The Hard Skills

What can a pop culture convention teach you about workplace culture and leadership? More than you think. Brandon Peters shares the leadership lessons behind building a stage people line up for.Brandon runs the live podcast stage at Indy PopCon, a locally owned pop culture convention in Indianapolis that runs on volunteers. It took him years of trial and error to turn a lonely table in a loud food court into a stage with a waitlist. In this conversation with Dr. Mira Brancu, he talks about what actually made the difference.You'll hear how the PopCon team keeps volunteers happy without micromanaging them, why "if my people are happy, everyone is happy" is more than a nice saying, and how they bring in new audiences without pushing out the regulars. Brandon also shares what happened when a two-night stadium concert crowd clashed with convention guests, and Mira explains why leaders who go quiet during a crisis only make it worse. If you lead a team, a community, or anything built on passion, this one is for you.Subscribe for weekly conversations on leadership, workplace culture, and building healthier organizations.Find our guest here:Connect with Brandon Peters:https://popcon.us/popcon-indy/  https://thebrandonpetersshow.com/ https://popcon.us/creator-summit/To find more of my work:Subscribe to this channelNewsletter: mailchi.mp/2079c04f4d44/subscribeBook a consultation: calendly.com/mira-brancu/30-minute-initial-consultationLinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/in/MiraBrancuWebsite: www.gotowerscope.comBooks: gotowerscope.com/booksJoin the next leadership training cohort: https://gotowerscope.com/fellowship Free Resources:Strategic Clarity and Leadership Resilience assessment: https://mailchi.mp/e1ebf8505764/slr-assessment Burnout Root Cause Assessment: https://mailchi.mp/29d7d18fae4a/burnout-root-cause-assessmentWorkplace Grief Guide: https://mailchi.mp/46873b910380/workplace-grief-field-guide Watch this Episode on Youtube : https://youtu.be/SeIiDKi4Aok

Is your team difficult, or are you misreading the signals?Build leadership skills by looking beneath workplace burnout and micromanagement.In this Season 12 compilation of The Hard Skills, Dr. Mira revisits 13 common leadership misinterpretations through guest conversations and solo episode highlights. Discover why incivility can signal exhaustion or organizational grief, why burnout requires more than resilience, and how a leader's self-talk shapes the emotional climate of a team. For technical experts moving into leadership, the conversation explores why expertise, accuracy, and high standards need new skills in relationships, prioritization, and influence. You'll also hear why productive friction matters, how to coach high performers through a new learning curve, and why generational labels can obscure individual differences. Other highlights connect compassion with accountability, explain when empowerment can feel like abandonment, and reframe managing up as joining up. The central invitation is to pause before judging behavior, examine the pressures beneath it, and choose a response that addresses the individual, team, organization, or wider system.Subscribe for weekly conversations on leadership, workplace wellbeing, and the human realities of work.Watch this Episode on Youtube : https://youtu.be/H5I4kVpxeI8Find our guests here:Dr. John O'Brien :https://youtu.be/t9-osoC_qgg Dr. Dana Gionta : https://stream.redcircle.com/episodes/4edaec00-83ac-4cb8-a043-7791d50ae282/stream.mp3 Jamie Ramsden and Dr. Suzie Burke: https://youtu.be/bDSp1vmwQS8 Ross Blankenship and Maggie Sass : https://youtu.be/MNGdGGJ8dHo Dr. Ryne Sherman : https://youtu.be/P-IoU4aIe_U James Dismond : https://youtu.be/2PiCI1KRX0U Dr. Sam Shriver and Suzie Bishop : https://youtu.be/5sJAe6E-fA0 Emily Ambrose : https://youtu.be/dYW5otMRrDA To find more of my work:Subscribe to this channelNewsletter: mailchi.mp/2079c04f4d44/subscribeBook a consultation: calendly.com/mira-brancu/30-minute-initial-consultationLinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/in/MiraBrancuWebsite: www.gotowerscope.comBooks: gotowerscope.com/booksJoin the next leadership training cohort: https://gotowerscope.com/fellowship Free Resources:Strategic Clarity and Leadership Resilience assessment: https://mailchi.mp/e1ebf8505764/slr-assessment Burnout Root Cause Assessment: https://mailchi.mp/29d7d18fae4a/burnout-root-cause-assessmentWorkplace Grief Guide: https://mailchi.mp/46873b910380/workplace-grief-field-guide #thehardskills #mirabrancu #selfawareness #leadershipdevelopment #emotionalintelligence #executivecoaching

