The Way Forward Webcasts with Leon Goren

In this special episode of The Way Forward podcast, we delve into Sam's remarkable life story, from Division One hockey player to traveling through North Korea, being wrongfully imprisoned in Syria, and co-founding a tech company in Singapore. Discover how his harrowing experience of surviving captivity shaped his approach to leadership and life in the business world. On a quest to visit every country in the world, Sam’s life took an unexpected turn when he found himself wrongfully imprisoned in Syria, accused of espionage and collaboration with terrorists. For 63 days, he endured the harsh realities of captivity, facing uncertainty, isolation, and unimaginable challenges. He shares with us three profound lessons that he learned while in solitary confinement that he continues as guiding principles for his day-to-day. Sam offers us invaluable insights on gratitude, resilience, and post-traumatic growth. PEO Leadership provides its business community the ability to leverage its collective knowledge, experience and network; to challenge and be challenged in a high disclosure, objective and trusted environment through a combination of Peer Advisory Boards, One-on-One Coaching, and Thought Leadership Executive Networking Events - all for the purpose of enhancing the personal and professional lives of its members. We have two upcoming in-person events that we would be delighted to have you join us for. The first, Catalyst 360: Give Us 15 Minutes to Solve Your Biggest Challenges & Opportunities will be on April 18th in Unionville, Ontario. The second, Compete on Culture: Unleash the Power of Your People for Strategic Success, will be on April 23rd in Halifax, Nova Scotia. Please visit the links to register. Our podcast is now listed at #7 amongst the top 30 CEO Podcasts.

In 2021,  Scott D. Anthony, was named the World’s 7th Most Influential Management Thinker by Thinkers50. Today’s turbulent times present unique and persistent challenges. Leaders are in a thick fog. Data to justify a decision comes in when it is too late to decide. Yesterday’s strengths become tomorrow’s weaknesses. Seemingly conflicting demands – purpose/profits, life/work, empowerment/decisiveness, meritocracy/inclusivity—feel paralyzing. When the fog of uncertainty descends, it is natural to want to slow down. The right mindsets, mental models, and approaches can allow leaders to navigate disruptive change, and own the future. Scott D. Anthony is passionate about helping individuals and organizations thrive in today’s world of never-ending change. He is a Professor at the Tuck School of Business at Dartmouth College, where he teaches a course called “Leading Disruptive Change,” and a Managing Director and Managing Partner Emeritus at Innosight, where he helps leaders design new growth strategies, build innovation capabilities, navigate disruptive innovation, and manage strategic transformation.   PEO Leadership provides its business community the ability to leverage its collective knowledge, experience and network; to challenge and be challenged in a high disclosure, objective and trusted environment through a combination of Peer Advisory Boards, One-on-One Coaching, and Thought Leadership Executive Networking Events - all for the purpose of enhancing the personal and professional lives of its members.

We were thrilled to have Dr. Michael Roizen, one of the world's leading experts on aging and longevity, at our Summer 2023 Eye of the Executive In-Person Series in partnership with Cleveland Clinic Canada and Aird & Berlis LLP, on June 20, 2023. Dr. Roizen is the creator of the innovative RealAge concept, which motivates behavior change to promote wellness. He has authored over 190 peer-reviewed scientific publications, five New York Times #1 best sellers and ten overall bestsellers. His latest book, The Great Age Reboot: Cracking the Longevity Code for a Younger Tomorrow, focuses on how to navigate upcoming changes, to make the best decisions for your brain, your body and your bank account. He helped start 13 companies and co-invented a drug approved by the FDA. He and Dr Oz coauthor a daily column syndicated to over 100 newspapers that translates current scientific reports into actionable steps for all audiences. In his keynote, he provided key insights on prevention, treatment, and technology that will reshape how we think about aging. PEO Leadership provides its business community the ability to leverage its collective knowledge, experience and network; to challenge and be challenged in a high disclosure, objective and trusted environment through a combination of Peer Advisory Boards, One-on-One Coaching, and Thought Leadership Executive Networking Events - all for the purpose of enhancing the personal and professional lives of its members.

