Upsize Your Leadership

In this episode Dr. Mike challenges conventional approaches to performance metrics by highlighting their limitations in a rapidly changing world. Using Nokia’s dramatic fall from market dominance as a cautionary tale, he arguex that traditional business scorecards often measure the wrong things—relying too heavily on past performance to forecast what lies ahead. KPIs and automated scorecards reflect historical success but fail to anticipate emerging threats or shifts in customer sentiment. Examples like Wells Fargo, Blockbuster, and Kodak illustrate how companies can meet internal targets yet lose market trust or miss disruptive trends. To counter this, he proposes a four-dimensional framework that serves as a counterbalance to overdependence on business scorecards: Strategic Foresight – Leaders must scan the horizon for change, test assumptions, and prepare for volatility rather than merely optimize current operations. Cultural Resonance – Leaders must stay emotionally attuned to shifting preferences and purchasing trends among their customer community to assure that their brand still connects meaningfully. Trajectory of Trust – Leaders must view trust as a form of capital that is to be monitored as carefully as any physical asset. Declining trust—internally or externally—is a warning sign that demands attention. Adaptive Capacity – Leaders must develop organizations that learn, unlearn, and relearn quickly. The ability to pivot strategically and culturally is essential for survival. Dr. Mike closes the episode with a reminder that leadership effectiveness depends not just on tracking performance, but on cultivating clarity, trust, and adaptability in the face of uncertainty. A PDF transcript of this podcast is available at https://www.upsizeyourleadership.com/episodes/2510-biz-scoreboards.htm. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Building Trust Builds Customer Loyalty Research consistently confirms that customers will pay more for a product or service if they trust the provider. Companies should therefore cease on every opportunity to foster a climate in which trust can flourish. Customer loyalty never takes root where trust in a brand or company is low. And trust takes shape only in settings where ethics are held in high regard. This episode explores five factors which are particularly powerful in determining whether customers will trust a company enough to be loyal to it. These are basically common-sense principles. But it's always worthwhile to be reminded of them so that they are not allowed to languish. A PDF transcript of this program is available at https://www.upsizeyourleadership.com/episodes/2509-trust-and-loyalty.htm. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The Staggering Challenge of Rebuilding Ukraine For the first time in years, the possibility of peace in Ukraine is in the headlines. Ignored in most media coverage, however, is the immense complexity of getting the country back on its feet economically, industrially, and in terms of fundamental services. In this episode, I examine realities that are unknown by most Americans, but are momentous challenges that Ukraine's postwar government must confront. The price tag for meeting these challenges is as great as the price tag for the war itself. Yet little is said about them -- or known about them -- outside of Europe. Not the least of these issues is a nation that will have a disproportionately small population of young families, which creates demographic imbalance for decades to come. With relatively few young families, Ukraine has an exceptionally small replacement population of children and teens. Rebuilding any economy with a shrinking population is a staggering task. Unlike nations who have made the investment to allow disabled workers to be integrated into the workplace, the infrastructure in Ukraine (and Russia, as well) is horrendously inadequate to accommodate people with physical liabilities. With hundreds of thousands of people now maimed by the war, the available workforce for rebuilding the nation will be terribly lacking in numbers. The podcast takes up other related postwar issues. A transcript is available at https://www.upsizeyourleadership.com/transcripts/2508-postwar-ukraine.pdf. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Five Essential Mindset Changes as You Climb the Management Ladder Have you known people with tremendous promise as managers or leaders whose careers got derailed and they never rose to the heights that they seemed destined for? No doubt you have. And as a leadership development coach, I’ve seen plenty of them. Of course, we could cite hosts of reasons why this happens. From what I’ve observed, failure to make appropriate change in one of five mindsets may be the single greatest the single greatest contributor to derailed careers. In this episode, I chronicle these five and explain why they are so pivotal in determining how high up the ladder you can climb. A PDF transcript of the program is available at https://www.upsizeyourleadership.com/transcripts/2507-management-ladder.pdf Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Four