Being Human Is Good For Business Leaders – Détails, épisodes et analyse

Business Leader and Bestselling Author Aliza Knox joins Wendy Appel and Mary Beth Sawicki of Trilogy Effect in this episode of the Being Human Is Good for Business podcast to discuss her new book Don’t Quit Your Day Job: The 6 Mindshifts You Need to Rise And Thrive At Work. 

Aliza built and led Asia-Pacific (APAC) businesses for three of the world's top technology firms—Google, Twitter and Cloudflare. Named 2020 APAC IT Woman of The Year, she spent decades as a global finance and consulting executive and is now a non-executive board director, a senior advisor for BCG, and a regular columnist for Forbes. 

In her new book, Aliza shares her experience in leading global businesses and stories about many of the people she’s mentored around the world, from recent college graduates to mid-career and senior business leaders. 

“Often, people think there’s a tradeoff between their work and their life, and to be happy, they’re going to have to leave their job,” explains Aliza. “But that’s not always the case. There's a lot you can do to make your whole self happy and keep your career on track. Often it just takes a mindshift to gain a new perspective on your work and where it fits into your life.” 

• How to find synergies between your life and your work.
• How perseverance plus enthusiasm can equal stamina, a career superpower.
• The importance of social capital and connection in a thriving career.
• How to develop a positive relationship with your career.
• Why you should embrace change by being flexible and persistent as you build your career.
• Steps for keeping visible and connected at work, even when working from home.

• Don’t Quit Your Day Job: The 6 Mindshifts You Need to Rise and Thrive At Work
• Questioning the Quiet Quit by Aliza Knox
• Wendy Appel, Author and Leadership Expert
• Mary Beth Sawicki, Leadership Development Expert
• Trilogy Effect, surfacing the untapped potential in people and organizations
• Inside Out Enneagram: The Game Changing Guide for Leaders

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This episode of the Being Human is Good For Business podcast is an encore show for September 2021...

In this episode of the Being Human is Good For Business Podcast, Trilogy Effect partners Heather Marasse, Wendy Appel and Mary Beth Sawicki discuss listening skills as a ‘superpower’ and explain how learning to listen generously can transform a good leader into a truly great one. 

“Like everyone who is lucky enough to have their sense of hearing, most leaders have been listening all their lives,” explains Managing Partner Heather Marasse. “But that doesn't mean they’re actually listening well. It takes a certain openness and curiosity as well as the patience to let things unfold naturally.” 

Listening is automatic for most people, and what an individual actually takes in is based on the filters they use to process and understand the world around them.   

Partner Wendy Appel explains, “When a colleague is talking, you might think, ‘I already know what you're going to say. Can you just get to the point? Hurry up so I can talk’, for example. This is listening in order to speak. But great leaders listen actively beyond their filters and encourage their team to share their ideas and opinions. This is how they fuel innovation and create new possibilities.” 

The profound impact of this superpower is often realized quickly as leaders put their generous listening skills to work. 

“One recent coaching client told us that she was convinced she didn’t have the right people on her team,” says Partner Mary Beth Sawicki. “She had some very clear ideas about these individuals and what they could and, more importantly, couldn’t do. Practicing generous listening allowed her to more clearly see the people she’s at work with, and to understand them better. Now she leads a high functioning team that’s delivering wonderful results. She loves them.” 

The good news is that, like any skill, you can learn how to be a generous listener and you can constantly improve through practice.  Listen to this podcast to find out how. 

You will also learn: 

• Practical leadership tips you can put to work right away
• How to make meetings better and more valuable for everyone
• How to develop your listening skills to become your best as a leader.

