The Remarkable Leadership Podcast

00:00:08:19 - 00:00:32:07
Kevin Eikenberry
This is the final episode of the Remarkable Leadership Podcast for 2025, and whether this is the first episode you've heard or seen or you've been watching all year, you're going to be glad you're here. As I talk about the biggest episodes of the year, my lessons from them and some other great stuff. If you're ready, let's get started.

00:00:32:09 - 00:01:02:20
Kevin Eikenberry
Welcome to another episode of the Remarkable Leadership Podcast, where we are helping leaders like you grow personally and professionally to lead more effectively and make a bigger difference for your teams, organizations, and the world. If you like what you're hearing today and want help in developing the leaders in your organization, we should talk. You can reach out to us at info at Kevin Eikenberry, dot com, and we'll schedule time to learn more about your needs and see how we might help.

00:01:02:21 - 00:01:28:08
Kevin Eikenberry
So what I want to do first, in this very special episode is introduce. Announce, I guess is a better way to say the five most listened to, watched, downloaded episodes of the show. Now, this is kind of hard to do because I'm not doing it right up to the very end of the year, and it's kind of hard to do because it gets watched and viewed in lots of places.

00:01:28:10 - 00:01:59:06
Kevin Eikenberry
But as best we can tell, or a pretty close approximation, at least these are the most listened to shows of the year. And rather than doing it sort of, Casey Kasem style, I'm going to start with number one and go down through the top five. I'm going to share each of these five, and we'll talk about them just a little bit to give you a hint, because what I really hope you'll do is if you're just starting to watch or listen, that these will be where you'll start your journey with us on the Remarkable Leadership Podcast.

00:01:59:08 - 00:02:31:12
Kevin Eikenberry
So the number one most listened to watched downloaded episode of the year is with Steve Magnus. Episode 483 back in May, just before my birthday, and the episode was titled When the Inside Game, and we talked about the difference. One of the big things we talked about was the difference between surviving and thriving. And and I think in the complex world, the challenging world of leadership today, a lot of us aren't doing a lot more than just surviving.

00:02:31:12 - 00:02:52:19
Kevin Eikenberry
And one of the things that Steve talked about was the idea that to thrive requires perspective, which means we have to get past our cognitive cognitive overload. And to me, that's one of the big ideas that I took from this particular episode, that our cognitive overload, which is an important thing that's happening to many of us, even if we're not aware of it.

00:02:52:19 - 00:03:26:03
Kevin Eikenberry
There's so many things that are pressing on us that we're thinking about. We're not stopping long enough to get the perspective that Steve talked about to help us get to a place of thriving as a leader and a human. And I made the connection to the idea of being flexible from my book Flexible Leadership, to say that during the episode, I said, well, in order to get past our natural defense mechanisms, in order to get past our first natural responses and respond effectively, we also have to have that same kind of perspective.

00:03:26:03 - 00:03:54:09
Kevin Eikenberry
So that's the number one by far and away the number one episode of the year. Number two was with Michael. It was episode 476. It was in April of last year. The title was How to Communicate more Effectively and Lead a Better Life. And we talked about three big things in this episode. We talked about presence, preparation and emotional clarity.

00:03:54:09 - 00:04:18:07
Kevin Eikenberry
So you think about being a better communicator, knowing, having a clear presence, having emotional clarity and being well prepared will help us do all of those things. And when we talked about emotional clarity, we talked a lot about the idea of what's going on in our internal dialog, that our internal dialog can either help or hinder us in how we're going to communicate outwardly as well.

00:04:18:08 - 00:04:46:07
Kevin Eikenberry
And one of the things that I talked about is that when people want to talk about great communicators, they often talk about charisma. And and I suggested that we need clarity more than we need. Charisma. And internal clarity comes before external communication. I don't know how many times this year that I've thought I communicated something clearly, and later on figured out that maybe I hadn't.

00:04:46:09 - 00:05:10:16
Kevin Eikenberry
And and I've learned to try to blame the other person less and say, well, maybe I wasn't clear enough myself to make it clear to them. So hopefully that's a useful thing. Number three on the list was with West Adams and Tamara Myles. I love this episode. Episode 485. It was in June of last year. This year, and the episode was titled Creating Meaningful Work.

00:05:10:18 - 00:05:39:04
Kevin Eikenberry
Meaningful work is such an important thing. So many people not really getting that meaningful work or feeling that meaningful work. And they talked about that 50% of employee meaning comes from the leader. Not from external, not from the job itself, but from the leader. You know, that relates to the release of the idea that we often talk about, that people leave a job voluntarily because they fire the boss if they're not finding meaning.

