Show notes:

- Focus on building trust within the team before diving into problem-solving [00:00:00]

- Prioritize getting the right people in place and headed in the right direction [00:01:08]

- Shift focus from analyzing the problem to evaluating the team's ability to get the job done [00:01:32]

- Recognize the importance of planning and looking ahead in careers and leadership [00:06:27]

- Address the dangers of reactive problem-solving without purpose and structure [00:08:31]

- Question initial information as a leader and involve the right people in decision-making [00:10:34]

- Empower and trust your team members by selecting them for specific tasks [00:12:32]

- Delegate problems to the team and provide the right level of coaching to support their success [00:15:02]

- Tackle the biggest problem first, instead of focusing on quick wins [00:19:12]

- Avoid the "quick win trap" and focus on addressing the most significant and challenging problems [00:21:18]

- Demonstrate the consultant's value quickly by addressing the system's bottleneck [00:23:25]

- Have confidence in your team's ability to work through problems [00:25:02]

- Invest time and energy into coaching, feedback, and effective communication for a strong team [00:27:44]

- Prioritize the team's success over personal agendas [00:33:23]

- Pair team members to work on tasks together for better problem-solving and team-building [00:39:07]

- Go through the stages of storming, forming, norming, and performing to build trust and improve collaboration [00:47:07]

Thanks for joining us today. Don't forget to hit the subscribe button and feel free to reach us at hello@wannagrabcoffee.com.

- Building trust between leaders and teams

- Trust as the foundation of psychological safety

- Leveraging radical candor in delivering difficult messages

- Establishing trust and psychological safety within a team

- Scaling care and trust across growing teams

- Coaching the coachable and avoiding over-focus on underperformers

- Creating an environment of open dialogue and vulnerability

- Storytelling in leadership

Thanks for listening. Please subscribe and share this episode to anyone you think could benefit.

1. Adjusting to recording again and optimizing our workspace for better productivity.

2. The significance of career progression within our teams and the importance of fostering an environment that supports growth and success.

3. The value of setting clear goals and priorities for the year ahead, emphasizing the need for clarity before the year starts.

4. Sharing personal experiences with promoting team members, highlighting the positive impact of providing opportunities for growth and development.

5. Balancing professional and personal life, and exploring our creative side through architectural drawing and sketching as a way to unwind and find balance.

6. ChatGPT and AI as a way to augment human productivity and output, with the downside of creating too much noise in the ecosystem.

We cover the challenges of maintaining a healthy work-life balance, especially when working remotely. We believe that taking breaks and setting boundaries are essential to avoiding burnout and staying productive.

• Share thoughts on the importance of being present in the moment and focusing on the task at hand. We also discusses the benefits of taking time off, such as reducing stress and improving overall wellbeing.
• Talk about recent road trips and how they helped recharge and reset. We also touch on the importance of finding time for self-care and exploring new experiences.
• We explore the idea of "divergence and convergence" during podcast discussions, where we uncover new ideas and perspectives that wouldn't otherwise be discovered.
• Taking breaks, setting boundaries, and taking time for self-care. Prioritize their wellbeing and to take steps towards finding a healthy work-life balance.

Thanks for joining us today and don't forget to hit the subscribe button or reach out at hello@wannagrabcoffee.com.

Bill Campbell's advice is clear - tolerating the Aberrant Genius is OK as long as their behaviors are in the service (or intended to be in the service) of the good of the company, or the good of the team. When it can't be tolerated is when they continually put him or herself above the team.

We think feedback and coaching are critical skills for everyone on the team and, if not done consistently and effectively, will introduce more risk if you have Aberrant Geniuses on your team. We also discuss whether or not the time and energy required to manage these profiles is the most effective place for leaders to spend their time.

We also discuss how managing this dynamic as a leader wades into decision-making. Critical decisions should have a timeframe. What is the useful life of a decision? When making critical decisions, it's vital we re-visit and re-assess at some point in the future. Too many decisions are made by "default" (taking no action) or "permanently" never adjusted in light of new information/wisdom.

We're back after a long summer break with one of our favorite leadership concepts from the Trillion Dollar coach around executive decision-making. Bill Campbell says our job as leaders are to ensure all perspectives get heard and considered when making decisions AND the accountability for the final decision rests on the leader's shoulders. In other words, it's the leader's job to break ties because sometimes the team's direction will align with the leader's directional vision, and others it won't. In our roles as leaders, we have to balance facilitating, enabling, and decision-making.

One thing we can do as leaders to immediately improve our decision-making skills is to create a Decision Journal. You can read more about Decision Journals here: https://fs.blog/decision-journal/

For more information, visit our website at Wanna Grab Coffee? website  or send us an email at hello@wannagrabcoffee.com.

