Level Up - A Leadership Podcast artwork

Level Up - A Leadership Podcast

16 episodes - English - Latest episode: 5 months ago - ★★★★★ - 5 ratings

Level Up is where mission driven leaders get learning content, resources, and insights that help them to improve their Head and the Heart leadership skills in order to create powerful professional relationships.

Business leadership senior living executive coach management emotional intelligence leader
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Episodes

Consistency and Discipline with Chris Heinz

December 01, 2023 13:00 - 1 hour - 53.3 MB

What are the building blocks of consistency?  How disciplined are you at...discipline? Leaders have the double-duty of being disciplined and creating discipline in their organizations.  I looked to Chris Heinz from Westport One in this conversation to discuss consistency and discipline in some key areas of leadership.  Some key discussion points gave us opportunities to discuss:  The building blocks of discipline Where does passion really come from? Tying discipline to your motivations...

Psychological Safety with Erin Thompson

November 03, 2023 01:00 - 59 minutes - 41.1 MB

Erin Thompson shares her leadership experiences, anecdotes and lessons learned about psychological safety in the work place.  Erin and I share a lot of similar experiences, and we dug into some examples of environments where safety was not the top priority.  We examined potential causes or reasons this is so prevalent in an industry that touts care, warmth and empathy - at least toward its customers. We also explored practical tips and approaches to create psychological safety and trust wi...

Purposeful Pause

October 09, 2023 12:00 - 1 hour - 44.1 MB

Nathan Jones is a former college football coach turned senior living advocate. Nathan was introduced to the world of senior living just out of college, and from the moment he first stepped foot into a senior living community, he was hooked. Since that day, Nathan's mission has been to change the negative perception surrounding aging & senior living through sharing authentic stories of older adults.  He does much of this work through his company, Dash Media. In a prep conversation together f...

Do People In Aging Services Perpetuate Ageism? with Guest, Ashton Applewhite

October 05, 2023 19:00 - 1 hour - 44.7 MB

Season 3 of the Level Up Leadership Podcast kicks off with a rather provocative episode: “Do People in Aging Services Perpetuate Ageism?”  [YouTube vide of episode.] It’s a long title, but I thought it deserved the full weight of the question. I was SO fortunate to interview Ashton Applewhite. In my readings and study on this topic, I couldn’t find a more compelling and articulate activist than she. Ashton’s Ted Talk, “Let’s End Ageism” is a masterful storytelling experience that gives au...

Conflict Management with Dana Garnett

December 09, 2021 16:00 - 1 hour - 47.7 MB

"Don't just think positive thoughts.  Feel positive feelings."  This is just one of many golden nuggets of wisdom I gained from my conversation with Dana Garnett, a conflict management strategist and professional mediator.   Dana is an insightful conflict expert who helps businesses and teams clear the deepest rifts to working in harmony fast. Founder of The Mindful Strategy she applies her vast business and life lessons learned to help improve business and social dynamics.  In this episode...

Leading a Startup Organization with Jack York

November 11, 2021 13:00 - 40 minutes - 27.7 MB

Jack York is a successful leader who self-describes as a "mediocre CEO".  A co-founder of the senior living technology company, iN2L, Jack is the prototypical Head + Heart leader that we talk about.  In this episode, Jack shares some of his own story, insights into how to lead a startup business, and what's next for him.  The episode spans topics like:  Launching a technology product into a wary senior living industry The tough early years of leading an organization Where he would focus b...

Preparing for the Executive Director Role

September 20, 2021 11:00 - 34 minutes - 23.8 MB

Executive Directors lead the day to day work within a senior living community.  In my opinion, this is a cornerstone role for any leader in our industry.  Whether it is a career-long role or a pivotal experience along your career journey, the E.D. is the heart and soul of our profession.  In this episode, I share some practical tips on how to prepare for and find the right Executive Director role.  Despite better intentions, most companies merely set up E.D.'s to babysit the business - givi...

