Provoking Your Greatness - Misti Burmeister

  After sharing the stage with Erin Moran just a few weeks ago up in New York, I had to interview her. While the innovative ideas and practices of the Union Square Hospitality Group (USHG) are certainly turning heads in the restaurant industry, it was Erin’s passion and energy that captured my attention. Throughout this interview, Erin shares about the experiences that prompted her into this line of work, the #1 key to tapping into human potential (This, from nearly two decades in the human potential industry), and the current success rate of USHG’s “No tipping” practice. Listen in! Erin, a special thank you for generously sharing your time and your stories with our listeners—your dedication to greatness is incredible, and I’m grateful to know you! Here’s to Your Greatness, Misti Burmeister NEW! Ready to reconnect to the excitement of— —Your work/career —Leading your team —Growing your bottom line, along with your people? Grab your 40 minute Gearing for Greatness session with Misti today—http://mistiburmeiste

In preparation for my interview with Anese Cavanaugh, I reviewed her website and watched this speech she gave at the Inc. Women’s Summit. Her message resonated with the mission of the Provoking Your Greatness podcast, and I was excited for this interview.   Our forty minutes together felt more like catching up with a good friend than interviewing an expert, author, and successful businesswoman. With that kind of chemistry, I knew we had to work together on a project.   A few weeks after the interview, we jumped on a Skype call to record a conversation about love, vulnerability, and leadership. For nearly an hour, we tossed ideas back and forth, got vulnerable, and shared strategies we use (and teach) for loving your work and your team. While the conversation was valuable and fun, the most valuable part for me came after we shut off the recording.   Just before we hung up, I asked Anese, “If you hear of anyone looking for a speaker, would you put my name in the hat?” As an expert receiving requests to speak,

Over the past two weeks, we covered tips 1-7.  You can gain access to 1, 2, and 3, here. You can gain access to 4-7 here. Provoke Their Greatness Tip #8  Our DNA is already wired for success. While their performance and perceived attitude might not always be up to par, remember they are wired for success. Sometimes fears (humanity) get in the way of asking for help, which leads to underperformance and attitude problems. Fortunately, this is where tip 4 comes in handy. If their performance isn’t up to par, work with them (get your hands dirty) to find out what you can do to help them get better results. Provoke Their Greatness Tip #9  Authentically caring about their success gives you permission to provoke. You know that quote by Theodore Roosevelt, “Nobody cares how much you know, until they know how much you care.” If you’re going to challenge (provoke) your team to do meaningful work—to care about their results—you have to care about them. One leader told me about his frustration with a handful of executive

As the author of Provoking Greatness: Unleashing Hidden Potential (Which Seth Godin says is “a generous book about stepping up to make art, to matter, and to contribute,” I’m often asked to coach progressive and passionate leaders.   In fact, I’ve had the chance to work with and speak for leaders at Johns Hopkins, NASA, and Johnson & Johnson, just to name a few.   Following my presentations, I often conduct on-the-spot coaching for those seeking to go beyond pushing for performance, onto provoking greatness. Many of these leaders have found themselves trapped in busy work, and are ready to free their time to focus on bigger projects.   Based on feedback from several leaders, they found the following tips particularly helpful in helping them free up their time to go bigger, while getting their team to step up.   These tips work whether you’re the CEO, mid-level manager, or requesting resources for a project. As one client told me, "They actually work ANYTIME you need to get stuff done through others."   P

Two of the greatest lies destroying our workforce today are: we can’t earn a living using our God-given talents & my employees don’t care.   In reality, we all want to use our natural talents to help our team, company, community, country, and our world—we just don’t always believe we can, and so we unconsciously sabotage ourselves in the process. Great leaders see this, and seek to provoke greatness in spite of insecurities.   The leaders who experience the greatest results from their team are the ones dedicated to looking beyond the dirt (lack of experience, inability to communicate effectively, impatience, etc) as they mine for gold (the natural talent within their team, fully expressed).   Here’s what believing in your team looks like:   Access to the full range of talents, passion and energy on your team. We always find what we’re looking for, so remember to stay focused on and nurturing of their talents. You get the benefit of their creative and innovative minds. When your vision (goals) are clear,