Bill Campbell brought his own unique flair to coaching his team and rooted it in solid leadership foundations that we will discuss today.

We discuss a few thoughts and ideas around how to improve your own 1:1 effectiveness which center mostly around consistency and preparation. No single one-on-one will be life-changing, but the frequency of these relationship investments will compound over time. You will also get a 10x return on the time you invest preparing for the one-on-one which will lead to faster growth of your team.

For more information, visit our website at Wanna Grab Coffee? website or send us an email at hello@wannagrabcoffee.com.

The Trip Report is exactly what it sounds like. A brief, informal, overview of a recent vacation you took aimed at sharing with your colleagues to build trust and help them get to know you better. When you have a team that is willing to share Trip Reports, you can foster a higher degree of empathy and collaboration over time.

For more information, visit our website at Wanna Grab Coffee? website or send us an email at hello@wannagrabcoffee.com.

In today's episode we continue our series on Bill Campbell and the Trillion Dollar Coach with Chapter 2: Your Title Makes You a Manager. Your People Make You a Leader.

This chapter is solid gold and a great start to the book. It's also very dense with lots of differing advice around leadership, executive effectiveness, and building great relationships throughout the organization.

Today we cover the areas of the chapter focused on building trust with your team and some of the attributes as a coach Bill brought to bear on the team to help it level up, both at the individual and group level.

For more information, visit our website at Wanna Grab Coffee? website or send us an email at hello@wannagrabcoffee.com.

Thanks for joining us today and don't forget to hit the subscribe button or reach out at hello@wannagrabcoffee.com.

Bill Campbell is not who you might have normally pegged as a fantastic leader that was in the middle of some of the greatest successes from the largest companies in silicon valley. He had a unique approach that informs how we might improve our own leadership craft.

Just like before, we will kick off the book, cover each chapter individually, and close out the series with our final thoughts and some ideas on how we can collectively grow.

Thanks for joining us today and don't forget to hit the subscribe button or reach out at hello@wannagrabcoffee.com.

• How do I ramp-up quickly on a new technology/topic?
• How often should I check in with my boss?
• How do I get more responsibility?

We referenced a couple of interesting resources during the discussion as well:

• Computer Scientist Explains Machine Learning in 5 Levels of Difficulty | WIRED
• The Feynman Learning Technique

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Imposter syndrome, also called perceived fraudulence, involves feelings of self-doubt and personal incompetence that persist despite your education, experience, and accomplishments. -HealthLine

We start the episode covering what Impostor Syndrome is, how you can recognize it in ourself and others, and how to overcome it. If you or someone on your team is struggling with Impostor Syndrome, this is the podcast episode for you.

Thanks for joining us today and don't forget to hit the subscribe button or reach out at hello@wannagrabcoffee.com.

Thanks for joining us after a year, we love doing this and hope you are finding value in our content. As always, don't forget to hit the subscribe button or reach out at hello@wannagrabcoffee.com.

Today we cover thoughts and ideas for regaining control of your calendar, managing expectations around your time, and making the time for things that are most important to you.

Thanks for joining us today and don't forget to hit the subscribe button or reach out at hello@wannagrabcoffee.com.

In this episode, we discuss how to think differently about vacations, effective strategies for taking vacations, and how overall health and wellbeing come into play.

Thanks for joining us today and don't forget to hit the subscribe button or reach out at hello@wannagrabcoffee.com.

Episode at a Glance:

1. NPR coined the term Great Resignation as a way to label the abnormally high number of people planning on leaving their jobs as we begin to exit the worst of the pandemic.
2. The decision to leave is largely driven by a desire for remote work flexibility and potentially a drive to take control over part of their life after navigating a crisis that gives a fresh start.
3. Organizations are poised to lose their best and brightest in this time period as the job market has heavily skewed towards job seekers.
4. What are actions we can take today to mitigate impact within our own organizations, or is it too late?

Further Reading:

• https://hbswk.hbs.edu/item/worried-about-the-great-resignation-be-a-good-company-to-come-from
• https://www.npr.org/2021/06/24/1007914455/as-the-pandemic-recedes-millions-of-workers-are-saying-i-quit

Thanks for joining us today and don't forget to hit the subscribe button or reach out at hello@wannagrabcoffee.com.

Thanks for joining us today and don't forget to hit the subscribe button or reach out at hello@wannagrabcoffee.com.

Thanks for joining us today and don't forget to hit the subscribe button or reach out at hello@wannagrabcoffee.com.

This is a presentation Robert gives in our new-hire orientation expanding on some of the great work Patrick Lencioni discusses in his book The Ideal Team Player: https://www.tablegroup.com/product/ideal-team-player.