Dealing with a micromanaging boss, or worried you're the one who can't stop micromanaging? The fix depends on why it's happening, and there's more than one reason.Micromanaging isn't the same as a healthy progress check-in. It's when the review gets so detailed that people stop owning their work and start wondering why they should even try. In this solo episode of The Hard Skills, Dr. Mira Brancu, a clinical psychologist turned executive advisor, walks through six reasons people micromanage: anxiety, skill gaps, trust problems, organizational pressure, personality, and misreading what engaged leadership looks like. She also gets honest about being on both sides of the trust problem, and how pushing harder can make someone share even less. Once you can name the real reason behind it, you'll know how to respond. That might mean offering to take more off your boss's plate, setting up steady check-ins, or getting support for your own anxiety, trust, or skill gaps as a leader.Watch this Episode on Youtube - https://youtu.be/Zdw24T4XRvASubscribe for weekly conversations on leadership, workplace politics, and the human side of leading.To find more of my work:Subscribe to this channelNewsletter: mailchi.mp/2079c04f4d44/subscribeBook a consultation: calendly.com/mira-brancu/30-minute-initial-consultationLinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/in/MiraBrancuWebsite: www.gotowerscope.comBooks: gotowerscope.com/booksJoin the next leadership training cohort: https://gotowerscope.com/fellowship Free Resources:Strategic Clarity and Leadership Resilience assessment: https://mailchi.mp/e1ebf8505764/slr-assessment Burnout Root Cause Assessment: https://mailchi.mp/29d7d18fae4a/burnout-root-cause-assessmentWorkplace Grief Guide: https://mailchi.mp/46873b910380/workplace-grief-field-guide Episodes and other resources referenced: https://youtu.be/QUeBQe8QLp8 

Your team is grieving, even when nobody says it out loud. Dr. Mira Brancu talks with HR leader and coach Emily Ambrose about the organizational grief behind burnout and quiet quitting.Most leaders learn to push past the hard stuff. A retirement gets a quick mention, a reorg gets a memo, and everyone moves on before anyone actually feels what changed. Emily Ambrose has spent 20 years inside organizations watching what happens when that grief never gets named, and it usually shows up later as burnout, disengagement, or good people quietly leaving. In this conversation, Emily and Mira walk through what it actually looks like to acknowledge loss at work, from a two-second check-in that changed how one employee showed up for months, to the SCARF model that explains why even small changes can feel like a threat. You will also hear how stay interviews work, why ambiguous grief shows up in things like remote work and pregnancy, and what to say when you do not have all the answers but still need to lead.Subscribe for weekly conversations on leadership, burnout, and mental health at work.Find our guest here:https://emilyambrose.com/https://shape.colostate.edu/Watch this video on youtube - https://youtu.be/dYW5otMRrDANewsletter: mailchi.mp/2079c04f4d44/subscribeBook a consultation: calendly.com/mira-brancu/30-minute-initial-consultationLinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/in/MiraBrancuWebsite: www.gotowerscope.comBooks: gotowerscope.com/booksJoin the next leadership training cohort: https://gotowerscope.com/fellowship Free Resources:Strategic Clarity and Leadership Resilience assessment: https://mailchi.mp/e1ebf8505764/slr-assessment Burnout Root Cause Assessment: https://mailchi.mp/29d7d18fae4a/burnout-root-cause-assessmentWorkplace Grief Guide: https://mailchi.mp/46873b910380/workplace-grief-field-guide 

Managing up is broken advice. Dr. Mira Brancu breaks down the leadership skill that actually builds trust with your boss, and it isn't managing anyone at all.Most advice about "managing up" treats your boss like a problem to handle. Dr. Mira Brancu, a clinical psychologist turned executive advisor, thinks that framing is backwards, and she has the story to prove it. In this episode she breaks down what one exceptional research coordinator did differently that made her impossible to replace, then walks through the two part shift from managing up to joining up: empathizing with what your leader is actually carrying, then bringing value only you can offer. You will learn how to spot blind spots before they blindside your team, how to read whether a leader is defensive, overwhelmed, or just wired differently, and why the same message can land completely differently depending on how you deliver it. If your relationship with your leader has felt more transactional than collaborative, this reframe will change how you show up.Subscribe for weekly conversations on leadership, burnout, and the human side of work.Watch this video on youtube - https://youtu.be/1lND5f_Bd3QTo find more of my work:Subscribe to this PodcastNewsletter: mailchi.mp/2079c04f4d44/subscribeBook a consultation: calendly.com/mira-brancu/30-minute-initial-consultationLinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/in/MiraBrancuWebsite: www.gotowerscope.comBooks: gotowerscope.com/booksJoin the next leadership training cohort: https://gotowerscope.com/fellowship Free Resources:Strategic Clarity and Leadership Resilience assessment: https://mailchi.mp/e1ebf8505764/slr-assessment Burnout Root Cause Assessment: https://mailchi.mp/29d7d18fae4a/burnout-root-cause-assessmentWorkplace Grief Guide: https://mailchi.mp/46873b910380/workplace-grief-field-guide