Links to helpful resources and information about some of the tools and concepts mentioned on the show:

• Listening: The Most Important Leadership Skill
• Trilogy Effect’s free leadership guidebook to be as your best self as a leader
• Our free newsletter, full of leadership advice and practical tips.
• Alignment: What It Is and Why It Matters
• What is Generous Listening?
• Facebook | LinkedIn | Twitter | Instagram

We invite you to subscribe to the Being Human Is Good for Business Podcast on iTunes, Amazon, Google Podcasts, iHeart Radio and Spotify (links below) or wherever you get your podcasts. Please rate us and leave a review!

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In a recent LIVE broadcast of the Being Human Is Good for Business podcast, the team at Trilogy Effect discusses the challenges of being a leader when, it seems, the whole world is completely stressed out. 

We’re all still ‘in the thick of it’ in terms of coping through this pandemic, and today’s leaders have the job of managing their people, many of whom are dealing with some personal trauma, through a whirlwind of change and stress. 

Recorded as a LIVE show on LinkedIn on February 9th, 2022, leadership experts Heather Marasse, Wendy Appel and Mary Beth Sawicki ask the question that’s top of mind for many people, “How are you doing?” 

They provide insight based on their recent experiences in supporting leaders and lots of practical advice and tips for leaders who may be struggling to support their teams while still hitting their business goals and objectives.   

Wendy Appel explains: “We are going through a collective experience where people’s basic trust has been shaken. And, at the same time organizations are dealing with important issues that have rarely been examined before now such as equality, diversity and inclusion. Add to that the struggle of managing big changes to daily operations such as moving to hybrid workforces, team recruitment and retention and integrating new ways of working! There’s been so much uncertainty, and this equals stress!” 

Mary Beth Sawicki adds: “Today’s leaders need to recognize that many in the workforce are not feeling well, either physically or emotionally. But business goes on and performance demands are not altered. You need to find a healthy balance of performance expectations and empathy for these challenging times.” 

Providing leadership development in this context means taking different and new approaches that account not only for skills development, but also the mental health of the leaders and their teams. That’s why Trilogy Effect is now integrating Internal Family Systems (IFS) into their coaching services. 

IFS is an empowering paradigm for understanding and harmonizing the mind. The coach brings a compassionate approach to guide inquiry into a client’s experience in a self-healing way. 

“We integrate IFS into our coaching and consulting practice,” explains Heather Marasse. “We use what we see as appropriate in the moment with each client. In everything we do, we also practice ourselves.  To be in the business of growth, we need to use compassionate inquiry and develop self-compassion in order to extend it to others. With IFS, we are able to meet this important client need.” 

• How pandemic stress is impacting workers.
• Are we seeing collective trauma in today’s workplace? 
• How is pandemic stress changing leadership? 
• What is IFS and how does it change the coaching experience? 

Links to information about the issues discussed in this show: 

• Navigating the Great Resignation of 2021
• What is Internal Family Systems?
• Post-Omicron Life Can Be Downright Maddening

We invite you to subscribe to the Being Human Is Good for Business Podcast on iTunes, Amazon, Google Podcasts, iHeart Radio, and Spotify (links below) or wherever you get your podcasts. Please rate us and leave a review. 

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Is the pandemic changing how you lead your organization? That’s the question we asked C-Suite executives at five different companies in this mini episode of the Being Human is Good for Business podcast. 

Over the past several months we’ve interviewed dozens of executive leaders from a broad range of businesses and social impact organizations. Yet, we seldom had a discussion that didn’t touch upon how the pandemic has changed how we lead and work.

For Bret Furio, CEO of Canidae, the pet food company, learning to see the positive in constantly changing circumstances helped him as a leader.  He says, “I’m learning to be more generous in terms of work life balance and being flexible about work arrangements. It lets people do what works best for them, and allows them to still contribute greatly.” 

Carnegie Mellon University CFO Angela Blanton told us how the pandemic had taught her the importance of building trusting relationships, of taking more time to make decisions, and to be a lot more flexible.  She says, “I am learning to back up and let my leaders lead. I’m trying to not make any decisions too quickly so that we can be flexible when we need to shift direction.” 

