Leadership Impact
Executive Coach and Founder of TGN Consulting, Kari Granger and CEO of Sound Financial Group, Paul Adams, bring a fresh take to the executive conversations on performance and leadership. This show supports executives to achieve bold commitments and empower workforce performance. Leadership Impact engages listeners with new insights and practices for recurrent leadership challenges such as retaining talent, penetrating new markets, increasing accountability, developing leadership, taking a stand without losing your job, post-M&A culture clash, and more. Join us to expand your own leadership impact. Paul also hosts Your Business Your Wealth where Kari periodically makes guest appearances.
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S3 48 | Leadership Impact Endisode
06/10/2020
S3 48 | Leadership Impact Endisode
The end of an era! In this special “end-isode,” Kari and Paul look back not only on this season in which we’ve explored trust, but on the past one-and-half years of Leadership Impact. For full shownotes:
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S3 47 | Acceptance as a Revolutionary Act
05/27/2020
S3 47 | Acceptance as a Revolutionary Act
Sooner or later, all of us will experience betrayals in life. The key isn’t going to the ends of the earth to avoid betrayals altogether. That will never happen. Rather, the key is in learning how to respond to betrayals when they do happen. In this episode, Kari and Paul show how an inability to recover from betrayals poisons our relationships and takes away our ability to act going forward. On the other hand, knowing how to powerfully accept and bounce back from betrayals enables us to move through life with more confidence, more creativity, and more trust. For full shownotes: 🎙️🎙️🎙️ Podcast production and marketing by
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S3 46 | Betrayal in the Workplace
05/20/2020
S3 46 | Betrayal in the Workplace
When we think of a “betrayal,” we often think of an earth-shattering, personally-devastating, stabbed-in-the-back sort of deception. But betrayals come in all shapes and sizes. And failure to acknowledge and deal with the “little betrayals”—such as routine gossip at the water-cooler—can have a huge effect on the state of trust in our organizations. In this episode, Kari and Paul discuss how to spot these minor betrayals, and how to deal with them early on and effectively. For full shownotes: 🎙️🎙️🎙️ Podcast production and marketing by
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S3 45 | Setting the Stage for a Trust Culture
05/13/2020
S3 45 | Setting the Stage for a Trust Culture
How often do we think we are on the same page with our colleagues—only to find out a little (or a lot) later that we had our wires completely crossed? Unclear agreements are incredibly common. In fact, one could say that most of the agreements that we make at work are at least partially unclear. And these unclear agreements don’t just lead to poor performance and inefficiency—they also erode trust in a big way. In this episode, Kari and Paul show you how to design your agreements so that everything is crystal clear, nothing slips through the cracks, and trust is maintained from start to finish. For full shownotes: 🎙️🎙️🎙️ Podcast production and marketing by
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S3 44 | Signs and Symptoms Your Are Not Oriented to Bring Trust
05/06/2020
S3 44 | Signs and Symptoms Your Are Not Oriented to Bring Trust
Moods are everywhere! We are always in one mood or another. In a way, they are the background tone of our existence, the lens through which we see the world. In this episode, Kari and Paul look at which moods support trust and which make trust all but impossible to sustain. Although moods have an outsized effect on our daily lives, we are not at their mercy. No matter what mood we find ourselves in, we can always cultivate a new one, one that sets us up for trusting relationships. For full shownotes: 🎙️🎙️🎙️ Podcast production and marketing by
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S3 43 | Trust is NOT a Light Switch
04/29/2020
S3 43 | Trust is NOT a Light Switch
We often think of trust as a binary -- either you have it, or you don’t. Either it’s there, or it isn’t. Like a light switch, we think trust is either “on” or “off,” with nothing in between. This extreme view of trust leads to some extreme behaviors. With a single violation, we can easily write off the possibility of trusting a person ever again. In this episode, Kari and Paul explore a more nuanced approach to trust that serves us in building lasting, authentic, trusting relationships. For full shownotes: 🎙️🎙️🎙️ Podcast production and marketing by
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S3 42 | Potatoes and Van Goghs
04/22/2020
S3 42 | Potatoes and Van Goghs