People who want your stuff—want your stuff. You don’t have to force the gift that is you. The right people come and the wrong ones go. Your job is to focus on the ones who stay, even after you risked the possibility of rejection on the deepest level. Reject who I was pretending to be? No problem. Reject, or avoid connecting with the “me” beneath the layers of my own uncertainty? No thank you. It’s hard enough to accept and embrace myself—I don’t need to worry about you. Thinking everyone should stay, we struggle with the ones who don’t honor us. “I’m out here on an edge—throw me a bone, please. Encourage me, support me, but please don’t tell me to ‘get over it,’” we think, embarrassed we haven’t gotten over the difficulty of embracing our own stories. For the ones who cannot handle our courage to step into the truth of who we really are, for fear they might also be seen, please step to the side graciously. Step inside, if you can—and let your own journey to freedom begin. While they might not be ready, you ar

Last week, I talked about how to give yourself permission to struggle (evolve). In this post, I share what I think of as the most important element to our personal growth.   Acknowledging the difficulty of evolution is the perfect place to begin. Recognizing the sheer challenge of our own evolution gives us permission to struggle. Sounds crazy—who wants permission to struggle? You do, that’s who. Difficulty can never be used to mold you into a stronger, more authentic, version of yourself if you never experience it.   When we welcome such difficulties, we train ourselves to hold the space for our own evolution to occur on the inside—the only place real change happens. What we see on the outside is a reflection of what we’ve accomplished on the inside. Our reaction to others acceptance, or lack thereof, cues us into our progress and perhaps our opportunity.   Such an intimate experience with our own evolution gives us the insight and compassion to hold the space for others to evolve. The greatest friendships a

Jennifer R. Lieberman’s passion is not only infectious… it is literally transforming the way an entire industry thinks about health care and leadership.   If you want to gain access to truth behind what it takes to create collaboration and innovation, listen to this podcast!   Jennifer Liebermann is a Kaiser Permanente “intrapraneur” who is passionate about shaping the future of health.  In 2006, she launched Kaiser Permanente’s Garfield Health Care Innovation Center, the first of its kind. The Garfield Center enables patients and clinicians to envision the future of health care and create it in a safe, simulated environment.  Described as a “giant Montessori school for adults”, the Garfield Center draws on design thinking principles to ideate, prototype and spread innovation.   Throughout the podcast, you will hear candid answers to following questions:   How do you get people inside an organization as big as Kaiser Permanente to collaborate? How do you get buy-in at all levels? If innovation and collaborat

Having moved many times in my life, I’d grown accustomed to the (hidden) benefit of starting over—zero expectations. When you’re brand new to a community, they don’t know what to expect, and so you have a chance to try on new behaviors and beliefs.   Changing the way we show up for people who have come to expect certain behaviors and beliefs is far more challenging then starting fresh. Having relationships that are deep and meaningful can create expectations that may easily halt our growth, lest we lose the people we hold dear to us.   When expectations are deeply rooted, and any deviation from the norm causes discomfort, our tendency is to hold tightly to worn out patterns. It’s easier to let the urge to evolve pass than it is to risk the possibility of losing the people we love.   Yet, change is the only real constant, and it’s necessary for living life. I suppose that’s why they say that some people show up in our lives for a reason, a season, or a lifetime. The problem is that we get attached to the peopl

Neatly stacked piles of paper with research from Harvard, Wharton, and Stanford sat on the table as we began our discussion about the event we were planning.   “What’s that?” I asked my soul sister and colleague, Mali Phonpadith, excited to talk about how we can pull our resources together and co-produce a retreat for executives seeking breakthroughs in leadership.   With an excited look on her face, she grabbed the first stack and said, “I went through all the top business schools and leadership training programs I could find. I pulled together the best language from each website and printed it to help us with messaging.”   My stomach cringed at the thought of regurgitating the same old language everyone else was using. I wanted to think about what we have to offer as unique and create our own language based on that.   Considering Mali’s level of excitement, I couldn’t just say, “Scrap that. Let’s create our own,” so instead I asked more questions and listened. Her thought process made perfect sense… from th

