Darrin Jahnel has had the heart of an entrepreneur since the day he was born. From a software engineer with multiple side-hustles to $70,000 in credit card debt, he has experienced the rocky start of many entrepreneurs. Despite his initial challenges, Darrin has always kept his eye on his true passion, trusting this would open the doors he wanted in life. Now, as a founder and CEO of Jahnel Group, Darrin leads a 150-person team in his thriving software consulting company in upstate New...

Anyone who knows me knows I am a wee bit passionate about communication. A brief interaction can touch your soul and change your life when you truly connect with someone. I began The Workplace Communication Podcast with the hopes of having this impact on others’ lives, and to bring these skills to leaders around the world who want to lead through trust and respect. For our 100th episode, we did things a bit differently. I’m joined by my 11-year-old niece, Maddy Farrar. Maddy is an...

Change is an inescapable aspect of our lives. It often happens faster than we are able to adapt. One of the challenges we face during change is the fear of being left behind. This can happen if we aren’t able to fully adapt to the changes surrounding us. And let’s face it. With the current economic climate, adaptability is key to businesses survival. According to Jim Frawley, Founder of Bellwether, by tapping into our beliefs and the traits that make us each uniquely human, we can...

Christian Espinosa was convinced from an early age that his intellect was his greatest asset. This belief served him well until he became a CEO and noticed that his team members also coveted the sought-out title of smartest person in the room. This jockeying for recognition of intelligence began affecting how Christian’s team related to and communicated with clients. Christian suddenly realized that his greatest weakness was people skills – and that it was one he would need to develop to...

Faisal Hoque is no stranger to the typical hurdles of life. After building a highly successful company in his late twenties, he learned that things don’t always work as anticipated when he was fired from the second company he opened. Things only got worse when his twenty-year-old son was diagnosed with cancer. Faisal not only had to take care of his son throughout his illness, but he also had to find a way to rise up again in his career. These life experiences are what led Faisal to a...

Working as a team of diverse members with hundreds of differences is something that many of us have yet to master. One thing that often remains untapped is the strength and power of optimizing those differences that lie between us. Carolynne Wintrip has been fascinated by team work and collaboration from a young age. She believed that learning about team collaboration would not only help her to impact change, but also help her team to become more productive, achieve better results, and...

As a nationally acclaimed attorney mediator, Hesha Abrams has earned her stripes as a Professional peace maker by mediating everything from business cases to car accidents to civil rights to whose roommate peed on the rug. On this episode of The Workplace Communication Podcast, Hesha (tag: Hesha Abrams Mediation) Hesha joins us to share her top tips to help you handle tension before it escalates into conflict. Leadership tips you won’t want to miss: 🎙️ Focusing on the problems...

After graduating with double degrees in International Relations: Language & Society and German Language, Heather Hansen moved abroad and began working in global environments while speaking a foreign language. She quickly began to notice that speaking English afforded her a certain level of respect, power and privilege that wasn’t necessarily given to second language speakers – particularly to those who weren’t as proficient or intelligible in English. As Founder, Author and TedX...

After listening to a recent podcast episode, my mentor commented that there wasn’t a single sign of the mountains of struggles I’ve been dealing with this past year. She said I sounded competent, together and professional. I should hope so. Ha! But it also led me to reflect on why. Why was the podcast episode the polished version of me? Was I trying to portray success and perfection and hiding what was really going on? The honest answer is that I simply haven’t had...

After working 60-hour weeks for multiple years and laying off 100s of people, Jerome Myers realized that despite his long list of accomplishments, his work lacked a sense of significance. By creating a business and career that brought purpose to his work, Jerome discovered that when you are passionate about what you do and are using your talents, the need to seek balance naturally disappears. On this episode of The Workplace Communication Podcast, Jerome and I discuss how to unlock...

Mark C. Crowley had a tumultuous childhood. His mother died when he was very young, spiraling his father into years of abusive behaviour towards Mark. A few days after Mark graduated from high school, his dad kicked him out onto the streets. As a top finance and banking exec, Mark’s journey towards heart-led leadership began years and years before he had ever realized that his focus on leading from the heart was a way of healing from his own past. On this episode of The Workplace...

Workplace communication can often give rise to conflict as people intensely share and defend different opinions on topics they are passionate about. When not addressed effectively, these differences of opinion can start to affect how we treat one another. How do we find common ground so we can start moving towards one another instead of dividing further? On this episode of The Workplace Communication Podcast, we’re talking with Attorney Frederick T. Golder about bridging the divide...

The golden rule that you should treat others the way you want to be treated yourself never quite made sense to Julie Pham. What if the way you like to be treated doesn’t quite hit the mark with others? As CEO and Founder of CuriosityBased and author of 7 Forms of Respect, Julie’s research has redefined the meaning of respect, as a dynamic, subjective concept that means different things to different people. On this episode of The Workplace Communication Podcast, Julie shares the 7...