00:05:39:04 - 00:06:13:20
Kevin Eikenberry
Part of that is because of us. We talked about three pillars of meaningful work from their book. We talked about community contribution and challenge. And those are three things that help us find meaning. And leaders can help support all of those things. And I suggested during the episode that we should definitely make sure that we're trying to plan for connection, and that if we want to be more connected with our folks, which is one of the ways that we can create greater meaning, we have to intentionally design our day, our calendar and our rhythms to create that connection.

00:06:13:23 - 00:06:39:21
Kevin Eikenberry
And so there you go. Episode number four, the fourth most downloaded, watched and listened to episode of this year, took place in, September. It's episode 503 and it's with Dave Matthews. Excuse me, Dave Reynolds, and it's titled Mastering the Art of questions. And I don't know if going back over all of the years that I've done this show, over 500 episodes, as you can tell.

00:06:39:23 - 00:07:04:07
Kevin Eikenberry
And I'm, I'm always drawn to books and ideas about questions, and I don't know how many times we've done an episode on questions in some way. It's been several. And this was a great episode where we talked about creating a coaching culture. We did get to questions and and obviously being a great question asker is a huge part of that idea of a coaching culture.

00:07:04:07 - 00:07:27:13
Kevin Eikenberry
But if if you're wanting to think consciously about culture, specifically about how to create more effective coaches, I really encourage you listening to this episode. And I made the comment to him, I shared a an equation, if you will. I said care equals calendar. And so if it kind of ties to the last episode that we talked about as well with Wes and Tamara.

00:07:27:15 - 00:08:09:16
Kevin Eikenberry
Number five, the fifth most listened to, watched, downloaded, etc. episode episode 478 from April of this year. And it was with Doctor Christy Smith. We talked about creating human powered leadership. We tried the ideas of belonging and identity and psychological safety, not just as good ideas, but we tied those with research to performance. And so if you are thinking about those ideas of belonging and identity, psychological safety, if those things are being talked about and bantered about in your organization, this episode helps you tie that to actual performance.

00:08:09:16 - 00:08:35:08
Kevin Eikenberry
Not just a nice to do, but a bottom line business value of creating those things. And, and I made the comment that belonging is an outcome of leadership behavior, not an HR program or an internal branding situation. So here's the thing. Too often organizations will say we need to create psychological safety as an example, or we need to create get more belonging.

00:08:35:10 - 00:09:03:15
Kevin Eikenberry
And then we send it off to HR and it belongs to all of us as leaders. The title of that, my conversation with Christy was Creating Human Powered Leadership. It wasn't creating new HR programs. No disrespect to our friends in HR, especially that, you know, those were the five biggest episodes of the year, and I'm happy to have been able to announce those to you as the five most popular If you were episodes.

00:09:03:15 - 00:09:26:08
Kevin Eikenberry
But I had lots of other lessons and I. I didn't want to make this episode too long. End of the year I want to make sure that you got through all of it. So what I've done is I've written an article, the my last article of the year, about some of my other lessons from other great conversations on the podcast, and you can learn more about that.

00:09:26:08 - 00:10:05:14
Kevin Eikenberry
You can find that by going to remarkable podcast.com/20 25 lessons. And there you can get it all figured out. And I hope that you will, take advantage of that. And since I mentioned article, if you didn't know, you can also get my writing on a weekly basis by signing up for our newsletters. If you don't know about our newsletters unleashing your remarkable potential and your remarkable day, you can learn more and sign up for those by going to Kevin eikenberry.com/newsletters.

00:10:05:15 - 00:10:22:00
Kevin Eikenberry
I certainly hope you're going to do that right. Now the next thing that I wanted to do was I wanted to step back. So those are some ideas from the top episodes. And I'm going to share I'm going to share some more ideas with you. But what I want to do now is sort of help you step back.

00:10:22:00 - 00:10:43:17
Kevin Eikenberry
And again, whether you listen to year or you just got here. I wanted to share some of my lessons or, excuse me, some of my themes from the year or the overarching themes from all of the episodes, all of the books and guests that we selected. And so what are the big meta messages from the show this year?

00:10:43:17 - 00:11:11:03
Kevin Eikenberry
And I think whether you listen or not, these will be useful. And the first of those is, and I think even in the five that I mentioned, this is, is probably pretty true, that leadership is becoming more human. And as I was preparing to share this, these ideas with you, I thought that so many like time magazine said that the seven key figures in AI are the people of the year.