We'll be back next week with brand new episodes.

Thanks for joining us today and don't forget to hit the subscribe button or reach out at hello@wannagrabcoffee.com.

Also, we are all taking some time off through July and August and might have a few gaps in our episode releases. Don't worry, we aren't going anywhere! We have lots of great content planned as we head into our second year of podcasting.

Thanks for joining us today and don't forget to hit the subscribe button or reach out at hello@wannagrabcoffee.com.

Truth: We follow spikes

Today we cover the final lie in our Nine Lies About Work series with Leadership is a Thing. It turns out, instead of classifying a leader as someone who possesses a pre-defined list of skills and developed some mastery over those skills (the traditional proxy for leadership) - we instead classify leaders as someone who has followers.

And, it turns out, followers follow the "spikes" of others. They are attracted to the most defined and extreme parts of another human towards a cause.

“When Aeschines spoke, they said, ‘How well he speaks.’

But when Demosthenes spoke, they said, ‘Let us march against Philip.’”

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Whether or not performance reviews are done well within your organization, they represent a core part of the career growth process and should be taken seriously. In addition, performance reviews offer an opportunity for you to share your career narrative and get full credit for your growth over the last review period.

Thanks for joining us today and don't forget to hit the subscribe button or reach out at hello@wannagrabcoffee.com.

Truth: Live-in-work matters most

We think the authors really hit their stride when they focus on the meta-work subjects and how to think about pulling those out of your team.

"Burnout isn't the absence of balance, but the absence of love."

Work is hard, the only way to do it sustainably is to have areas of work that you love. The number doesn't have to be that high - only around 20% and it's not a cure-all, because work is hard. BUT, if you love a good chunk of your work, you are most likely to be able to do it successfully and sustainably over time AND you avoid much of the downside like burnout and all of the healh-related issues that come along with it.

This chapter really spoke to me. I feel like I am most balanced in my life when I am professionally exhausted. I don't even need 40 hours a week to do that, but I need something interesting and challenging and difficult to work on with a sufficient degree of autonomy. If I don't have that in my professional life, I've found that my personal life suffers - even if I don't have that much on my plate.

"This person didn’t find this work—she didn’t happen upon it, fully-formed and waiting for her. Instead, she made it. She took a generic job, with a generic job description, and then, within that job, she took her loves seriously, and gradually, little by little and a lot over time, she turned the best of her job into most of her job."

"She tweaked and tweaked the role until, in all the most important ways, it came to resemble her—it became an expression of her. You can do the same. "

This is very much tied to strengths, this idea of leaning in on those, expressing them, growing them. This is the key that unlocks professional love.

Autonomy/Mastery/Purpose - Dan Pink and Cal Newport talk a lot about this. They would argue following your passions is silly. The probability that you have a passion that you are born with, that is something you are good at, will love for your entire life, and is actually useful are slim. They argue you build passion over time by building strength.

Story about Miles the anesthesiologist and what he loves about work, other similar doctors loved a different aspect, but they all had roughly the same job.

"The world won’t do your weaving for you—it doesn’t care about your red threads. The only person who can stop and be attentive enough to identify these threads, and weave them intelligently into the fabric of your work, is you."

Thanks for joining us today and don't forget to hit the subscribe button or reach out at hello@wannagrabcoffee.com.

Truth: People have momentum

Potential is an intangible subjective opinion about someone that is rooted in almost a character trait instead of a tangible behavior or skill. You can't assess the potential of someone because we're all unique, our brains develop differently, we have different interests, we're all at different stages in our lives, etc.

so. to bucket a person into one of two PERMANENT buckets, high-potential or low-potential might be well meaning but is ultimately an unsophisticated way to assess current capabilities and future performance. Worse of all, these labels stick with you for your entire tenure at the organization you are at and it's virtually impossible to change.

Idea here is to reframe the discussion around momentum, which has an analogy back to physics. Momentum is a product of mass and velocity. Two measurable traits, that when you multiply them together, you have a meaningful term that is a vector - so magnitude and direction. Momentum is a term that we all have experienced and is easier to wrap our head around and does not require us to tell the future.

"Potential is a one-sided evaluation. Momentum is an ongoing conversation"

In the idea of performance momentum mass refers to inherent and enduring traits. These things don't really change or if they do, not by much, or not very frequently.

• behavioral tendencies
• core values
• extroversion/introversion
• How they prefer to work
• Favorite parts of their job
• Things they get excited about

Then you have velocity. These are demonstrated skills, performance record, credentials. These describe what your responsibilities are, and how well you've done them. They can be used as an indicator of direction, but they can also change - people change the focus of their careers over time.