We were thrilled to have Avi Goldfarb, one of the world's leading experts on AI, kick off our 2023 Eye of the Executive In-Person Series in partnership with Aird & Berlis LLP, on March 23rd, 2023. Avi is the co-author of the bestselling book Power and Prediction, on how artificial intelligence is changing business, economics, and finance. In his keynote, he provided key insights on how AI is transforming the global economy and how companies can best leverage its capabilities. Avi Goldfarb is a renowned expert in AI and its impact on business, economics, and finance. He has written several books on the topic, including Prediction Machines: The Simple Economics of Artificial Intelligence, which was named a best business book of 2018 by strategy+business magazine. He is also a frequent speaker and commentator on the topic, having been featured in publications such as The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, and Forbes. PEO Leadership provides its business community the ability to leverage its collective knowledge, experience, and network; to challenge and be challenged in a high-disclosure, objective, and trusted environment through a combination of Peer Advisory Boards, One-on-One Coaching, and Thought Leadership Executive Networking Events - all to enhance the personal and professional lives of its members.

2022 PEO Leadership Conference Keynote. Over the past decade, globalization, demographic shifts, and technology have changed the very landscape in which businesses are operating. The speed of change continues to accelerate with the third connected-age technologies of AI, Voice, 5G, and cloud computing. To further add to the uncertainty of the future, the economy is highly volatile and the world is facing geopolitical strains not seen in a lifetime. Rishad will distill this uncertainty and confusion into the key drivers leaders should focus on to prepare them and their companies for the Great Re-Invention. He will reveal how new scale is replacing old scale, why data is key but like electricity, not really a differentiator, how the rules of brand building require an understanding of “God-like” power, and how to separate the signal from the noise.  Rishad Tobaccowala is a Senior Advisor to the Publicis Groupe where he has spent his entire 38 year career, most recently serving as the Groupe's Chief Growth Officer and Chief Strategist. Tobaccowala was named by BusinessWeek as one of the top business leaders for his pioneering innovation and TIME magazine dubbed him “1 of 5 Marketing Innovators”. He is in  the Ad Age Interactive Hall of Fame and received a lifetime achievement silver medal from the Chicago Ad Federation. Rishad is also the author of “Restoring the Soul of Business: Staying Human in The Age of Data” which helps people think, feel and see differently about how to grow their companies, their teams and themselves to remain relevant in transformational times. Each Sunday, Rishad publishes a post covering a variety of topics. Explore more of his insights by visiting https://rishadtobaccowala.com/100. Additionally, Rishad is the host of the 'What Next?' podcast, where he finds fresh takes on society, the advertising and marketing industry, and the way we work to guide us into the near future. Rishad is also the Chairman of The Tobaccowala Foundation which helps 10,000 people in India gain better healthcare and education. Rishad has a BS in Mathematics from the University of Bombay and an MBA from the Booth School of Business at the University of Chicago. PEO Leadership is one of the leading peer to peer leadership advisory for C-Level Executives. It provides its business community the ability to leverage its collective knowledge, experience and network; to challenge and be challenged in a high disclosure, objective and trusted environment through a combination of Peer Advisory Boards, One-on-One Coaching, and Thought Leadership Executive Networking Events - all to enhance the personal and professional lives of its members.

We were thrilled to have Richard Skippon, Partner at EY who leads the Workforce Advisory Practice in Canada, speak to our community in June of 2022 about the challenges and opportunities in the labour market as well as how to retain and engage your employees.  Over his 25-year career, Richard has held HR leadership roles in both industry and professional services organizations. As part of his practice at EY, he supports clients in achieving business outcomes through effective alignment of their organizations and people. Key areas of focus for the practice include the evolution of talent in response to digital transformation, change management, culture, human resources strategy, and organization structure design. PEO Leadership provides its business community the ability to leverage its collective knowledge, experience and network; to challenge and be challenged in a high disclosure, objective and trusted environment through a combination of Peer Advisory Boards, One-on-One Coaching, and Thought Leadership Executive Networking Events - all for the purpose of enhancing the personal and professional lives of its members.