Back in December, I had the great privilege of capturing Rich’s simple system for building a life, company, and career that spreads joy across the globe. For more on that interview, click here. This time around I wanted to get Rich’s perspective on why it’s lonely at the top, and some strategies for increasing connection and joy from the top. Without realizing it, I tapped right into one of his greatest struggles as an executive within a large company, before co-founding Menlo Innovations. Throughout this interview, Rich shares exactly what he continues to do every day to ensure he eliminates loneliness and has a real feeling on joy in his work. Here are the links to the books both Rich and I talk about during the interview: The Highest Goal The 5th Discipline Peter Drucker’s Books Mega Trends The Untethered Soul The Surrender Experiment Bury My Heart Rich’s cure to loneliness at the top: Build meaningful relationships. A key question to ask during any meeting that fosters depth in relationships: “Tell me yo

While anger, irritation, frustration, and sadness are generally undesirable, they can be quite useful in uncovering the difference we need to make. Complaining is another clue to pay attention to—the stronger and more consistent the complaint, the greater the potential opportunity.  It’s easy to complain and criticize—to sit in the stands, drink beer, eat hot dogs, and curse at (I mean cheer for) players. You don’t have to take any hits, or worry about the cost of your mistakes, but you also never get to feel the immense satisfaction of scoring. While some games are better left to elite athletes, most of us are unknowingly missing out on the games that are meant for us. When sitting in the stands and yelling is causing ulcers, anxiety, and sleepless nights, get on the field. Often the games we’re meant to play choose us, and anger, irritation, frustration, and sadness are our clues. While listening to my friend Frank-the-farmer lament about the unethical farming practices of a few of his colleagues, I found m

Love is a strong word that many reserve for close friends and family. But what results can love offer in a leadership context? What does love at the office even mean?How To Let Love Inspire Your Leadership: A Raw Conversation between Anese Cavanaugh and Misti Burmeister These are the questions that drove this unique conversation between two women who have worked with hundreds of leaders in corporations throughout the globe. Listen in. Here’s to Your Greatness, Misti Burmeister

MGosh, Anese Cavanaugh is amazing. She’s authentic, passionate, and deeply committed to helping you show up, powerfully. Whether you’re seeking to strengthen your leadership presence, increase your energy, or improve confidence throughout your team, listen to this interview! Top innovators and executives in companies like IDEO, Zingerman’s, Cooper, Joie de Vivre, Fitbit, and others have engaged with Anese to strengthen team health, maximize leadership impact, and optimize company culture. In addition to appearing in publications like The Huffington Post, CEO.com, and the NY Times, Anese writes regularly for Inc.com in her column “Showing Up”. Follow her @AneseCavanaugh. Anese is the creator of the IEP Method® (Intentional Energetic Presence), an advisor and thinking partner to leaders and organizations around the world, and author of Contagious Culture: Show Up, Set the Tone, and Intentionally Create an Organization That Thrives (McGraw Hill). During the interview, Anese provided a simple strategy to discover

In a society that treasures independence, we struggle with the notion that we should ever need help. “If I ask you, then I owe you,” ripples through our minds as we sit inside the safety of our home, wishing for freedom and complaining about our circumstances. Besides, even if we did ask, we risk the possibility that you might say “No,” leaving us open to feelings of rejection. It’s hard to ask for help, and it’s even difficult to offer it at times. It’s frustrating to deal with the people who refuse to accept help, lest you make a real human connection with them—one where money and power diminish in exchange for a deeper human connection. We all have needs, and we all struggle with loneliness. Few of us are willing to let our guard down long enough to experience the pure bliss that is connection. The vast majority keep our walls fully erect—to the death, if necessary. How might your life be different if you lived and worked in a community where difficulties were expressed openly, emotions had the space to br