• Record of performance
• Demonstrated behaviors
• Feedback from peers
• Measurable and coachable areas that that be improved and adjusted over time

These concepts are rooted in something real, that you can take and help shape/coach/assess for the future. We have taken an unusable subjective assessment that is unsophisticated and, with a little bit of effort and data we already have, morph the discussion into something practical and gives us an opportunity to multiply our team's contributions within the organization in a sustainable way - and that are in our direct's control.

Understanding these two areas requires two desecrate lines of questioning and the ability to synthesize them - the point here is there is an ongoing conversation here with your team.

• In your 1:1s ask probing questions over time to understand those behavioral tendencies, core values, and general personal and professional preferences.
• At the same time, over time, through your 1:1s, feedback, coaching, and delegation, build a solid understanding of the existing skills and strengths of your team and overlay with the first part

And most near term, stop thinking about potential, stop talking about potential. Have a more modern, nuanced, sophisticated, and effective discussion around momentum as defined by a person's professional mass and velocity.

Never in my life have I wanted a high mass.

Thanks for joining us today and don't forget to hit the subscribe button or reach out at hello@wannagrabcoffee.com.

"Content-free executives have no value in startups."

As the information landscape around us continues to outpace our ability to manage it, this truism is affecting all knowledge workers - not just executives in the frontier of business and technology.

It's not enough today to be a "generic" leader or thought worker. Today, we must have *perspective* about the world around us.

Today it's vital that leaders are able to rapidly take in relevant information from the world around us, make sense of it, generate insight, and make a decision. This process is what we mean when we use terms like *Thought Leadership* or *Perspective*.

Luckily, this is a skill that can be learned and mastery over the ability to create thought leadership consistently over time will become more and more critical to succeed in our careers over the long term.

Thanks for joining us today and don't forget to hit the subscribe button and reach out at hello@wannagrabcoffee.com.

We are firm believers that everyone experiences fear and acts of *bravery* are individual's willingness to face their fears and move forward in spite of what they are feeling. This ability can have profound positive impacts on your life and career.

Unfortunately, this is easier said than done. In this podcast, we cover practical tips to help think through, process, and mitigate your fears so you can better prepare and manage them moving forward.

"I believe the intervention that is most effective, the minimum effective dose here, is just that first part of writing down what it is you're afraid of."

You can't keep yourself from experiencing the chemical reactions associated with fear, but you can work to override and mitigate their effects after the fact.

Thanks for joining us today and don't forget to hit the subscribe button or reach out at hello@wannagrabcoffee.com.

We cover the subtle difference between feedback given about an individual against an obscure set of criteria - with an arbitrary numerical scoring system - and the professional opinion and experience of the leader discussing how they experience/perceive the behaviors and performance of their directs.

We believe the latter approach, recommended by the book, is a great starting point for more effective "performance management" within an organization. Working on an individual, context rich, and nuanced approach for your team will yield more dividends in the future than a yearly infrequent scoring against standardized criteria.

Thanks for joining us today and don't forget to hit the subscribe button or reach out at hello@wannagrabcoffee.com.

We cover the difference between feedback and attention and why the ability to deliver effective positive and negative feedback is a cornerstone of strong leadership and management.

As leaders, it's vital that we build exceptional relationships with our team as a prerequisite to delivering performance related feedback - especially negative feedback.

We also cover 2 rules-of-thumb around feedback:

• If you want to be a world-class performer in any discipline you need about 10 times the feedback that you're getting today or that your peer group is getting.
• If you want your team to be world-class, you should be delivering feedback to your team at least once per day.

Thanks for joining us today and don't forget to hit the subscribe button or reach out at hello@wannagrabcoffee.com.

Today we focus our career discussion on the executive ranks of an organization. We talk about what the role of an executive is, what attributes make up an executive, and what skills we can all start building today to succeed as an executive.

It turns out, defining an executive role is not straightforward. There are several attributes that can encompass a modern executive:

• Signing authority
• Weight of role power (towards the top of a multi-layered organization)
• Responsibility/Ownership of large initiatives
• Decisionmaking authority to allocate the organization's resources
• Large "blast radius" (decisions impact lots of people)

We also discuss five cornerstone skills for succeeding as an executive. Luckily, these are all skills you can start building, practicing, improving, and demonstrating today:

• Dealing with complexity
• Defining and living your core values
• Mastering the art of delegation
• Building and cultivating exceptional relationships
• Broadening your gaze internally and externally

We hope this podcast episode demystifies what it means to be an executive. We'd love to hear your thoughts.

Thanks for joining us today and don't forget to hit the subscribe button or reach out at hello@wannagrabcoffee.com.