00:11:11:05 - 00:11:37:04
Kevin Eikenberry
So much of this year has been about AI is about the non human. And I'm not saying this to say that AI isn't important, that we shouldn't be paying attention to it. We shouldn't be leveraging it. All of that is true. We've had AI conversations this year. We've got some more coming up in the new year. And yet inside of that, or maybe on top of that, is that leadership is becoming more human.

00:11:37:06 - 00:12:08:12
Kevin Eikenberry
We've we talked a lot this year about managing ourselves, mastering our narratives, the things we say to ourselves, identifying, understanding our blind spots, building our confidence. Ultimately, if we can't lead ourselves, we can't lead others. Leadership isn't about us, and it's us that makes it more human. Another one of the themes from the year is the idea that meaningful work.

00:12:08:14 - 00:12:43:22
Kevin Eikenberry
I'll put that up here. Meaningful work is. A leadership responsibility. And I mentioned this earlier in my conversation, about my conversation with, Tamara and, and where's that, meaning isn't found. It's created. And as leaders, we play a role in helping that. How happen? We help people to see how that they matter. We help connect people to the purpose, their work, to the purpose of the organization and of what we're trying to accomplish.

00:12:44:02 - 00:13:03:13
Kevin Eikenberry
We can help provide growth and challenge, which is one of the things that gives us meaning. And we can certainly create community. So meaning in work isn't just found from the work itself. We as leaders have a huge role to play, and that's one of the big themes for the year. Another one of the themes for the years around communication.

00:13:03:15 - 00:13:30:12
Kevin Eikenberry
And I think the theme is that communication is a skill that multiplies all of the others. So, you can find any leadership podcast that you would choose to listen to. You're going to find conversations about communication because it's a core foundational communication skill. But I think one of the things that comes out of the shows of this year is the idea that it's a multiplier.

00:13:30:14 - 00:13:49:11
Kevin Eikenberry
It's not just something we have to do because we need to do it well, that's true, but as we do it well, it helps us with everything else as we're a better communicator, we're a better coach, we're a better leader, we're a better we're better at creating meaning. It's we're a better communicator. We're better at building culture. We could go on and on and on.

00:13:49:13 - 00:14:18:12
Kevin Eikenberry
So listening and question asking and influence and clarity and all of these things are a part of it. And as we are better communicators, it helps us in almost every other part of our role as a leader. And I've got two more themes for you. Another one is and this one, if you're been watching and listening, all you probably be surprised by is that leaders must navigate complexity and uncertainty with flexibility.

00:14:18:13 - 00:14:43:19
Kevin Eikenberry
Now, yes, that's related to my book Flexible Leadership. Navigate uncertainty and Lead with confidence, which came out this year. Learn more by going to Kevin. I can pre-comp flexible. But interestingly, even though there were a few episodes early in the year leading up to the launch of the book where I wanted to tie into those ideas, that theme kept coming up.

00:14:43:21 - 00:15:11:23
Kevin Eikenberry
That theme kept coming up around helping us remove roadblocks, focusing on learning, how do we lead through paradox? How do we deal with the complexity that we face? All of those things continue to be a theme, not just because, I purposely, implanted a little bit more of that early in the year. And the last theme, I think, from the year is this is that mindset is the new leadership advantage.

00:15:12:01 - 00:15:38:01
Kevin Eikenberry
Mindset is the new leadership advantage. This message was clear. You don't rise to the level of your goals. You rise to the level of your mindset. We won't practice skills that don't match our mindset. We won't grow until our mindset sets us up for that growth. We won't lead in the ways we need to lead until our mindset matches those outcomes.

00:15:38:03 - 00:16:12:01
Kevin Eikenberry
And so I truly believe that mindset is the new leadership advantage. Pretty confident you're going to hear more about that from me in the future. And if you've been around us you know that. So much of our work, the underpinning of our work with leaders is the connection between mindset and skill set and habits. Set right. So there are some themes from the year, and hopefully that maybe gives you an arc of things to think about moving forward and how those ideas can help you as a leader moving forward.

00:16:12:03 - 00:16:47:02
Kevin Eikenberry
And so, what I want to do now is share with you a super exciting idea, and that is that I had a guest back in August. Her name is Jennifer Moss. And the episode, it was episode number 501, and we talked about creating a work culture that everyone wants. And she said something during that episode that led me to have another conversation with her as soon as this week, closed the live stream and stopped the recording.

