Show Notes
EP 203 | Unlock Your Team’s Hidden Potential | Jordan Cole Fence posts planted five feet apart in Irish soil grew back into trees. If your team’s culture is rich enough, it can grow your people. Jordana Cole talks with Dr. Joey about the one question that transforms fence post performers into vibrant, tree-top contributors. About Jordana Cole Jordana Cole is an igniter of leadership and team potential, sparking behavioral change that doesn't just stick - it spreads. Jordana is the founder of Ignited, where she consults on l&d strategy, facilitates workshops, and serves as an ICF certified coach for leaders and organizations globally. Prior to founding Ignited, Jordana led enterprise learning and development functions within industries spanning financial services, technology, and ecommerce that featured companies both on the Fortune 50 and on Fortune's Best Places to Work list. Jordana combines her rich background in organizational leadership with her master's degree in applied positive psychology from the University of Pennsylvania, to translate research and best practices into accessible and energizing actions that anyone can implement. She's been featured on podcasts and articles discussing the intersection of leadership, wellbeing, and organizational success. Her 2025 TEDx talk "What to Do When You Don't Know What's Next" currently ranks in the top 10% of views for all TEDx talks globally. Key Insights
People carry far more capability inside them than they realize. Surfacing it takes somebody who spots what they miss and offers challenge and support together. Jordana calls it, push and catch. We spend 70% of our waking hours at work while 3 out of 4 people report working miserable. This misery spills into the rest of their lives. The fastest way to attract top talent is investing in current talent. Think of current team members as brand ambassadors who already describe your culture to their friends. Managers reach leadership roles cold, while teaching, healthcare, financial planning, and law all require education, certification, supervision, and continuing practice. Leadership is a behavior. Core knowledge accounts for 20% of it. Practice and habit account for the other 80%. Fixing what's broken reaches compliance and baseline. Growth arrives as you create clarity on what good looks like, create conditions that make it easy, and reward it. Systems and incentives quietly overrule training, so great leaders who arrive excited take their skills elsewhere once the culture contradicts the classroom. The pace and volume of change fills the mind the way clutter fills a hoarder's house. Such overcrowding shoves your people into survival mode where creativity and self-regulation both thin out. Research from Oxford behavioral economist Jan-Emmanuel De Neve links an organizational focus on well-being to higher profitability, higher productivity, better retention, and better engagement. Job security has thinned across industries once considered safe. Layoffs now arrive during profitable quarters which makes loyalty scarce.
Do One Thing In your next interaction today, ask one person a real question and tell them one specific thing you appreciate about them. Connect With Jordana Cole Website: https://ignitedbyjordana.com/ LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jordana-cole-mapp-pcc-a8445a8/ TEDx talk: [TEDX URL PENDING - see Pending table] Take Your Next Step Discover where your culture stands in the free Work Positive Culture Assessment at workpositive.today. Four minutes.
More from Work Positive
EP 209 | Make Retention a HABIT | Dr. Sharon Grossman An engineer at Hewlett-Packard ran into his manager’s office with a breakthrough. The manager wanted to say thank you on the spot. He reached into his lunch bag and handed over the only thing he had: a banana. It became the Golden Banana Award. In this week’s episode, psychologist Dr. Sharon Grossman talks with Dr. Joey about the fifteen-minute daily habit that keeps your top talent on your team. Who on your team earned a golden banana yesterday? ABOUT THE GUEST Dr. Sharon Grossman is a psychologist, keynote speaker and retention strategist. She helps organizations reduce turnover, strengthen leadership and create work cultures where people are motivated to stay. She combines behavioral science with practical systems that improve engagement, performance and retention, and she has for more than 25 years. Her executive coaching helps leaders recover from burnout, and her retention work extends that care to frontline teams. Her HABIT system equips people leaders to do five things in a fifteen-minute daily huddle: Huddles, Appreciation, Barometer, Improvement and Tracking. She’s the author of several books, including Don’t Buy Their Lunch! Buy Their Loyalty. You discover her books, speaking, coaching and consulting at drsharongrossman.com. Key Insights
