Episode 50! Now Its Time To Practice What We Preach

Well, we made it to episode 50! I want to thank all of you in the Iron Sharpens Iron movement, which together has grown and experienced the stories of some amazing people that I hope you then took and shared with others.

Remember, this podcast’s premise is to make yourself and others around you better every day. I am going to entitle this episode, “practice what you preach.” This will serve as a point of reflection and accountability to myself about season 1 and did we accomplish what we set out to do. I have always considered myself a servant leader and more recently changed that perspective slightly to a steward leader (meaning owning it and passing it along as a steward of this great responsibility of leading others). I was taught that by the Commissioner of the South African Revenue Service, the honorable Edward Kieswetter.

This brings me to some reflection…

  • In 2019, I had the privilege to travel to Europe, Africa, the Middle East, and South Asia to meet with leaders from all types of industry and scale, to discuss the topic of leadership and what they felt were some of the key points to discuss in terms of shaping the leadership landscape within the next few years.  What I discovered was fascinating… almost to a person. There was a focus on people-centric leading. It did not matter the culture or industry or the context of the fourth industrial revolution or the impact of AI or big data…what mattered was people. Without guiding the conversation, it was a natural progression of different perspectives that still provided the same ending…and that is that people matter most. This re-enforcement of what I held as my own core beliefs gave me the confidence to know this was a global perspective on leading, and now it came down (as it always does) to executing the art and science of leading.
  • Emboldened by what we discovered overseas, I planned on taking this same process and meeting the top executives from North and South America. But just as 2020 got underway, we were hit with the pandemic.  This was actually when the Iron Sharpens Iron Movement was born. Faced with not being able to travel, we decided to make a podcast as a platform to continue meeting with amazing leaders about the power of human-centric leading.
  • So here we are…After around the world trip and a year of podcast interviews, where do we go next? Hence the practice of what you preach title for this episode. I can not stop now, but I need to continue to get better… remember Iron Sharpens Iron.
  • I got with many colleagues, and we determined we needed to expand the platform and provide different venues to present ideas. So season two is going to be amazing!
  • We are building the movement on YouTube, and we will provide 3 really cool perspectives.
    • The first will be the traditional Iron Sharpens Iron Movement podcast but with video. The podcast will not be any different than season one, except I do plan to focus a bit more on CHRO’s and CEO’s that are on the front lines of business and how does leadership impact the bottom line and trends they see in leaders being able to truly move the needle in regards to performance and a people-first focus.
    • The second offering will be my mindset moments. This will be a mixture of my thoughts through my 30+ years of experience and a reflection on when I take notes during a podcast, and I really want to foot stomp on an idea.
    • The third venue is the power of threes. I will bring three key leadership takeaways in under three minutes.

I am really excited about each of these, and we are already starting to record some for future episodes. So here is to Season 1! We did it with your support and interaction. Season 2 will be a blast and make sure you tell a friend as we want to continue to grow our tribe.

Give us a few weeks to reshuffle the way we record and interview, and we will certainly provide updates and links to the Youtube channel that will host Season 2 (along with all the other traditional podcast hosting sites you can find us on).

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