Authors Speak Series
1 hour interviews with bestselling authors and leadership experts
Take part in our free Authors Speak series, a 1 Hour online interview with bestselling authors and leadership experts who are deeply passionate about people, growth and driving change. Bring your questions to the 30-minute audience Q&A. A fantastic opportunity for collaborative learning with your team and peers. Your interest will determine which books are featured in our upcoming Leadership Learning Labs.
Upcoming Authors
February 5th at NOON MST
Pam August
Author of POTENTIAL, How to Connect What's Already There for Exponential Impact
March 25th at NOON MST
Jen Goldman-Wetzler, Ph.D.
Author of Optimal Outcomes; Free Yourself from Conflict at Work, At Home and in Life
April 30th at NOON MST
Sarah Noll Wilson
Author of Don’t Feed the Elephants! Overcoming the Art of Avoidance to Build Powerful Partnerships
Authors Speak Previously Recorded Sessions
January 15th:
Authors Betsy Polk and Maggie Chotas, Power Through Partnership: How Women Lead Better Together.
About the Authors:
Betsey Polk, Co-Author of Power through Partnership
Betsy is a self-proclaimed people connector, “Yes and” thinker, community builder, program leader, fund raiser who makes ideas happen & helps people succeed. She is currently Director of Jewish Life at Elon University, North Caroline and previously co-partner of The Mulberry Partners, LLC. She helps people figure out how to build strong partnerships, strengthen collaboration, improve communication, resolve conflict, and achieve goals that stick. In addition to her role as Director, she serves as leadership and organization-development consultant for the North Carolina Partnership for Children.
Maggie Ellis Chotas, Co-Author of Power through Partnership
Maggie’s passion is working with leaders, teams, agencies, and sectors to maximize collaboration and communication. She has deep experience as a mediator and facilitator with local governments, education from PreK through higher ed, coalitions, and nonprofits.
Always learning, she has an M.A. from St. Johns College and an M.S.A. from UNC-CH and is certified in Emotional Intelligence/360s, Conflict Dynamics, Workplace Mediation, and Confronting Whiteness. She is currently Director of Group Facilitation at The Dispute Settlement Centre. Working with individuals, teams, organizations and sectors to strengthen communication and collaboration so they fulfill their missions and leverage their support for the communities they serve. And of course, was co-partner of The Mulberry Group.
Purchase Power Through Partnerships Here: https://www.amazon.ca/Power-Through-Partnership-Better-Together/dp/1626561583
November 12:
Eric D. Stone
Author of Jumpstart Your Workplace Cutlure
About the Author: Eric D. Stone
CREATE. BUILD. ELEVATE.
Eric D. Stone’s passion for business fueled an extraordinary 26-year career at Enterprise Holdings, where he rose to become one of the most decorated Regional Vice Presidents in the company’s history. Known for his remarkable ability to connect with and inspire employees across generations and demographics, Eric cultivated a culture of pride and sustained top-tier performance within his teams.
His leadership was tested—and proven—through some of the most challenging times in recent history, including 9/11, the Great Recession, the COVID-19 pandemic, and the Great Resignation. Eric attributes his teams’ resilience and success to his talent for creating, igniting, and elevating high-performance cultures, combined with his exceptional ability to adapt to the unexpected and empower others to do the same.
After retiring from Enterprise in 2018, Eric founded Clear Path Ventures, a company dedicated to guiding young professionals and businesses in their journeys to success. His commitment to making a difference extends to his service on multiple nonprofit boards, where he contributes to closing the opportunity gap for marginalized communities.
Purchase Jumpstart Your Workplace Culture: A Roadmap for Igniting High Performance and explore more about Eric’s work: https://www.ericdstone.com/
Oct. 31:
Lori-Ann Muenzer
20th Anniversary Edition of One Gear, No Breaks
Tune in to this captivating conversation with 2x Olympian Lori-Ann Muenzer, OLY, as she shares her inspiring journey and dives into her book, newly re-released in a 20th Anniversary Edition: One Gear, No Breaks! 
In this exhilarating, straight-from-the-heart chat, Lori-Ann delivers a powerful, no-holds-barred message on motivation and resilience. Don't miss it! 
