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Five Years of Experimentation: A Conversation with Melanie Parish

Hi there. I’m Mel Rutherford. I’m McMaster University’s first transgender department chair, and I’m the co host of the experimental leader podcast. For the last four years, I’ve been learning about leadership and experimenting with leadership in my role as department chair, some of the things I’ve been thinking about recently is how to implement values based leadership. I’ve started my term as chair determined to center values, and today I actually was reading the literature on values based leadership. And the funny thing is, they there’s not a lot out there, and how to implement values based leadership. So what I did in my department was I started with a process of naming our values. I got the whole department involved in making a values statement, and then we looked at the way we were doing things, the processes we we followed side by side with our value statement, and we did a gap analysis, and we looked at what we were doing that was consistent with our values and what we were doing that wasn’t consistent with the values we had just named. And we changed our changed our processes in accordance. So that’s how we started with values based leadership and implemented values based leadership. So that’s what I was thinking about this week.

This week, in our podcast, we have a surprising guest. Our guest today is the founder of The Experimental Leader podcast, and we’re doing this because today’s the fifth anniversary of The Experimental Leader Podcast.

Our guest is Melanie Parish, a master certified coach and an organizational and relationship system, certified coach, a public speaker, a consultant, a workshop leader, an author. She’s won a prism award for her coaching and consulting. She’s an expert in leadership, problem solving, strategic hiring and brand development. Melanie has consulted and coached organizations ranging from Fortune 500 companies to IT startups receiving their first round of funding. Founder of the experimental leader podcast, Melanie invites people to think of new ways about their leadership. 

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Welcome, Melanie.

Hello, Mel. Silly. Feels silly to be the guest.

You’re the guest today, and we’re celebrating the fifth year, the fifth anniversary of of the podcast. So we wanted to talk about the podcast and its history and the dream. So my first question is, what? What was the big dream when you started the podcast?

Well, part of it was COVID related because my book came out and and I wasn’t able to, like, tour with my book, so I wanted to talk about the ideas that were in the experimental leader book and a podcast. Every It was the middle of COVID, it was either start a podcast or bake bread. So I decided to start a spot podcast. I was actually thinking as you were talking. I was like, Huh, I wonder. I know there were a ton of podcasts that started in the pandemic because people had time. And I was wondering how many of them, you know, were celebrating this kind of milestone with us, like it. It for You know, but that’s why it was, because of marketing changes related to the pandemic.

Right? That makes a lot of sense. How has your experience in the last five years differed from what you expected when you started out?

I think it’s interesting. You know, I don’t know what my I actually don’t know what I hoped would happen with the podcast, other than visibility. As a coach, I think my job is to ask a lot of questions and and so I think that’s been interesting on the podcast, to ask people about their leadership. I think one of the things that I find most surprising is how hard it is to have just a really good conversation. Sometimes guests show up with talking points and they talk at me, and I love when they just show up and are fully present to what we’re talking about, and we can actually bounce off of each other and have a really unique conversation. So I think that was the surprise is just how hard it is in a podcast format to have an authentic conversation.

Yeah, so what do you like in a guest, and what do you not like in a guest?

I like to know. I mean, I always want to when a guest comes on our show, like, why are they? Why are they doing podcasts? Like, what’s, what are, what’s in it for them? Because I want to be generous and kind as a host. Um, I really like when there’s curiosity. I mean, you’re up to really interesting things. I’m up to really interesting things. Often our guests are up to interesting things, and sort of shared interest in all those things, I think makes for a good conversation and a good podcast. I think the things I don’t like about a podcast is really when they they come to the podcast sort of with a lot of ego, and it’s about getting what they want without giving our listeners what they want. I don’t think it’s good for them. I want them to really think about, you know, our listeners, and what are they curious to know? And it’s not just spouting off a bunch of information, it’s diving into new thoughts, new thinking, new ideas for leaders. What are you doing? What am I doing? What have we seen before? So yeah, I think talking points sometimes get in the way of that.

So it’s interesting that you talk about giving, giving something to the listener. I wonder, what do you know about your listener?

Precious, little, I know that they listen to our podcast on desktops. I have not as much data as I would want. As an experimenter, I’m always enamored of people who stopped me somewhere and like, I listened to your podcast, I was like, Oh, well, tell me all about you. And what do you want more of you know we get like, listens like, so I know that those are sometimes driven by who the guest is and how big their how many followers they have, how many followers we have, where we share it, how much we can collaborate. Sometimes topics grab people, but that’s kind of what I know.

Yeah, what do you think the podcast has achieved in the last five years?

Wow, these are hard questions. I just got a note from Christine in the chat that says, All Time downloads of over 30,000 so we’ve had 30,000 downloads of our podcast. So that’s a lot of people who have tuned in to hear what we have to say. It’s like my parents came from towns of, like, less than 5000 people, like they’re the whole town came out to hear what we had to say here and there.