We talk about the tradeoffs of investing in your strengths instead of weaknesses and how leaders can work to build an exceptional team through mobilizing the diverse strengths of those around them.

Thanks for joining us today and don't forget to hit the subscribe button or reach out at hello@wannagrabcoffee.com.

We talk about the dual polarity of Management and Leadership and how we must keep a constant balance through articulating the meaning/values of the organization while still focusing on being effective and making progress.

Thanks for joining us today and don't forget to hit the subscribe button or reach out at hello@wannagrabcoffee.com.

Today we answer another question from the internet around adjusting to a new leadership role. These situations are always unique, complex, and nuanced so we do our best to provide some support for a tricky situation.

Thanks for joining us today and don't forget to hit the subscribe button or reach out at hello@wannagrabcoffee.com.

Kaufman updates Maslow's hierarchy with a more practical sailboat metaphor which you can learn more about on his website. Instead of a pyramid, which implies climbing towards the pinnacle, and anchoring to a specific level - we talk about a much more flexible model of a sailboat navigating the ocean with other people/boats around us.

We think this is a great metaphor for personal and professional lives and hope you get something out of it as well.

Thanks for joining us today and don't forget to hit the subscribe button or reach out at hello@wannagrabcoffee.com.

We discuss the value of plans, planning, and the need for teams and individuals to make and meet commitments in order for meaningful progress to be made.

We also talk about the difference between planning and decision-making and how leaders can benefit from the guidance from the chapter from that perspective.

Thanks for joining us today and don't forget to hit the subscribe button or reach out at hello@wannagrabcoffee.com.

We discuss each weakness and ways we mitigate them (spoiler alert: they all involve surrounding ourselves with other people who excel where we are weakest).

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One of the core arguments in the first chapter is: Perks attract, teams retain.

When organizations recruit, they offer surface-level perks that are attractive in nature (fancy cafeterias, free dry cleaning, bring your dog to work, company name brand, etc.) which do a great job of getting the attention of prospective talent in a crowded market, but do little over time to actually retain that talent.

This happens because the individuals you end up working with have much more impact on your overall happiness and career growth than anything the organization can do at the macro-level. A terrible boss or toxic teammate chip away at any of the happiness material perks can hope to give.

In general, we feel this is a strong start to the book and are enjoying the series so far - we hope you are as well. Thanks for joining us today and don't forget to hit the subscribe button or reach out at hello@wannagrabcoffee.com.

In today's episode, we discuss the book, some of the impact it had on Igor's career, provide a brief overview of the lies, and discuss our initial reactions/roles moving forward.

1. People care which company they work for
2. The best plan wins
3. The best companies cascade goals
4. The best people are well-rounded
5. People need feedback
6. People can reliably rate other people
7. People have potential
8. Work-life balance matters most
9. Leadership is a thing

If you are interested in following along, you can find Nine Lies About Work at any major bookseller. We're hoping to provide some color, experience, thoughts, and narrative about each Lie in order to inform our own thinking of our leadership style and hopefully share thoughts and ideas that are helpful to you as well.

This series is sure to create some healthy conflict and drama in the group so we're excited to go on this journey with you!

Thanks for joining us today and don't forget to hit the subscribe button or reach out at hello@wannagrabcoffee.com.

• What are book recommendations that will help you grow your career?
• What is the #1 behavior required to be a successful leader?
• What do I do if I get feedback and don't agree with it?

Thanks for joining us today and don't forget to hit the subscribe button or reach out at hello@wannagrabcoffee.com.

In today's episode, we check in on our 2021 goals, talk about what distracts us from meeting our goals and provide some guidance on what to do about it. It's clear we are all still recovering from a bad year, so give yourself some grace, take a step back, assess where you are and where you want to be, and move forward in that direction.

If you want some resources to help with this, we recommended the following:

• Digital Minimalism by Cal Newport
• Deep Work by Cal Newport
• Indistractable by Nir Eyal

Thanks for joining us today and don't forget to hit the subscribe button or reach out at hello@wannagrabcoffee.com.

Organizations are constantly struggling to balance moving towards the vauge-but-aspirational vision statements with bland-but-measurable objectives and measures. Vision statements may offer our teams the inspirational nudge they need to galvanize around a cause, but ultimately offer little guidance on our daily work. On the other side of the coin, objectives tend to be bland and rote, often disconnecting us from the broader "why" behind what we are doing.

In today's discussion, we talk about how Essentialism, applied at the organizational level may serve as an effective tool for leaders to help bridge the gap between the inspirational and concrete.

As will all leadership tools, there is nuance required for implementation (or even usefulness of the tool) - we'd love to hear your thoughts on whether you think Essentialism is a tool worth adding to your kit.

Thanks for joining us today and don't forget to hit the subscribe button or reach out at hello@wannagrabcoffee.com.