About the Author: Lori-Ann Muenzer
See it. Feel it. Believe it. Achieve it.
As a peak-performance mindset coach Lori-Ann helps business leaders experience and live the gold medal formula to success. Lori-Ann brings this insight from her own lived experience. At the age of 38, she became a two-time Olympian and made history as Canada’s first Olympic Gold Medalist in cycling at the 2004 Athens Games. Competing against athletes half her age, she trained for her gold medal while working full-time.
Lori-Ann is a 13-time National Champion and has earned medals at the World Cup, World Championships, and Commonwealth Games. She is also a proud member of both Canada’s Sports Hall of Fame and Alberta’s Hall of Fame.
About the Book:
Lori-Ann believes that if you want different results, you need to spark change where results are created—in your mind. By doing so, your goals shift from being merely possible or probable to becoming inevitable. At thirty-eight years old, Olympic cyclist Lori-Ann Muenzer was given no chance at the 2004 Olympics in Athens. Competing against the world’s best athletes—most of whom were almost half her age—she was considered too old. Washed up!
In a cycling career that has spanned twenty years, Lori-Ann has seen it all. The glory of winning more than a dozen national titles. But there has been defeat and injuries too: Broken bones. Wrecked knees. Fatigue and exhaustion. The list goes on and on.
In spite of age, an injury-plagued career, despite the doubters and detractors, the pressure, the isolation and loneliness, the aggravation and pain, the challenges, Lori-Ann insists, it’s been worth it.
Oct. 9th:
Ludmila N. Praslova, Ph.D.
Author of The Canary Code: A guide to Neurodiversity, Dignity and Intersectional Belonging At Work.
About the Author: Ludmila Praslova
Dr. Praslova knows first-hand that single-focus “inclusion initiatives” leave people behind. However, the principles of creating culture-add organizations can be applied to building systems for intersectional and holistic inclusion. Her consulting is focused on creating organizational systems for supporting human dignity and well-being, and providing neuroinclusion training to organizations such as Amazon, Bank of America, and MIT.
Ludmila N. Praslova, Ph.D. is named a member of Thinkers 50 2024 Radar, a global group of 30 management thinkers leaders whose ideas are most likely to shape the future of work. She is a Professor of Industrial-Organizational Psychology at the Vanguard University of Southern California and regularly writes for Harvard Business Review, Fast Company, Psychology Today, and Forbes.
Purchase The Canary Code here https://www.amazon.ca/Canary-Code-Neurodiversity-Intersectional-Belonging/dp/152300584X
Sept. 18th:
Shannon Huffman Polson
Author of The Grit Factor: Courage, Resilience, and Leadership in the Most Male-Dominated Organization in the World
About the Author: Shannon Huffman Polson
Shannon is one of the first women to fly Apache combat helicopters in the U.S. Armed Forces, leading missions on three continents! After her military service, she earned her MBA at Dartmouth’s Tuck School of Business, led teams at Guidant and Microsoft, and founded The Grit Institute. She’s the author of The Grit Factor: Courage, Resilience and Leadership and North of Hope: A Daughter’s Arctic Journey, sharing leadership lessons that inspire resilience and grit.
About the Book: The Grit Factor: Courage, Resilience and Leadership in the Most Male Dominated Organization in the World.
Polson made it her mission to become acquainted with an elite pack of tough, impressive female iconoclasts who shared their candid stories of combat and career. This decorated cast of characters includes Heather Penney, one of the first female F-16 pilots who was put on a “suicide mission” for 9/11; General Ann Dunwoody, first female four-star general in the Army; Marine Commander Amy McGrath, first woman to fly the F/A-18 in combat and a 2018 Congressional candidate–and dozens of other unstoppable women who got there first, including Polson herself.
