On this episode of Leading Beyond Limits: Cultivating Creativity, my guest is Laura Nespoli.
Laura has spent 20 years shaping brand, marketing, sales, and product stories for leading global brands and nonprofits. As Group Strategy Director at Article Group, she shapes strategic narratives for innovative product companies. Laura also founded Meshin Movement, a story consultancy that operates in the space between strategy, social impact and creative expression. Through Meshin, Laura speaks about the power of story to develop people, teams and leaders and also helps people and orgs develop their purpose stories.
5:30 Hear about how discovering the terms empath and highly sensitive person (HSP) unlocked a purposeful life path.
11:00 Learn how leveraging agency and creativity can help in finding your authentic story and self.
14:36 Hear how sharing your unique and authentic self and story helps to connect and create community as human beings.
27:25 Learn how to push the boundaries of creativity by embracing failure.
35:00 Learn how resilience and perseverance can be stoked by the flames of borrowing other people’s belief in you and your ideas, even when you’re struggling to believe in yourself.
Where can you find more?
On this episode of Leading Beyond Limits: Cultivating Creativity, my guest is Emily Schneider.
Emily is a visual storyteller specializing in presentation design. Her passion for simplifying complex content has become a bit of a magical knack — blending storytelling with a keen design eye. She’s not just a designer; Emily is a strategic collaborator, dedicated to helping businesses confidently transform their messages into beautiful, effective presentations that truly resonate with their intended audiences.
4:10 Learn about how Emily’s passion for storytelling and creative problem solving was shaped by a deep wonder about how things come together to create an emotional connection.
8:00 Hear how leveraging our zone of genius, curiosity, and community can help us become more resilient in order to show up at our best and most favorite self so we can lead by example in uncertain times.
9:15 Hear about the power of connection, community and vulnerability and how we can strengthen, grow and evolve through failure and learning.
13:06 Emily turns the tables and asks Shawn the question, “When I’m hitting my goals consistently, am I setting the right goals?”
17:40 Hear about leveraging external influences for creative input and how boundaries create space to be able to find an edge.
20:00 Hear about the three critical things that make a presentation resonate.
24:40 Hear about the role courage plays as our personal seasons shift, evolving our relationships with ourselves, others, and our connections to things and ideas.
Where can you find more?
Subscribe to the podcast on Spotify or using your favorite podcast app.
You can also support the podcast with ratings, kind words, and by sharing with others.
Find Shawn on Substack, LinkedIn, Instagram and explore Shawn’s coaching here.
Find Emily at iamemilyschneider.com and on LinkedIn.
The 15 Commitments of Conscious Leadership by Jim Dethmer, Diana Chapman and Kaley Klemp
On this episode of Leading Beyond Limits: Cultivating Creativity, my guest is Kerry Ann King.
Kerry Ann is the founder and CEO of Eluminate Labs, a software development company dedicated to building solutions that decolonize tech, creating inclusive tools for human wellbeing. After more than a decade working inside the tech industry to promote human-centered approaches to engagement, wellbeing and inclusion, Kerry Ann felt strongly that it was necessary to break free from the exploitative foundations of big tech in order to build software and applications that put people and their wellbeing first. Eluminate Lab’s debut offering Fin - Positive Productivity is designed to help neurodivergent adults learn about their productivity style through data and coaching.
2:53 Hear about the benefits of self-awareness as a method of data collection to help you better understand yourself and what will bring you contentment in your career and life.
12:40 Learn what decolonizing tech means and how it differs from what you might expect.
17:37 Hear about leveraging data to provide customers with better information (without taking an extractive approach) and how data can be balanced alongside other humanistic (rather than deterministic) approaches when managing employees.
24:18 Hear about the philosophy behind Eluminate Labs’ product and how it guides product development and the mission of providing value for neurodivergent individuals.
27:00 Hear about how to build and foster creativity in problem-solving as a leader.
Where can you find more?
On this episode of Leading Beyond Limits: Cultivating Creativity, my guest is Consuelo Ruybal.
Consuelo has been a Product Design leader since 2001 and is known for supporting and nurturing each designer in successfully growing their career while positively impacting the company's business and clients. Consuelo builds teams from the ground up for agencies and start-ups, recruiting, hiring, and creating the operational environment for those teams through a mix of business strategy, product innovation, product design, design operations, and a focus on customer needs with a solid research and discovery practice. Consuelo is deeply inspired to create user experiences that deliver value to customers and generate results for clients and particularly loves working on large, complicated projects with diverse team members.
