Here’s a peek at Getting Clear With Others: Module Two of The Leadership Academy. I explain the half-dozen frameworks you’ll learn, and the ways you’ll apply them, to practice leadership grounded in trust, psychological safety, inclusion, equity, marketing (gasp!) and old-fashioned kindness. I talk a bit about the research, authors, and ideas behind the content; and share the story of how I learned the importance of talking about your own leadership. For you Badgers trained in the English Dept, this episode is also kind of a love letter to Brad Hughes. 🧡

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Here’s this episode at a glance:

>> 1:24. Welcome to episode 11 and the last quiet days of summer. Are you excited for fall semester to begin? I am! (Which tells me I’ve had a relatively restful summer, for which I am super grateful. And also: hell, that rest was hard-earned!.)

>> 2:36. Everyone in the world of Writing Program Administrators loves Brad Hughes, the long-time (and now retired) Director of the Writing Center at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Brad is renowned not only for his expertise but his kindness and goodness. Being mentored by Brad has been one of the biggest gifts of my career. In 2003 I found myself surrounded by a group of his fans, which got me thinking about how we tell stories of our own leadership successes. 

>> 8:18. Framework #1: How to build, strengthen, sustain, and repair trust with your team. This framework draws on the work of Stephen M. R. Covey’s book and subsequent resources, The Speed of Trust. 

>> 9:03. Framework #2: Establishing psychological safety through the framework of inner work life. This framework draws on the work of Teresa Amabile and Steven Kramer in their book The Progress Principle: Using Small Wins to Ignite Joy, Engagement, and Creativity at Work.  

>> 11:15. Framework #3: Facing the hard conversations by combining stories, opennes, and cooperative planning. This framework draws on the book Crucial Converations: Tools for Talking When the Stakes Are High. 

>> 12:23. Framework #4: Why Am I Talking? This framework is fundamentally about listening, but you want to listen to things are useful for someone to say, so this framework combines asking powerful questions with learning the STFU and listen carefully and lovingly to the answers. 

>> 13:16. Framework #5. Expanding to purpose and exploring what it means to gather people in a meaningful way. Meaningful gatherings go way beyond the basic stuff you can find to help you run organized meetings. Instead, this framework focuses on the question why are we gathering in the first place? The framework comes from The Art of Gathering by Priya Parker. 

>> 16:34. Framework #6. Telling powerful stories by telling stories like a marketing genius. Effective marketers tell powerful stories that reveal their value while speaking to the values of their audience. This framework draws on Seth Godin’s book, All Marketers Are Liars. 

>> 21:38. Preview of next week: Getting Clear on Purpose – the third and final module in The Leadership  Academy.

Like how this sounds? Join the waitlist for The Leadership Academy! 

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Extra Reading & Resources (not affiliate marketing – just sharing information!)

Steven M. R. Covey. Speed of Trust/Franklin Covey (website); The Speed of Trust (book).

Teresa Amabile and Steven Kramer. The Progress Principle: Using Small Wins to Ignite Joy, Engagement, and Creativity at Work. 

Kerry Patterson, Al Switzler, Joseph Grenny. Crucial Learning (website); Crucial Conversations: Tools for Talking When the Stakes Are  High (book). 

Priya Parker, The Art of Gathering (website); The Art of Gathering (book). 

Seth Godin. Seth’s Blog (website);  All Marketers Are Liars (book); This is Marketing: You Can’t Be Seen Until You Learn To See (book).

Curious to know about Brad? Start with his own words.