With Special Guest: Anne Bonney, Change Management Authority, International Keynote Speaker, and Author of Get Over It! and Get Them Over It!

Most people spend their whole career running from discomfort. Anne Bonney built hers by running straight at it.

In this episode, Meridith sits down with change management authority Anne Bonney, who traces her path from a childhood spent moving across four continents to training seals and sea lions at the Boston Aquarium to a corner office job in New York City that looked perfect on paper and left her unable to get out of bed. Anne shares the moment she realized having the title, the salary, and the city she loved was not the same as having a life she wanted, and the leap she took into her parents' basement in Michigan to rebuild from scratch as a change speaker and author.

Anne and Meridith dig into what actually moves people through uncertainty: shifting from an external locus of control to an internal one, focusing energy only on what you can act on, and letting go of the anger you feel toward everyone else. They also unpack what leaders get wrong about difficult conversations, including the shift from calling people out to calling them in, and why teams trust a leader who is consistently direct far more than one who is inconsistently nice.

What you will take away from this conversation:

• Why "what can I control right now" is the single most useful question in a season of change
• The difference between an internal and external locus of control, and why it determines your resilience
• How one manager's simple question, "what are you worried about, what are you mad about, what are you losing," turned a scary company-wide change into a team that trusted him
• Why being liked and being respected are not the same goal, and choosing wrong costs you both
• The teapot metaphor for feelings, and why bottling them up always ends the same way

If you are navigating your own basement moment, or leading a team through one, Anne's closing advice says it best: don't do it alone.

Connect with Anne Bonney:
yourchangespeaker.com | Books: Get Over It! and Get Them Over It!

LinkedIn: http://linkedin.com/in/annebonney

Facebook or Instagram: @SpeakerAnneBonney

With Special Guest: Brian Biro, America's Breakthrough Coach and Bestselling Author of The ROI of Kindness

Kindness has an image problem in business. Brian Biro has spent decades proving that image is wrong.

In this episode, Meridith welcomes her longtime mentor Brian Biro, "America's Breakthrough Coach," to make the case that kindness is not a soft skill leaders can afford to skip. It is the foundation of trust, performance, and results. Brian traces his passion for kindness back to his own mentor, legendary UCLA basketball coach John Wooden, and shows why the companies that top every industry, from Southwest Airlines to Starbucks to Kaiser Permanente, all share kindness as a core value.

Brian introduces his ESPN framework for building people: deliver thanks with real Effort and energy, use the power of Surprise, be fully Present, and choose Now over "as soon as." He and Meridith also tackle the question every leader eventually faces: how do you stay kind while still holding people accountable? Through stories, including Coach Wooden confronting a star player over a broken team rule, and Meridith's own story of delivering hard feedback to a talented young executive, they show that real kindness means telling someone the truth because you believe in what they can become, not withholding it to protect their feelings, or yours.

What you will take away from this conversation:

• Why the Pygmalion effect means what you focus on in your people is what you create in them
• The ESPN framework for building trust: Effort and energy, Surprise, Presence, and Now
• Why kindness and accountability are not opposites, and how to deliver a hard message with genuine care
• The difference between being liked and being respected, and why leaders who chase the first lose both
• Brian's closing truth: "The love we fail to share is the only pain we live with"

If you lead people through uncertainty and want a culture that performs and holds together, this conversation gives you the blueprint.

Connect with Brian Biro:
brianbiro.com | Book: The ROI of Kindness

https://www.linkedin.com/in/brianbiro/

With Special Guest: Richard Newman, Founder and CEO of Body Talk

Most leaders think a failed change initiative comes down to a bad strategy. Usually, it comes down to bad delivery. In this episode of Ask for Change, I sit down with Richard Newman, founder and CEO of Body Talk and author of the bestseller Lift Your Impact. Richard has trained over 150,000 leaders at companies like Microsoft, Virgin, and 3M. His path started in an unlikely place. He was a painfully shy teenager who spent six months in a Himalayan monastery with monks who spoke no English. That forced silence became the foundation of his career.

Richard's research with UCL psychology professor Adrian Furnham surveyed more than 2,000 people worldwide. The results are hard to argue with. A few specific shifts in posture and presence changed how people voted for a candidate by 59 percent. Nonverbal signals move an audience 42 to 44 percent more than words alone.

We talk about why teams lose trust in a leader before that leader even speaks. We break down the three Cs every leader needs during change: clarity, care, and courage. And we unpack why the habits you call "just who I am" are actually the habits holding your influence back.

If your organization is running into change fatigue, this episode gives you a different lever to pull. Not new words. A new presence.

Connect with Richard:

http://www.richardnewmanspeaks.com/

https://www.linkedin.com/in/richardnewmanspeaks/

https://www.instagram.com/richardnewmanspeaks/