1:51 Learn about the different ways that creativity shows up in our lives.
3:15 Hear how Consuelo builds diverse design teams and the importance of different ideas to spark innovation for business success.
5:03 Hear about removing your ego in order to approach decision-making in design (and more broadly) when faced with the tension between artistic vision and practicality.
7:01 Hear about the fear that shows up when we begin in a new medium or domain and how to embrace the discomfort of “beginner mind” to foster empathy.
10:52 Hear about belonging and how to honor and embrace your own style of leadership, even through challenges like layoffs or harassment at work, rather than internalizing those systemic factors.
16:40 Hear about how to navigate and lead a team through transitions in the constantly evolving technologies, trends, and consumer needs by consistently evaluating the trifecta of process, tooling, and situations.
19:29 Hear about helping your teams grow and work together through feedback and how to be courageous and curious in providing it.
23:23 Hear about how side projects and pro bono work can keep your creative energy flowing.
Where can you find more?
-Subscribe to the podcast on Spotify or using your favorite podcast app.
-You can also support the podcast with ratings, kind words, and by sharing with others.
-Find Shawn on Substack, LinkedIn, Instagram and explore their coaching here.
-Find Consuelo at www.consuelo.com, Substack, and on LinkedIn.
On this episode of Leading Beyond Limits: Cultivating Creativity, my guest is Tanya Hallett. Please be aware that this episode includes descriptions of trauma and mentions of stillbirth.
After spending more than 20 years working in education, Tanya founded TIPT (Trauma Informed Practice Training) to create psychologically safe, diverse, and inclusive schools and workplaces where everyone can thrive, not just survive. She has spent much of her career working with children, adolescents and adults who are neurodiverse, from CALD backgrounds or those who suffer from complex trauma and mental health challenges. Tanya is a passionate advocate for play and creativity in improving mental health and human connection, and trauma informed practice in schools and workplaces. She is a LEGO® Serious Play® facilitator. She has lived experience of neurodiversity, PTSD, anxiety/depression and is a Mental Health First Aid Instructor. Tanya strongly believes the future of successful leadership and productivity will need to be trauma informed to meet the needs of our incoming Gen Z workforce.
3:10 You’ll hear about Tanya’s journey from teaching kids in schools to founding Trauma Informed Practice Training.
19:30 You’ll hear what trauma-informed leadership looks like in practice and why it's essential, especially when working with younger generations like Gen Z.
24:00 You’ll hear about using Lego Serious Play in team building.
27:30 You’ll hear about the responsibility individuals have in overcoming their own trauma and where that meets the responsibility that companies have for the psychological safety of their employees at work.
34:00 You’ll hear how leaders can shift their focus toward supporting the well-being and growth of their team members without compromising organizational goals.
36:30 You’ll hear ways that leaders can incorporate more play and creative thinking into their team’s daily work to produce better outcomes.
Where can you find more?
For more information about Shawn Carney Coaching, check out the website www.shawncarneycoaching.com
Subscribe to the podcast on Spotify or using your favorite podcast app.
You can also support the podcast with ratings, kind words, and by sharing with others.
Find Tanya on her website TIPT.com.au or on LinkedIn.
In this episode of Leading Beyond Limits: Cultivating Creativity, Jon Clemence joins us to discuss SEO, how to increase readership and conversion using both your existing and new content, and valuable lessons about entrepreneurship.
Jon is a professional proofreader, editor, and writer who’s in the top 2% of freelancers on Upwork. He’s the founder and owner of Cedar Press Proofreading, which helps businesses improve their written content to attract more people to their websites and convert them into new clients. Jon also helps people improve their blogs, newsletters, articles, books and more. He’s learned what it takes to craft compelling content and stand out in a sea of online content, and is here to share what he’s learned with us to help you create content that helps your business grow.
1:30 Learn some creative tips about how to transform stale blog content into a traffic magnet without writing a single new post.
6:13 Learn about how people are misusing AI and methods and tools that will get you better results in the long term.