The former president of International Brake Industries (IBI), Paul Johnson, told us how his team has been able to innovate under difficult circumstances.  He says that learning to work through the pandemic has raised their level of innovation. 

EA’s Vice President of Worldwide Customer Experience Joel Knutson told us his organization has been able to pivot, thanks to increased investment in the health and wellbeing of the team.  He explains, “We’re flexing up our empathy, significantly. We’re flexing to focus on employee needs and are rolling out additional benefits to all our employees.” 

When we spoke to Misan Rewane, the former CEO of the Nigerian social enterprise Wave Academies, she told us how the pandemic is teaching her to hold space for her people while they are work as virtual team. She says, “It’s the simple things like starting a call by genuinely listening as people tell you how they really are.” 

Watch for future mini episodes where we’ll bring you highlights from all our past shows.  To hear the full interview with the leaders featured in today’s show download these episodes: 

Episode 6:  Interview with Bret Furio:How Leaders Can Accelerate Business Growth

Episode 7: Lessons from the C-Suite: My First Year

Episode 10: Creating Connections Beyond the Org Chart

Episode 11: Electronic Arts’ People-Centered Approach to Business

Episode 21: Creating a WAVE of Positive Impact for Nigerian Youth

We invite you to subscribe to the Being Human Is Good for Business Podcast on iTunes, Amazon, Google Podcasts, iHeart Radio, and Spotify (links below) or wherever you get your podcasts. Please rate us and leave a review. 

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What makes a leader great? That’s what we asked leaders of four of the world’s biggest and best-known companies in this mini episode of the Being Human Is Good For Business podcast. 

Despite their different backgrounds and industry sectors, these leaders all agree on the essentials of a great leader: empathy, listening, clear communication, patience, and robust dialogue. 

For Gary Cohen, the CEO of Qualitor, being decisive is a key leadership skill needed to set a vision and execute a strategy to achieve it, but good leaders also need to hone softer skills, such as listening and empathy, to support their teams in achieving that vision. 

Mary Riley, Vice President of Litigation at Genentech, agrees that empathy is an important element of great leadership. She also feels that clear communication is key to making great teamwork possible, by ensuring everyone on the team understands what the expectations are. 

Paul Johnson, former President of International Brake Industries, tells us that patience is an important element of empathetic leadership, knowing when to step in and take the reins and when to hold back. 

For Vidhu Dev, Vice President at GlaxoSmithKline Consumer Healthcare, that mindset plays an important role in encouraging a robust team dialogue. It makes meetings more informal while allowing all to appreciate the expertise each team member brings to the table. 

Listen for future mini episodes where we’ll bring you highlights from all our past episodes. To hear the full interviews with the leaders featured today, download these episodes: 

• Episode 8: Leading Innovation with Emotional Intelligence featuring Gary Cohen
• Episode 15: Empathetic Leadership Underpins Business Growth featuring Mary Riley
• Episode 10: Creating Connections Beyond the Org Chart featuring Paul Johnson
• Episode 12: The Winning Mindset with Vidhu Dev

We invite you to subscribe to the Being Human Is Good for Business Podcast on iTunes, Amazon, Google Podcasts, iHeart Radio, and Spotify (links below) or wherever you get your podcasts. Please rate us and leave a review!

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Learn from a top leader at one the world’s biggest and best-known gaming companies, EA. Employee Enablement and Communications Sr. Director Alex Masters-Goessling joins host Sherrilynne Starkie and Trilogy Effect’s Wendy Appel to talk about how EA benefited from coaching beyond the C-Suite into the extended leadership team.

Wendy and the Trilogy Effect team have been working with EA leaders for several years having coached top executives across the organization. Now they are working with Alex to grow the internal capacity and capability for self-leadership at different levels of the organization. 

“I would say the one of the greatest tools that we've learned about, is the Enneagram,” explains Alex Masters-Goessling. “During the onset of the pandemic, knowing the Enneagram helped everyone as we transitioned to support millions of players stuck at home. It's led to a lot of positive self-realization and people have been really receptive.