Whenever we get stuck in a downward cycle of distrust, even the smallest perceived slight can appear as an existential threat to our existence, and the faintest provocation can send us up the wall. In this episode, Kari and Paul show how building trust with others often relies on shifting our perspective on the “small things” in life and avoiding the tendency to blow everything out of proportion. What’s the secret to making that shift? Well, it has little something to do with “potatoes and Van Goghs”…listen to find out more! For full shownotes: 🎙️🎙️🎙️ Podcast production and marketing by
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S3 41 | Thank You for the (Negative) Feedback
04/15/2020
S3 41 | Thank You for the (Negative) Feedback
Feedback. Many of us cringe at even the thought of giving it—let alone receiving it. But navigating feedback is an absolutely critical skill for maintaining the health of our relationships and our organizations. When we sit on our feedback and refuse to share it, we sow the seeds of distrust. In this episode, Kari and Paul show how we can develop our capacity for giving and receiving feedback so that we actually look forward to those conversations as opportunities for alignment and co-creation. For full shownotes: 🎙️🎙️🎙️ Podcast production and marketing by
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S3 40 | Why Faking It Could Be Sabotaging Your Culture
04/08/2020
S3 40 | Why Faking It Could Be Sabotaging Your Culture
“Fake it till you make it.” That’s advice we often hear for how to step up our game at work. But as it turns out, when it comes to building trust, that advice just doesn’t work very well. Why do we often feel so compelled to pretend there’s trust when there isn’t. We do it in order to be polite, because we don’t want to ruffle any feathers with our colleagues (and certainly not our bosses!). Instead, we slowly create a poisonous environment where real issues can’t be addressed and resentments build. But there is another way—a way to be direct when it comes to conversations for trust, without burning bridges. In this episode, Kari and Paul we explain how. For full shownotes: 🎙️🎙️🎙️ Podcast production and marketing by
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S3 39 | How Cultures Spiral Out of Control
04/01/2020
S3 39 | How Cultures Spiral Out of Control
Distrust often starts innocuously enough. A bit of gossip. A smidge of dissent. But as the saying goes, “When it rains, it pours.” Before you know it, a snowball effect takes hold, and the whole organization can easily become engulfed in cynicism, antagonism, and territorial bickering. In this episode, Kari and Paul discuss how to intervene before our organizational cultures spiral into a cycle of distrust, and how to maintain more productive moods of curiosity, ambition, and collaboration instead. How do we intervene in this way? First, we must recognize that trust is built through conversation, and learn how to have those conversations more effectively in creating a positive spiral of trust throughout our organizations. For full shownotes: 🎙️🎙️🎙️ Podcast production and marketing by
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S3 38 | The Value of Trust in Chaotic Times
03/25/2020
S3 38 | The Value of Trust in Chaotic Times
We are living in frightening, unprecedented times. Now more than ever, it’s easy to fall out of trust—with society, the government, the financial markets, and more broadly, with the prospect of a brighter future. In this episode, Kari and Paul remind us that trust is ultimately a choice, and underscore the importance of choosing trust amidst the tumult. Choosing trust opens us up to wondrous possibilities, no matter the circumstance. Instead of suspiciousness, we can choose generosity. Instead of isolation, we can choose connection. Instead of fear and anxiety, can choose a commitment to what matters most, and devise inventive ways of fulfilling that commitment. For full shownotes: 🎙️🎙️🎙️ Podcast production and marketing by
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S3 37 | How To Practice Trust
03/18/2020
S3 37 | How To Practice Trust
When it comes to building trust, we often turn it into a waiting game. “I will get around to trusting her…but she needs to prove herself first.” “Why should I re-engage with him if he’s the one who messed up to begin with?!” In this episode, Kari and Paul show how these justifications rarely yield desired results, and usually sabotage the outcomes we are out to achieve. Instead of sitting back and waiting for trust to just happen, we must learn to take a more proactive stance by extending a “Window of Trust.” This doesn’t mean we trust blindly. It does mean we muster the courage to make the first move, in a way that positions us to break through the gridlock and forge a new pathway. For full shownotes: 🎙️🎙️🎙️ Podcast production and marketing by
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S3 36 | The Limitations of Unconditional Trust
03/11/2020
S3 36 | The Limitations of Unconditional Trust