Emotional Intelligence - Part 1 of 2 - Self-Management

August 02, 2021 12:00 - 33 minutes - 23 MB

There are two critical components of having high emotional intelligence: inward facing (self management) and outward facing (social management).   In this episode, I share three practical tips on how you can build your self-awareness and self-management skills. Grow Your Emotions Vocabulary Orient Yourself to Empathy as a Skill and Not a Feeling Create and Write Down Specific (S.M.A.R.T.) Goals Related to Building Emotional Intelligence I also explore the difference between sympathy and...

Turnaround Mindset (Part 2) with Sean McGuire

July 19, 2021 13:00 - 52 minutes - 36.1 MB

Sean is a turnaround guru.  In his wide ranging professional experiences in helping distressed companies to restructure and turnaround, he has observed lots of organizational patterns that may have contributed to tough times. In this second part of our epic conversation together, Sean and I discuss:  A therapy metaphor for adopting a turnaround mindset How to develop a coalition on your team to get ideas heard An argument for in-person work (vs. remote) to facilitate healthy friction on ...

Turnaround Mindset (Part 1) with Sean McGuire

July 13, 2021 01:00 - 31 minutes - 21.9 MB

Sean is a turnaround guru.  In his wide ranging professional experiences in helping distressed companies to restructure and turnaround, he has observed lots of organizational patterns that may have contributed to tough times. In the COVID era, just about every company experienced elements of turnaround.  In this first segment of a two-part episode, Sean shares some of his insights and advice to leaders to draw lessons from our collective experiences during the pandemic, how to avoid pitfall...

Leading Within Your Purpose

June 01, 2021 20:00 - 59 minutes - 40.7 MB

“Purpose transcends ego.” This was one of the many quotable quotes that came from the discussion between James and Anna Hall, the Chief Purpose Officer for Connected Living and the inventor of the Purpose Equation.  In this episode, James delves into the topic of purpose and how it relates to greater leadership effectiveness. Anna also shares some of her techniques by walking James through his own purpose equation. This is sure to be an episode that you bookmark for you to return to more th...

Thought Leadership and Content Marketing

May 11, 2021 11:00 - 52 minutes - 35.8 MB

Why do people go to websites?  It's probably not to see an advertisement of your company. Advertisements are inherently disruptive.  They are designed to interrupt what you are doing (i.e. watching TV) to pay attention to your company or brand.  Content Marketing is a magnet that draws interested people to content that will actually help them.  In other words, advertisements are the "hype" and content marketing is the "help".  Whether you are a solo-entrepreneur or a large company, you wi...

Leadership Culture and Performance

April 27, 2021 10:00 - 56 minutes - 38.6 MB

James reunites with managers from the first community where he was an Executive Director to recall and revisit what elements of their leadership culture made the team special.  Does culture correlate to performance?  How does an interview signal the culture of the leader and the team? How do you get an entire group of people to buy in to and contribute to a positive culture?  In this episode, we take a look behind the curtain to ask the central question about culture and its relevance in bu...

Strategy Execution with Monte Pedersen

April 13, 2021 09:00 - 58 minutes - 40.1 MB

Monte Pedersen enjoyed a 35-year career in hospitality management before deciding to form his own leadership and training firm focused on Strategy Execution Management.  In this episode, James and Monte discuss some basic concepts of strategy formation, execution, and how it all ties to taking care of the people who make up your company.  Key takeaways offered in this episode will help leaders to examine their own company’s strategy execution and their role in creating a culture around acco...

The MBAR Leadership Model

April 02, 2021 13:00 - 25 minutes - 17.9 MB

I discuss the value of having a leadership model with serial entrepreneur Josh Crisp, the CEO and Founder of Solinity Senior Living, Solinity Marketing, and the co-creator of Bridge The Gap Senior Living Podcast (among many other ventures). In this episode, I delve further into motivations for the podcast and also share the leadership model I developed to self-guide my professional growth in both emotional intelligence and business intelligence.  It also became the foundation for how I led ...

Why This Podcast?

April 02, 2021 13:00 - 24 minutes - 17 MB

This podcast is for mission driven leaders who want to level up their own abilities, skills, and mindset to create powerful relationships.  Host, James Lee, shares some of his guiding principles of life that inspired him to create a podcast to document his own learning journey and share it with other mission driven leaders who believe that self-improvement is the best way to serve the people you love.