Why most people never decide to go for greatness Saying you’ll start that certification someday isn’t the same as deciding to get the certification. Without a decision, talk cheapens you. It provides entirely too much room for letting yourself off the hook. It’s easy to say you’re going to read a book a month, write for an hour every day, take on a new project, or finish your degree. Decision puts you on the hook, and leaves you vulnerable. You could fail. Actually, that’s not true. You cannot fail. Failure doesn’t really exist, except in your mind. You learn what doesn’t work, and you wind up with new information to help you in your next step forward. Seriously. Technically, I failed in my attempt to swim those five miles around Gibson Island back in September of 2015. At roughly the 3 mile mark, they pulled a handful of us out, motored us ahead by about ¾ of a mile, and then plopped us back in to finish the swim. With my decision on the line, I did everything I could to complete that swim. Three hours, five

  Dr. Hans Finzel is the author of nine books, including his bestseller The Top Ten Mistakes Leaders Make (David C Cook) and his newest release The Power of Passion in Leadership. His books have been published in over twenty foreign languages.   Hans is a mentor, speaker and trusted authority in the field of leadership. He is host of “The Leadership Answer Man” Podcast. Hans has trained leaders internationally on five continents. He and Donna founded HDLeaders in 2012 where he serves as President.   Far beyond his experience and wealth of knowledge lies a man who cares deeply about serving. Through this interview, Hans shares valuable insight into the visionary process, inspiring change, and empowering others to step up.     To learn more about Hans, book him as a speaker, or gain access to finding your passion zone, click here and sign up.   Thank you for sharing the gift of you, Hans!   Here’s to Your Greatness,   Misti Burmeister  

“What’s the point of focusing on getting women into leadership roles?” Yvette asked in a conversation off line, prior to this interview. Knowing her generous, supportive nature, I was taken aback by her question. Doesn’t she know how important it is to see people like us in leadership positions? Having spent several years focused in the area of diversity, through my work with generational differences, I had to find out why a woman, who is a senior producer in an all male dominated industry (video-gaming) would ever ask that question. So, I roped her into a twenty-minute interview on this very topic. Not only does she share practical strategies for getting the support you need as an up-and-comer, she nails the single greatest reason she’s never struggled with the idea of becoming a leader in the industry. Listen in to find out how you can rise through the ranks, and get your foot in the door of any industry. Here’s to Your Greatness, Misti Burmeister   NEW! You can now gain easy access to discovering your blin

“How did they do that?” we ask ourselves as we watch the Olympian finish the race, the teenager sell a multi-million dollar business, or the juggler throw sharp knives into the air, while balancing himself on a unicycle.   How does anyone do anything of significance? (Significance defined: important to you.)   “Misti,” my accountant said, “I’ve been trying to train for a 5K for years, but I can’t seem to stay with the training. Any suggestions?”   Whether you decide to get an MBA, change industries, develop meaningful relationships, or run a 5K, there are 3 key factors to keep in mind. Here they are:   Decide Act The first 30 minutes   There’s a distinct difference between saying, “I want to run a 5K,” and deciding to run a 5K. The first lacks an unwavering commitment, while the later forces us into action. Put your word to it—decide. Make the decision, and consider it done.   Without decision, you will not take action on the various stepping-stones thrown into your path to help you reach success. Interesti

Recently, I took my car in to get new brakes and rotors. After learning it would take two hours, I grabbed my computer and walked to a local coffee shop to work.   Six hours later, as they were putting the last tire back on my car, a lug nut broke, and they had to call the parts shop down the street. Realizing it was going to be at least a couple more hours, the manager encouraged me to get a rental car from a block away.   When I came back the next day to get my car, George, another shop manager who I’ve had several good experiences with was there and so I asked him what happened the day before.   “The guys don’t always respond well to the other manager. They had bitten off more than they could chew and the guys weren’t pushing hard to catch up,” George said.   “Why is that?” I asked, remembering the other managers exasperated look from the day before.   “When I ask them for a favor, they bend over backwards to help me. They don’t for him,” George said.   “Why?”   Looking me in the eyes, and in a hushed tone