Meikles & Dimes

145: UNC Professor Alison Fragale | Helping Women Navigate Power & Status Dynamics

Alison Fragale is an award-winning professor at the University of North Carolina, where she teaches courses on leadership and negotiation.

Alison has consulted with numerous organizations, including ExxonMobil, Bayer CropScience, and the U.S. Air Force and Navy among others. And her research has appeared in the Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post, The Boston Globe, Fast Company, Inc. Magazine, and The Financial Times. Before entering academia, Alison worked as a management consultant for McKinsey & Company.

Alison earned her PhD in organizational behavior from Stanford and her BA in mathematics and economics from Dartmouth, graduating magna cum laude and Phi Beta Kappa.

In this episode we discuss the following:

• Though Alison didn’t explicitly set out to conduct research to help women, she realized that it was often the women who were sticking around after class asking for help from someone who looked like them.
• Status and power are often used interchangeably, but they are distinct. Status is respect. Power is resource control. So, it's possible to have one and not have the other.
• Women, more so than men, end up in positions of power without the commensurate status. The alternative, status without power, is much easier to navigate. People think of you as warm, giving, and capable. But people who have power without status are often treated poorly, which can lead to instability and exit.
• Alison’s most common recommendation for women who ask for help navigating power and status dynamics is to start sooner advocating for themselves. Otherwise, they may find themselves in situations where people have already concluded that they’re not the valuable person in the room.

 

Follow Alison:

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/alisonfragale/

Website: https://alisonfragale.com/about/

Book: https://amzn.to/3XuH6Wj

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144: Harvard Professor Amy Edmondson on Psychological Safety | Noticing When the Dog Doesn’t Bark but Should Have

Amy Edmondson is a Leadership and Management professor at Harvard Business School and is world-renowned for her pioneering work on psychological safety.

Amy has been recognized by the Thinkers50 global ranking of management thinkers since 2011, and in 2021 and 2023 Amy was ranked #1 in the world.

Amy is also the author of several books which have been translated into more than two dozen languages. Her most recent book, The right kind of Wrong was named the business book of the year by the Financial Times and Schroders.

Amy earned a BA in engineering and design, an MA in psychology, and a PhD in organizational behavior, all from Harvard University.

In this episode we discuss the following:

• When Amy studied hospital teams, she found, to her dismay, that better teamwork was correlated with higher error rates. But then she had a key insight: better teams were more willing to report errors than worse teams.
• Most people, most of the time, hold back dissenting views. And because we don’t know what we don’t hear, we have to go on a treasure hunt for people’s dissenting views if we want to hear them.
• Psychological safety doesn’t mean being comfortable. Rather, it’s about a willingness to endure discomfort, giving people permission for candor, when we go on treasure hunts for dissenting views.
• We believe we see reality, but we rarely stop to think whether what we think we see is actually true. 

 

Follow Amy:

X: https://x.com/AmyCEdmondson

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/amycedmondson/

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X: https://twitter.com/nate_meikle

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143: Chicago Professor Ayelet Fishbach | Four Science-Backed Ways to Increase Motivation

Ayelet Fishbach is a Professor of Behavioral Science and Marketing at the University of Chicago, Booth School of Business, and the author of GET IT DONE: Surprising Lessons from the Science of Motivation. She is the past president of the Society for the Science of Motivation and the International Social Cognition Network. Her groundbreaking research on human motivation has won numerous awards and is regularly featured in the media, including the New York Times, Financial Times, Wall Street Journal, CNN, and NPR.

Ayelet earned a bachelor's degree with distinction in psychology, a master's degree summa cum laude in psychology, and a PhD magna cum laude in psychology, all from Tel Aviv University.

In this episode we discuss the following:

• To increase motivation, find pleasure along the way. And setting a goal to do something is generally more motivating than setting a goal to stop doing something.
• To increase motivation, we can monitor progress by looking back and looking ahead. When we start out, we can look back and take encouragement from the small progress we’ve made. When we’ve almost completed our goal, we can look forward, and take encouragement from how little we have left.
• When our goals are in harmony with each other we’re more motivated than when we have conflicting goals. For example, rather than thinking about work-life goals as conflicting, we can think more abstractly about how the goals complement each other.
• Including other people in our goals can be more motivating, whether that’s explicitly involving them in our goals, or just acknowledging that others have an interest in us achieving our goals whether they realize it or not. 

Follow Ayelet:

X: https://x.com/ayeletfishbach

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ayelet-fishbach-b32a8b4/

Website: https://www.ayeletfishbach.com/

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X: https://twitter.com/nate_meikle

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142: White Shoe Firm Corporate Attorney Todd Mortensen | Advising CEOs and Boards of Directors

Todd Mortensen is a corporate attorney in New York City who advises boards of directors, investment banks, and special committees on sell-side, buy-side, public, and private transactions in a wide range of industries. Todd has represented Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley, JPMorgan Chase, Barclays Capital, Wells Fargo Securities, UBS, and Rothschild & Co. among others.

