Once again, I am pulling from the book Leading with Emotional Intelligence by Reldan Nadler. In his book, Nadler talks about “The Perfection Loop” — the fact that success-driven people often set unrealistic goals that set them up for failure or frustration. Today, we’ll break down why people set unrealistic goals, the six stages of the Perfection Loop, some indicators that you’re in one, and how to counter it.

Today, we’re talking about leading through a Reduction in Force, or RIF. This episode isn’t just for people who have managerial duties, but also people who lead by influence.

A RIF period at a company is trying for everyone but it also provides a great opportunity to demonstrate leadership and empathy.

Transitioning from managing yourself to managing others — is this the route for you?

For those becoming first-time managers, there is a learning curve, with the biggest change being a shift to begin thinking about others. Let’s talk about the differences when moving from an individual contributor to a manager, issues that can arise and what to do to help, and how to set yourself up for success.

One of my all-time favorite leadership books – certainly the one with the most sticky tabs in it – is Reldan Nadler’s Leading with Emotional Intelligence. I’ve used this resource for other episodes of the podcast, and today I want to talk about tools for building your self-confidence — specifically, Being on Your Side rather than Being on Your Case. Or, as I like to call it, having your own back. While we’re specifically talking about your relationship with yourself in this episode, understand the consequences of that relationship to all the other relationships in your life. If you lead people, you will likely treat them as you treat yourself.

I have been re-reading the book Quiet Leadership: Six Steps to Transforming Performance at Work, by David Rock. One of his concepts jumped out at me, and I wanted to share it with you. Brain science tells us that, when we focus on a behavior we wish to change, we are actually cementing the neural pathway that was created when we began repeating that behavior in the first place. Once a neural pathway is created in our brain, it will always be there. The challenge is not to remove that pathway – we can’t – but rather create a new neural pathway through our thinking and beliefs. Today, we’ll walk through some examples and discuss how we can do this to improve our professional persona.

Today, I want to delve into the three biggest mistakes I see people making in their attempts to brand themselves – as well as the solution. First, we’ll talk about why personal branding is important, then break down the mistakes I see most often, wrapping up with the solution, accompanied by some examples.

Let me start by saying there are good reasons to accept a counteroffer from your current employer. However, if the ONLY reason you are even considering the counteroffer is because it pays more than the outside offer you’ve received, it’s probably the wrong move for you. What is a counteroffer? There are two possibilities that we’ll go over today, along with tools to evaluate an initial job offer, counteroffer strategies, and how to accept or decline an offer from your company or an outside company.

Today, I want to give you a five-step process for answering behavioral interview questions. Behavioral interviewing operates on the principle that the best predictor of future behavior is past behavior. Behavioral interview questions require you to respond with a specific story, rather than talking in hypotheticals. In these situations, preparation is key. I teach my clients the CARL method: Challenge – Action – Result – Lessons Learned, and that’s what I recommend for you as well.

Here’s a fact: for most of us, and the companies in which we work, career development is rarely a priority. There are too many urgent matters to attend to every day…and career planning takes a back seat. So today, we’re talking about what might be holding back your career development — and how to help.

I get a lot of questions about following up after a job interview. Today, I want to give the ABC’s of interview follow-up, as well as some creative options for staying in touch throughout the decision-making process.

Today, a return guest – and one of my favorites! Previously, Katrina McGhee was on the podcast to talk about taking a career break. Today, we talk about leveraging a sabbatical before taking on a bigger role. Whether with your current employer or accepting a position with another company, you may need a break before taking on even more responsibility and challenges. Katrina talks about the signs that this break may be more of a need than a want and how to ask for the break. We also talk about re-entry strategies after the break is over.

Today, we’re talking about organizing your job search. For some of you, this may be a foreign concept – why would I need organization to look at job boards? I just look at them and apply to as many jobs as I possibly can – right? Wrong. I’m not going to go into detail with specific job search strategies – I covered that in multiple other episodes. Rather, what I want to cover today is the structure of your job search…dedicating time for your job search and using that time to your best advantage.

For some of you, you may want help with your goal. For others of you, you may want to make a job or even a career change this year. For still others, you may want to position yourself for success in your current role. These are all great reasons to hire a coach, so I wanted to dedicate an episode to helping you find the right coach for you.

Let me start by saying I’m a planning geek. Goals and strategies excite me, and I love realizing the aggressive goals I set for myself. Today, I’m inviting you to pick an area of your professional life that you would like to see massive change in. We’ll work together to create a plan to make it happen!

I wanted to revisit a topic I covered way back in episode #82 on how to answer the “Tell me about yourself” interview question. Because the “tell me about yourself” question is asked first if it is asked at all, it holds considerable weight in the interviewer’s mind. It also gives you the opportunity to start the interview off on the best possible foot. Today, I wanted to go over how I coach my clients to answer this question.

My guest today is Dr. Amy Mednick, a New York City psychiatrist who specializes in the overlap between the humanities in neuroscience. Today, Amy and I talk about Zoom fatigue — what is it, why is it so prevalent, and the warning signs you want to pay attention to. We also talk about how to make Zoom meetings more humanizing if you are in charge.

This week, I have a return guest — Robert Jordan. Robert is CEO of Interim Execs, which matches interim, project, and fractional executives with opportunities. Today, we’re talking about the role of an interim executive — and who is the right fit for these types of opportunities. Robert shares the characteristics he looks for in interim executives and how you can best present yourself for these roles.

Each year since the inception of this podcast in 2017, I have done a Five Unusual Things to Be Thankful For episode during Thanksgiving week. The purpose is two-fold: to get you thinking about the things in your life that you could look at differently – and to show gratitude for those things that maybe didn’t feel so good at the time they were happening.

Not all job searches should look alike — and the important thing is that you launch the type of job search that makes the most sense for you. Today, we’re breaking down passive and active job searching, and how to split up your time based on the time and urgency of your job search.

Okay…I’m determined not to get mushy here, but I do want to take a moment to congratulate myself on the exciting accomplishment of releasing 250 podcast episodes. Today, we’ll cover the story of how I got started in podcasting, challenging my beliefs of scarcity, and I’ll give you four tips for doing the same for yourself.