Marlene and Jonathan, with guest, psychotherapist Amanda Youssef, explore how empathy is necessary to form connections between people and why people need those connections in order to show up as the best versions of themselves and in order to do their best work.

About Amanda Youssef

Amanda Youssef is a Registered Psychotherapist, Canadian Certified Counsellor, and Certified Meditation Instructor. She specializes in relationships and therapeutic approaches including emotion-focused therapy, dialectic behaviour therapy, and motivational interviewing. Amanda is an avid believer in practicing what she teaches her clients, so you will often find her "forest bathing," meditating, taking long walks with her dog, snuggling with her kids, and writing poetry when she is not busy doing the job she loves!

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Jonathan and Marlene recount their own journeys to find words to understand why they, each in their own way, found and find externally imposed motivation structures (both the positive “carrot” kind and the negative “stick” kind) to be so confusing and counter productive. They propose using “intention” as a third way that Leadership Practitioners can use to escape the tactical “carrot/stick trap.” They explore exactly how this higher-level strategy avoids so many of the carrot-stick pitfalls, and the value it can bring to anyone practicing leadership, particularly in tough organizational contexts where one might have fewer colleagues sharing similar mindsets.



This podcast is listener supported. If you find value in what you've just heard, please consider supporting us by joining a Leadership Practitioner™ Connection. Monthly subscriptions start at $0.00. Go to https://leadershippractitioner.org/connection for more details.

In perhaps this podcast's most epic (we mean that literally) conversational journey to-date, Marlene and JR with guest, leadership development coach Alisdair Smith, take you from critical explorations of authoritarianism and idealism, through tactical approaches to balancing effectiveness with efficiency, the value of naming, being a "learn-it-all," honouring but not dwelling on the past, and the role of nurse logs in old growth forests. Just in case you're worried they might lose the way, no fear - this is all harnessed to together exploring exactly how Leadership Practitioners use forward-focused mindsets to co-create possible positive, compelling and intriguing futures.



About Alisdair Smith

Alisdair is an International Coaching Federation certified coach who works with executive leaders and teams across Canada. He specializes in human creativity and development related to governance, ethics, strategic thinking, teamwork, and leadership and works with diverse clients, from large corporations like Microsoft to NGO’s in Goa, India. Alisdair has also taught leadership and teamwork at the Masters level at 3 Canadian universities and has facilitated dialogues for the Dalai Lama Centre for Peace and Education and Simon Fraser University’s Centre for Dialogue.



This podcast is listener supported. If you find value in what you've just heard, please consider supporting us by joining a Leadership Practitioner™ Connection. Monthly subscriptions start at $0.00. Go to https://leadershippractitioner.org/connection for more details.

Jonathan and Marlene explore the powerful change that can happen in a context where people are showing up, and choosing to practice leadership by making connection individual-by-individual. Plus: Jonathan and Marlene share insights from their own travels as they learned this lesson and experience how groups who are used to being subjected to this aggregate notion of "people" change when even just one or two individuals in the group model this mindset shift.

This podcast is listener supported. If you find value in what you've just heard, please consider supporting us by joining a Leadership Practitioner™ Connection. Monthly subscriptions start at $0.00. Go to https://leadershippractitioner.org/connection for more details.

Marlene and Jonathan discuss how the "doing" of various practices of leadership is where one discovers how challenging showing up to create a context for people to be the best versions of themselves and do their best work can be. Plus: Marlene and Jonathan talk about the mantra of "practice makes permanent".



This podcast is listener supported. If you find value in what you've just heard, please consider supporting us by joining a Leadership Practitioner™ Connection. Monthly subscriptions start at $0.00. Go to https://leadershippractitioner.org/connection for more details.

Jonathan and Marlene dive into psychological safety, why it is fundamental to creating a context where people can be the best version of themselves, and how increasing safety is built into each practice of the Leadership Practitioner™ Framework.

This podcast is listener supported. If you find value in what you've just heard, please consider supporting us by joining a Leadership Practitioner™ Connection. Monthly subscriptions start at $0.00. Go to https://leadershippractitioner.org/connection for more details.

Marlene and JR chat about humanized interactions as prerequisites to creating a context where people can be the best versions of themselves and do their best work. Plus: Jonathan and Marlene demonstrate how the Leadership Practitioner™ framework invites humanization with every practice.

This podcast is listener supported. If you find value in what you've just heard, please consider supporting us by joining a Leadership Practitioner™ Connection. Monthly subscriptions start at $0.00. Go to https://leadershippractitioner.org/connection for more details.

Jonathan and Marlene chat the importance and the benefits of being zooming in and zooming out to solve challenges. Plus: Jonathan and Marlene share how to look for when you might be jumping to solutions to quickly.

This podcast is listener supported. If you find value in what you've just heard, please consider supporting us by joining a Leadership Practitioner™ Connection. Monthly subscriptions start at $0.00. Go to https://leadershippractitioner.org/connection for more details.