Chatting About Change with Dr. Jim Maddox

My guest this week is Suzanna Mathews, who is a dating & relationship coach and ‘mindful matchmaker.’  She helps individuals create mindset tools, social strategies, and digital tactics to help her clients elevate dating and deepen connection.  She shares how she brings business acumen to the building of healthy, meaningful relationships.  We talk about how having a relationship coach can be invaluable in helping personal growth, increasing self-awareness and developing greater fulfillment with meaningful connections.

This week, I am joined by Dr. Nate Regier, an author, consultant and public speaker and the Owner of Next Element, a global training and advisory firm specializing in leadership communication.  Nate helps people-focused leaders re-imagine compassion at work by implementing The Compassion Mindset Framework.  Nate shares his ideas around inclusion and particularly his focus on personality inclusion and what this means for organizations to grow and thrive.  His book, Conflict Without Casualties, is a great illustration of Nate’s passion around helping leaders and organizations, particularly how to manage conflict with different personality types, beyond the typical quick personality surveys we are all familiar with.  The following link will take you to his survey, the Personality Inclusive Workplace Survey, this is part of a large research project Nate is working on.  The link also takes you to some free workshops that Nate offers.

My guest for this episode is Dr. Roni Reitter-Palmon, who is the Director of the Industrial/Organizational Psychology Graduate program and Director of Innovation, Center for Collaboration Science at the University of Nebraska at Omaha.  She shares her research and consulting experience around creativity and innovation.  We discuss how all creativity is change, but not all change is creativity.  In helping organizations grow and improve, she shares her insights around the role of novelty and usefulness in creative problem solving.  With the level of unprecedented change and challenges facing our world, creativity and innovative thinking are needed more than ever. 

My guest is Nikki Beyrle, the Senior Director of Human Resources for the LDF organization.  She works with a variety of large beverage companies and their HR and talent development teams.  She talks about the need as an HR professional to integratively use both sides of her brain; using the left side for the transactional/analytical aspect of HR and using the right side of the brain for the transformational/strategic side of HR.  We talk about the challenges of this type of diverse thinking and offers tips on how to effectively juggle both divergent types of activities.  We discuss the need to create learning cultures to adapt to ongoing change and the ideas around creating leaders within the organization to be fluid and adaptable.  We take a deep dive into what shapes culture and strategies for translating values into actual everyday behaviors to intentionally create a desired culture.

My guest is Jennifer Freeman, a shaman who helps empower individuals and organizations through her company, Quantum Coaching and Consulting.  She shares her own personal journey and transformation and how this led to her coaching and consulting practice where she helps others shift from a Newtonian perspective, where they see themselves as an object or problem to be solved, and instead, see themselves as a process of mystery, wonder, and possibilities.   She focuses on helping her clients to bring forth their authentic self and truly embrace their gifts.  She describes how we are experiencing this global shift, and we are the medicine.  She explains the phenomenon of vibrational energy within each of us.

My guest for this episode is Dr. Tojo Thatchenkery, Professor and director of the Organization Development and Knowledge Management graduate program at the Schar School of Policy & Government, at George Mason University. He is also a member of the Taos Institute and the NTL Institute. He is a leading change thinker, and the author of over a dozen books including Appreciative Intelligence: Seeing the Mighty Oak in the Acorn and Appreciative Sharing of Knowledge.  He shares his ideas and insights around the concept of using appreciative intelligence for innovation.  He shares some great examples of using reframing to rethink various paradigms.  Reframing to see the positive, and then acting on the reframing, bringing the future to the present.  Great examples of this approach include Amazon, Apple, and many other innovators around Silicon Valley.  He shares his thoughts around how some organizations are using this approach to survive and thrive during COVID.

My guest this episode is Dave Jamieson, who is the president of the Jamieson Consulting Group, a visiting professor at a number of universities.  He is the author of multiple books including the Handbook for Strategic HR: Best Practices in OD, The Facilitator’s Fieldbook and Consultation for Organizational Change Revisited. The companies that are thriving and growing are having to make significant changes.  No organization really knows what is on the other side of the bridge.  We discuss the role of creativity and innovation in creating a business in a new way.  We aren’t going back to normal.  A lot of the population doesn’t want to go back to normal.  Normal was not working for a lot of individuals.  Dave shares his ideas around the need for companies to have inclusive participation, because leaders can’t know it all.  “There used to be a lot more that was known by somebody and now, there’s a lot less that is known by anybody.”  The need has never been greater for all organizational members to have ownership in the changes occurring and be co-creators of their shared futures.

My guest this episode is Dr. Dorothy Siminovitch, from Toronto, Canada.  Dr. Siminovitch is a global executive coach, speaker, author, Director of Coach Training, presence, awareness & somatic coaching.  She is the co-founder of the Gestalt Center for Coaching and author of the book, Gestalt Coaching Primer.  She has her Ph.D. from the Weatherhead School of Management at Case Western Reserve University.  We discuss the concept of vertical development and how we use ourselves to recognize when something is disrupting us or catching our attention that requires adaptability, creativity, and innovation.  She talks about Gestalt and using the “now” in adaptive ways, remaining grounded in the present moment.  We discuss the global need to be resilient and agile and how to use Gestalt principles for personal and organizational development and growth.

My guest this episode is Dr. Russell Fox, political scientist and professor.  Russell considers himself an idea person and his research is centered around local politics and the politics of place.  We discuss the increased polarization of politics and how polarization is now sociological and the impact of technological change.  The increased technological means of information sorting and its impact and implications is still unfolding.  My guest this episode is Dr. Russell Fox, political scientist and professor.  Russell considers himself an idea person and his research is centered around local politics and the politics of place.  We discuss the increased polarization of politics and how polarization is now sociological and the impact of technological change.  The increased technological means of information sorting and its impact and implications is still unfolding.  

My guest this episode is Noble Kumawu from Accra, Ghana.  Noble is the President of the Organisation Development Institute and Chief Executive Officer of the Organisation Development (OD) Consultancy firm, Organisation Capacity Improvement Consultants (OCIC).  Noble established the first African educational graduate program in Organization Development.  He is the author of two books, “Global OD: A Model for Africa and the World” (2007) and “The Father of Organisation Development in Africa: The Journey, The Struggles and The Career” (2020).  He shares his international OD consulting insights from his 40-year career (of which 30 were spent in England).  He shares his insights and challenges of transitioning his OD graduate program and his consulting practice both to a virtual environment.  We discuss the wide range of Noble’s experiences training OD practitioners across the continent of Africa.