Todd has also worked in a number of investment management roles at Blackstone, Morgan Stanley, Merrill Lynch, and Wells Fargo. He’s a former professional athlete and speaks fluent Spanish  and earned a JD/MBA from Penn Law School and Wharton.

In this episode we discuss the following:

• As a corporate attorney Todd helps CEOs and Boards of Directors 1) act in good faith and 2) be fully informed when buying and selling billion-dollar businesses. If the execs fulfill those two requirements, the court will defer to the “business judgement rule.” Otherwise, the courts will use the more stringent “entire fairness” standard.
• If you want to be successful at anything, you typically have to work really, really hard at it. This includes embracing the process of improving a little bit each day, week, and year. And if you’re consistent and diligent with your work ethic, overtime you’ll rise to the top.
• If you’re good to people, doors will open for you. Todd’s managing director at Morgan Stanley taught him that the decisions that would most affect Todd’s career would likely be made when Todd wasn’t in the room. So, Todd needed to make sure that his reputation helped rather than hurt him during those meetings.
• As Todd learned in Venezuela, “Create fama y echete a la came.” Create fame for yourself, and then go lie down. Our reputation is either helping or hurting us.

Follow Todd:

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/toddmortensen/

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X: https://twitter.com/nate_meikle

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141: How To Have a Crucial Conversation | Joseph Grenny

Joseph Grenny is the coauthor of four New York Times bestsellers, including Crucial Conversations, Crucial Accountability, Change Anything, and Crucial Influence. His work has been translated into 28 languages, is available in 36 countries, and has generated results for more than half of the Forbes Global 2000.

Joseph is also a globally sought after keynote speaker, and has shared the stage with Jack Welch, Brené Brown, Jim Collins, and General Colin Powell among others. 

In addition to his writing and speaking, Joseph serves as chairman of the board for the Other Side Academy, a peer-run residential school for people with long histories of crime, homelessness, and addiction.

In this episode we discuss the following:

• At the heart of most disappointment in organizations are conversations that people are either not holding or not holding well, in part because many of us think that there are just some conversations that we can’t have.
• But Joseph’s work shows that you can talk with almost anyone about almost anything as long as you create enough safety. If people feel safe, and that you’re motives are appropriate, then they’ll let you say almost anything you need.
• Joseph witnessed this firsthand when he intervened during a fight at the airport. By showing the aggressor that he understood and cared for him, Joseph was then able to deliver the truth that the man’s behavior was unacceptable. In seconds the man moved from aggression to apology.

 

Follow Joseph:

X: https://twitter.com/josephgrenny

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/joseph-grenny-a89081b/

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X: https://twitter.com/nate_meikle

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140: Nathan Tanner | Telling Ourselves the Right Stories

Nathan Tanner is an executive coach who helps CEOs, founders, and leaders scale themselves and their companies. He has coached leaders at Silicon Valley startups and bellwether companies including DoorDash, Google, Autodesk, Electronic Arts, LinkedIn, Procter & Gamble, and Lyft.

Prior to becoming a full-time coach, Nathan was the VP of People at Neighbor, an Andreessen Horowitz-backed startup disrupting the storage industry. Prior to Neighbor, Nathan spent half a decade at DoorDash where he was hired as the head of HR and scaled the company from 250 to 5,000+ employees. There he built the company’s first leadership development program and coached more than half of the executive team. Prior to DoorDash, Nathan held several roles on the HR team at LinkedIn. He started his career on Wall Street at Lehman Brothers where he had a front-row seat to the largest bankruptcy in history.

Nathan is also the author of two books, Not Your Parents' Workplace, and his new book, The Unconquerable Leader. Nathan has been an advisor at Y Combinator and writes for Forbes, Inc., Fast Company, and other publications. He's an IRONMAN triathlete, holds an MBA from BYU, and was trained as an executive coach at the Co-Active Training Institute.

In this episode we discuss the following:

• When Lehman went bankrupt and Nathan struggled to get back into investment banking, he told himself the story that he wasn’t smart enough or talented enough. But then he realized that this story wasn’t serving him. He changed the story from, “I can’t do this” to “I haven’t done it yet, but I can figure it out.”
• Rather than tell ourselves the limiting story of, “That’s just who I am” we can aim to become the best version of ourselves.
• Identify the self-limiting stories we tell ourselves and reframe them into stories that serve us.

Follow Nathan:

X: https://twitter.com/nhtanner

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/nathantanner/

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X: https://twitter.com/nate_meikle

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139: Professor Taya Cohen on Guilt Versus Shame

Taya Cohen is a Professor Organizational Behavior and Business Ethics at Carnegie Mellon University. Her research focuses on honesty, moral character, negotiation, and conflict management. Taya is frequently featured in prominent media outlets, including The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, The Financial Times, BBC, NPR, and TIME magazine.