10:43 Learn some ways to leverage your existing website/blog/email/newsletter content in order to see an increase in readership and conversion rates.
15:49 Hear some creative ways to promote your content even when you’re not an expert in Google SEO.
17:49 Hear how Jon left the corporate world during the pandemic to become an entrepreneur and some helpful lessons he learned along the way.
21:10 Learn about how Jon balances structure and experimentation with his team to foster innovation and creativity in a way that enables delegation so he can focus on the business instead of getting too caught up being in the business.
24:00 Hear how Jon intentionally creates space for creativity in his daily routine.
Where can you find more?
For more information about Shawn Carney Coaching, the podcast, and ways to support, check out the website www.shawncarneycoaching.com and subscribe on YouTube, Spotify, Apple, Amazon, or using your favorite RSS app.
You can also support the podcast with ratings, kind words, and by sharing with others.
Find Jon on his website CedarPressProofreading.com or on LinkedIn.
In this episode of Leading Beyond Limits: Cultivating Creativity, Dr. Kate Raynes-Goldie joins us to discuss the use of play for serious purposes such as innovation, connection, and mental health among other benefits, leveraging LEGO® Serious Play® and SUPERCONNECT®.
Dr. Kate Raynes-Goldie is an internationally awarded human connection specialist, PhD trained business anthropologist, university lecturer, keynote speaker and strategic speaker coach. She is also the Co-Founder and Chief Connection Officer at The Up Next Company, and a passionate advocate for the power of curiosity and play for boosting connection, trust, mental health, communication, innovation and strategy.
2:10 You’ll hear about LEGO® Serious Play® and the value of using play for serious purposes.
6:09 You’ll hear about the benefits of play and curiosity at work and the growing body of research in this area.
8:15 You’ll hear about some common reasons that prevent us from being innovative and fearless at work, as well as how play can help foster psychological safety.
11:16 You’ll hear about how play can help with exploring metaphor and story in order to gain insights and create deeper connections.
14:30 You’ll hear about SUPERCONNECT®, an add on for LEGO Serious Play, created by Dr Kate, that optimizes for human connection, psychological safety, and better conversations about what really matters including the power of incorporating kindness and consent and how that fosters inclusion and belonging.
19:45 You’ll hear about the interdisciplinary approach of leveraging anthropology as a tool to help people lean into their professional curiosity to understand and meet their customer’s needs better.
23:34 You’ll hear about the ADHD superpower of being curious and creative, as well as tactics you can utilize in your own life to channel some of that power.
26:50 You’ll hear about the “I’m not creative” false narrative that many people believe about themselves and how to change that narrative for yourself and others.
31:24 You’ll learn about strategic speaking and how it can help to ensure you’re serving the purpose you’re aiming to serve with speaking.
Where can you find more?
For more information about Shawn Carney Coaching, the podcast, and ways to support, check out the website www.shawncarneycoaching.com and subscribe on Spotify, Apple, Amazon, or using your favorite RSS app.
You can also support the podcast with ratings, kind words, and by sharing with others.
Find Shawn on LinkedIn/in/shawncarney or Instagram @shawncarneycoaching
Find Dr Kate on her website kateraynesgoldie.com or at The Up Next Company website https://bio.site/theupnextcompany
In this episode of Leading Beyond Limits: Cultivating Creativity, Dr. Natalie Marr joins us to discuss self-care, especially for women entering or in the midst of midlife, with evidence backed tactics for stress management. If you're not a woman in midlife, there's plenty of helpful tips in here for you, too!
Dr. Natalie is a clinical psychologist who specializes in evidence-based approaches that help midlife women find inner peace and joy by cultivating their curiosity, growth, and wisdom. She’s also a teacher, speaker, trainer, podcast host, blogger, and is writing a book on how to redefine happiness.
Where can you find more?
This episode of Leading Beyond Limits: Cultivating Creativity, Andrea Johnson joins me to discuss leveraging your strengths, the power of intentional optimism, self-awareness and alignment with core values, and other valuable lessons.
Andrea is a certified DISC Consultant, speaker, trainer and coach and she empowers executives and founders to lead with authenticity, conviction and confidence so they can make a positive impact on their lives, organizations and communities. She also has a podcast, Stand Tall & Own It, for high performing female leaders who are ready to make an impact by discovering the safety that comes from understanding their own value and exercising their authority.