PEO Leadership 2022 Conference - Special thanks to Focus Asset Management for making this fireside chat possible! David Rosenberg provides advice to 2,600 clients, both retail and institutional, across 40 countries. He is the founder and president of Rosenberg Research, an economic and financial market consulting firm he established in January 2020. Prior to creating his own company, David was chief economist and strategist at Gluskin Sheff + Associates from 2009 to 2019. Prior to that, from 2000 to 2009, he was at Merrill Lynch, where for the first two years he was the chief Canadian economist and strategist based out of Toronto; for the last seven, he was the chief North American economist at Merrill Lynch in New York, where he was consistently ranked in the top three of Wall Street economists polled by the annual Institutional Investors survey. PEO Leadership provides its business community the ability to leverage its collective knowledge, experience and network; to challenge and be challenged in a high-disclosure, objective and trusted environment through a combination of Peer Advisory Boards, One-on-One Coaching, and Thought Leadership Executive Networking Events - all for the purpose of enhancing the personal and professional lives of its members.

2022 PEO Leadership Conference Keynote. Over the past decade, globalization, demographic shifts, and technology have changed the very landscape in which businesses are operating. The speed of change continues to accelerate with the third connected-age technologies of AI, Voice, 5G, and cloud computing. To further add to the uncertainty of the future, the economy is highly volatile and the world is facing geopolitical strains not seen in a lifetime. Rishad will distill this uncertainty and confusion into the key drivers leaders should focus on to prepare them and their companies for the Great Re-Invention. He will reveal how new scale is replacing old scale, why data is key but like electricity, not really a differentiator, how the rules of brand building require an understanding of “God-like” power, and how to separate the signal from the noise.  Rishad Tobaccowala is a Senior Advisor to the Publicis Groupe where he has spent his entire 38 year career, most recently serving as the Groupe's Chief Growth Officer and Chief Strategist. Tobaccowala was named by BusinessWeek as one of the top business leaders for his pioneering innovation and TIME magazine dubbed him “1 of 5 Marketing Innovators”. He is in  the Ad Age Interactive Hall of Fame and received a lifetime achievement silver medal from the Chicago Ad Federation. Rishad is also the author of “Restoring the Soul of Business: Staying Human in The Age of Data” which helps people think, feel and see differently about how to grow their companies, their teams and themselves to remain relevant in transformational times. Rishad is also the Chairman of The Tobaccowala Foundation which helps 10,000 people in India gain better healthcare and education. Rishad has a BS in Mathematics from the University of Bombay and an MBA from the Booth School of Business at the University of Chicago. PEO Leadership is one of the leading peer to peer leadership advisory for C-Level Executives. It provides its business community the ability to leverage its collective knowledge, experience and network; to challenge and be challenged in a high disclosure, objective and trusted environment through a combination of Peer Advisory Boards, One-on-One Coaching, and Thought Leadership Executive Networking Events - all for the purpose of enhancing the personal and professional lives of its members.

PEO Leadership 2022 Conference - Special thanks to Focus Asset Management for making this fireside chat possible! David Rosenberg provides advice to 2,600 clients, both retail and institutional, across 40 countries. He is the founder and president of Rosenberg Research, an economic and financial market consulting firm he established in January 2020. Prior to creating his own company, David was chief economist and strategist at Gluskin Sheff + Associates from 2009 to 2019. Prior to that, from 2000 to 2009, he was at Merrill Lynch, where for the first two years he was chief Canadian economist and strategist based out of Toronto; for the last seven he was Chief North American economist at Merrill Lynch in New York, where he was consistently ranked in the top three of Wall Street economists polled by the annual Institutional Investors survey. PEO Leadership provides its business community the ability to leverage its collective knowledge, experience and network; to challenge and be challenged in a high disclosure, objective and trusted environment through a combination of Peer Advisory Boards, One-on-One Coaching, and Thought Leadership Executive Networking Events - all for the purpose of enhancing the personal and professional lives of its members.