When a decade of building a reputation as a networking expert became irrelevant overnight, as in-person events disappeared, Robbie Samuels swiftly shifted his focus to virtual events building a thriving six-figure business based on all-new revenue streams. On this episode of The Workplace Communication Podcast, Robbie and I discuss concrete steps that you can implement today to build a successful business, regardless of the size of your mailing list. Leadership tips you won’t want...

As a teenager who found his way into some pretty dark places over the years, Michael King felt like a misfit. When he began dating the youth pastor’s daughter (yikes!), he somehow found his way to church. He found a place where he belonged. Following the footsteps of his youth pastor, he eventually became a pastor himself, ultimately working with leadership pipelines and successfully leading a large team within the church for close to 20 years. Until he hit burnout. On...

According to Marlene Chism, conflict isn’t the problem - mismanagement of conflict is. If you think of almost any conflict you’ve ever had, it can be traced back to a conversation that should have happened but didn't. As the author of From Conflict to Courage: How to Stop Avoiding and Start Leading, Marlene joins us on this episode of The Workplace Communication Podcast, Marlene joins us to talk about the role of avoiding, appeasing and aggression in conflict and guides listeners to...

Do you have clarity on your priorities to an extent that it is easy to make daily decisions on when to accept requests for your time? While many experts talk about the importance of saying no and others teach how to say no, Don Khouri, Executive Coach at Khouri Coaching, noticed that the real problem is that we don’t like to say no. On this episode of The Workplace Communication Podcast, as author of When to Say Yes, The 5 Steps to Protect Your Time, Don teaches us what he’s learned...

Having spent many years as the only woman executive on a team, Teresa Vozza spent much of her time looking to men as her role models. It was only after hitting the ER for a severe burnout that she could see the gender inequity and patriarchal systems that keep women from finding full command of their voice and their message. This was an episode that spoke straight to my heart. Join Teresa and I for the most recent episode of The Workplace Communication Podcast, where we explore...

  Marc Reifenrath started Spinutech as a Junior in College. By tapping into common sense, he built a company that experienced zero turnover in its first 10 years. ZERO!!!! As Spinutech reached a phase of rapid growth, he realized that the speed and rate of recruitment were negatively impacting the culture of his organization. Marc has spent 17 years perfecting Spinutech’s now formalized onboarding process – a process that leaves Spinutech with turnover rates that are 20%...

After getting passed over time and time again for promotions, feeling disrespected and even invisible at times, Ivna Currie, knew that something needed to change. She realized that she’d been taught to be a people pleaser – and that it wasn’t getting her what she wanted in life. Ivna devoted herself to learning how to be more assertive. She ultimately got so good at it that she now helps misunderstood professionals speak up without coming across as rude or aggressive so...

Odell Bizzell’s career journey has spanned everything from high school candy store mogul to prison guard to Communication Expert. The common thread across all of his professional and personal experiences has been finding how we can all have a true impact through the decisions we make in our lives – impact on our culture, our communities, and our companies. It’s our day-to-day conversations that spark growth and influence the impact we make in our lives. Join us for this episode...

As an educator, Barry found himself faced with a student who had just admitted that he’d missed course deadlines because he had a gambling problem and had stolen $300 from his sports team. In that moment, Barry had two choices. He could use his authority to scold the student for making bad choices. Or he could choose to try to see beyond his bad decision and truly connect with the student’s common humanity. Barry knew that he could play a role in helping this student step into a new...

“What does good connection look like to you?”. Rather than assuming what is needed for teams to work well together remotely, it’s a question that McKenna Sweazey suggests be asked to all team members. On this episode of The Workplace Communication Podcast, McKenna shares tips on rewriting virtual communication, feedback and connection from her soon-to-be-published book: How to Win Friends and Manage Remotely. Leadership tips you won’t want to miss: 🎙️ The difference...

Do you find yourself facing a case of the Sunday scaries as each weekend winds down, dreading going back to work the next day? How can we all find a space where we’re excited about the contributions we make to the world each day through our work? According to Amy Lynn Durham, Founder/Spiritual Business Coach at Create Magic at Work it comes from combining the serious inner work we all need for maximum results with fun, humour and magic. Join us for this episode of The Workplace...

No matter how hard we may try to control business outcomes, nothing ever goes perfectly according to plan. In fact, sometimes, things go so far off the tracks that we may be drawn to protect ourselves – to hide all possible traces of our missteps. On this episode of The Workplace Communication Podcast, we’re talking with Alyssa Cox, Founder at Blue Swift Consulting about how taking an intentional approach to learning from failure provides not only the opportunity to learn, but to...