When it comes to trust, people are prone to “either/or” thinking. Either “I trust you 100%” or, once that trust is compromised in any way at all, “I can never trust you again!” In this episode, Kari and Paul show how this simplistic way of thinking precludes the possibility of real, lasting trust. Instead, we must begin somewhat counter-intuitively: by recognizing from the outset that human beings make mistakes and that betrayal is possible (if not probable). And yet—we can choose to trust anyways, knowing that in the event trust is broken, we have the tools to engage that conversation authentically and rebuild what was lost. For full shownotes: 🎙️🎙️🎙️ Podcast production and marketing by
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S3 35 | Taking the Trust Temperature in Your Organization
03/04/2020
S3 35 | Taking the Trust Temperature in Your Organization
Blaming. Complaining. Gossiping. Justifying. Avoiding. Defending. So often, these harmful behaviors seep into our everyday interactions at the office. As leaders, we do our best to head off these bad behaviors at the pass. But what if they’re all merely symptoms of a larger, more central problem? In this episode, Kari and Paul discuss how a lack of trust is that common problem at the heart of so much daily dysfunction, and why it can be so hard to recognize it as the culprit. Finally, Kari provides a novel definition of trust as something that we do—a choice that we make—as opposed to something that simply exists. By making that choice to extend trust, we generate extraordinary possibilities that would have otherwise proven impossible. For full shownotes: 🎙️🎙️🎙️ Podcast production and marketing by
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Season 3 Teaser
02/26/2020
Season 3 Teaser
We’re back! Welcome to Season Three of the Leadership Impact podcast. In this “teaser-isode,” we set the stage for this season’s topic: building and sustaining trust. So many of us think of trust as a luxury—it would be nice to have it, the thinking goes. But if we don’t get it, we can still get on with the business of getting stuff done. But therein lies the mistake that wreaks havoc on so many organizations. Trust is more than a “nice-to-have”! Trust is a necessary condition for success. Without trust, our big-ticket outcomes and wildly important goals don’t stand a chance. Building trust, then, isn’t a “soft skill” as many assume. It’s perhaps the most reliable predictor of hard, tangible business outcomes. In Season Three, Kari and Paul will guide you through restoring trust when it’s lost, and keeping it when it’s there. For full shownotes: 🎙️🎙️🎙️ Podcast production and marketing by
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S2 34 | Season Two Endisode
10/23/2019
S2 34 | Season Two Endisode
This season flipped the script on traditional thinking, causing a fundamental shift in the way we relate to accountability. In the old paradigm, accountability was about explaining what went wrong; it was something to avoid; something that took up time at work; it was either the thing that missing or the thing we were subjected to; and it caused lots of suffering in organizations. Out of listening to this season’s episodes, a new orientation accountability has emerged that is empowering; one that’s about creating the future; one about partnership; in fact, it opens a whole new paradigm of how we can interact with others. Join Kari Granger and Paul Adams as they share highlights, provide recommendations, and reflect on Season Two. With an eye towards the future, Kari and Paul invite the audience to provide feedback on the podcast and suggest topics they would like to see covered in Season Three of Leadership Impact. For full shownotes: 🎙️🎙️🎙️ Podcast production and marketing by
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S2 33 | How to Structure Performance Reviews That Are Celebrated
10/16/2019
S2 33 | How to Structure Performance Reviews That Are Celebrated
For many, performance reviews are nothing more than an end of year obligation that devolves into uncomfortable conversations about performance gaps and compensation. However, if we structure them to take us step-by-step into aligning with one another in four key areas, performance reviews become a treasured opportunity for both colleagues and a huge opportunity to leverage performance toward a shared vision. Join Kari Granger and Paul Adams as they dissect how organizations can utilize performance reviews as a tool to acknowledge contribution, identify the relevant domains of evaluation, assess performance impact, and partner for future development. For full shownotes: 🎙️🎙️🎙️ Podcast production and marketing by
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S2 32 | How to Replace the Hierarchy Mindset with Accountability Spheres
10/09/2019
S2 32 | How to Replace the Hierarchy Mindset with Accountability Spheres
