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Strong Leaders Serve with Teri Schmidt
The leadership podcast for people who are in leadership not for the status and power, but instead to use that status and power to turn potential into performance for positive change.
Hosted by Teri Schmidt, Executive Leadership Coach & CEO of Strong Leaders Serve.
Each episode we focus on supporting leaders who are dealing with the overwhelming realities of transitioning into and operating in roles where their success isn't just about their own performance anymore, but about leading through complexity, ambiguity, and stakes their old playbook never had to handle. We focus on naming what's actually happening underneath the overwhelm, and finding a way back to clarity without pretending there's a five-step fix.
Strong Leaders Serve with Teri Schmidt
200. Best of Strong Leaders Serve
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To celebrate our 200th (!) episode, we're revisiting some of our favorite conversations from the last 100 episodes.
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Welcome to episode 200 of Strong Leaders Serve. I can't believe that we are already here, although it has been five years since we started with the name Moms That Lead, and three years since we hit episode 100 and changed the name to Strong Leaders Serve. We've had so many great conversations. So for today's episode, I wanted to take you back. To some of my favorite conversations from the last 100 episodes. If you don't know me yet, I'm Terry Schmidt, executive and leadership coach at Strong Leaders Serve. Where I love partnering with compassionate driven leaders and their teams, especially through those leadership stretch moments where what got them to where they are is not going to get them to where they need to go. And this is the Strong Leaders Serve Podcast. So first we'll start with Farah Harris. Farah was a guest on both episode 1 0 4 and 1 23, and we got into some really great conversations about her book, the Color of Emotional Intelligence. We had such great conversations that it went over two episodes, and I strongly encourage you to listen to both of them. The clip that I wanted to highlight today was particularly impactful for me in that. Privilege had almost become a dirty word in my mind, and the way that Farah framed it really inspired and encouraged me both in my work and outside of it.
Farah HarrisPrivilege is just another opportunity to serve others. It's what do you have that another person doesn't that be here to support them?? So, you know, just as a leader, what is it that you have? What knowledge do you have? What rooms do you have access to? What understanding do you have that this newer person that's coming in does not have?
The next conversation that I wanted to highlight was with Jane Miller, the former COO and President of Gallup. I was really excited to have this conversation, particularly because we were focusing on what it really takes to help women leaders thrive in the workplace. We got into a great conversation about the systems and structures that were needed and how organizations and leaders could empower women in the workplace.
Jane MillerThe performance, the compassion, and how you create the environments that are family friendly. You have to really show those systems and structures and strategies because if you just jump from the philosophy and let everybody do their own thing, it's all willy-nilly and chaotic again, and you don't have a predictable environment. And followers want a predictable, stable environment. And so much of that comes from how you write things down, how you state it, and then how you live it out every day with each person.
Ah. And next is my conversation with Justin Jones ou, one of my absolute favorite conversations as we talked about how to respectfully disagree even during an election year. I've had several conversations with Justin, and in each one I'm not only inspired, but I learned something new that I can apply right away. You can catch our full conversation on episode 1 54.
Justin Jones-FosuI do a whole presentation called work through different beats. I love drumming. There's a different feel and experience. I have when I'm a part of a drum circle when I'm a part of the drumming and we're creating a beat that could not come from just one of us. That's what leaders are where they are able to orchestrate that beat that we're creating a new rhythm of ideation, new rhythms of how do we solve the problems? How do we provide great customer service and service excellence? New rhythms of how do I Give more to my team than take from them. Those are the things that we unleash our members, our team, our employees to be able to do really powerful, significant things when they know that they're supported. With us, just simply keeping rhythm. That's the power of leadership.
Next, in episode 1 0 5, I had my first conversation with Tamara Miles and learned about her and Wes Adams model for meaningful work, the three Cs of community contribution and challenge. It is one of the leadership models that I refer back to the most, and thankfully I was able to have them both back on episode one 90 as well.
Tamara Myleschallenge is really about. Giving people opportunities for growth and development, but beyond that is about uncovering potential in people that they may not even see themselves yet.
In episode one 60, orris Kne and I talked about radical humility and how humble leadership is actually more efficient than command and control. I love how he dispelled a lot of the myths about humble leadership like this one that you'll hear next.
urs--he-him-_2_06-17-2024_083726So I would argue that in order to be. humble, I need to be fundamentally confident. So it's not a contradiction. So if we think about, you know, I talk about some client examples in my book, clients who stand up or, you know, leaders, executive coaching clients who stand up in front of their team and admit that they don't have all the that they're constantly working on getting better, that they have also blind spots and weaknesses. Like, that requires courage and guts. Like, the soft stuff is not soft. The soft stuff is tough. It's tough. And so, so that's the first one. So the, they go hand in hand. The second one I often hear is, how can I be ambitious and humble? And again, I would turn this around. What does ambition look like? It looks like asking hard questions. It looks like asking questions like Terry. What business are we in? Why are we failing or why are we not as successful as we could be and what's my part in it? These are humble questions, but we need to ask them if we want to actually achieve and so In order to achieve we need to have the humility To ask these questions. So again, instead of being a contradiction, it goes hand in hand, ambition and humility
You probably know that I'm a big fan of Tom Garrity and Psych Safety and the newsletter that they put out every week because he brings in such wisdom from so many different fields and applies it to psychological safety and leadership. We had a great conversation on episode 1 48 about the cognitive load. That it actually takes when you are in an environment that is not psychologically safe and how we can save that energy by putting energy into making the environment somewhere where people don't have to think too hard about speaking up and stating their ideas. Tom also came back on in episode 180 2 and you'll hear that in the second clip when we talked about efficiency versus resilience. It was another great conversation, and I encourage you to listen to the whole thing.