We really like the idea of Vitality as a term over Health because Vitality implies energy applied to life and doing the things required to have enough energy to reach your full potential. Health is very important but is traditionally focused on preventative measures - avoiding sickness, etc.

We also discuss seven different types of rest from a great TED talk by Dr. Sandra Dalton-Smith: https://ideas.ted.com/the-7-types-of-rest-that-every-person-needs/

• Physical Rest - what we normally think of, sleeping/napping
• Mental Rest - Slow down, take breaks, get thoughts out of your head through journaling, etc.
• Sensory Rest - Take a break from screens
• Creative Rest - Activities that re-awaken the awe and wonder inside each of us
• Emotional Rest - Having time and space to express your feelings
• Social Rest - Focusing on relationships that revive us
• Spiritual Rest - Connecting beyond the physical

Thanks for joining us today and don't forget to hit the subscribe button or reach out at hello@wannagrabcoffee.com.

When most people think achievement, they immediately get into goal setting with SMART goals. At Wanna Grab Coffee? we really hate the idea of SMART goals and think there is a better way.

We talk about how the very act of setting goals is rooted in optimism - believing the future will be better than today, which can provide hope and motivation when we reach obstacles.

Effective goals require three things which we will provide a framework for more consistently defining and planning around:

• The "Wish" - what is it you hope to achieve
• The "Waypower" - have you defined a realistic way/path/plan
• The "Willpower" - Energy and effort required to finish

Finally, we talk about the WOOP framework as a scientifically backed method of setting and achieving effective goals:

• Wish - Define what you want
• Outcome - Visualize and articulate the benefits of getting it
• Obstacle - Think through obstacles and roadblocks that could stand in your way
• Plan - Create a plan up-front to handle obstacles and overcome them

We hope you are getting value out of our series around flourishing in work and life, wellbeing, and productivity after a difficult 2020. If there is anything we can do to help you, feel free to reach out.

Thanks for joining us today and don't forget to hit the subscribe button or reach out at hello@wannagrabcoffee.com.

Today Robert, Igor, and Charles talk about finding your Essential Intent in 2021 in order to give you greater clarity in your personal and professional life, as well as equip you to fight the success paradox.

The two things holding us back from finding our essential intent are:

• We are doing too many non-essential things
• We are not clear about what is essential

We also cover several topics around the idea of essentialism and doing your best work:

• Essentialism: The Disciplined Pursuit of Less by Greg McKeown
• Time Block Planner by Cal Newport
• The War of Art by Stephen Pressfield

Thanks for joining us today and don't forget to hit the subscribe button or reach out at hello@wannagrabcoffee.com. We'd love to hear your thoughts on your Essential Intent and how it is guiding your actions in 2021.

We cover a ton of topics in this episode, we hope it's helpful:

• Designing Your Life: How to Build a Well-Lived, Joyful Life by Bill Burnett
• How Will You Measure Your LIfe by Clayton Christensen
• Design your life by designing your week
• Understand your times of productivity and times of constraint throughout your day and week
• The Career/Family Happiness Matrix
• Think about how you spend your weeks as a "portfolio" of time investments
• Journaling to understand how you are spending your weeks over long periods of time
• The importance of sustained effort over time
• Don't compare your beginning with someone else's middle

Thanks for joining us today and don't forget to hit the subscribe button or reach out at hello@wannagrabcoffee.com. We'd love to hear your thoughts on productivity systems so feel free to let us know about your systems and how they are helping or causing you frustration.

In our opinion, productivity systems and tools are highly personal - and are never perfect. Instead of offering a functionality / use-case deep dive of our individual tool choices and how we use them, we cover some of our thoughts around the mindset of productivity systems and how they should evolve to meet your needs - ultimately removing psychic weight.

The primary concept behind productivity systems uses the analogy of the car, driver, and mechanic - we play each of these in our lives:

• When you are the car you are in a state of doing work. Driving from point A->B
• The car on its own can't know where to go, that's where the driver comes in. The driver sets the direction and ensures we are going to the right destination - doing the right things.
• The engineer/mechanic improves the entire system, making the planning or execution of tasks more efficient over time

Usually stress comes in when one of these three personas are over-used or neglected (e.g. getting a bunch of tasks done as the car but not working on the right priorities).