 

Your town that’s twice the size of the town I grew up in.

I know  so I think, I think, you know, you and I talk about ideas a lot in our lives and and being able to share those and have other people think about those ideas. I think it’s really cool. I think it’s cool that people learn about other people who are doing cool leadership in the world. I also think it’s a really nice platform for me, and it’s a really nice platform for you. As a coach, I My job is to ask lots of questions. I don’t often have an opportunity to say what my thoughts are, so I like the podcast for that too. For me, that’s a win, and I love hearing what you have to say too.

Do you have some favorite episodes?

I’m sure I do. I’m sure I do. I love the pride episodes that we’ve done. Those are probably, that’s probably my favorite. Is those. There was one that I did early on in the pandemic with the the leaders at one at a restaurant in Hamilton. I think it was, it actually was so long that it ended up being two episodes. And I loved hearing how they experimented with their menus and things like that. I think it was the restaurant is the French, so I’m not sure what it’s titled, but that’s another one that I just thought it was really fun. And to I still am struck by the chef talking about one Mother’s Day, and they had three drinks, and they were all the same color, and they were doing carry out in the pandemic, and they couldn’t remember which was which. And they were like, wow, if we had just thought about that for a second, we wouldn’t, we would have color coded that better. But it’s just fun to hear how they were changing things up trying to make it through the pandemic. And we just ate at that restaurant this weekend, and it was going strong, like they survived because of their experimentation during COVID.

Yeah, yeah. So if you had a time machine and you could go back five years to give yourself advice. What would you tell yourself as you launched the podcast?

I don’t know. I don’t know what I would have done differently. I mean, I always think that there’s like, you know, this myth of like, you know, having millions of followers and all that. And I just don’t think that’s true for most sort of normal people. You know, I’m not going to get a butt job or, you know, do anything to be fancy. I’m just me and and so I think maybe some lower expectations of allowing myself to influence at the level that’s reasonable for me and my career. And I really, I would have told myself to get a co host earlier. I think it’s been about like, it’s almost two years that you started co hosting, and it got a lot more fun when it was when you came on as co host. I also did years of weekly shows, and I and I think that that diminished the quality, at least, it diminished the quality of my experience as a host. It felt like we had to put that out all the time. We tried going live for a while, I would give myself the advice never to do that. Guests just aren’t reliable enough. I’m reliable enough. You’re reliable enough. The guests aren’t reliable enough. They always change the schedule. So I wouldn’t go live. I wouldn’t even try that experiment. If I could give myself advice. I’m curious about what you’ve been around for a couple of years. What are, what are your thoughts about the experience of being a host?

It’s so different from what I do for a living. It’s, it’s kind of, yeah, it’s, it’s a really different kind of knowledge translation, because in, you know, I’m an academic, and in my career, when I’m the the information that I put out into the world is written and it’s edited a bunch of times by multiple people, and we have carefully thought through every word and what that word might imply, and does that word, is that word necessary, and does it carry the meaning that we think it means? And like, you know, it’s really carefully thought out and time we have, like, it’ll take us a year to write a document that’s going to be published, and a podcast is such a different style and pace of knowledge. Translation, I, you know, I’m you’re asking me a question. I’m making up an answer, right, like, right now, that doesn’t…

I think that’s one of the things I love about it is that I I get to share thoughts, and they don’t have to be perfect. And I can say that something different, you know, next week about a topic. I also love that when I meet somebody interesting, I can invite them to come on the show and and I can pick their brain and hear more about them. I think we’ve had some amazing, amazing guests. And yeah, I love, I love the emergent nature of the podcast and the talking, talking really authentically in the moment.

So what do you think the future of the experimental leader podcast will be?

I don’t know. I mean, we have a couple of years of research leave and sabbatical coming up about in July of 2026 so I don’t know. Does does the podcast go on the road? That’d be fun.

Taping from the VW van.

Yes, the mythological van that we don’t have yet. But yes, that would be fun. I don’t know. I really don’t know what the future holds for us. I don’t plan to stop it at the moment. Um. You know, so we’ll keep going for this year at least. I always think, Oh, should we think about it? And I always, I always like that. It exists in the world. I like that. We’ve, I’ve created a podcast, and it happens and people listen to it.

Where can your listeners find The Experimental Leader book?

I think Amazon’s the best place to look for the moment. You can also check on our website or reach out to us directly if you want to sign to copy. But yeah, I think that’s the best way to find it.

Thanks. Well, thanks for being our guest today. Surprisingly.

It was a good surprise. Here we go. And I guess I should say, Go experiment.

Go experiment.

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