BROADCASTS.com

Back in early December, Jessie-Lee cruelly abandoned Marcella and myself, and we were left to our own devices to record our 51st episode -- Are Undermining Words a Crime?

If you missed that episode, for shame.

But here's the short version: A Gmail extension -- Just Not Sorry -- made waves a couple years ago. The extension would underline words like “sorry” and “just” in emails, which sounds harmless enough. The catch, however, is that women were the target audience, and the tool was designed to help them stop using language that would undermine their authority in the workplace.

The conversation was fun, manageable, and straightforward -- with some healthy disagreement sprinkled in, for good measure -- but it got a little weird and uncomfortable toward the end.

While Marcella and I were able to speak from experience about expectations about females in the workplace, toward the end, we realized our good faith discussion was becoming dangerously one-sided.

We had zero knowledge or understanding of what expectations are (or aren’t) forced upon men in the workplace. Moreover, it seemed unfair to dive into an informed discussion about male vs. female leadership without a male voice present.

That’s why we invited Chris Duprey -- IMPACT's COO and self-described "student of leadership" -- to join us this week as our special guest! 

What resulted was an honest discussion about the expectations of men vs. women as leaders, and in the workplace, in general. While this episode was challenging at times, I think we all were able to agree that these are the kinds of conversations leaders of today (and tomorrow) and more evolved organizations need to be having.

Enjoy!