We were thrilled to have Richard Skippon, Partner at EY who leads the Workforce Advisory Practice in Canada, speak to our community in June of 2022 about the challenges and opportunities in the labour market as well as how to retain and engage your employees.  Over his 25-year career, Richard has held HR leadership roles in both industry and professional services organizations. As part of his practice at EY, he supports clients in achieving business outcomes through effective alignment of their organizations’ and people. Key areas of focus for the practice include the evolution of talent in response to digital transformation, change management, culture, human resources strategy, and organization structure design. PEO Leadership provides its business community the ability to leverage its collective knowledge, experience and network; to challenge and be challenged in a high disclosure, objective and trusted environment through a combination of Peer Advisory Boards, One-on-One Coaching, and Thought Leadership Executive Networking Events - all for the purpose of enhancing the personal and professional lives of its members.

We spend a lot of time upgrading our physical operating systems by exercising and watching what we eat but do we spend enough time exercising our minds and feeding the right sides of our brains to unleash innovation so we can truly grow, adapt, and remain relevant in a world of change? Rishad will share key learnings, including why there are much better ways to generate new thinking and ideas than offsites and why it is key to build a case for the exact opposite of what you believe. A plethora of tools, exercises, and resources will be shared and discussed. Rishad Tobaccowala is a Senior Advisor to the Publicis Groupe where he has spent his entire 38 year career, most recently serving as the Chief Growth Officer and Chief Strategist of the Groupe. Tobaccowala was named by BusinessWeek as one of the top business leaders for his pioneering innovation and TIME magazine dubbed him “1 of 5 Marketing Innovators”. He is in  the Ad Age Interactive Hall of Fame and has received a lifetime achievement silver medal award from the Chicago Ad Federation. Rishad is also the author of “Restoring the Soul of Business: Staying Human in The Age of Data” which helps people think, feel and see differently about how to grow their companies, their teams and themselves to remain relevant in transformational times. Rishad is also the Chairman of The Tobaccowala Foundation which helps 10,000 people in India gain better healthcare and education. Rishad has a BS in Mathematics from the University of Bombay and an MBA from the Booth School of Business at the University of Chicago. PEO Leadership is one of the leading peer to peer leadership advisory for C-Level Executives. It provides its business community the ability to leverage its collective knowledge, experience and network; to challenge and be challenged in a high disclosure, objective and trusted environment through a combination of Peer Advisory Boards, One-on-One Coaching, and Thought Leadership Executive Networking Events - all for the purpose of enhancing the personal and professional lives of its members.

We are very excited to have Fred Reichheld, the creator of the Net Promoter system of management and the founder of Bain & Company’s Loyalty practice, as our special guest on The Way Forward podcast series. Fred is known for “putting loyalty economics on the map” and is a trusted expert in customer loyalty.  Two thirds of the Fortune 1000 now use Net Promoter Score (NPS), the world’s leading customer success and loyalty framework. Companies that achieve the highest NPS in their industry consistently beat the stock market over the past decade, with annual returns of 26%+, and outperform the vast majority of private equity funds. The very best return across the universe of funds and ETFs tracked by Morningstar barely reached 19% over the decade. The issue at hand is that a July 2021 Bain & Co. survey of business executives revealed that only 10% of business leaders believe the primary purpose of their company is to enrich the lives of their customers. 90% of today’s executives dismiss the unbeatable advantages of a customer-centered purpose, which is sine qua non of loyalty leadership. In his latest book, Winning on Purpose, Fred Reichheld shows why all businesses should make enriching the lives of customers their primary purpose. It’s the best way to ensure sustainable growth, happily fulfilled employees, and robust investor returns. He unveils Net Promoter 3.0 – updated for our current business and social environment and introduces Bain’s latest invention, Earned Growth, which provides an accounting-based twin for Net Promoter Score.

We were extremely excited to have Stephen Poloz, the former Governor of the Bank of Canada, kick off our 2022 Eye of the Executive In-Person Series in partnership with Focus Asset Management, on April 6th, 2022. Stephen is a widely recognized economist with nearly 40 years of experience in financial markets, forecasting, and economic policy, including 35 years in the public sector. The economic ground is shifting beneath our feet. The world is becoming more volatile, and people are understandably worried about their financial futures. Stephen Poloz maps out the powerful tectonic forces that are shaping our future, and the ideas that will allow us to master them in his new book, The Next Age of Uncertainty: How the World Can Adapt to a Riskier Future. These forces include an aging workforce, mounting debt, and rising income inequality. Technological advances are adding to the pressure, putting people out of work, and climate change is forcing a transition to a lower-carbon economy.   The implications of these tectonic tensions will cascade through every dimension of our lives—the job market, the housing market, the investment climate, as well as government and central bank policy, and the role of the corporation within society. The pandemic has added momentum to many of them.  PEO Leadership provides its business community the ability to leverage its collective knowledge, experience and network; to challenge and be challenged in a high disclosure, objective and trusted environment through a combination of Peer Advisory Boards, One-on-One Coaching, and Thought Leadership Executive Networking Events - all for the purpose of enhancing the personal and professional lives of its members.

PEO Leadership's Michelle Calvin sits down with Vanessa Bohns to discuss why we fail to recognize the influence we have, and how that lack of awareness can lead us to miss opportunities or accidentally misuse our power. Vanessa Bohns is social psychologist and professor of organizational behavior at Cornell University. She argues that despite the popular opinion that we need to gain influence in order to get what we want, we actually already have it — we’re just not using it mindfully. If you’ve ever felt ineffective, invisible, or inarticulate, chances are you weren’t actually any of those things. Those feelings may instead have been the result of a lack of awareness we all seem to have for how our words, actions, and even our mere presence affect other people. Weaving together compelling stories with cutting edge science and original research, Bohns offers science-based strategies for observing the effect we have on others, reconsidering our fear of rejection, and even, sometimes, pulling back to use our influence less.

Listen to our most recent episode of The Way Forward Webcasts, with University of Toronto Professor Tiziana Casciaro. This was recorded live at our November PEO Conference.  Tiziana Casciaro is a Professor of Organizational Behavior at Rotman and the holder of the Marcel Desautels Chair in Integrative Thinking at U of T. Her research explores how structural and psychological forces jointly shape behavior in organizations. Her work on organizational networks, power dynamics, change implementation, and professional networking is published in Administrative Science Quarterly, Academy of Management Journal, Management Science, Organization Science, and Harvard Business Review, and featured in the Economist, Financial Times, Washington Post, Huffington Post, USA Today, Forbes, CNN, MSNBC, ABC, CBC Radio, Fortune and TIME. Professor Casciaro has served as Senior Editor at Organization Science. Her awards include the Outstanding Publication in Organizational Behavior Award of the Academy of Management, and Thinkers50 Radar list of the 30 management thinkers in the world most likely to shape the future of how organizations are managed and led.

Runaway climate change and rampant inequality are ravaging the world and costing a fortune. Who will help lead us to a better future? Business. These massive dual challenges—and other profound shifts, such as pandemics, resource pressures, and shrinking biodiversity—threaten our very existence. Other mega trends, such as the push for a clean economy and the unprecedented focus on diversity and inclusion, offer exciting new opportunities to heal the world, and prosper by doing so. Government cannot do this alone. Business must step up. Sustainable business guru, Andrew Winston will explore: How addressing these challenges presents the greatest economic opportunity of our time; The repercussions of businesses not taking action on social issues; How leaders must rethink what business is, how it grows and profits, what its purpose is, and how it drives change in the world. This is no utopian fantasy. Courageous leaders are already making it real—and the stakes couldn't be higher. With bold vision and compelling stories, Net Positive sets out the principles and practices that will deliver the scale of change and transformation the world so desperately needs.

