Partnerships And Possibilities Podcast

“Vulnerability is really about allowing ourselves to be seen… there are ways of being seen a little more clearly in places that actually helps and helps other people and helps the situation.” What kind of strategies do you use to help you get through the stressful time when you hit the wall? And what are the healthy ways that you’ve found to deal with that? We look forward to hearing some of your tips on how to manage stress and change.

“The need to have more women involved in software development, since women are at least half of the consumers of software development … does give us some differences in perspectives, although there are some conversations about how we might characterize those differences.” If you are a woman, what has your experience been as part of a team in a male-dominated industry? If you are a man, what are your concerns or thoughts about including more women on work teams primarily made up of men? And if you’re leading and you’ve come up with some good ways of making your work environment friendlier to technical women, please share with us what you’ve been doing.

“Stories can be very powerful, [but] it’s not enough to just have a story to tell, it has to have relevance, it has to have meaning, to you personally, you have to tell the story sincerely, [and] with authenticity” What is your experience of storytelling in your organization? Where has it been successful? Where has it not been successful? Where has it fallen flat? Where has it taken things in a direction opposite from what the storyteller intended? How do you as a leader use storytelling in your own leadership practice?

“Politics is really how we get things done – it’s the networks, it’s the interactions, it’s who talks to who, who influences who.” What kinds of power and politics have you seen in your organization? Have you seen positive use of power and politics in your organization?

“If you use the credibility that comes with your job title, once, and then people discover that it really wasn’t authentic then you’ve broken trust and trust is difficult to restore once broken.” How do you use your credibility and what are the sources of your credibility when you are trying to persuade other people? How do you use the relationships in your life to help you make the world better for you and others?

“Effective persuasion becomes a negotiating and learning process through which a persuader leads colleagues to a problem’s shared solution” – Jay A. Conger, PhD, Professor and Author Have you experienced persuasive leadership? How does the discussion on persuasion resonate with your experience?

“Our influence is a source of power; the way we influence is unique to each of us.” What is your unique source of influence and how are you using it in your organization? When have you needed to reach out and tap someone else’s style of influencing to really get things done that benefit the whole?

“Once you define a problem differently, it opens up different solutions and the possibility then of influencing the patterns becomes much greater because there are different places you can touch the problem that you might not have thought of otherwise.” What leadership experience has made an impact in your professional life? Share your story.

“Leaderful organization…It’s collective because it involves lots of people and it disburses the leadership throughout. It’s collaborative and it’s compassionate…”

“The essence of leadership; it’s about who you are and being clear about your values.”

“He knows the organization that they have now can’t do what it really needs to do. It’s just not functional enough.” How does your organization begin the process of implementing change? What are some of the challenges you have faced in the change process?

Diana Larsen and Sharon Buckmaster embark on a discussion of defining what it means to be a change agent at different levels of the organization. How do you define change agent leadership? Is it the same at all levels? If not, what makes it different? Share your comments and questions.