00:16:47:04 - 00:17:13:01
Kevin Eikenberry
And it led us to a conversation. I said, I think there's a podcast or a podcast series here around this idea that you can change your culture in 20 minutes or less. So we've had several conversations. We've worked through some of the details, and there's going to be a five week series as extra episodes on the show in January, starting, we hope, on January the 22nd.

00:17:13:03 - 00:17:34:20
Kevin Eikenberry
A series of episodes with Jennifer and I together talking about very specific things you can do to change your culture in 20 minutes or less. And it's our goal to heat the episodes at 20 minutes or less. But as we've gotten to know each other, I'm that might be a bit of a challenge, but I guarantee you, what you're going to find is that you're going to have fun.

00:17:35:02 - 00:17:55:07
Kevin Eikenberry
And it's going to be practical. We're going to start, like I said, we hope the 22nd of January for five consecutive Thursdays, you'll get to know her voice as well as mine. We're doing it as an experiment that we are super excited about. What happens after that with it for her or for I or for both of us?

00:17:55:09 - 00:18:14:00
Kevin Eikenberry
Who knows? Here's what I know. If we want to get better, we have to try new stuff. And we are so excited to try this and share what we're doing with you. We've laid out what these episodes are. I'm not going to tell you, but I can tell you that each of them is going to leave you with tactical things that you can do.

00:18:14:01 - 00:18:37:23
Kevin Eikenberry
So excited about that for us in the conversation we're going to have in a couple of weeks to to record them all and then to share them all with you starting on January the 22nd. I end every episode all year with the question of now what? So I suppose I should do that here, too. There's a couple of things that I want you to do every week on the show.

00:18:37:23 - 00:19:00:21
Kevin Eikenberry
I ask you the now what question with the idea of, you applying something that you learned. And that certainly still applies to the last 20 minutes of this conversation where you can say, take what did I get that I can go use and apply because until we apply it, it really doesn't make a difference, doesn't really move the needle.

00:19:00:23 - 00:19:30:00
Kevin Eikenberry
But there's a couple other things I'd like you to do after today. Like if if this is the first time you're hearing or watching, I hope that you will subscribe wherever you're watching or listening from. And if you like this, I hope you will rate it, and I hope you will share it with others. If you're listening or watching as a leader of leaders, as someone in your organization that wants to help develop not just yourself, but other leaders, then why wouldn't you share this with others in your organization?

00:19:30:02 - 00:19:47:05
Kevin Eikenberry
That would be a great thing for you to do. Not just because it would help me, but you would, because it would help you. But the other thing I'd like to do, along with thanking you for the chance to have the platform to share all of these conversations with all of these wise and brilliant people over the course of the last year.

00:19:47:07 - 00:20:06:10
Kevin Eikenberry
I want to thank you for that chance, but I also want to give you the chance to give me some feedback, because even though we do most of these as live streams, even in that moment, the the chance for feedback about how this is going and what's happening and, and how we could do better, it doesn't really afford itself.

00:20:06:12 - 00:20:26:02
Kevin Eikenberry
So what I want to do is invite you to give us feedback to, give us input on what you'd like to see or hear or learn about, or even a book that you've read that you think then you should have. I'd love to hear a conversation between you and that person, and I'd love to know all of those things and give you three ways that you can do it.

00:20:26:08 - 00:20:49:06
Kevin Eikenberry
You can check us out if you're not connected with us on LinkedIn or Facebook. Those are two of the places that we live stream. You can go to remarkable podcast.com/linked In and join us there and give us some feedback there. Input there. Or you can do the same thing, on our in our Facebook group for the show.

00:20:49:07 - 00:21:10:00
Kevin Eikenberry
And you can get there by going to remarkable podcast.com/facebook. But maybe you don't want to join another group. Maybe you're not really active in those sites and that's perfectly fine. But there's one more way that you can give me some feedback. And maybe you say, hey, I'm already connected to you there. But the feedback I want to give, you want to give it to you personally so you can send me an email.

00:21:10:02 - 00:21:32:02
Kevin Eikenberry
Right. So why wouldn't you send me an email? Email info at Kevin eikenberry.com. And we'll get that, input and we'll do all we can to get better. And with your help, listen, I hope that you enjoyed this episode. And as I say at the end of every episode, I hope this helps you become the leader you were born to be.

00:21:32:04 - 00:21:53:11
Kevin Eikenberry
And if it does, I hope you will like. I hope you will subscribe. I hope you will share if you do those things that'll make everyone move in the direction of becoming the leaders that we want to be, and making the world a better place. Thanks for the chance to be with you. I'll see you next week, right here for another episode of the Remarkable Leadership Podcast.