Modern Mentor

919. When your team keeps missing its goals, is it a people problem or a process problem? Most leaders assume it’s the people. After 20 years inside organizations, Rodney Evans rarely buys it. The CEO of The Ready joins host Rachel Cooke to explain why people respond rationally to the systems they work in, and why leaders can hire heroes to overcome a broken system only until those heroes burn out and leave. Rodney and Rachel dig into why leaders dismiss day-to-day fixes as too small to matter, how Rodney gets CEOs to pay attention to meetings and who gets to decide what, and why debates like whether remote work is real are still going a decade later. Plus, she offers advice for anyone feeling stuck, starting with finding out what their real constraints are.

Modern Mentor is a Quick and Dirty Tips Podcast, hosted by Rachel Cooke!
Find more from Rachel at LeadAboveNoise.com.
Have a question for Modern Mentor? Email: modernmentor@quickanddirtytips.com
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918. You need to open a meeting, and the usual icebreaker makes everyone cringe. Chosen with intention, a warmup does real work by warming up the exact muscles a team needs for the job in front of it. Rachel Cooke shares five of her favorites, from reflection cards to a Would You Rather deck. She explains how she matches each one to what the meeting needs to accomplish, whether that’s getting a stuck team to decide, building trust for a hard conversation or helping a new team connect.

Modern Mentor is a Quick and Dirty Tips Podcast, hosted by Rachel Cooke!
Find more from Rachel at LeadAboveNoise.com.
Have a question for Modern Mentor? Email: modernmentor@quickanddirtytips.com
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Transcripts available on your podcast app or QuickandDirtyTips.com
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

917. Lots of teams have quietly stopped being teams. They're capable people sprinting in their own directions, connected by a reporting line and little else. Rachel Cooke explains why that fragmentation is lonely for people and expensive for the organization, and offers four ways to put the team back together: a shared winning aspiration, forums for deciding together, smarter use of one-on-ones, and protected time to reconnect.

Modern Mentor is a Quick and Dirty Tips Podcast, hosted by Rachel Cooke!
Find more from Rachel at LeadAboveNoise.com.
Have a question for Modern Mentor? Email: modernmentor@quickanddirtytips.com
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Transcripts available on your podcast app or QuickandDirtyTips.com
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

916. Getting better at AI isn't a technology problem. It's a work design problem. Drawing on a corporate "digital transformation" that never quite landed, Rachel Cooke explains why skill without structure has nothing to hold onto. She then walks through four questions that build that structure: what you're trying to win, whether your tools and guardrails match your expectations, where AI belongs in your highest-value work, and how your team learns together while the technology keeps changing.

Modern Mentor is a Quick and Dirty Tips Podcast, hosted by Rachel Cooke!
Find more from Rachel at LeadAboveNoise.com.
Have a question for Modern Mentor? Email: modernmentor@quickanddirtytips.com
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Transcripts available on your podcast app or QuickandDirtyTips.com
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

915. Your team missed the deadline, and the reasons are starting to sound like excuses. The instinct is to push harder: tighter check-ins, a firmer performance conversation, more pressure applied in the same direction. But the fastest move and the most useful move are rarely the same one. In this episode, Rachel Cooke walks through five self-directed questions she uses with coaching clients whose teams have stalled, from "what if I'm wrong" to "can you define good" to "what distance have you already traveled."

Modern Mentor is a Quick and Dirty Tips Podcast, hosted by Rachel Cooke!
Find more from Rachel at LeadAboveNoise.com.
Have a question for Modern Mentor? Email: modernmentor@quickanddirtytips.com
Discover more from Modern Mentor!
Facebook
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Transcripts available on your podcast app or QuickandDirtyTips.com
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.