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Featured Guests: Kevin Cassidy & Christopher Washington 

Formed in the aftermath of World War I, the International Labour Organization has evolved along with the workforce as part of the League of Nations and the United Nations. The ILO studies the environment for workers from a tripartite perspective:  from labor itself, from business, and from government. All three are necessary to create optimal conditions for workers – but for women, minorities, and citizens of developing nations, conditions are far from optimal.

Kevin Cassidy, Director for the ILO Office for the United States and Canada, has a uniquely comprehensive view on both the issues and solutions for labor today…as well as glimpses of how artificial intelligence and new tech will affect labor tomorrow. It’s not what you think; CEOs and CFOs, for example, are in the group most easily replaced by AI. Kevin and Franklin University Provost Christopher Washington join host Maureen Metcalf in this wide-ranging discussion of labor’s past, present, and future.

Featured Guests: Tom Grote and Christoph Hinske

Many — perhaps too many — corporations think they’re transforming their business models…but in reality continue to do the same old stuff; they just put fancy new words around it.  Innovative leaders focus more on real systemic change than on the vocabulary.  Many of those change leaders take lessons learned from organizations such as the Innovative Leadership Institute, merge them into their business models, and develop unique new ways of improvement and change.

Two of the Innovative Leadership Institute’s certified facilitators join us to discuss how they took the concepts they learned and applied them to their business functions.  Graduates Tom Grote and Christoph Hinske join Maureen to discuss how they have extended the program content, and built a values-based systems mapping technique that helped shape both of their professional and personal journeys.

Featured Guest: George Limbert

Helping nurses and doctors during the pandemic. Assisting first responders as towns recover from natural disasters. Joining the fight against human trafficking.

Red Roof’s evolution as a corporation is more than just another branding story. New president George Limbert firmly believes leaders must guide their organizations into always doing what is right: for customers, of course, but also for employees…and communities. As a new president, we plan on following George quarterly to better learn his vision, observe his evolution and growth as a leader, and study how he incorporates his principles into day-to-day operations. Join us for this first introductory episode as George discusses his history, and the steps he’s already taken in the midst of 2021’s radical viral, social, and economic changes.

Featured Guest: John Kilpatrick

Traditional organizations follow a linear economy: everything flows one-way, from resource to product to consumer to trash. It’s often summarized by the mantra “take, make, waste.” That certainly doesn’t mitigate climate change, pollution, and other threats to humanity. Is there a better path that won’t disrupt our consumer-driven culture?

John Kilpatrick heartily believes so. Just circle back to the economy of our great-great-grandparents: the circular economy. It’s the old “reduce, reuse, recycle” mantra, with a heavy emphasis on the “reuse.” It was the common sense way of life for most Americans for much of our history. John goes into the details—and reveals the clear benefits to both business and consumers—as he joins host Maureen Metcalf in this episode.

Featured Guest: Darren Chait

There’s one simple truth most working adults realize in their first job:  meetings stink.  Darren Chait is no exception.  While he was an attorney, he recoiled at how inefficient and archaic lawyers’ meetings are…then he had sticker shock when he saw the invoices and realized clients pay for that slow-paced inefficiency!  That put him on the path to finding a better way for meeting.  The result:  Hugo, an online app that changes the way we think about meetings.

On the way, Darren learned that leadership in a fast-growth startup is very different than what the textbooks say. He joins Maureen to share what he’s learned on the journey about leadership, how collaboration is changing, modern team dynamics, shared consciousness, direction versus support, and when to make leader problems team problems.

Featured Guest: Pete Martin

If you’re a leader of a business or non-profit, how you spend your time has a direct impact on the success of your organization. Focusing on just one big idea instead of scattershot-ting your attention keeps that impact positive.

What you, as a leader, work on minute-by-minute, hour-by-hour, day-by-day matters—and either moves the needle and propels growth or constricts it. For instance, consistently and strategically choosing one “big idea” per month will move a business forward faster than any one particular tactic. Working on one big idea across each pillar of your business – team, customers, capital and strategic execution (and personal mindset) – will lead to exponential growth over time. Pete Martin joins Maureen to share reasons why companies get stuck and stop growing, and what leaders can do to change that.

Featured Guest: Ron Carucci

Honesty is more than a character trait: it’s a muscle that has to be built to stay strong; honesty can be learned. Truth, justice, and purpose are “three sides of the same coin.” Together, they mean honesty – to have honesty, you need all three; honesty means you have to say the right thing, do the right thing, and say and do them for the right reason…even when it’s hard. Based on a 15-year longitudinal study of more than 3,200 leaders, we can now prove under what conditions people will tell the truth, behave fairly, and serve a greater good…and under what conditions they will lie, cheat, and serve their own interests. Ron Carrucci joins the show to discuss his book, To Be Honest. It is a book about heroes – the honest leaders and thinkers we should all want to emulate. Honest organizations out-perform, out-compete, and out-attract top talent by substantial multipliers.

Featured Guests: Amiel Handelsman and Jewel Kinch-Thomas

America’s racial reckoning is underway, yet continues to be hotly debated. One novel approach comes from leadership consultants Amiel Handelsman and Jewel Kinch-Thomas: frame it as a hero’s or heroine’s journey. The answer is surprising, simple – and makes a great deal of sense in fostering reckoning…then reconciliation.

The same core principles also apply to leadership, particularly when combined to the fundamental leadership style required by musicians when performing jazz:  the music simply couldn’t be performed without a leader who knows how to forge a team, yet preserve the unique perspectives and talents of each member of the team.

Guest: Janet Fouts

We recognize the many layers of stress we are under day-to-day. Those stresses are very real – and often increase as we move up the leadership ladder. That stress has consequences, both physical and mental. What can we do?

Janet Fouts has distilled some very simple tools that can help us be less reactive and more responsive to what life throws at us. They’re based on her deep dive into mindfulness as she dealt with the extreme stress of working as a full time digital marketer while caring for a dying partner. In the process, she learned that when we are aware of ourselves, we have better opportunities to understand others, making us better leaders, communicators, and partners.

Here’s what Janet and Maureen cover:

• How to recognize, and deal with, the triggers that can set you off;
• Ways to learn mindfulness in easy microsteps; and
• Why work meetings cause so much stress (and why Americans do meetings so poorly).

Featured Guests: William B. Bonvillian & Sanjay Sarma

Technological advances are putting quality jobs out of reach for workers who lack the proper skills and training. From pre-K through college and on-the-job “professional development,” the United States’ old-school education system simply isn’t up to the task. Universities, for example, can no longer be havens of academic theory and football; enrollment will begin to trickle over the next decade as college grads become too unprepared for the modern workplace.

We need a roadmap for a new workforce education system to rebuild America’s working class, tackling inequality by equipping our workers for twenty-first-century jobs. The post-pandemic workplace requires us to train more workers more quickly, using innovative methods. William Bonvillian and Sanjay Sarma — both of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) — join host Maureen Metcalf to share various ideas on the new roles community colleges, employers, governments, and universities need in workforce education, as well as new education technologies that may be adopted to deliver such training.