Unlocking High Performance

WRKdefined Podcast Network
  • 5.0 (3)
  • Management
  • Updated Weekly

Unlocking High Performance, hosted by Jason Lauritsen, is a podcast for leaders who want strong results without burning out their people. Through solo reflections and honest conversations with leaders, Jason looks at how clarity, alignment, and connection shape the way work actually gets done.

  1. 7h ago

    Building a People-Centered Workplace Culture

    Most leaders were trained to tell people to leave their personal lives at the door. This conversation makes the case for the opposite. Tim Anderson, president and CEO of the United States Senate Federal Credit Union, explains how his team built a workplace that treats employees as whole people and still runs a strong business. You will hear how flexibility, mental and financial health support, and a leader who knows his people by name added up to higher productivity and a culture people trust. If you have ever wondered whether caring for employees actually improves results, or how to make psychological safety real instead of a slogan, this episode gives you a working example from a ninety-year-old organization that was recently named one of the top workplaces in the country. Key Takeaways → Telling people to leave their personal lives at the door does not work, because those needs do not disappear when someone logs in. → Wellbeing is a performance capacity issue, since personal stress takes the first share of a person's energy and focus before work even begins. → When an organization takes care of its employees, those employees take better care of customers and members. → Flexibility like remote and hybrid work lets people handle real life, from childcare to appointments, without falling behind at work. → Supporting the whole person means offering help for mental health, physical health, and personal finances, not just the job itself. → Authenticity has to start at the top, with a leader willing to show vulnerability and admit they are still learning. → Psychological safety becomes real only when people can make mistakes and challenge the boss without fear of retaliation. → A strong culture outlasts any single leader when it is built on trust that gets lived, not just announced. Timestamps 00:00 – Why leaders should not have to choose between results and people 01:07 – Background on the credit union and who it serves 03:20 – What leading the whole person actually means 05:51 – Why flexibility adds complexity but still pays off 07:28 – The business benefit of making room for people's whole lives 08:41 – Wellbeing as a limit on the energy people bring to work 09:51 – How the culture held up during the shift to remote work 13:32 – Why authentic leadership has to start at the top 17:56 – Turning psychological safety into everyday practice 22:51 – The biggest challenges in sustaining this kind of culture Keywords employee wellbeing at work, psychological safety in the workplace, people-first company culture, building trust as a leader, authentic leadership, caring for employees, whole person leadership, flexible and remote work culture, credit union workplace culture, how culture drives performance —  Connect with Tim: LinkedIn: ⁠linkedin.com/in/timothy-l-anderson-mba-5528696 — JOIN THOUSANDS OF LEADERS WHO ARE HARNESSING THE POWER OF RELATIONSHIPS AT WORK. Subscribe to our newsletter: ⁠https://tinyurl.com/59nrvxnj⁠ — Connect with Jason Lauritsen: Website: ⁠https://jasonlauritsen.com/⁠ YouTube: ⁠https://www.youtube.com/@JasonLauritsenVideo⁠ LinkedIn: ⁠https://www.linkedin.com/in/jasonlauritsen/⁠ Instagram: ⁠https://www.instagram.com/jasonlauritsen/

    Building a People-Centered Workplace Culture

  2. Jul 30

    Getting Unstuck In Work And Life

    Feeling stuck is one of the most common and most isolating experiences in work and in life. In this solo episode, Jason Lauritsen shares his own year-long effort to move his business forward after realizing he kept landing in the same place, year after year. He walks through what it actually took to break the loop, why reinventing the business meant reinventing himself, and the two lessons that made the difference. If you are wondering how to move past a season where nothing you try seems to work, this episode is an honest look at what getting unstuck really requires, and a reminder that it is possible. Key Takeaways → Feeling stuck often shows up as a loop, where you set ambitious goals but keep ending the year in the same place you started. → Being stuck does not always mean something is broken. You can be doing good work and still not move forward. → Reinventing your business often means reinventing yourself, especially when your work is closely tied to who you are. → Every big transformation has a hard middle, and skipping past it in your planning is what makes the change harder than expected. → You need people who will tell you the truth about what is working and what is not, without worrying about your feelings. → Hiring outside expertise is not a failure. If you already knew how to solve it, you would have solved it by now. → Getting unstuck takes time and grace, so keep learning from the setbacks and give yourself credit for hard work. Timestamps 00:03 – What to do when you feel stuck 01:57 – The loop of starting over every year 04:03 – Committing to get unstuck 05:56 – Why reinvention meant becoming a startup again 08:17 – Relearning how to tell the story, and the real cost 09:04 – Why so many people feel stuck 10:45 – The first lesson: you cannot do it alone 13:08 – Listening to the people who care most 15:32 – Finding the right outside guides 17:37 – The second lesson: give yourself grace Keywords how to get unstuck, feeling stuck at work, reinventing your business, personal transformation, leadership growth, asking for help when stuck, business reinvention, breaking out of a rut, finding a coach or advisor, overcoming professional setbacks JOIN THOUSANDS OF LEADERS WHO ARE HARNESSING THE POWER OF RELATIONSHIPS AT WORK. Subscribe to our newsletter: ⁠https://tinyurl.com/59nrvxnj⁠ Connect with Jason Lauritsen: Website: ⁠https://jasonlauritsen.com/⁠ YouTube: ⁠https://www.youtube.com/@JasonLauritsenVideo LinkedIn: ⁠ https://www.linkedin.com/in/jasonlauritsen/ Instagram: ⁠ https://www.instagram.com/jasonlauritsen/