“The other great tool that we now use all the time is the ‘alignment tool.’ It’s changed the trajectory of our decision making and the philosophy of how we decide. It means we are a lot more agile and can get new things in motion quickly.” 

Trilogy Effect’s Alignment Tool is designed to support strategic decision making. Wendy Appel explains, “A good analogy for alignment is to think of a flock of geese flying in formation. They are not in a single file behind the leader, but everyone is heading together in the same direction. Alignment speeds decisions because you are not deciding on every detail but just on the overall strategy or approach.” 

In this episode you will learn how leadership development outside of the executive suite benefits your organization by building stronger connections among the extended team, improving teamwork, and creating an environment for fast, smart decision making.

More information about the tools and concepts discussed in this podcast: 

• Trilogy Effect Leadership Guidebook
• EA’s People -Centered Approach to Business
• How to use the Enneagram to Become a Better Leader
• Alignment and Why It Matters
• Facebook | LinkedIn | Twitter | Instagram

We invite you to subscribe to the Being Human Is Good for Business Podcast on iTunes, Amazon, Google Podcasts, iHeart Radio, and Spotify (links below) or wherever you get your podcasts. Please rate us and leave a review!

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Jane Finette learned about the value of leadership coaching late in her career, but when she finally did, it changed everything. 

She left her position as Chief of Staff to the CEO of Mozilla, the global internet company behind the Firefox browser, to launch The Coaching Fellowship. This non-profit organization helps advance young women as social change leaders by giving them the coaching they need to become their best selves.  It’s a community of professionally-trained, volunteer coaches who span more than 25 countries. Since its inception in 2014, more than 1,000 women from 70 countries have graduated from the Coaching Fellowship. 

“I’ve had a lot of training over my 25-year career, but never anything quite like coaching.  And it cracked my world open,” says Jane Finette.“I immediately realized I was in the wrong career and understood that most of my successes so far were not much more than happy accidents.  It wasn’t until I experienced coaching, that I could make solid decisions with positive intention.” 

Jane has recently published her first book, Unlocked – How Empowered Women Empower Women as both a referendum on women’s inequality and a toolkit for leveling the playfield for women and girls.It’s a collection of real-world short stories about female leaders who are working to propel women and girls forward.

“Sexual violence statistics are through the roof, sub-Saharan girls are not in school, US women are losing many rights and in Afghanistan, 20 years of headway was wiped out in a few days. Reading these headlines in the throes of the pandemic, I realized that women lost a generation of progress in 2020,” says Jane.  “But I believe we can turn this around when every woman stands up for other women. That’s why my book Unlocked is part inspiration, part practical guide.”   

In this episode, you’ll learn about Jane’s own experience of leadership coaching and how it changed the trajectory of her career and her life.  You’ll learn how she’s taken what she learned from coaching and turned it into a global movement to empower women and girls. You’ll be inspired by Jane’s uplifting and instructive view of the power of women in leadership. 

Win a signed copy of Unlocked – How Empowered Women Empower Women, by Jane Finette, founder of The Coaching Fellowship. 

To enter the draw, share a link to this podcast on social media and tag Trilogy Effect (our social media profiles are linked below). Enter by November 30th, 2021, to be included in the December 1st draw. Good luck to everyone!

More information about leadership, coaching and The Coaching Fellowship: 

• Trilogy Effect Leadership Guidebook
• Getting the Job of Your Dream!  A Young Leader’s Journey
• Creating a WAVE of positive impact for Nigerian youths
• Facebook | LinkedIn | Twitter | Instagram

We invite you to subscribe to the Being Human Is Good for Business Podcast on iTunes, Amazon, Google Podcasts, iHeart Radio and Spotify (links below) or wherever you get your podcasts. Please rate us and leave a review!