Tom GeraghtyOne of the useful ways to think about psychological safety is that it's a calculation. Everything we say has a calculation behind it, a calculation of cost versus benefit. And, and so we've constantly got this filter going of, do I say that thing or do I say this thing? Most of the time we default to silence It's only when the benefit of saying the thing outweighs the cost. That we say the thing and we speak it out loud Amy Edmondson has called this the mental calculus of voice, every time we speak up it's a calculation. If someone's utilized a hundred percent there is no space left to even recover or adapt to anything. You're basically just planning burnout as an organizational strategy.
Sarah Noel Wilson came on on episode 1 46 to talk about leading with curiosity to transform conflict. Curiosity is one of my favorite things to think about and talk about and is a skill that I continue to hone, And Sarah serves an as an inspiration for me for that hard work.
sarah-noll-wilson--she-her-_1_11-20-2023_100713Curiosity is the greatest gift you can give someone because you're telling them they're worthy to be known.
It was an honor to speak with NCA Professor Henrik Breman Twice, first on episode 1 74, talking about how teams look different today. And then next on episode 180 about how to create high performing diverse teams, which is something that he gets into in this next clip.
Henrik BresmanParticularly when there's anxiety and pressure, our brain tells us that we gotta move. We, we have, we have an answer here to, to the problem. And, and that's how you end up with the right answer to the, to the wrong question usually. And, and so what's, what's the way out? Easy to say, difficult to do, but it's exactly in those situations that as a leader, you need to stop and really listen to what people say. And that's hard when you, you feel that you know already what it is that you need to do. And it's particularly hard. And now I'm circling back to the diversity part. When, when someone comes with input that you can't. That you don't naturally connect to, so to to really pay attention to what is said and, And stay with the problem.
I thoroughly enjoyed my conversation with Cheryl Fields Tyler, about how to help leaders thrive in our current environment and the importance of thriving leaders for organizations to thrive. I. You can find our conversation on episode 1 68.
Cheryl Fields Tylercheryl-fields-tyler--she-her-_1_10-29-2024_120754cheryl-fields-tyler--she-her-_1_10-29-2024_120754That work of leading and managing people really is not just a really sacred calling, but it's also an economically essential calling in our organizations that there's just virtually nothing in our. World that generates value that doesn't require us to work together across teams and within teams and that people leadership, bringing teams together, bringing people together is, is really crucial to every aspect of a value creation. What we know now about what it takes to bring people together to set the conditions. For human beings to work together effectively is so much more than we knew 20 years ago.
Speaking of what leadership takes differently now than maybe it did in the past. Patrick Boland and I had an excellent conversation about contemplative leadership, and I loved this quote in particular when he talks about one of his coaching clients and the impact that her making changes in her leadership had on her entire organization. The conversation is really worth a full listen. You can find it in episode 1 69.
Patrick BolandAnd the impact that it had on a systemic level with the individuals and with the team within the organization. The whole culture and how it stood out as a very different culture and started to kind of prod at the dominant culture within that financial institution where people started to take notice and go, what is that? As Meg Wheatley, a mentor of mine says, you know, there's an island of sanity that we can create and we can light little fires within the system. And these can be little ideas for people to go. That's possible. And then people start to move from idea into a lived experience of it and go, What if that became the norm around here? If our system looked like that? What a place to work. What a place to be. What a place in which to contribute. So seeing that happen, to me, that was like ultimate service. And she did her work and it was really difficult for the first couple of years. And her individual coaching was really difficult. And then she did it. It was beautiful.
Zach Mecurio and I had a conversation that ranged a lot of different topics, but they all centered around the concept of mattering and mattering at work. One of my favorite parts was when we got to talk a little bit about AI and how AI cannot take responsibility for actions and cannot effectively stand in for relationships with human beings. I.
zach-mercurio_1_07-23-2025_111604There's no, there's no more powerful experience I think in life than knowing that your presence and absence means something to another person. You're just a prompt to the ai, you're an input. It Not a human, you're not a, you're not a you're not a human being 'cause it doesn't know what it's like to be a human being. No matter how comforting your AI may be to you it doesn't care if you come back
And finally, Jade Garrett and I had a great conversation about psychological safety and really going under the buzzword of what it means. She shared some practices that made so much sense and could have such a positive impact right away, and that I had never heard of before. We also talked about the assumptions that sometimes get in the way of psychological safety, which you will hear about in this next clip. The whole episode is definitely worth a listen, and you can find it in episode 1 97.
Jade GarattAnd it's very easy when you have power, when you have authority, when you have leadership, to assume that because you feel safe to speak up, to share your ideas, to ask questions, to admit mistakes that everyone does and that's not necessarily true. And we don't know the things that we're not hearing. So I think just assuming that it's there, it is a real risk.
Well, there you have it. Some of my favorite conversations from the last 100 episodes of Strong Leaders Serve. I want to thank you for being a listener, whether you have been here since episode one and are all the way here through to episode 200, or whether you just started listening recently. It means so much to me to have you with me each week, and I hope that you have gained something that has helped make it just a little bit easier to be a compassionate, driven leader. It is gonna be goodbye for me for a little while. I am going to take a break until at least the beginning of 2026. Although I won't be podcasting for a little while, you can of course still find me over on LinkedIn, so be sure to connect with me. I would love to stay in touch. Okay. I hope you will use this time to catch up on any episodes that you've missed, and of course, enjoy the end of year festivities with your family and friends. Until our next time together, I hope that you will know just how important and powerful your leadership is, not only for your team, not only for your organization, but for your entire community. Stay strong, continue to serve and make an impact through your leadership.