2:42 You’ll hear how focusing on your strengths and sharing your abundance can contribute to your communities
4:00 You’ll hear how self-awareness can help you make space for creative thought and also strategically approach your goals, including how body doubling can help not only folks with ADHD, but anyone who needs accountability get things done.
9:30 You’ll hear about how being willing to say you need help can make space for others to show up and collaborate with you.
11:51 You’ll hear how understanding and honoring your core values can help you navigate expectations and to break out of the conditioning and narratives that don’t serve you.
14:30 You’ll hear about giving yourself permission by naming what you’re experiencing in your life, including health issues like menopause, anxiety, and other historically taboo topics.
21:00 You’ll hear about saying no to things in order to make more space for the things that truly matter, align with your core values, and serve the broader good.
23:15 You’ll hear about techniques that let you stay open and creative in a volatile, uncertain, complex, and ambiguous world.
Links mentioned in this episode:
Where can you find more?
For more information about Shawn Carney Coaching, the podcast, and ways to support, check out the website www.shawncarneycoaching.com and subscribe on YouTube, Spotify, Google, Apple, Amazon, or using your favorite RSS app.
You can also support the podcast with ratings, kind words, and by sharing with others.
Find Shawn on LinkedIn/in/shawncarney or Instagram @shawncarneycoaching
Find Andrea on her website The Intentional Optimist, LinkedIn, Instagram, and her podcast Stand Tall and Own It.
In this episode of Leading Beyond Limits: Cultivating Creativity, Paul Teasdale joins me to discuss lessons learned working across diverse industries from sausage making, banking, Formula 1 and more.
Paul helps people perform using insights from his 7 years working with Formula 1 team McLaren, while incorporating lessons from other high performance organizations that he has worked with.
2:00 You’ll hear about the power “yes, and” has in making space for creativity to happen.
5:13 You’ll hear about how processes can build confidence and make space for innovation.
8:20 You’ll hear about how reviewing rules and assumptions can spark creative breakthroughs.
11:44 You’ll hear about evolutionary wins and how making small improvements in strategic places can stack for massive innovation and progress.
15:00 You’ll hear how to leverage industry expertise in one area to bring a fresh perspective in approaching problem solving in a different industry.
19:54 You’ll hear about how to leverage the REFRAME process for a competitive advantage when you’re at peak performance in your industry.
23:10 You’ll hear about how to set up helpful conditions for creating the environment for safe and fast experimentation and innovation, including why celebrating failure can be a good thing.
28:15 You’ll hear about leveraging your support network and changing your physical environment can spark creativity.
32:26 You’ll hear how measuring the wrong thing can stifle innovation and creativity by inadvertently optimizing for behaviors that don’t serve your company.
Where can you find more?
For more information about Shawn Carney Coaching, the podcast, and ways to support, check out the website www.shawncarneycoaching.com and subscribe on YouTube, Spotify, Apple, Amazon, or using your favorite RSS app.
You can also support the podcast with ratings, kind words, and by sharing with others.
Find Shawn on LinkedIn/in/shawncarney or Instagram @shawncarneycoaching
Find Paul on LinkedIn/in/PaulTeasdale or paulteasdale.co.uk
In this episode of Leading Beyond Limits: Cultivating Creativity, Julie Pham, Phd joins me to discuss the intersection of curiosity and creativity, why optimizing your team’s energy instead of their time brings better results, and how to leverage failure as a growth propellant. Julie is an author, TEDx Speaker, curiosity connoisseur, CEO of CuriosityBased, and founder of “7 Forms of Respect®”. She was born in Saigon, Vietnam, and raised in Seattle. Dr. Pham earned her PhD in history at Cambridge University as a Gates Cambridge Scholar and she graduated magna cum laude from UC Berkeley, where she studied history. She earned her real-life MBA by running her family’s Vietnamese language newspaper during the 2008-2010 recession. She has worked as a journalist, historian, marketer, nonprofit executive, community organizer, and management consultant. She has been recognized with numerous awards for her community leadership. She lives in Seattle, Washington.
Where can you find more?
In this episode of Leading Beyond Limits: Cultivating Creativity, Sam Drauschak joins me to discuss process science - the study of change in systems, becoming a conscious business, and how the accumulation of process debt can impede your capacity for creativity and innovation.