The three of us use our productivity systems differently:

• Robert uses OmniFocus strictly as a near-term commitment tracker and creates custom filters to get priority tasks in front of him quickly
• Charles uses Todoist as a "brain dump" to remove as much psychic weight from his life as possible - which creates a negative side effect (task hoarding)
• Igor uses Trello as a visual representation of what is on his plate which helps him be more creative at work

Even though we use different tools, there are some areas/outcomes we feel similarly about:

• We discuss the absolute importance of getting todo's out of your brain and into a trusted system
• A trusted system is a place for your tasks/commitments that store your "open loops" and keep things from falling through the cracks
• Trusted systems should remove the psychic weight of the open loops in your life - which frees you up to work more creatively and focused
• Your productivity systems will have downsides or negative side effects (like task hoarding) - watch out for these and adapt over time
• The Eisenhower Matrix is generally helpful - or maybe not, who knows?!

Thanks for joining us today and don't forget to hit the subscribe button or reach out at hello@wannagrabcoffee.com. We'd love to hear your thoughts on productivity systems so feel free to let us know about your systems and how they are helping or causing you frustration.

If you'd like to take a similar Character Strengths survey like we discussed about today, you can find one here.

We also discuss how Character Strengths help shape our Core Values, and therefore meaning and how all of these concepts apply to taking on personal responsibility.

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We also cover some leadership stories and how balancing the polarities all leaders encounter, empowering your team to take on more, and taking ownership for mistakes leads to better long-term results.

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We also talk about the idea of Active Constructive Responding as a way to exponentially increase the relationships with those around you.

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That's why we're spending so much time on PERMA-V. We wholeheartedly believe that when times are tough and uncertain, improving positive emotions, becoming more engaged at work, leveling up your relationships, plugging into a greater meaning, checking items off of your todo list, and making sure you get enough sleep and are eating well can make a material positive impact on your life. The future is bright, we just need to hang on long enough to get there.

We also cover a listener question about how to break into a leadership position from an individual contributor role.

Thanks for joining us today and don't forget to hit the subscribe button or reach out at hello@wannagrabcoffee.com.

We cover how to interpret behavioral and strengths-based assessments and what to do about the results. Our personal perspective is that these assessments are best viewed through an optimistic lens - focusing on the benefits articulated versus getting hung up on the downside.

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This is definitely something we would be talking about over coffee if we were able to meet in person and you are invited to be a fly on the wall.

If you want to reach out and continue the discussion, feel free to contact us at hello@wannagrabcoffee.com.

Engagement, is about flow, the flow state. We've all heard of elite athletes, world class musicians, and even experienced for ourselves losing a sense of self and losing track of time. Not a mindless way, but in a very focus and engaged way. That's Engagement. We discuss flow, the conditions required for flow, and how character strengths can lead to a more engaged life . 

Links Discussed:

• How to enter the flow state more often
• Flow at work (Positive Psychology)
• Overview of Flow
• Positive Psychology - Flow (Wikipedia)
• VIA Institute on Character
• Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

Thanks for joining us today and don't forget to subscribe and drop us a line at hello@wannagrabcoffee.com.

Components of Design Thinking

• Human Centered – having empathy for the people you are designing products and services for
• Integrative – looking at situations in a different way, thinking through the consequences of those decisions, and ultimately coming up with new solutions that go way beyond just improving the existing alternatives
• Action Oriented - Design Thinking is much less about thinking and more about discussing and working through problems. The most optimal way to do this is through prototyping and testing
• Iterative - the road to a successful solution is definitely not a straight line and requires rework, feedback, and rethinking throughout the process

We also discuss several resources during the discussion

• IDEO Design Thinking
• Why Design Thinking Works - HBR
• Natasha Jen: Design Thinking Is Bullsh*t
• George Makes a Stand / Curious George Sees the Light

As always, don't forget to hit the subscribe button on your podcast player of choice. And feel free to drop us a line at hello@wannagrabcoffee.com or on Twitter @wannagrabcoffee.

The Positive Psychology definition of Savoring is the use of thoughts and actions, to increase the intensity, duration, and appreciation of positive experiences and emotions. We do things intentionally to amplify and enhance our emotions.

There are six components of Savoring that can help you enhance your Positive Emotions.

• Duration – Making sure you have enough time to Savor the experience
• Reducing Stress – Mitigating general stressors while you are experiencing the positive emotion
• Complexity – Engaging all of your senses
• Attentional Focus – Being aware of what’s happening around you
• Balanced Self-Monitoring – Recognizing components that will take away from the ability to Savor
• Social Connection – Increasing Savoring by sharing the experience with others

In our discussion we also discuss a variety of resources that can help you learn more about Positive Psychology and the art of Savoring:

• Savoring Definition
• The Science of Savoring
• Savoring Academic Paper (International Journal of Wellbeing)

As always, don't forget to hit the subscribe button on your podcast player of choice. And feel free to drop us a line at hello@wannagrabcoffee.com or on Twitter @wannagrabcoffee.