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Misan Rewane is a remarkable young leader from Nigeria who took the lessons learned from her leadership coach to heart. She created WAVE Academies to tackle the problem of youth unemployment by getting young people ‘work ready’ and helping employers to find the local talent they need to grow their businesses. 

Having met Trilogy Effect’s Wendy Appel through The Coaching Fellowship, Misan applied the leadership information and knowledge she gained from this coaching experience to create an organization with powerful social impact. 

The Coaching Fellowship is a non-profit organization matching volunteer coaches with young women leaders interested in making a real difference in the lives of others.  Misan and Wendy took their relationship way beyond one-on-one coaching to share the learning across the whole WAVE Academies team and to the young people they support. 

The WAVE Academies curriculum includes leadership skills needed to be ‘work ready,’ such as communications, problem solving, negotiations, and teamwork.

“Where I’m from, we don't get a lot of space to reflect inward.  We're struggling to meet the basic needs of food, shelter, clothing and security, so we don’t get a lot of space to reflect on who we are and how we show up in the world,” Misan explains. “At Wave Academies, we’re teaching emotional intelligence to unemployed young people who often don't have emotional vocabulary beyond ‘I’m happy or I’m sad.’”

Wendy has travelled to WAVE headquarters in Nigeria several times to work with Misan’s team. She says, “This is far and away some of the most rewarding work I've ever done. I don't know that I've ever worked with an organization where the tools and frameworks I share would have such immediate impact. I would teach them the tools and then they'd apply and make them their own, all before I left the meeting. Their thirst for knowledge was extraordinary.”  

The impact is real. More than 50,000 young Nigerians have been trained through Wave Academies and the employment rate among alumni is 70%. 

In this episode, you’ll learn about Misan’s incredible leadership journey and how working with a coach not only dramatically improved her effectiveness as a leader, it helped her discover a direct path to creating effective and long-lasting change for the young people in her community.   

• What is emotional intelligence and why having it is important? 
• About tools and frameworks to develop leadership capability and capacity.
• Why is being human good for business? 

Links to information about the issues discussed in the is show: 

• How to be a better leader by being a better listener
• Trilogy Effect Leadership Guidebook
• Getting the Job of Your Dream!  A Young Leader’s Journey
• Facebook | LinkedIn | Twitter | Instagram

We invite you to subscribe to the Being Human Is Good for Business Podcast on iTunes, Amazon, Google Podcasts, iHeart Radio and Spotify (links below) or wherever you get your podcasts. Please rate us and leave a review!

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In this, the first ever LIVE broadcast of the Being Human Is Good For Business podcast, the team at Trilogy Effect discuss the Great Resignation of 2021. What's driving people to leave their jobs in droves?  What can a leader do to stem the flow? 

Recorded as a Live broadcast on LinkedIn on October 1st, leadership experts Heather Marasse,Wendy Appel and Mary Beth Sawicki look at what's behind this trend and offer great advice and practical tips to help leaders navigate it.  

COVID continues to affect every corner of our lives. And “This pandemic has given everyone a chance to see what was really important in life,” explains Wendy Appel, Founding Partner, Trilogy Effect. “When lives are at stake, when your children's lives may be at stake, people are reprioritizing. While work is important, people started asking themselves some tough questions. For instance, do I want to spend so much time away from my family travelling for business? Do I want to spend two hours of each day on a commute?” 

Recent statistics show that 4 million Americans quit their jobs this past July. And a survey of Canadian workers found that 42 per cent of employees would quit their job if remote working is not offered going forward. This presents an enormous challenge for today’s leaders.

It’s clear that, despite the impetus to return to work, people are not ready to give up the flexibility of working from home. And yet, leaders must continue to make decisions in running their businesses. 