In 2020, Taya was recognized as one of the Best 40 Under 40 MBA Professors by Poets & Quants, and she is a Past-President of the International Association for Conflict Management.

Taya earned a B.A. in Psychology from Pennsylvania State University, and an M.A. and Ph.D. in Social Psychology from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Prior to joining the faculty at Carnegie Mellon, Taya spent two years as a postdoc at Northwestern’s Kellogg School of Management.

In this episode, we discuss the following:

• When we do something wrong, we can feel guilt for the bad behavior, or we can feel shame for being a bad person. If we feel guilt, we can apologize and try to be better in the future, which can give us hope. But feeling shame, feeling like we’re fundamentally flawed, can make us feel less optimistic about the future and can be much harder to deal with.
• When we provide feedback to others, it’s generally more effective to focus on people’s behaviors as opposed to more generalized statements about who they are as a person.
• Guilt tends to be a much more healthy, positive emotion than shame.

Follow Taya:

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/taya-cohen-478381104/

X: https://twitter.com/1TayaC

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X: https://twitter.com/nate_meikle

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138: Bryan Porter | Hedge Fund Portfolio Manager

Bryan Porter is a Portfolio Manager at the hedge fund MIG Capital, and he’s been a hedge fund analyst since 2013. Earlier in his career, Bryan spent three years at The Carlyle Group in the $14B US Buyout fund, and was an Investment Banking analyst at Goldman Sachs.

Bryan earned his B.S. in Accounting from the University of Southern California and his M.B.A. from Stanford Business School.

But before all of that, Bryan was working at McDonald’s and sleeping on couches, in closets, and in cars.

Bryan’s incredible story borders on unbelievable.

In his words, if you ran the experiment of his life 1,000 times, you’re going to get 999 gutter balls.  

But in this in-depth interview, Bryan shares his playbook for how achieved a most improbable comeback.

In this episode we discuss the following:

• In high school Bryan was sleeping on friends’ couches. He took a job at McDonald’s. He graduated high school near the bottom decile. He slept in closets and in cars.
• When a close friend committed suicide and Bryan got kicked out of his house, he made a change.
• “If you realize you’re heading in the wrong direction, even if you’re 95% of the way there, you turn around.”
• Bryan took control of his health. He served a church mission. He earned a 4.0. And eventually he made his way to Goldman, Carlyle, Stanford, and the hedge fund world.
• And along the way, Bryan learned crucial lessons:
• Study to learn, not to pass tests.
• Make game day easier than practice.
• Persistence is one of life’s biggest differentiators. People are not patient and want results now.
• An orchid requires just the right amount of water and sunlight. But a weed can grow in bad dirt, with little water and sunlight, and can punch through concrete. Do you want to be an orchid or a weed?
• You can’t outrun your diet. A Big Mac meal is 1300 calories. And an hour at the gym burns just 300 calories.
• Find your limiter and train it until it’s no longer a constraint. Then find your next limiter and repeat.
• And maybe the most important takeaway of all was Bryan’s playbook:
• Set some ridiculous goal that's far out in the future. And then embody that reality with perfect clarity and become it. Smell it, taste it, live it, and your brain won’t know the difference. And then just persist. People overestimate what they can do in a six-month time frame, but underestimate what they can do in a six-year time frame, if they persist.

Follow Bryan:

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/bryandporter/

Follow Me:

X: https://twitter.com/nate_meikle

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/natemeikle/

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/nate_meikle/

 

137: Cory Sanford | What Helps Us Today Can Hurt Us Tomorrow

Cory Sanford is the Vice President of Culture and Talent at Guidant Financial, where he led the transition of the entire organization to remote work. He has also helped two different companies win #1 best place to work honors.

Cory is both a graduate of and an instructor in Cornell University’s Executive Master’s in Human Resource Management program. His book HR You Kidding Me? Surprisingly Simple Steps to Unlock the Power of People is a #1 best seller on Amazon.

In this episode we discuss the following:

• It’s impossible to dive deep while wearing a life jacket. The things that helped us in the past can be the same things that hold us back today.

• Cory has found power in the words, “I don’t know”, “I’m not sure, let’s look together” or “What do you think?” By being okay with not having all the answers, Cory has accelerated his own learning.

Follow Cory:

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/cory-sanford/

Website: https://www.guidantfinancial.com/about-us/leadership-team/

Follow Me:

X: https://twitter.com/nate_meikle

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/natemeikle/

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136: Sundays with Tozer Episode 13 | Tozer and His “First Friend” Jake Garn

In this episode Tozer and I talk with Jake Garn, an international law attorney at Garn & Graber, who is Nate Garn's younger brother. We discuss how Jake became Tozer’s first friend and co-tenant, and how Jake set the stage for all of the youth who came after him.

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