As always, don't forget to hit the subscribe button on your podcast player of choice. And feel free to drop us a line at hello@wannagrabcoffee.com or on Twitter @wannagrabcoffee.

In his book Flourish, Martin Seligman discusses his theory of Well-Being and the five elements of Well-Being that make up the PERMA framework. 

• P – Positive Emotion
• E – Engagement
• R – Relationships
• M – Meaning
• A – Accomplishments

V – for Vitality is often added to this model to cover the fact that if you're physically or mentally sick or ill, it's hard to flourish.

If you are interested in the concept of Positive Psychology and want to learn more about how you can flourish, be sure to check out the following resources:

• Flourish, by Martin Seligman
• Coursera Positive Psychology Course

As always, don't forget to hit the subscribe button in your podcast player of choice and feel free to drop us a line at hello@wannagrabcoffee.com for on Twitter @wannagrabcoffee.

The Ideal Team Player concept was developed by Patrick Lencioni and is critical to long-term career success. In this discussion, I show how exceptional teams change the world, how exceptional teams are made up of Ideal Team Players, and the behaviors required to become an effective Ideal Team Player. Finally, we cover some practical tips and tools that can help anyone level-up their team-centered behaviors.

We reference several materials in this discussion to help level-up your skillset, regardless of your career or experience level:

• You can find the presentation Slides from my talk here
• The Ideal Team Player by Patrick Lencioni
• Extreme Ownership by Jocko Willink
• Radical Candor by Kim Scott
• The Trust Equation from The Trusted Advisor by David Maister
• Manager Tools and Career Tools - free resources that provide practical career-centric advice for any situation "There's a cast for that"
• I also took live polls from the virtual audience to help increase engagement using PollEverywhere

As always, don't forget to hit the subscribe button in your podcast player of choice and feel free to drop us a line at hello@wannagrabcoffee.com or on Twitter @wannagrabcoffee.

Charles uses his journey to talk about the importance of thinking about a career as part of a life-long journey of growth, the need for a mental model to better facilitate work-life balance and well-being, and imposter syndrome as a roadblock to growth. Finally, Charles talks about the practice of voluntary discomfort as a way to inoculate us against fear and the underrated leadership skill of vulnerability.

Charles references several books and people in this presentation:

Flourish by Martin Seligman

"High-achievers focus a great deal on becoming the person they want to be at work—and far too little on the person they want to be at home ... What this leads us to is over-investing in our careers and under-investing in one of the most important parts of our life."

― Clayton M. Christensen, How Will You Measure Your Life?

"You gain strength, courage, and confidence by every experience in which you really stop to look fear in the face. You must do the thing you think you cannot do."

― Eleanor Roosevelt

"We suffer more from imagination than reality"

― Seneca

Daring Greatly by Brene Brown

As always, don't forget to hit the subscribe button in your podcast player of choice and feel free to drop us a line at hello@wannagrabcoffee.com for on Twitter @wannagrabcoffee.

We referenced the following resources during our discussion, be sure to check them out if they piqued your interest: 

• Role of Gratitude in Crisis Leadership
• A Simple Gratitude Practice
• Gratitude as a Predictor of Well-Being 

Thanks for joining us today and don't forget to subscribe and drop us a line at hello@wannagrabcoffee.com to continue the discussion.

Our three practical tips at-a-glance:

1. Level up your space
2. Level up your virtual relationships
3. Level up your 100-day plan

If you are in the process of transitioning to a new organization and need some support reach out and we'll do everything we can to help: hello@wannagrabcoffee.com.

Whether you are trying to get unstuck in your career and don't know where to go next, aiming towards that next big promotion, or looking to add a little flavor to your personal and professional life - the talent stack can keep you focused on your long term goals while providing clarity on what to focus on today.

We referenced the following resources during our discussion, be sure to check them out if they piqued your interest:

• The Talent Stack - coined by Dilbert's Scott Adams
• Coursera - Effective Business Communication Course - focused on business writing
• Storytelling Overview - a course on general storytelling concepts
• Ikigai Book - combining passion, happiness, and competence
• Ikigai Article - a nice overview of the concept
• The Hero's Journey as a way to frame up compelling business writing

Thanks for joining us today and don't forget to subscribe and drop us a line if you enjoyed the episode.

We also discuss the idea of creating a Trip Report to share with our team when we return.

The Trip Report was made famous by Bill Campbell, in the Trillion Dollar Coach when he suggested the Management Team at Google share details of their travels in order to build trust across the team.

Thanks for joining us today and we'd love to hear from you so please drop us a comment on your social media platform of choice.

You can also view the live recording of this episode here.

Special shout out to Tara Haelle who wrote a great piece on Medium about surge capacity and emotional wellbeing in a crisis.