Sam Drauschak is the Co-founder and Chief Process Scientist at Truvle. He leads a mission to empower businesses in curbing wasteful activity through innovative tools, software, and expert content. With over a decade of management consulting experience across financial services, resources, legal, media, and digital sectors, Sam leverages business science fundamentals to streamline and enhance operations. His authored work, Becoming A Conscious Business, explores the efficiency of biological systems and their modern business applications.
At Truvle, he spearheads initiatives to optimize business processes and energy flow, having pioneered the Truvle Mapping Language (TML), a universal process mapping standard adopted by major enterprises worldwide. Sam is a distinguished speaker at IIBA and Columbia University, recognized for his process consulting expertise. Featured in Top 100 Magazine and Marqui’s Who’s Who, he’s celebrated for his exceptional contributions to process mapping language development.
2:16 You’ll hear how self actualization and fulfillment can be outputs of the study of process science by turning the lens of building efficient systems on yourself.
2:57 You’ll hear how being open to pivoting, flowing, and trying different things can be part of an efficient process, even if it sounds counterintuitive.
4:40 You’ll hear about the importance of automating and delegating the routine processes to get out of the mire of the everyday in order to make time for creativity.
7:40 You’ll hear about the valuable messiness of the creative process.
9:00 You’ll learn how failure could look like the right idea at the wrong time and how the process of life unfolding can create opportunities and fertile ground.
11:25 You’ll hear how being vulnerable and authentically sharing your passion can attract collaborators, connectivity, and energy. Like puzzle pieces, we have to combine to create different things together.
14:05 You’ll hear how we’re not being present or sustainable in our business when we intentionally leave the tech, process, and operational debt cleanup for the future knowing it will eventually slow us down.
Links mentioned in this episode:
Where can you find more?
For more information about Shawn Carney Coaching, the podcast, and ways to support, check out the website www.shawncarneycoaching.com and subscribe on YouTube, Spotify, Google, Apple, Amazon, or using your favorite RSS app.
You can also support the podcast with ratings, kind words, and by sharing with others.
Find Sam at truvle.com and LinkedIn
In this episode of Leading Beyond Limits: Cultivating Creativity, Meri Williams joins me to discuss being an inclusive tech leader, leveraging risk to unlock creativity, and how to redesign your leadership role and team for greater impact and enjoyment.
Meri Williams is an experienced CTO and technology leader. She particularly enjoys helping others to level up as technical leaders and managers of organisations, and works as a CTO coach and tech advisor to various companies in this capacity through micro-consultancy ChromeRose.
She has led teams that scale in size from 30 to 300, in a range of organisations from Procter & Gamble, to the Government Digital Service, award-winning online print company MOO, mobile-first challenger bank Monzo and patient-inspired AI-driven rare disease treatment discovery company Healx, amongst others.
A published author and international speaker, she is the chair of The Lead Developer conference, and a tech advisor for Kindred Capital. She’s also a trustee at Stonewall, the UK’s leading LGBTQ+ rights charity, and together with her wife runs micro-charity One Goes Up to help young women & enby folks pursue STEM education & careers.
Links mentioned in this episode:
Where can you find more?
Leadership is about being in service of others, your customers, your employees, your communities, your partners, your stakeholders, and your shareholders. The level of complexity in the world requires creativity in how we navigate uncertainties, identify challenges and opportunities, and create innovative products and services that meet ever-changing conditions and needs, disrupt the market status quo, and delight the customer. To achieve all of this, creativity isn’t a nice-to-have, it’s a must-have. It's not just about artistic expression; creativity is a powerful force that can propel innovative thinking, out-of-the-box problem-solving, and visionary direction. So, how can you cultivate creativity for yourself and your teams? In this podcast, Leading beyond limits: Cultivating creativity, we talk with leaders from different industries and company sizes, solo entrepreneurs, managers, and CEOs in order to offer tactical strategies to help you tap into your creative potential and inspire your teams to do so as well. If you’re looking to create an impact, to make a difference that matters, to set yourself apart from the crowd, to inspire those around you to greatness, then you’re in the right place. Subscribe, embrace your inner creativity, and watch as it transforms not only your leadership but also the world around you.
