Podcast

Are you a business owner, executive, leader, team leader, aspiring future leader, leadership junkie, a scientist, a design thinker, or simply the leader of your own life? If you are, then you are a leader, and as such, you should be experimenting!

Welcome to The Experimental Leader, a podcast where we tackle the ways leaders are experimenting in their own work. Hosted by Melanie Parish and Dr. Mel Rutherford, we dive into the most interesting questions about leaders and get into real-life conversations about how people might be experimenting with their leadership. What they are trying? How they are leading and managing their flow of work and throughput? How are they managing bottlenecks, mission, vision, strategic, operational, and tactical intents? How do they organize experiments? How do they succeed? How do they fail? How do they collect data?

The loneliness of leadership can be overwhelming, especially when a leader gets promoted and doesn’t have a roadmap for how to lead. They might feel like they are supposed to have the answers, and yet they have to figure out what that really means. The hardest part can be not having anyone to talk to about their leadership journey.

  Nothing is ever the same in this current COVID-19 pandemic environment. For leaders, that means having to find more experimental ways to really reach out to their team and keep the organization afloat. In this episode, Melanie Parsh interviews someone who perfectly captures the experimental leader. She brings over the Managing Partner of Integral Leadership & Coaching, Libby Robinson, who has worked for 26 years with senior leaders globally, helping to bring more mindfulness, resilience, and greater capacity to brilliant and ambitious leaders. Here, Libby shares how she is experimenting in her work, life, and business, giving us a peek intoRead More
There’s value to having something to strive for. All of us need to be striving toward something, and that vision comes from our values about what we want in our lives and what has meaning. When we have that vision, we can set a target and move toward it. Joining Melanie Parish on the show today is Melinda Harrison, a former Olympic swimmer and a professional certified ICF PCC Level Executive Coach with an extensive experience in goal discovery and pathways to attainment. Melinda tackles the challenges that competitive athletes struggle with in finding their true North. She also touchesRead More
There is always something in somebody that is valuable and that you can learn from regardless of how different we all are. With the current pandemic, humanity has rediscovered that relationships matter and that leadership lives in everybody, not just in the designated leader. On today’s show, Melanie Parish talks with Marita Fridjhon about relationship systems and how they impact everything that we do. They also dive into how you can integrate the voice of the novice into your solutions, acknowledging that the novice sometimes has information that isn’t available to those who are in an organization. Marita is the CEO andRead More
In times like this when leadership is being challenged in all fronts, the experimental leader rises to the forefront, armed with a team imbued with a culture of adaptability and innovation. No other time is more apt than now to propagate the message of a new kind of leadership that harnesses the potential of the team to the fullest. Melanie Parish succinctly describes this kind of leadership in her talk during the April 28th, 2020 online book launch of her book, The Experimental Leader: Be a New Kind of Boss to Cultivate an Organization of Innovators. Melanie firmly believes that experimentationRead More
  There are many kindnesses that we must let ourselves learn over time, and one of these kindnesses is allowing vulnerability into our lives. Allowing vulnerability opens a new door of possibility in the various ways you interact with the world, and with this kindness, you attain a new degree of freedom. Joanna Davis, MCC has over a decade of experience as a certified coach. She joins Melanie Parish to talk about allowing vulnerability into your interactions with yourself and others. Together with Joanna and Melanie, attain this new freedom by allowing yourself to be vulnerable. — Listen to the podcastRead More
  It is the people in the food supply chain that are really the unsung heroes who keep us going as we wait out the COVID-19 crisis in isolation. With community shared agriculture, people can assure themselves of food sovereignty by relying on locally-farmed produce as border closures make it hard to secure food from big, cross-country suppliers. Alvaro Venturelli Luchsinger joins Melanie Parish to talk about how Plan B Organic Farms manages to support its community of 750 families as the current crisis makes it hard for consumers to procure food conventionally. Alvaro’s story is a touching narrative of a personRead More
  The COVID-19 pandemic has put our daily lives on pause, especially on the business front. For speakers who normally do their work on stages and outside venues, this current situation has become a game-changer. Sharing with us how she is coping and even becoming a leader at it is CEO and co-founder of Talk Boutique, Andrea Sampson. As a TED and TEDx trained speaker coach, Andrea has definitely felt the weight of the health crisis. She tells us how she has been experimenting in the way she works in her business and reveals how others can do the same. Andrea alsoRead More
  Learning to prioritize is a huge part of coming into your own as a leader of any group, organization, or company. Without getting your priorities sorted, chaos descends upon whatever it is you’re doing, and you end up getting much less done. Melanie Parish is joined by Liane Davey, a New York Times bestselling author and the Co-Founder of 3COze Inc. Together, Melanie and Liane emphasize the leadership benefits of learning to prioritize. This is an absolutely essential leadership skill and quality, so don’t miss out on this conversation! — Listen to the podcast here I’m here with LianeRead More
There probably is no greater time to be more creative and innovative than now. Businesses are fighting for their survival, and if they do not step up and adapt to the current COVID-19 situation, then they may not stand a chance. One of the crucial areas that businesses can look at is their branding, assessing whether or not it mirrors the concerns of the people now at large. Helping you grapple with this challenge, host, Melanie Parish, invites Jeremy Miller, the president of Sticky Branding and a globally recognized branding expert and bestselling author. Here, Jeremy shifts our focus into helpfulness, looking deeperRead More
  When we think of metabolism, our initial reaction is thinking of weight loss. However, more than that, our metabolism plays a very important part of our health and affects every aspect of our lives. Joining Melanie Parish to shed light on the topic is Haylie Pomroy, a #1 New York Times bestselling author, leading health and wellness entrepreneur, celebrity nutritionist, and motivational speaker whose “Food is Medicine” philosophy resonates deeply with her fans. Through her latest book, Cooking for a Fast Metabolism, Haylie helps us understand the metabolic pathways that make the body tick and offers some great advice to improveRead More

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