This is the last episode of Too Millennial for a long time. As I leave behind the podcast, I’m leaving behind the thing I most want you to carry forward: Team IM-PACT, the model I use with teams. Because impact is what you leave behind. Built from research by Richard Hackman, Amy Edmondson, and Eduardo Salas, and tested across fifteen workshops and retreats, PACT is a four-part foundation (purpose, accountability, coordination, trust) kept alive by two ongoing moves (illuminate, modify). It’s a model built not for high performance, but for impact.

Work with Jessy: I teach leaders to diagnose and develop their teams, facilitate full-day retreats, and build PACT into organizational team strategy at scale zlncoaching.com

The pact is the promise. The impact is what it leaves behind. Thank you for every episode, in every season.

Superstars and the Epicenter Test with Debbie Plager

Two team effectiveness practitioners who see teams in opposite ways share what they learned from teaching Northwestern undergrads, and what leaders can do about it.I'm joined by my mentor and co-teacher Debbie Plager, founder of Lumin Partners, to talk about why teams energize some people and stress others out, why a team of all superstars doesn't work (yes, there's a super chicken story), and one test you can run in your very next team meeting to find out whether everything on your team runs through you.

Resources mentioned

• “Why it’s time to forget the pecking order at work” (the super chicken TED Talk), Margaret Heffernan, TED 2015
• Thomas-Kilmann Conflict Mode Instrument
• The Prism assessment: https://www.surepeople.com/prism

Connect with JessyLinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jessy-grossman/Website: https://www.zlncoaching.com

Connect with DebbieLumin Partners: https://lumin-partners.com/

I coach teams. I foster dogs. And lately, I can't tell which one is teaching me more.

So today, I'm merging my two worlds by sitting down with Heather Owen, co-founder of One Tail at a Time, to talk about what dog packs teach us about leading teams: the correction we never make, the repair we always skip, and why the healthiest teams aren't the ones without conflict but the ones that know how to recover from it.

Stay tuned for the story of a 100-pound dog, an 18-pound grumpy senior, and months of tolerating it, until one day he didn't.

Want to help? As Heather says, the best thing you can do for animals is something. Donate to a local rescue. Volunteer at your shelter. Foster, which is how I started, and it's the number one way rescues can save more animals. Or adopt your next dog or cat. If you're in Chicago, start with One Tail at a Time: https://www.onetail.org/

Fair warning: once you start, you may find yourself refreshing the adoption page every weekend to see who found their home. Ask me how I know.