Things that Pacesetting Leaders Get Right Our business world is not merely competitive. It's hypercompetitive. Run-of-the-mill performance is no longer acceptable. To stay ahead, companies need leaders who build and maintain sustained high performance. Over two decades ago, I began studying leaders who had done that very thing. I started to identify common denominators in organizations – both profit and nonprofit – which had attained exceptional, pacesetting performance. Even more importantly, I began to condense what I learned into models and methodologies which I could share with clients. Along the way, I came to realize that I could categorize the leadership principles for achieving peak performance under four headings: · People Alignment Culture · Engagement Recently I've embarked on developing an online course entitled how to be a PACEsetting leader, with the letters P-A-C-E intentionally capitalized. These letters form an acronym consisting of the first letters of the words people, alignment, culture, and engagement. In this podcast, I survey critical leadership traits under each of those headings. They are indeed the pillars that support PACEsetting leadership. A PDF transcript of this program is available at https://www.upsizeyourleadership.com/episodes. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

A Supreme Court Decision That Changed Nothing The Future of the Beneficial Ownership Information Report Remains Uncertain After bouncing around in district and appeals courts for months, the Corporate Transparency Act (CTA) and its mandated Beneficial Ownership Information Report had their first day before the Supreme Court this month. On January 23, the Court lifted a temporary restraining order (TRO) which had suspended enforcement of the reporting requirement since December 2. But perhaps for the first time in the history of the Supreme Court, the justices lifted a TRO and their decision made no practical difference whatsoever. I trace this strange development in this episode and lay out the possible scenarios which may play out in the weeks ahead with the CTA. I look at the question, is the Beneficial Ownership Information Report going away? Or coming back? Some 30 million small business owners are waiting to find out. You can download the script for this program at https://www.upsizeyourleadership.com/transcripts/2505-boi-coming-back.pdf. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

What Managers Should Always Remember About Their People One of the shortcomings of modern accounting systems is that they have no mechanism for showing the capability and dedication of your workforce as an asset on a balance sheet. Workers appear only as liabilities: payrolls due, cost of benefits, Social Security obligations, etc. Yet workers are the manager's most valuable asset. That's one of seven things that I feature in this podcast about the relationship between managers and workers. Seven things which should always be front-of-mind for anyone in a managerial position. A transcript of this program can be downloaded at https://www.upsizeyourleadership.com/transcripts/2504-seven-things.pdf. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Five Ways Managers Can Combat Distrust in the Workplace Recent studies confirm that worker distrust of the company and its managers is solidly entrenched. These studies found that fewer than half of employees trust their manager. And only one in three trusts upper management. In today's episode I examine some historic roots of this distrust. It gained its foothold in the business and corporate world in the 1980s. I trace what happened in those years that provide the backdrop for the kind of distrust that has plagued companies ever since. A printed copy of today's podcast is available at https://www.upsizeyourleadership.com/transcripts/2503-workplace-distrust.htm. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Beneficial Ownership Information Report The Latest Legal Maneuvers As I predicted in my podcast two weeks ago, the court challenge to the Beneficial Ownership Information Report has now made its way to the steps of the Supreme Court. At the time of my previous podcast regarding this case, the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals had given assent to a nationwide temporary restraining order on the Corporate Transparency Act, which is the legislation authorizing the BOI Report. In this episode, we look at what happened within hours of the podcast going live and in the days since. Presently, the Supreme Court is in the early stage of deciding whether to override the Fifth Circuit's decision. Today's episode looks at possible scenarios which could play out, depending on what the Court decides. I also sound a warning about a proliferation of scams that try to trick small business owners into filing their Beneficial Ownership Information Report with bogus firms who take the owner's money, but never file a report. You can download a transcript of the podcast at https://www.upsizeyourleadership.com/transcripts/2502-boi-latest-turns.pdf. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Why I Quit Asking People for Buy-In Here's What I Want Instead I've dropped "buy-in" from my leadership vocabulary. I guess I've led to many initiatives where people "bought in," but never became engaged. We all buy into great causes, but never become actively involved. For example, everyone buys into the value of ending world hunger. But only a few ever take up the fight personally. Both within organizations and in the broader life of our communities, far more ideas and initiatives languish because of insufficient engagement than because of insufficient buy-in. Personal engagement demands personal investment. The investment may be in the form of time, energy, talent, imagination, money, or resources. Buy-in requires only mental consent that an idea or initiative has merit. In this episode I explore what leaders must do to bring about worker or volunteer engagement. Too often we focus on why workers are not engaged. A far more profitable exercise is to discuss whether we as leaders are doing what we should to elicit engagement from those whom we lead. A transcript of this episode is available at https://www.upsizeyourleadership.com/transcripts/2501-buy-in.htm. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Beginning shortly after Thanksgiving, I've been on a roller coaster ride, along with the owners of about 37 million other small businesses in the U.S. Constitutional challenges to the Corporate Transparency Act have been making their way through the court system. In rapid-fire fashion judicial decisions have been made, then reversed, followed in short order by a reversal of the reversal. The result is widespread confusion as to what the status of the Beneficial Ownership Information Report is at present. In this episode, I bring you up to the minute on that question. A transcript of this podcast is available at https://www.upsizeyourleadership.com/transcripts/2411-boi-twists-and-turns.pdf Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

For over 30 million small businesses, the Beneficial Ownership Information Report is due in three weeks. Since the first of December, however, the requirement to file the BOI has changed repeatedly. First it was on. Then it was off. Now, it's back on again -- at least for the moment. And it now has a new deadline. Because these changes have occurred in the heart of the holiday season, when people are distracted by the hustle and bustle surrounding it, most have likely missed these recent developments related to the BOI and its enabling legislation, the Corporate Transparency Act. This podcast catches you up on all the details surrounding court cases and Congressional continuing resolutions this month that have a bearing on the BOI Report. A transcript of the podcast is available at https://www.upsizeyourleadership.com/episodes/2411-boi-twists-and-turns.pdf. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Tales from a Total Solar Eclipse in Siberia Two Very Funny Stories I live just north of Dallas, so we are in the direct path of this month's complete solar eclipse. It's all the buzz around here. I'm sure that the event will spin off lots of personal stories as people relate what happened around them during the eclipse. But I doubt that any of these stories will top two of mine from my last total eclipse. And they won't be nearly as funny. The stories occurred in Siberia, where I was conducting a series of workshops along the Op River. I think about them often, because they revolved around two of the most humorous statements I've ever heard. So, I'm taking a departure from my normal topics for this podcast to share them with you. I believe you'll get a good chuckle from them. A PDF transcript of this program is available for download at https://www.upsizeyourleadership.com/episodes. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

War in Ukraine: What the Final Outcome May Look Like Now that the spring thaw has begun in Ukraine, the year's most intense season of combat is about to start. How will this war end? It's almost anyone's guess. But whatever the outcome, it will be shaped by the influence of the backstories which we've focused on in the last three podcasts. With this episode, we bring the series to a conclusion by examining the prospects for both Russia and Ukraine, however the war happens to conclude. Putin believes that time is on his side, that he can persist in his efforts until he wears down Ukraine and exhausts the resolve of Ukraine's allies, so that he has the upper hand in dictating the terms which eventually bring the conflict to a close. A host of practical questions will shape the contours of any final settlement. One of these is whether Ukraine, economically depleted and with a population millions smaller than when the war began, would have the manpower and wherewithal to defend its borders should they be restored to their prewar status. And if Ukraine does not regain those border, the its future may well hinge on the answer to one question: how many of its ports can Ukraine reclaim through combat or peace negotiations. With its economy centered on grain transport, and with only the port of Odessa still under its control, the resolution of this issue is pivotal to Ukraine's viability after the war. In this wrap-up episode, I explore a host of questions along this line. A transcript of this episode is available at https://www.upsizeyourleadership.com/episodes. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Russian Perspectives on the War The Historical Backdrop This is the third program in a four-part series examining historical and cultural factors which shape the backdrop against which the war in Ukraine is playing out. Having devoted the first two programs to Ukrainian perspectives, in this one we shift to how Russia views both the war and Ukrainians themselves. For reasons which I explain in this episode, there is a paranoia that is characteristic of the Russian people in general and its leaders in particular. They have long seen themselves as surrounded by enemies, both east and west. Historically, they have built vast buffer zones of territory to protect their European centers from invading forces. Traversing those buffer zones exhausted Napoleon's men and supplies in 1812, then did the same to Hitler's armies in the Second World War. The war with Ukraine stems in large measure from a resurgence of that paranoia. During the Cold War, the Warsaw Pact, controlled from Moscow, buffered against another invasion from Germany or France. Ukraine buffered against attack from the Mediterranean. With the collapse of the Soviet Union, however, with former Warsaw Pact nations joining NATO and Ukraine declaring its independence, these strategic buffers were lost. With Ukraine moving to join the European Union and perhaps NATO, the last semblance of a buffer zone disappeared. Early on, as the Warsaw Pact fell apart, Russia could do little to counter its reversal of fortunes, because Russia itself was in such social turmoil and economic chaos. The calamitous fall of the Soviet Union was a sore blow to Russian nationalistic pride, even among those who were not particularly fond of the Communist regime. Putin has been successful at merging that injured pride with the historic sense of paranoia to justify reclaiming Ukraine as Moscow's own vassal. Human nature becomes more determined when its pride is injured. And paranoia will motivate people to take irrational measures. All that comes together in the way that Russia is prosecuting this war. And because of these factors, finding a workable peace settlement, short of Ukraine's complete annihilation, will do little to ease Russian paranoia. And being fought to a stalemate by a supposedly second-rate power will only add to Russia's injured pride. At best, therefore, any peace settlement promises to be a recess from hostilities, not the end of them. _________ You can download a PDF transcript of this program at https://www.upsizeyourleadership.com/episodes. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Ukraine's Newfound Patriotic Zeal An Unintended Gift from Putin It's clear that neither Vladimir Putin nor his war planners ever anticipated the strength and the tenacity of Ukraine's resistance to the Russian invasion. A war which the Russians expected to last a few hours or days has now entered its third year, and Russian offensives have been stymied month after month. What explains this Ukrainian determination to in the face of what would appear to be overwhelming odds? It stems in part from a sense of nationalism and patriotism which the Ukrainians have developed for the first time in their history. Prior to the invasion, Ukrainians had a sense of pride in their country and their culture. But they had never been united around patriotic fervor. The war has changed all that. In this episode I explain how this happened and what it implies for the future course of the war. I also explain why the Ukrainians are likely to fight on, even if their aid from the U.S. and western Europe dissipates entirely. A PDF transcript of this episode can be downloaded at https://www.upsizeyourleadership.com/episodes. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Following the collapse of the Soviet Union, I worked extensively in both Russia and Ukraine. I managed offices and staffs in both countries and interacted closely with everyone from the most common laborers to top government officials. Not only that, my duties required me to travel widely in Russia and from corner to corner of Ukraine. I became intimately acquainted with how Ukrainians feel about Russia and how Russians feel about Ukraine. In spite of their cultural, historical, and linguistic commonalities, I soon learned that Russians tended to view Ukrainians with disdain, and Ukrainians tended to view Russians with resentment. Those deep-seated, historic feelings aggravate the challenge of finding a solution to the war now raging in Ukraine. Yet, most Americans -- even otherwise well-informed political commentators -- are either unaware of this attitudinal divide or disregard it in analyzing the conflict as it has unfolded. With this episode, I undertake a series of podcast programs dealing with this attitudinal divide and other critical backstories which make resolution of this conflict highly complex and perhaps impossible. Even if one side triumphs militarily over the other, the tension -- and now, outright animosity -- will live on. I give this first episode to the roots of Ukrainian resentment of Russian rule. I zero in on two events in the 20th century that permanently poisoned Ukrainian outlooks toward their huge neighbor to the north. A PDF transcript of this episode is available at https://www.upsizeyourleadership.com/episodes/. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The Action Agenda for Every Leader This is the fourth episode in a series examining the meaning of leadership. Previous programs explored the people-centric nature of leadership and the orchestrating role of purpose at the heart of the leader's endeavor. This final episode in the series examines the three-part action agenda which every leader must carry out. First is to rally people around the purpose. Then motivate them to pursue it. And third is to mobilize them to achieve it. I discuss the importance of each of these functions and why their success depends in large measure on the leader's personality and strengths. As a leader, where does your effectiveness lie? In rallying people to your cause? In motivating them to get behind it? Or mobilizing them to make it happen? The first two of these functions are people-centered. The third -- mobilizing -- is process-centric. The most successful leaders move effortlessly from motivating and inspiring people to managing processes, and vice versa. Others are not so versatile. They excel at engaging and inspiring people, but pay insufficient attention to the process side of leadership. And naturally, there are leaders for which the opposite is true. They are superb at managing processes, but weak at bringing out the best in their people. You will find the analysis of these dynamics quite thought-provoking. You can download a transcript of the episode at https://www.upsizeyourleadership.com/episodes. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

How We Developed a Muddled Concept of Leadership In my early 20s, when I began conducting trainings on leadership, few books on the subject existed. The business world was somewhat exclusive enthralled with management, and that was reflected in the inventory choices at the typical bookstore. It would be another 20 years before Warren Bemis and others began publishing works which drew a sharp distinction between management and leadership. The popularity of their books touched off an steady outpouring of leadership books ever since. The explosion of interest in leadership toward the end of the 20th century resulted from a striking change in the American labor force. At the outset of the century, workers were largely uneducated and somewhat limited in their skill sets. By the end of the century, the workforce was highly educated and thoroughly advanced as skilled specialists. To bring out the highest performance of a worker community like this, companies had to adopt a more people-centric approach from those which had prevailed just two generations before. Leadership filled that bill. But the way that corporations initially attempted to create a leadership culture had an unintended consequence. The concept of what it means to be a leader became somewhat muddled. It In this episode I trace how that happened and elaborate on three questions which I developed to determine whether someone is indeed a leader or merely wears the title. This episode not only expands on those questions. It also explains the historical influences which made them important. A PDF transcript of the episode is available at https://www.upsizeyourleadership.com/transcripts/2404-muddled-concepts-of-leadership.pdf. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Implications of Viewing Leadership as Art Last week we began parsing the definition of leadership which I developed 20 years ago: Leadership is the art of rallying people around a shared purpose, then motivating them and mobilizing them to achieve it.. In that episode, we examined the import of the terms "people" and "shared purpose." This week we take up a third term: "art." Last week we examined two key terms from my definition of leadership. This week we take up a third term, "art." Leadership is far more akin to an art than a science. And because it is, there are no objective measures by which to judge a leader's work, no more than there are objective measures by which to judge an artist's work. People either like it or they don't. In fact, people might like the results a leader gets, but dislike the leader's style or personality. And since their judgment of the leader is entirely subjective, it is not easily refuted. Leaders must therefore have a strong enough sense of self that they are not knocked off course by criticism that is uninformed, mean-spirited, or the product of personal prejudice. A transcript of this episode is available at https://www.upsizeyourleadership.com/episodes/2403-leadership-as-art.htm, Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices