In today’s interlude episode, I’m sharing some key questions leaders should be asking themselves as employees return to the office after over a year of remote work. Especially in emerging hybrid models where employees can work in the office some days and work from home on other days, there are important considerations that leaders must be cognizant of as they begin to design new policies and working arrangements

Today I’m continuing my interlude series on leading during times of crisis, especially a social justice crisis. I’m diving into something many leaders struggle with: how to talk to their team members during or after a racially motivated incident. This can be an extremely sensitive topic for team members, so I am walking you through steps you can take to connect authentically and openly with your team.

In this episode, I am sharing my thoughts on how leaders can support their team members in underrepresented communities after external crises occur within these communities.Leaders should acknowledge tragedies and events impacting these communities and have crucial conversations about how their teams and organizations can show allyship, but it's critical that leaders engage in reflection and inner work first/

If you follow me over on Instagram @leadwithlois, this audio might sound familiar! This past weekend I sat down outside (excuse the echo!) and recorded my thoughts on how I’m making time to care for myself in the midst of tragic violence against Black and brown people and Asian Americans. In your leadership journey, I encourage you to reflect on:

(1) How you can take time to process and navigate the violent tragedies in this country?

(2) How might you help to stamp out systemic harm caused to marginalized communities?

In this episode, I sat down with my good friend Yvonne Davenport-Perkins to dive into her career journey and explore how self-efficacy played a role in her transition from education to business administration to life coaching. This episode is full of incredible advice and insight from Yvonne on how she’s been motivated to drive change in her work, life, parenting, and everything in between.

This interview is kicking off a new series on the Lead with Lois Podcast all about career transitions. In this first interview, I sat down with my dear friend Kelli Doss, the Chief Talent & Equity Officer at iMentor, a non-profit that pairs high school students with professional mentors to increase their likelihood of enrolling in and graduating from college. Kelli shares how self-awareness and self-reflection helped her to transition from a legal career into the Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion space.

In this episode I’m tackling that little voice inside of us: our inner critic. Letting our inner critic influence our decisions can hold us back, harm our mental and emotional health, and hinder our leadership of ourselves and our teams. However, there are some transformative reflections and actions you can take today to turn your inner critic into your inner champion. In this episode, I will walk you through it!

In this episode I discuss four components of self-leadership. There are a lot of differing opinions on the most important components of self-leadership, but I highlight four components - Self-Awareness, Self-Motivation, Self-Efficacy and Self-Resilience that I think are particularly important. I also share exercises, journaling prompts, and examples to help you start developing in each of the four components today.

In this introductory episode I discuss my motivation for starting the Lead with Lois podcast and share a little bit about my career journey. I also begin to tackle the topic of self-leadership, what it is, why it’s important and how practicing self-leadership has helped me lead others more effectively. Let me know what you think and please subscribe.