Sept. 5th:
Jeff Wetzler
Author of ASK: Tap Into the Hidden Wisdom of People Around You For Unexpected Breakthroughs in Leadership and Life
About the Author: Jeff Wetzler offers a hands-on and effective way to find out what others really think, know, and feel. Ask leads to smarter decisions, more creative solutions, and deeper relationships. He has been on a quarter-century quest to transform learning opportunities. Blending a unique set of leadership experiences in the fields of business and education, he’s pursued this quest as a management consultant to the world’s top corporations, as a learning facilitator for leaders around the world. Transcend Education Website and The Ask Approach Website
About the Book: Jeff Wetzler offers a hands-on, surprisingly effective approach to find out what others really think, make smarter decision, and achieve business success—teaching how to make the path to sharing information (especially negative information about what isn’t working) as safe and easy as possible. Buy the Book
August, 2024
Karin Hurt
Co-Author of Powerful Phrases for Dealing with Workplace Conflict
About the Authors: Karin Hurt and David Dye empower human-centered leaders to find clarity in uncertainty, drive innovation, and achieve breakthrough results. As CEO and President of Let’s Grow Leaders, they’re renowned for their practical tools and leadership development programs that truly stick. Let’s Grow Leaders Website
About the Book: In many workplaces today, workplace conflict is an escalating issue. The shift to remote work and hybrid teams has left many people longing for deeper human connection. On top of this, add a younger generation clamoring for more feedback and impatient for change, steady advances in technology that can feel threatening to job security, or people reexamining priorities and quietly quitting. Take the increase in anxiety, stress, and depression, mix in the loss of human relationships, and you get less tolerance and understanding leading, ultimately, to more unresolved workplace conflict.
Powerful Phrases for Dealing with Workplace Conflict is an essential resource for all employees (and their managers) who are looking for help on how to navigate frequent workplace conflicts, including with their boss and other difficult people, so they can rebuild trust, collaboration, and ultimately enjoy more influence at work.
July, 2024
Amy Edmondson
Author of The Right Kind of Wrong, The Science of Failing Well
About the Author: Amy C. Edmondson is the Novartis Professor of Leadership and Management at the Harvard Business School. Her work explores teaming – the dynamic forms of collaboration needed in environments characterized by uncertainty and ambiguity. She has also studied the role of psychological safety in teamwork and innovation. Amy C. Edmondson Website
About the Book: After decades of award-winning research, Amy Edmondson is here to upend our understanding of failure and make it work for us. In Right Kind of Wrong, Edmondson provides the framework to think, discuss, and practice failure wisely. Outlining the three archetypes of failure—basic, complex, and intelligent—Amy showcases how to minimize unproductive failure while maximizing what we gain from flubs of all stripes. She illustrates how we and our organizations can embrace our human fallibility, learn exactly when failure is our friend, and prevent most of it when it is not. This is the key to pursuing smart risks and preventing avoidable harm. You’ll never look at failure the same way again. Buy Amy’s Books
June, 2024
Nate Regier, PhD
Author of Seeing People Through: Unleash Your Leadership Potential with the Process Communication Model®
About the Author: Dr. Nate Regier, PhD, serves as the CEO and founding owner of Next Element Consulting, a global firm specializing in leadership consulting and training, with a focus on fostering cultures of compassionate accountability. Next Element
About the Book: In Seeing People Through, Dr. Nate Regier takes a deep dive into the Process Communication Model® (PCM), a behavioral communication model that teaches people how to assess, connect, motivate and resolve conflict by understanding the personality types that make up a person’s whole self and leveraging personality diversity.
May, 2024
Mark C. Crowley
Author of Lead from the Heart:
Transformational Leadership for the 21st Century
About the Author: Mark is an Award-Winning Pioneer of Heart-Led Leadership. A Bestselling Author, host of the Acclaimed Lead from the Heart Podcast with audiences in 175 countries, and a Twitter following of over 141,000 people and a regular leadership contributor to multiple top tier publications.
About the Book: In Mark’s book he provides the roadmap workplace leaders worldwide are seeking: How to inspire and manage other human beings in the post-pandemic era most successfully and sustainably. He shows how trading in the old business playbook for heart-led leadership strategies will create purpose-driven, dedicated employees and higher levels of performances.
