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The Pivotal Leader

The Pivotal Leader podcast, hosted by Gina Trimarco, Chief Results Officer of Pivot10 Results, features 30-minute interviews with modern and pivotal business leaders who share their experiences and anecdotal success stories to inspire rising leaders to shift their own organizational cultures to higher success.
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Now displaying: December, 2016
Dec 27, 2016

Carey Cranston, the inaugural president for the new American Writers Museum in Chicago shared with us his passion for the written word and his journey to launching the only American Writers Museum in the United States. What resonated the most during this interview was his approach to earning the trust and respect of his newly acquired working board of directors. There’s a vast difference in transitioning from a for-profit academic institution to a non-profit artistic organization. His approach: “I go to them. I’ll even go to their house to meet with them. I want my board to feel appreciated.”

Prior to his new role, Carey most recently served as President of Fox College, a private career college in Chicago, where he spent the last 12 years.

Podcast Topics Include:

  • Adapting as a leader to a new industry
  • Transitioning from a for-profit to NPO environment
  • Creating culture from the ground up in a start-up
  • Engaging and managing governance and working boards of directors
  • Acquiring top talent based “being the right fit” for the company mission
  • Managing team members who may not share the similar core values, such as as “hard work pays off”, respect and openness
  • Best practices for effective communications: in person versus virtual
  • Being a leader who is passionate about the purpose of an organization

Show notes: http://pivot10results.com/episode10

 

Dec 20, 2016

Steve Bernas, President & CEO for the Better Business Bureau of Chicago and Northern Illinois, Inc. and the President of the Better Business Bureau Educational Foundation, grew up wanting to be a policer and helping people. When he came to the conclusion that he might have to shoot someone with a gun, he took another direction by joining the Better Business Bureau of Chicago and has been there for the past 29 years, growing in the ranks from the top up “with nowhere left to go internally”. In a different kind of way, he’s still living his dream by policing businesses to protect consumers.

In this episode, the most obvious common denominator for him is trust. “Trust is the currency of today’s marketplace,” he says. Learn more about his leadership style.

Podcast Topics Include:

  • Employee career development for retention
  • Continuous development for CEOs to be effective leaders
  • need to continuously develop themselves to develop others
  • The importance of instilling the values of loyalty and dedication
  • Learning from and learning to love Millennials
  • The “secret sauce” for attracting top talent
  • “Setting the table” to find the right mentors, at all levels in one’s career
  • Steve’s recommended list of books to read and development suggestions

Show notes: http://pivot10results.com/episode-9

Dec 13, 2016

“Timesheets are a culture killer,” is only one of the many insights that Jody Padar shared with me in this episode. Listen in to hear how this leader is transforming the accounting industry by being “radical”. She recently took over the family practice that her father founded and has changed the way clients are served and how the industry regards her as a change agent.

Podcast Topics Include:

  • How to be “radical” in a conventional industry
  • Changing a business model to adapt with the times and technology
  • Serving clients the way they need and want to be served
  • Becoming a subject matter expert for competitors
  • Recognizing that most non-Millennials want to be Millennials
  • The value of telling employees to “Come back again” with their ideas
  • Succession planning in family owned businesses

Show notes: http://pivotal10results.com/episode-8

Dec 6, 2016

What sets Aleksandra Scepanovic apart from many leaders is her philosophy on how to attract top talent. In this podcast she shared with me, “We decided it was very important to actually hire a human as opposed to a salesman … the best salespeople are people who are people first and then they do sales for a living.”

Aleksandra Scepanovic is Managing Director of Ideal Properties Group, one of the largest, privately owned, independent real estate firms specializing in premier Brooklyn neighborhoods. A full-service firm, Ideal offers pre-development marketing and branding as well as residential, commercial, office and retail services.

Originally from Serbia where she worked as an editor and media analyst, with firsthand experience of reporting from the war zones of the Balkans, Aleksandra came to New York to pursue a degree from the Fashion Institute of Technology. Ironically, her passion for architecture and interiors is evident in her organization. She designed the office space to be transparent from street view. This physical transparency has organically manifested into a company culture of transparency and openness.

Topics include:

  • Seeing company culture as an intricate fabric of everyday commitments and personal resolutions that one makes to themselves and others, resulting in effective teamwork
  • The need to have a creative streak to be successful in disrupting business and staying ahead of the competition
  • How to look at problems from a different perspective to solve them
  • The need for openness and transparency
  • Creating a work environment that’s unusual for its industry where employees are quick to help each other and everyone at all levels of production is considered equal
  • Top pivot strategy all leaders should have in their playbook: pay close attention to your results
  • Additional strategies that leaders need to pivot successfully

Show notes: http://pivot10results.com/episode-7

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