EP 208 | You Invest. Your People Invest Back. | Katherine Kobs About a decade ago, a company told a young team member, "We wanna send you to college and we'll pay for it." Kate Kobs said yes. Nearly a decade later, she invests in people the way that company invested in her. In this week's episode, Kate talks with Dr. Joey about attracting top talent with total rewards and retaining them as you follow through. Who on your team waits for you to invest first? ABOUT THE GUEST Katherine (Kate) Kobs is a human resources leader who creates people-first HR functions. She created them across manufacturing, municipal government, energy, and retail companies. She loves translating compliance into practical guidance managers use to positively influence their culture. Today she leads HR for an organization with entities spread across Wisconsin. She also serves as a human resources sergeant in the Wisconsin Army National Guard. Kate lives in Sheboygan, Wisconsin. She shares inspiring stories about work culture on LinkedIn. She welcomes your questions there. Key Insights
EP 207 | Slow Down to Grow Trust | Sara Valentine Halloween comes every Monday at Give Kids The World Village. Christmas comes every Thursday. Sara Valentine says your culture happens on the days in between, on ordinary Tuesdays. In this week's episode, Sara talks with Dr. Joey about the HEART framework she discovered as she watched her team serve Wish families, and how a culture climbs back from rock bottom one conversation at a time. What does your team hear from you on an ordinary Tuesday? ABOUT THE GUEST Our guest on this episode is a human resources executive, leadership speaker, and creator of the Heart Leadership framework. It's a simple approach that helps leaders like you and me build trust through intentional conversations and everyday actions. She's led people and culture for nearly 20 years, and is passionate about helping organizations like yours create work cultures where employees feel heard, valued, and empowered. She currently serves as vice president of talent and culture at Give Kids The World Village, and hosts the Heart Leadership podcast. She believes that leadership is less about having all the answers and more about how we show up for our people. Sara welcomes messages from the Work Positive community on LinkedIn. KEY INSIGHTS
EP 206 | You Go First. Then Your Team Follows. | Dr. Joey Faucette Every February at Dr. Joey's farm, the first crocus pushes through frozen ground before the daylilies stir. The crocus goes first. Then spring follows. In this week's episode, Dr. Joey coaches all five B.R.A.V.E. @ Work practices from the Work Positive Community Live Experience. Who on your team waits for you to go first? ABOUT DR. JOEY Dr. Joey Faucette is the creator of the Work Positive Culture framework and founder of Work Positive Today. He serves as a Positive Culture Architect, Executive Coach, and host of the Work Positive Podcast. He helps people leaders transform their work cultures so they attract top talent, reduce turnover, and grow productivity and profits. The bestselling author of 19 books, Dr. Joey brings more than four decades of culture coaching to every conversation. Each month he hosts the Work Positive Culture Live Experience, where he coaches the Work Positive Community through one framework at a time. He works from Pleasant Gap Farm in Dry Fork, Virginia. KEY INSIGHTS
EP 205 | Millions Hiding in Your Organization | Porschia Parker-Griffin Two sisters bought a pearl necklace at a Goodwill for sixty-nine cents. The appraisal came back at $50,000. Do you undervalue your team in a similar way? One designer at an architecture firm shared her underappraisal with Glassdoor because her owner had yet to ask. Porschia Parker-Griffin helps organizations unlock the millions of dollars of potential hiding inside their own teams. What would an appraisal of your team discover that you priced too low? ABOUT THE GUEST Porschia Parker-Griffin is the founder and CEO of Fly High Coaching. She helps organizations attract, engage, and retain high-caliber professionals through tailored consulting, training, and coaching programs that achieve their business goals and enhance their culture. She holds the ICF Professional Certified Coach credential along with numerous other important certifications, including master practitioner status in the MBTI and certification in the Hogan assessments. She holds two psychology degrees, including a master's in industrial and organizational psychology, and she hosts the Career 101 Podcast, which she describes as everything you were never taught about career growth, development, and change. Her company tagline is soaring to your full potential. She especially enjoys helping companies unlock the millions of dollars of potential hiding in their organization, and she offers the Work Positive community her case studies, her podcast, and an open LinkedIn inbox. KEY INSIGHTS