What sort of Leader do you want to be with Lisa O'Neil
Pushing Beyond the Obvious - Helping Entrepreneurs Succeed
Release Date: 10/26/2023
Here is Why You Are You Stuck in Middle Management According to India's Top Executive Coach
Pushing Beyond the Obvious - Helping Entrepreneurs Succeed
Premise In this podcast episode, we host India's biggest and best Executive Coach Shital Kakkar Mehra. She has trained more than 1000 CxO's and more than 40000 leaders about how to develop their executive presence. We talk about how the we lead and what is expected from us shifts as we continue to grow in our careers and what makes us successful early in our career is no longer enough when we become managers (managing people) and it changes again, when we start leading managers and agains shifts when we start leading functions and organisations. Apart from all the technical skills and the...
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The Hidden Leadership Skill: Leading for Evolution
Pushing Beyond the Obvious - Helping Entrepreneurs Succeed
Premise: Almost all leaders today lead in an environment that is ripe with disruptions and ever changing competitive landscape. The challenges of leading in this constantly evolving landscape are very different from that of leading in a stable environment where the current management practices are rooted in. So, if we have to succeed in this new world, we need to change the lens through which we view leadership and management practices. That begs the questions - where can we draw inspiration for the new way of leading. Thankfully, we don't need to look far. We can learn from . Leading an...
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The Bomber with No Guns: 3 Lessons in Strategy from a World War II Secret Weapon
Pushing Beyond the Obvious - Helping Entrepreneurs Succeed
In this episode, I want to share a brilliant story written by one of my favorite marketers, Dave Trott, titled "Strategy is Sacrifice". The story takes us back to World War II. At the time, standard military strategy assumed that for a bomber to survive, it needed more armor, more guns, and a larger crew. Planes like the British Lancaster and the American B-17 were massive, heavy, and slow because they were weighed down by defenses. But Geoffrey de Havilland had a different idea—a creative strategy. He asked a simple question: What if the enemy couldn't catch you?. Instead of adding more...
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The Most Important Question You Can Ask Your Team: "Are You Okay?"
Pushing Beyond the Obvious - Helping Entrepreneurs Succeed
Welcome back to another episode of Pushing Beyond the Obvious. I recently read a blog post from the MIT Sloan Management Review titled "Your people are not all right," which highlights the immense overwhelm and stress employees are currently facing. This inspired me to talk about a critical responsibility we have as leaders: having a clear understanding of what is happening in our team members' lives, not to spy on them, but to genuinely ensure their wellbeing. In this video, I break down the subtle but vital differences between an average leader, a good leader, and a leader worth following....
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How to Be Remarkable And stand out from the crowd
Pushing Beyond the Obvious - Helping Entrepreneurs Succeed
Standing out starts with choosing to see, think, and act differently from the default, and then designing your work, relationships, and systems around that choice. This means intentionally questioning “how things are done here” and repeatedly experimenting with better ways that reflect who you are and what you care about.youtube Why being different matters Most environments quietly push people to conform, to not make waves, and to follow existing templates for success. If you obey those pressures blindly, you become invisible, even when you are talented and hardworking.youtube ...
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Here is how to build an engaged team
Pushing Beyond the Obvious - Helping Entrepreneurs Succeed
Teams that are engaged perform better, collaborate more, and stay longer. I often talk about how employee engagement sits at the heart of every high-performing team. The real question is: how do leaders actually build it in day-to-day work? Hire for Attitude Before Skills Engagement starts much earlier than most people realise — right at the hiring stage. I believe that while skills can be developed over time, attitude is much harder to change. Hiring people who naturally align with the team’s values and energy creates a stronger foundation for engagement. At the same time, we need to...
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3 Ways to come up with Breakthrough Ideas
Pushing Beyond the Obvious - Helping Entrepreneurs Succeed
Premise: In today's fast-paced world, every organization and leader feels the relentless pressure to innovate. We're taught to hunt for that game-changing idea, that single "Eureka!" moment that will redefine our market. But waiting for a random stroke of genius is an ineffective and stressful strategy. The myth of the lone visionary struck by a sudden, brilliant insight is just that—a myth. True innovation isn't about luck; it's about process. Generating breakthrough ideas can be a systematic, repeatable activity. By moving beyond passive inspiration and adopting active methods, you...
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The Confidence to be VISIBLE with Sheena Yap Chan
Pushing Beyond the Obvious - Helping Entrepreneurs Succeed
Introduction Confidence doesn’t always come naturally, especially when you grow up rarely seeing people like you represented in leadership, media, or success stories. In a world where visibility often determines opportunity, learning how to show up fully becomes essential. Sheena Yap Chan, a keynote speaker, leadership strategist, and author, shares powerful insights on confidence, identity, and visibility, particularly for Asian women navigating personal and professional spaces. Why Representation Matters More Than We Think? Growing up in Canada, Sheena often felt the absence of...
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Don’t Solve Problems. Develop Problem Solvers
Pushing Beyond the Obvious - Helping Entrepreneurs Succeed
Premise The real job of a leader is not decision-making. It is decision capability-building and this can be done by creating better leaders from those that they lead. Bad leaders manage how work is being done, good leaders manage whether the work is being done and great leaders create capacity so that the work gets done. This is possible only when we are able to find ways to train them, to coach them and to get them ready for their journey as a leader. This requires us to give them additional responsibilities and create opportunities to lead as part of the day-to-day work. We can prepare...
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What Quentin Tarantino Can Teach Leaders About their Jobs
Pushing Beyond the Obvious - Helping Entrepreneurs Succeed
In this short narration, talks about the role of a director and it is a classic definition of what we need to do as leaders to become a leader worth following. Very early in his career, he asked on what was the job of a director in the making of a movie and here is what he was told – “It is not your job to create your vision, it is your job to have a vision! And it is your job then to hire talented people who understand your vision. You articulate your vision to them. Then they take your vision and they create it. And with them creating it, you bring your inputs to...
info_outlineThis the first episode of the current season of my podcast - Pushing Beyond the Obvious and I am super happy and excited to kick off the season with none other than Lisa O'Neill. She is a self described energy and human expert.
In this wide ranging conversation about energy and leadership, she shared a lot of great insights on leadership.
Here are some of my takeaways from the conversation:
She shared insights about the importance of knowing ourselves. If we do not know what kind of a leader we want to be, how would our team know.
In order for our teams to perform at their best, they need to know exactly what we expect from them. So the first thing that we need to do as a leader is to become aware of what exactly do we want, who exactly we are and how exactly should our team engage with us.
She also shared the importance of letting our team know how we roll as a leader. That way they know how to get the best out of us. High performing teams don't just need team members performing at their peak but their leaders performing at their peak as well. And this aspect of leadership is not discussed or shared enough.
She shares a 4 step model to help us get more self aware - Notice, Nourish, Navigate and Nurture. In all, she shares the importance of pondering, pondering about ourselves and what we want.
She also challenged the leaders listening with these three quests:
- Spend a week only asking questions of your team.
- List down all the people in your team and rate them from whom you really like to the one you least like. Answer the question - why is this so?
- Write down three personal things you know about everyone on your team. If you can't up with them, take them off for a cup of coffee or tea and talk to them to get to know them.
In conclusion, this season could not have started at a better note than this conversation. I have lined up a lot more conversations with both thought leaders and practicing leaders for the show and am excited about how things will go from here. I hope you ride along with me on this journey.
PS: If you want to want Lisa as you listen to this conversation, you can do so below: