Kon Apostolopoulos is the founder and CEO of Fresh Biz Solutions, a human capital management consulting group that provides performance improvement and training solutions to help organizations develop people, improve business results, and benefit from a comprehensive talent management strategy. He’s also the co-author of the timely book, 7 Keys to Navigating a Crisis, and a regular contributor to Thrive Global and Achievers Engagement Blog.

As a speaker and expert in performance improvement and change management, Kon has delivered hundreds of workshops and spoken at countless events for leaders in North America and Europe, sharing fresh ideas and best practices that engage his audiences and empower participants to take the next bold step forward in their professional and personal lives.

The world is faced with a crisis which has already greatly affected our approach to leadership. As employees work from home, we’ve learned the hard way that trust in our staff is critical. Going without it is no longer an option.

So many leaders see leadership and business as being all about them. The truth is, leadership isn’t about any one person. Leadership is about the people you lead. It’s because of selfish leaders that we see negative trends like the “great resignation” happening all around us. Good leaders have to meet the needs of their employees, but they also have to strike a balance between providing direction and not getting in the way.

Navigating the global crisis on a personal level has meant reckoning with the fact that life is going to be full of good times, and bad. Every positive moment in life stands out in contrast to what’s around us. Before, we may have seen friends and loved ones on a daily basis. But for many, that experience was magnified in meaning after spending months apart. Everything in life, the ups and downs, happens in natural contrast with one another.

Kindness is desperately needed in our world today. We need to be kind to ourselves, first and foremost, but we also need to extend it to those around us. The minute you show kindness to someone else, you get it back in return.

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Resources:

• freshbizsolutions.com
• Read: 7 Keys to Navigating a Crisis
• LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/coachkon

Today’s guest is… Peter Margaritis! Huh? That’s right, we’re turning the mic around with a special guest host, Kate Colbert, President of Silver Tree Publishing, to celebrate the release of “Off Script: Mastering the Art of Business Improv.”

I’ve documented much of the journey of writing this book directly through the podcast, and today we’re going to wrap things up to talk about the whole story: Why I wrote this book, what it means to go off script, and how you can use improv to sharpen your business and leadership skills.

What does it actually mean to go off script? The idea for the book was born during some research into Martin Luther King, who improvised his famous “I Have a Dream” speech. But improvising doesn’t mean “winging it.” Dr. King over prepared for that presentation. He took moments from previous speeches that he knew resonated with audiences and he built upon them, matching the ebb and flow of the crowd’s attention.

We’ve been taught that good leaders control the situation. They have everything locked down, they know what’s going on, and they’re directing the flow of business. And while that may be true of good leaders, it’s not what great leaders do. 

Great leaders don’t make it about them, but about the people they lead. When leaders lead with their ego, they shut out the possibility that other people may have better ideas than they do. But when a leader treats their teams with a mind for collaboration, they cultivate the best minds to make the best decisions possible.

The “Yes, and…” lifestyle takes time to adapt to. You’re going to fall off the wagon. But trust me, it’s going to change your career if you just keep at it. If you’re ready to learn more, check out Off Script: Mastering the Art of Business Improv.

Resources:

• Read: Off Script: Mastering the Art of Business Improv

Dr. Gleb Tsipursky is the CEO of Disaster Avoidance Experts and the author of several books, including Returning to the Office and Leading Hybrid and Remote Teams: A Manual on Benchmarking to Best Practices for Competitive Advantage. He joins the show to lay out just why we can’t rely on our guts to tell us how to approach bringing workforces back to the office.

Through confirmation bias and the disconnect between higher management and their workforce, it can be very easy to make the wrong decisions when it comes to structuring a company in this new, post-COVID world. Thankfully, Gleb has studied the data extensively and he knows exactly where people are going right and where they’re going wrong.

A great example Gleb relays is how managers love Zoom happy hours as a morale booster and team building exercise while staff are separated. But the data all suggests that staff don’t enjoy these sessions and, if anything, they lead to more disconnect than before. 

• A very small minority of employees want to return to the office full-time and, in many cases, they will look for work elsewhere (and even accept pay cuts in the process) if a company forces them to fully return to a physical building.
• Employees hold a lot of power when it comes to this particular negotiation and it’s something management is still waking up to in a lot of places.
• Everything from pay to office size will need to be reevaluated as a result of these changes.
• Management teams should be placed in a position where they are forced to justify each day an employee is made to come to the office individually.

Ultimately, Gleb’s philosophy is about studying the numbers and looking at what people are actually doing. It may be counterintuitive in places, but that’s why it’s so valuable to hear what he has to say.

The superpower Gleb wants to teach us is learning to love discovering when we’re wrong. That way we can ensure we actually get things right. So think to yourself, now… What am I doing in my work right now that might not be the right way to do things?

Click to Download the Full Transcript PDF

• Read: Returning to the Office and Leading Hybrid and Remote Teams: A Manual on Benchmarking to Best Practices for Competitive Advantage
  gleb@disasteravoidanceexpert.com
• Access the “Assessment on Dangerous Judgment Errors in the Workplace” and the “Wise Decision Maker Course” for free
• Follow Gleb Tsipursky on
  • LinkedIn
  • Facebook
  • Twitter
  • Instagram
  • YouTube
  • RSS feed

One of the key features of improvisation is the ability to listen. When we listen, we park our ego and our agenda, and strive to understand what the other person is trying to say. It’s about listening with our eyes and our ears – but it’s also about the questions we ask.

My son is a type 1 diabetic. He recently had his wisdom teeth extracted, and we had to take care of him. One day, he called me and asked me to come home because he was vomiting. He had taken some of his antibiotics but he hadn’t eaten any food recently. So I started doing some research, and I asked the question: “What happens when you take an antibiotic on an empty stomach?” I noticed the symptoms: vomiting, dry heaving, etc, but when I checked his blood sugar, I knew something else was going on. I rushed him to the emergency room.

Within minutes he was diagnosed with DKA – diabetic ketoacidosis. This is a serious condition that can lead to a diabetic coma or even death. I was lucky to catch this despite the information I was getting back from my question. The question I should have been asking was: “What could be happening when a type 1 diabetic is throwing up?” That would have clued me in that things were more severe than I realized and saved me valuable time.

Even when we think we’ve reached the right answer to our questions, we need to pause and ask ourselves “What else could this be? What are the blind spots I’m not seeing?” We need to think through that and come to realize that maybe this could be something else. That’s a big part of listening.