To achieve success and happiness in the workplace, it’s not about changing what you do, but how you do it. People who use humor at work are more productive, less stressed, and happier. In our fall opener of PEO Leadership's The Way Forward Live Webcast series, we hosted a conversation with Andrew Tarvin, humor engineer, leadership expert and author of Humor That Works. The current way of working isn’t actually working. 83% of Americans are stressed out at work, 55% are unsatisfied with their jobs, and 47% struggle to stay happy. Today, 18 months into this pandemic, workers are quitting their jobs in record numbers. What are you and your leadership team doing to retain, inspire and engage your people and attract great talent? The purpose of Humor That Works is to provide you with a compact, cohesive resource for understanding the ‘what’, ‘why’, and ‘how’ of using humor at work. The goal is to make you a better leader by implementing specific strategies, you’ll not only get better results, you’ll also have more fun. This is a way of working that is different and effective. Choosing a humor mindset means understanding the various styles of humor and knowing which are appropriate for the workplace. In this session, Andrew Tarvin will discuss how to use humor to:  Be a better leader To think more creatively To execute with excellence To communicate more effectively To create better connections in your professional and personal life

Research consistently finds that purpose may be the most powerful influencer of our behaviours, attitudes, and motivation in organizations, work, school, and life. Yet despite the increasing evidence of purpose’s power, many of the organizations, systems, and institutions which dominate human life aren’t built to elicit and leverage the fundamental human search for purpose and meaning. Zach Mercurio, a purposeful leadership expert and author of The Invisible Leader, joined The Way Forward webcast to help us figure out just these problems.  In The Invisible Leader: Transform Your Life, Work, and Organization with the Power of Authentic Purpose, international purpose and meaningful work consultant and researcher, Zach Mercurio, shows business leaders, educators, students, athletes, and parents HOW to discover, clarify, and deliver their reason for existence―their authentic purpose. The Invisible Leader takes the next step and details both how purpose works and the research-backed practices to implement it in our lives, work, and organizations.

Humans rely on body language to connect and build trust, but with most of our communication happening from behind a screen, traditional body language signals are no longer visible - or are they? Erica Dhawan, the world's leading authority on 21st century Collaboration and Connectional Intelligence, joined the Way Forward webcasts to bring key insights to our PEO audience.  In her new book,Digital Body Language, she combines cutting edge research with engaging storytelling to decode the new signals and cues that have replaced traditional body language across genders, generations, and culture. In real life, we lean in, uncross our arms, smile, nod and make eye contact to show we listen and care.   Dhawan investigates a wide array of exchanges-from large conferences and video meetings to daily emails, texts, IMs, and conference calls-and offers insights and solutions to build trust and clarity to anyone in our ever-changing world. Digital Body Language will turn your daily misunderstandings into a set of collectively understood laws that foster connection, no matter the distance.

Doing well with money isn't necessarily about what you know. It's about how you behave. And behaviour is hard to teach, even to really smart people. Listen to PEO Leadership's The Way Forward Live Webcast 's conversation with Morgan Housel, award winning columnist, financial behaviour expert and author of The Psychology of Money.  Money - investing, personal finance, and business decisions - is typically taught as a math-based field, where data and formulas tell us exactly what to do. But in the real world people don't make financial decisions on a spreadsheet. They make them at the dinner table, or in a meeting room, where personal history, your own unique view of the world, ego, pride, marketing, and odd incentives are scrambled together. During this interactive and live session, you should expect to learn the following:  Getting Wealthy vs. Staying Wealthy - Good investing is not necessarily about making good decisions. It's about consistently not screwing up. The importance of Room for Error - The most important part of every plan is planning on your plan not going according to plan. It's all about Freedom - Controlling your time is the highest dividend money pays. Tails, You Win - You can be wrong half the time and still make a fortune. Nothing's Free - Everything has a price, but not all prices appear on labels.