SparkEffect

There's a moment in this episode where Jen Barnes says the quiet part out loud: she wasn't sure it would work. Not the bar, not the bet on an entire audience nobody had built a business model around, none of it. She built Rough & Tumble anyway, because waiting for someone else to prove women's sports fans would show up meant waiting forever, and forever wasn't an option she was willing to give herself.

Here's the part people don't talk about enough. Courage doesn't look like confidence from the inside. It looks like doing the thing while your stomach is still in knots, because you've decided the fear doesn't get a vote.

On this episode of Courage to Advance, Jen Barnes sits down with Kim Bohr and gets into the parts that don't usually make it into the founder story: the nights she second-guessed the whole idea, what it actually felt like to have banks and "experts" tell her to wait for proof that didn't exist yet, and the moment she stopped asking for permission and just built the thing.

This isn't only a story about a bar. It's about the decision every one of us eventually has to make, the one where nobody can hand you the data, and you have to move on conviction alone. Jen's version of that decision just happens to have a scoreboard and a packed room behind it.

Hit play. This is one of those conversations you'll want to hear in her own words, not ours.

New episode of Courage to Advance is live now on YouTube, or wherever you listen to podcasts.

"People don't mind change. They just don't like being changed."

That's Scott McInnes on the latest episode of Courage to Advance, and it might be the cleanest summary of why so many culture initiatives stall.

Scott is the founder of Inspiring Change, a Dublin-based consultancy that shapes culture and develops leaders across Ireland and Europe. His firm surveyed chief people officers across Ireland to find out what's actually getting in the way of building strong, aligned cultures. The result was five recurring challenges, most of them the same ones organizations were facing a decade ago.

Kim Bohr sat down with Scott to compare his Irish research with SparkEffect's Trust in Turbulence™ findings from the US. The through-line, on both sides of the Atlantic: trust is the connective tissue, and middle managers are the ones who carry it.

Scott calls them chief sense makers. We'd add: they're also the place where culture either compounds or collapses.

🎧 Listen now on your favorite platform!

Most leadership advice assumes everyone on your team is okay. What happens when they're not?

This week on Courage to Advance, Kim sits down with Dr. Gretchen Schmelzer, Harvard-trained psychologist, two-time national rowing champion, and co-founder of the Center for Trauma and Leadership, for a conversation about what leaders are actually carrying right now, and what most leadership development gets wrong about it.

A few of the threads worth listening for:
The difference between trauma and moral injury, and why the second one is what's quietly burning out your most mission-driven people.

The three forms of repeated trauma: what happened, the protections people built to survive it, and what didn't happen. Why that third one is often the work an organization has to make up for years later.

Why the survival strategies that catapult people into leadership (working hard, not asking for help, perfectionism) are the same ones that derail them once they get there.

And the reframe Gretchen would want every leader to take with them: stress management isn't about feeling good. It's about being able to access your full cognitive capacity in the moments that matter most.

Listen now: https://bit.ly/42kgMzF

You don't have to post every day.

You don't have to go viral.

You just have to show up.

That's what Nina Froriep told Kim Bohr in this episode of Courage to Advance. Nina is an Emmy-winning producer who spent years making other people look extraordinary on camera for Oprah. Then the industry shifted and she had to turn that lens on herself.

What she found surprised her. The less produced she was, the more people trusted her. Sharing her dog, her photography, her life between Switzerland and New York built deeper connections than any polished professional content ever did.

Her advice for leaders who've been putting off their professional presence:

Once a week is enough. Pick three personal things you're comfortable sharing. Respond to people who comment like you'd respond to someone at a dinner party. That's it.

The algorithm rewards consistency. So do people.

What's stopping you from showing up this week?

Listen to the full converstation here: https://bit.ly/4mYyGBj

You don't have to post every day.

You don't have to go viral.

You just have to show up.

That's what Nina Froriep told Kim Bohr in this episode of Courage to Advance. Nina is an Emmy-winning producer who spent years making other people look extraordinary on camera for Oprah. Then the industry shifted and she had to turn that lens on herself.

What she found surprised her. The less produced she was, the more people trusted her. Sharing her dog, her photography, her life between Switzerland and New York built deeper connections than any polished professional content ever did.

Her advice for leaders who've been putting off their professional presence:

Once a week is enough. Pick three personal things you're comfortable sharing. Respond to people who comment like you'd respond to someone at a dinner party. That's it.

The algorithm rewards consistency. So do people.

What's stopping you from showing up this week?

Listen to the full converstation here: https://bit.ly/4mDVhmL