“It’s not my job!” When silos run workplace dynamics and the “not-my-job” mantra leaves projects disconnected, the likely culprit is the “hierarchy mindset.” For many organizations, a hierarchical structure is a good fit, but the mindset of having to operate out of a little box on an organizational chart, can limit creativity and innovation, starve collaborations, and keep projects from crossing the finish line on time and to the company’s quality standard. Join Kari Granger and Paul Adams as they examine an alternative way of relating to our positions and coordinating actions -- no matter how your company is structured. For full shownotes: 🎙️🎙️🎙️ Podcast production and marketing by
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S2 31 | Being Loyal to the Big Picture
10/02/2019
S2 31 | Being Loyal to the Big Picture
Like curiosity, loyalty is another key to accountability. This may seem counterintuitive -- afterall, isn’t our loyalty to others what makes holding them to account difficult in the first place? Actually, we have a choice. We can be loyal to a person’s shortcomings (and suffer the impact). Or, we can choose to be loyal to a person’s capacity to grow and learn. We can be loyal to the mission we set out to accomplish together. We can be loyal to our their ability to reckon with the impact of their behavior and choose differently. And, we can do it all with compassion. Join Kari Granger and Paul Adams as they uncover what motivates our loyalties and how to elevate our loyalty to transform performance and relationships. For full shownotes: 🎙️🎙️🎙️ Podcast production and marketing by
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S2 30 | Get to the Heart of the Issue with These Questions
09/25/2019
S2 30 | Get to the Heart of the Issue with These Questions
Curiosity levels up any professional’s ability to address problems without causing others to become defensive. And, it turns out what we get curious about makes a difference! Different questions trigger our brains to produce different types of answers. Join Kari Granger and Paul Adams as they guide us through what questions to ask to get to the core of a breakdown and back in action again! For full shownotes: 🎙️🎙️🎙️ Podcast production and marketing by
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S2 29 | How to Create Breakthroughs with Anyone
09/18/2019
S2 29 | How to Create Breakthroughs with Anyone
How do we create a breakthrough with anyone, anytime, anywhere? How do we have tough conversations? How do we get out of tough situations that are intractable? It all starts with one key -- and with it, we suddenly start to see things differently. We begin to question things. We learn things that we did not know before. Join Kari Granger and Paul Adams illuminate one shift that can disarm stalemates, catalyze creative problem solving, and support authentic learning. For full shownotes: 🎙️🎙️🎙️ Podcast production and marketing by
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S2 28 | How to Distinguish Requests From Requirements
09/11/2019
S2 28 | How to Distinguish Requests From Requirements
Fundamentally, humans are not awesome at distinguishing between requests and requirements. That point of miscommunication easily erodes trust in relationships and undermines a team’s focus on priority projects. When we begin to see where the wires get crossed (and the huge impact that causes), new pathways for circumventing these problems become apparent. Join Kari Granger and Paul Adams as they unpack this ubiquitous breakdown and give us conversational doorways to getting onto the same page with our bosses, colleagues, direct reports, spouses, and children. For full shownotes: 🎙️🎙️🎙️ Podcast production and marketing by
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S2 27 | Stop “Holding People Accountable”
09/04/2019
S2 27 | Stop “Holding People Accountable”
What if there were a way to have your team’s performance improve without “holding them accountable” or “holding their feet to the fire” or “enforcing standards”? There is a more effective and less painful way to generate results. Join Kari Granger and Paul Adams as they debunk these traditional methods and show us how to, instead, inspire accountability. For full shownotes: 🎙️🎙️🎙️ Podcast production and marketing by
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S2 26 | How to Stop Managing and Start Partnering
08/28/2019
S2 26 | How to Stop Managing and Start Partnering
Sure, we’re happy to engage in partner-based leadership when things are going well...but as soon as something goes wrong we slip right into managing the issue “back into line!” We’re left agitated and our “partners” are left defeated, with no option to regain their footing in the project or the relationship. Join Kari Granger and Paul Adams as they highlight the meaningful steps to take the next time you encounter a breakdown, including practical language that can help you navigate these moments with partnership -- for your sake and theirs. For full shownotes: 🎙️🎙️🎙️ Podcast production and marketing by
