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Are you a business owner, executive, leader, team leader, aspiring future leader, leadership junkie, a scientist, a design thinker, or simply the leader of your own life? If you are, then you are a leader, and as such, you should be experimenting!

Welcome to The Experimental Leader, a podcast where we tackle the ways leaders are experimenting in their own work. Hosted by Melanie Parish and Dr. Mel Rutherford, we dive into the most interesting questions about leaders and get into real-life conversations about how people might be experimenting with their leadership. What they are trying? How they are leading and managing their flow of work and throughput? How are they managing bottlenecks, mission, vision, strategic, operational, and tactical intents? How do they organize experiments? How do they succeed? How do they fail? How do they collect data?

The loneliness of leadership can be overwhelming, especially when a leader gets promoted and doesn’t have a roadmap for how to lead. They might feel like they are supposed to have the answers, and yet they have to figure out what that really means. The hardest part can be not having anyone to talk to about their leadership journey.

TEL 55 | Emotional Competency

Emotional Competency With Dr. Keith Westman

  Emotional competency is so important to who we are and who we want to become as a leader. The show’s guest today is Dr. Keith Westman, the Chief Operating Officer at Otus. Otus is the first EdTech platform to centralize learning management, assessment, and data on one platform, reducing chaos for educators, students, and their families. Dr. Keith discusses with Melanie Parish how crucial it is to make space for the people we work with. We have to allow them to be human, have families, and have things they care about outside of work. Tune in and learn more about humanizing yourRead More

3 Tips for Leading a Team that Rocks Innovation

Listen to the podcast here Three Tips For Leading A Team That Rocks Innovation Hey, everybody, I’m super excited to be here with you today. And I want to give you some tips that’ll help you. When you’re leading innovation. There’s something really hard about creating alchemy in a business or an organization when you’re trying to do something that’s never been done before. It can feel like a slog, it can feel like you’re kind of trying to push through sand or move fast through the water. It isn’t always apparent why it feels so hard, because you think,Read More
TEL 54 | Art Of Negotiation

David Johnson On How The Art of Negotiation Can Lead To Great Job Opportunities

  Finding the right job for you and getting the salary you want is not that easy. One must master the art of negotiation and learn how to show up properly if they’re going to pull that off. Melanie Parish sits down with David Johnson, who aims to combine his professional experiences as a lawyer with design. He shares the most important strategies when chasing job opportunities on both entry-level and C-Suite ranks, focusing on showcasing your value and facing every challenge of ambiguity. David also talks about how one can hone and experiment with their negotiation skills just byRead More
TEL 53 Shahmeen Sadiq | Staying Present

How Staying Present And Being Self-Aware Help You Become A Great Leader With Shahmeen Sadiq

    We often rush to take action and do something, but when was the last time you allowed things to slow down a bit? Shahmeen Sadiq, an executive coach, and founder of Anjali Leadership, joins Melanie Parish, to share what it is about staying present and being self-aware that help mold a true leader. Sharing her insights on some social issues, Shahmeen points out that people wanted to move things quickly and help out when all she wanted was to sit a little longer. She tells Melanie about Power Pause, a space she created where people can come, get centered, tune inward, and see what emerges. It’s the beauty of staying present and being aware of themselves that will allow them to deal with an unexpected crisis, difficult people, and events. This is theRead More

International Coaches Week Special: Mastering Business Coaching With Garry Schleifer

  Business coaching is about being 100% present to your client. For our International Coaches Week special episode, our guest is Garry Schleifer, a business coach and the publisher of Choice, the magazine of professional coaching. In this episode, Garry talks about his experiences as a business coach. To Garry, values are very important in coaching; you need to hire and work with people who share your values. Never resting on your laurels as a coach is also essential. After all, mastery is not a destination but a journey. Do you want to learn more from Garry’s experiences to becomeRead More
TEL 51 Shawna Schuh | Neuro-Linguistic Programming

Shawna Schuh: How Neuro-Linguistic Programming Can Redirect Your Life

  Although we have different cultures and upbringing, society has been limiting us in more ways than one, making our full potential for us to unleash. Through neuro-linguistic programming, Shawna Schuh believes that this can help produce the most effective leaders today and become more open to fear and failure. Melanie Parish talks with this innovative thought leader to reveal how she studies animal behavior, language impact, and human connection to break down limitations that hinder us from achieving our best self. Shawna also dissects how such programming can be applied in the contrasting cultures between the United States and Canada, asRead More
TEL 50 Tova Sherman | Workplace Inclusion

Workplace Inclusion: Bringing People With Disabilities To The Workforce With Tova Sherman

  Why do many workplaces exclude people with disabilities? To engage and get the maximum out of your community, you have to be inclusive. Melanie Parish’s guest is Tova Sherman, the award-winning CEO of reachAbility. ReachAbility is an organization that provides supportive and accessible programs dedicated to workplace inclusion for anyone facing barriers. In this episode, Melanie and Tova discuss Tova’s new book, Win, Win, Win! The 18 Inclusion-isms You Need to Become a Disability Confident Employer. Join in the conversation and learn how people don’t come with instructions, why it’s not a lack of capacity that keeps persons with disability out of the workplace,Read More
TEL 48 Jerrett Young Part 2 | Food Takeout Service

How To Transition Into The Food Takeout Service With John Forcier And Jerrett Young, Part 2

  Pivots are breeding grounds for experimentation. As they shifted from the traditional restaurant paradigm to food takeout service, John Forcier and Jerrett Young of Equal Parts found themselves becoming dishwashers, delivery drivers, and prep cooks at various times. This is on top of the Gemba walks that they are already making so that they can really see what needs to be done around the kitchen. In this second part of their interview with Melanie Parish, John and Jerrett share how this experience of experimentation has given them a fresh eye for how work was done in the restaurant and find ways to optimize processes and offers. They also share how theyRead More
TEL 47 Jerrett Young Part 1 | Food Takeout Service

How To Successfully Transition Into The Food Takeout Service With John Forcier And Jerrett Young

  With the hospitality management one of the hardest hit by COVID-19 restrictions, restaurants are still barred from keeping their full capacity. For most dining establishments, pivoting to the food takeout service has allowed them to survive. In this first part of the discussion, Melanie Parish talks to John Forcier and Jerrett Young of Equal Parts about the strategies and challenges of balancing a full restaurant service and a reliable takeout service, all without losing their original branding. They talk about the process of finding the right packaging design and materials, how they see takeout service moving forward, and how they handled laying off people in theRead More
TEL 46 EB Sanders | Career Change

EB Sanders On Pursuing A Career Change The Right Way

  It is not that easy to do a career change, especially when pivoting to a completely different industry. What does it take in terms of skills and mindset for you to be successful in such a huge shift in life? Career coach EB Sanders works with creative individuals who need guidance in this regard. She talks with Melanie Parish about her work on career development, which is now mainly done through virtual platforms due to the pandemic. EB also emphasizes the challenges faced by women, people of color, and members of the marginalized sector regarding career opportunities which, despite the increasing awareness,Read More

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