the impact of their behavior and choose differently. And, we can do it all with compassion. Join Kari Granger and Paul Adams as they uncover what motivates our loyalties and how to elevate our loyalty to transform performance and relationships. For full shownotes: https://grangernetwork.com/31 🎙️🎙️🎙️ Podcast production and marketing by FullCast

Curiosity levels up any professional’s ability to address problems without causing others to become defensive. And, it turns out what we get curious about makes a difference! Different questions trigger our brains to produce different types of answers. Join Kari Granger and Paul Adams as they guide us through what questions to ask to get to the core of a breakdown and back in action again! For full shownotes: https://grangernetwork.com/30 🎙️🎙️🎙️ Podcast production and marketing by FullCast