Trilogy Effect’s Managing Partner explains, “Leaders are in the throes of making big decisions about the business models, about real estate, their operations. And they answer to boards, to shareholders and to the public. We’ve been in a holding pattern for more than 18 months, but we are now realising that the return to work is not a problem which needs solving, so much as it is a journey we’re taking together that is full of continual shifts and course alterations. And we don’t know what the end looks like.”

The trend is not so much the great resignation as it is the great ‘awakening’, according to Mary Beth Sawicki, Trilogy Effect Founding Partner. “Business leaders need to recognize their responsibility in supporting people in their lives as well as their work.It’s more than work/life balance, it’s work/life integration. They need to listen to their people, and ensure they feel seen and understood. To successfully navigate through these unusual times, leaders must let humanity flourish.” 

• Why are people leaving their employers?
• What are the hot button issues behind the great resignation? 
• Why is being human good for business? 

Links to information about the issues discussed in the is show: 

• How to be a better leader by being a better listener
• Trilogy Effect Leadership Guidebook
• Electronic Arts’ People-Centered Approach to Business
• Facebook | LinkedIn | Twitter | Instagram

We invite you to subscribe to the Being Human Is Good for Business Podcast on iTunes, Amazon, Google Podcasts, iHeart Radio and Spotify (links below) or wherever you get your podcasts. Please rate us and leave a review!

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In this episode of the Being Human is Good For Business Podcast we meet Chief Technology Officer Mike Potter of the business intelligence technology company, Qlik. More than 50,000 companies, worldwide, depend on Qlik technology for crucial business insights. The company has more than 2,000 employees and operations in 30 countries. 

“The key to being a successful leader is knowing and understanding your own strengths and limitations,” explains Mike. “Then you must surround yourself with people who not only compensate for those limitations, but challenge you to be better and then work together with them in a way that is inspiring for everyone.” 

Mike shares some of the leadership lessons he’s learned throughout his career as a technical leader in large IT companies, especially the importance of learning to fail. He says, “We like to make new mistakes every day. We take risks and we treat failures as data. This means creating a culture that supports failure because if you make people afraid to take risks, you can't lead, you can't be the best in the industry, you can't do things that others aren't.”

Mike agrees that leading a multinational, global team brings its own challenges when it comes to developing a strong work culture. “We have a diverse group, and that brings its own set of dynamics. It's quite interesting seeing how the different countries approach challenges, problems, conflicts and such. We meet each other in a central approach culturally, while at the same time, honouring our local countries, where we come from and who we are.”

One thing that supports this central meeting is the team’s use of the Enneagram framework. It allows leaders to see their own automatic patterns of thinking and behaving and helps them become their best as a leader. 

“My leadership team and I all learned how to use the Enneagram. It was an interesting exercise to put a bunch of engineers in front of a model like this, because the first thing they do is reverse engineer it!” explains Mike. 

Trilogy Effect Managing Partner Heather Marasse agrees: “It's always interesting to bring the Enneagram to a highly technical team. They're rigorous both in their approach and in their thinking.  It’s reaffirming that everyone is interested in learning more about themselves and about each other. Mike’s team was completely engaged and continue to use the Enneagram as a practical tool to support their ongoing leadership development.” 

Listen to the full interview to gain practical leadership tips and insights. Learn: 

• How teams must be allowed to fail if they are going to become their best, most creative selves and do their very best work. 
• How supporting your team in developing self awareness and a greater understanding of each other will fuel creativity and high-performance. 
• Why we sometimes need to show our own vulnerabilities to become the best, most inspiring leaders and to build strong teams. 

Links to information about the concepts and tools discussed in the show: 

• Trilogy Effect’s free leadership guidebook to be your best self as a leader.
• Detached and Observant: Meet the Enneagram Type 5 Leader
• Leading in Unusual Times
• Facebook | LinkedIn | Twitter | Instagram

We invite you to subscribe to the Being Human Is Good for Business Podcast on iTunes, Amazon, Google Podcasts, iHeart Radio and Spotify (links below) or wherever you get your podcasts. Please rate us and leave a review!

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