May, 2024
Dr. Haesun Moon
Author of Coaching a-z: The Extraordinary Use of Ordinary Words
About the Author: Dr. Moon cares about people experiencing better conversations at home and at work – and she does that by training, coaching, and consulting. She believes that conversations can change the world, and she defines this process as hosting dialogic conditions in which people participate to imagineer and perform their preferred change. Her academic and professional research in coaching dialogues and pedagogy from the University of Toronto led to development of a simple coaching model, Dialogic Orientation Quadrant (DOQ). Canadian Centre for Brief Coaching
About the Book: Language is a powerful tool that can unite, engage, and move people to action. It’s all in what you choose to say, and how you say it. In this practical, accessible guide to having more powerful conversations, leading evidence-based coaching expert Haesun Moon offers a set of powerful words or phrases—one for every letter of the alphabet—to help you move others toward greater purpose and accomplishment.
May, 2024
Urs Koenig
Author of Radical Humility:
How Be A Badass Leader and A Good Human
About the Author: When companies need to inspire, engage, and develop their people while at the same time delivering stellar results in today’s hyper-competitive and complex business environment, they call Urs Koenig. Urs is an internationally renowned keynote speaker, bestselling author, and leading expert on humble leadership. Urs Koenig Website
About the Book: Urs’ research-backed Radical Humility Framework is packed with tangible tools and practical takeaways, leaving audience members with the ultimate actionable blueprint for a new type of leader for a new type of world.
February, 2024
Nate Regier
Author of Compassionate Accountability
How Leaders Build Connection and Get Results
About the Author: Nate Regier, Ph.D. is the CEO and founding owner of Next Element Consulting, award-winning author, a former practicing psychologist and expert in social-emotional intelligence, interpersonal communication and leadership. Leadership Keynote Speaker Dr. Nate Regier | Next Element (next-element.com)
About the Book: Compassionate Accountability is focused on the need to hold our teams accountable for both compassion and results…a challenge we all face after COVID.
What Participants Said: “Loved the conversation and walked away with some practical strategies that will work immediately for our team. Thank you!” VP Non-Profit
March 2024:
Eduardo Briceno
Author of THE PERFORMANCE PARADOX Turning the Power of Mindset into Action
About the Author: Eduardo Briceño is an award-winning author, global keynote speaker, facilitator, and guide supporting leaders cultivating growth mindset cultures. Eduardo Briceno Website
About the Book: Discover how to balance learning and performing to bolster personal and team success with this revolutionary guide from a world-renowned expert in growth mindset.
What Participants said: “So enjoyed listening to Eduardo Briceno, Author of The Performance Paradox, with the opportunity to ask questions. He provided so much information in 30 minutes…amazing.”
Author, Olympian, Trailblazer
In her captivating book, ONE Gear, NO BREAKS: Lori-Ann Muenzer’s Ride to Belief, Belonging, and a Gold Medal, Lori-Ann takes readers on an exhilarating journey. From the grueling world of competitive cycling to the life lessons learned along the way, this memoir is a must-read for dreamers, doers, and anyone who dares to reach for greatness.
- A Story of Resilience: Overcoming obstacles with unwavering determination, she shows us what’s possible with heart and hustle.
- Advocate for Growth: Beyond the bike, Lori-Ann is passionate about fostering belief in oneself and others—a message that resonates deeply.
Discover more about Lori-Ann and her incredible journey today https://lori-annmuenzer.com/
Author, Olympian, Trailblazer
In her captivating book, ONE Gear, NO BREAKS: Lori-Ann Muenzer’s Ride to Belief, Belonging, and a Gold Medal, Lori-Ann takes readers on an exhilarating journey. From the grueling world of competitive cycling to the life lessons learned along the way, this memoir is a must-read for dreamers, doers, and anyone who dares to reach for greatness.
- A Story of Resilience: Overcoming obstacles with unwavering determination, she shows us what’s possible with heart and hustle.
- Advocate for Growth: Beyond the bike, Lori-Ann is passionate about fostering belief in oneself and others—a message that resonates deeply.
Discover more about Lori-Ann and her incredible journey today https://lori-annmuenzer.com/
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Facilitated Leadership Learning Lab Sessions
Contact us to discuss facilitating a Leadership Learning Lab with any of the books referenced, or the leadership book of your choice.
Linda Maul, CEC, PCC
Phone: 780.668.9481