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S2 25 | Words Disappear; How to Make Your Commitments Concrete
08/21/2019
S2 25 | Words Disappear; How to Make Your Commitments Concrete
How often do you count on your memory to record the tasks and activities you intend to do? Our short term memory only retains about seven pieces of information at a time...and, even then, only for about 20 seconds. Relying on memory or notes that are written on napkins, the back of our hands, or random pieces of paper, sets us up to miss deadlines, omit key project criteria, or forget to take any action at all. Join Kari and Paul as they break down how to increase your completion and accuracy rates by putting your promises into existence. For full shownotes: 🎙️🎙️🎙️ Podcast production and marketing by
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S2 24 | Get to Know Your Default Escape Strategies
08/14/2019
S2 24 | Get to Know Your Default Escape Strategies
What is your go-to under stress -- anxiety and late nights? Righteousness and swooping in as the hero? Resignation and gossip? Fear and hiding out? With the constant barrage of things coming at us each day and minefields of unreliable people in our lives, human beings tend to react with habitual moods, thoughts, and patterns of behavior. Join Kari Granger and Paul Adams as they unveil the several “default escape strategies” and what we can do about them. For full shownotes: 🎙️🎙️🎙️ Podcast production and marketing by
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S2 23 | How to Deal with Others' Expectations of You
08/07/2019
S2 23 | How to Deal with Others' Expectations of You
Others have expectations of us. Sometimes they are explicit and agreed upon, but -- more often than not -- they are unstated, not agreed upon, and wreaking havoc on our relationships, our collaborations, and our wellbeing, whether it is the mother-in-law who expects every holiday to be celebrated at their home or the colleague who expects same-day turnaround on every request. Join Kari Granger and Paul Adams as they look at the game-changing strategy that allows us to powerfully navigate the expectations minefield in our work and our lives, improving workability, performance, and trust. For full shownotes: 🎙️🎙️🎙️ Podcast production and marketing by
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S2 22 | How to Mess Up and Actually Improve Your Relationships
07/31/2019
S2 22 | How to Mess Up and Actually Improve Your Relationships
Whether it’s in business, our personal relationships, or life in general, we all make mistakes. It is how we respond to these mistakes that makes the difference in our relationships. Accountability is at the crux of remedying our mistakes. Often times, when we fess up, level up, and go beyond what is expected, we create a stronger sense of trust from those who have been directly impacted by our mistakes. Join Kari Granger and Paul Adams as they speak to the power of owning up to your mistakes and the capacity to be vulnerable as a strategy for improving and deepening relationships. For full shownotes: 🎙️🎙️🎙️ Podcast production and marketing by
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S2 21 | How to Free Up Your Brain and Your Life
07/24/2019
S2 21 | How to Free Up Your Brain and Your Life
Life is full of incompletions -- open loops of unanswered emails; vague coffee invitations; big projects we need to ‘get to’; kids’ recitals; the nagging awareness that we really should be should be eating better or going to the gym; and dishes -- so many dishes. With all the demands on our attention coming at us all day, every day, it is predictable that our trying-not-to-forget-it-all, is always stealing a part of our awareness and attention, whether we’re in the middle of a meeting or a family dinner. Join Kari Granger and Paul Adams as they propose an alternative to the haze of all-the-things-there-are-to-do-and-handle. For full shownotes: 🎙️🎙️🎙️ Podcast production and marketing by
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S2 20 | The Importance of Creating a Condition for Success
07/17/2019
S2 20 | The Importance of Creating a Condition for Success
Most of the time, we think of accountability as what happens “after-the-fact” -- once something has gone wrong and it’s time to ferret out the responsible party. The trouble is, this doesn’t give us the opportunity to intervene before we have missed the mark on what we set out to achieve in the first place! Join Kari Granger and Paul Adams as they explorate an alternative: accountability could, instead, be the set of perspectives and practices that we employ to maintain a condition for success. When we reallocate our concern and attention from after-the-fact to before-the-fact, we can intervene in performance quickly and stay on-course to achieve our mission. For full shownotes: 🎙️🎙️🎙️ Podcast production and marketing by
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