    Getting Unstuck In Work And Life

  3. Jul 23

    Aligning Strategy And Culture At Scale with Jamie Griffin

    If you are trying to keep your culture consistent as you grow, this conversation shows you how one people leader is doing it across hundreds of locations and thousands of frontline workers. You will learn why clarity and alignment are two different jobs, how an origin story becomes a tool for shaping culture, how to design the employee experience so people live your values without ever being handed a document, and why the shift from being nice to being kind changes how leaders show up. It is a practical look at connecting strategy and culture so they push the organization forward together instead of pulling in different directions. Key Takeaways → Clarity and alignment are not the same thing. Two people can agree on the exact same words and still picture completely different outcomes, so leaders have to slow down and make sure everyone sees the same result. → A company's origin story shapes how it should grow. Knowing where you came from gives you a source to design culture forward as you scale. → Culture lives in the minds of your team members and brand lives in the minds of your guests. You shape both by controlling the experience, not by handing people a values statement. → Every part of the employee journey can be designed as an episode, from the first day to orientation, so the culture comes to life without anyone being lectured about it. → Systems and processes are how culture scales. Design the work so it is easy to get right and hard to get wrong, then look at the design first when someone gets it wrong. → Feedback only matters if you close the loop. Guest and team member sentiment should feed back into training and coaching, not sit unused in a report. → Attendance problems are often a leadership signal, not a team member problem. When one leader has repeated issues, you need a leader intervention, not an attendance policy. → Leader stability drives results. People need time in one place to build connection with their team and community, so growth should not always mean moving somewhere new. → Nice is not the same as kind. Nice avoids discomfort, while kind embraces a little discomfort to leave someone better than you found them. → Caring for someone means telling them the truth. Keeping people comfortable while they are struggling is not care, and keeping someone safe is not the same as protecting them from discomfort. Timestamps 01:07 – Why people are the solution, not the problem 04:38 – Keeping strategy and culture from pulling apart 05:44 – Why clarity has to come before alignment 08:02 – Using your origin story to define who you are 10:24 – Turning company values into a culture napkin 13:01 – Getting the message all the way to the frontline 15:15 – Designing every moment as an episode 18:46 – Building systems that close the feedback loop 22:59 – Why leader stability drives performance 25:23 – Moving from nice to kind in how you lead Keywords scaling company culture, aligning strategy and culture, leadership clarity and alignment, frontline employee experience, building culture across multiple locations, moving from nice to kind leadership, chief people officer insights, employee onboarding and orientation, giving honest feedback at work, retaining frontline workers —  Connect with Jamie: LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jamiejgriffin/ — JOIN THOUSANDS OF LEADERS WHO ARE HARNESSING THE POWER OF RELATIONSHIPS AT WORK. Subscribe to our newsletter: https://tinyurl.com/59nrvxnj — Connect with Jason Lauritsen: Website: https://jasonlauritsen.com/ YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@JasonLauritsenVideo LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jasonlauritsen/ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/jasonlauritsen/

    Aligning Strategy And Culture At Scale with Jamie Griffin

  4. Jul 2

    What Caring Actually Looks Like as a Leader

    In this solo episode, Jason explores with a question that sounds simple until you look at it closely. What does it look like to care for someone as their leader? He talks through why care at work has to look different from the care we show at home because the relationship has specific purpose. And he highlights the moments when the most caring thing a leader can do is to step into a difficult conversation with the employee. Key highlights from the conversation: ➡️ Why the way we care for the people we love outside of work can actually backfire when we bring it to the people we lead ➡️ The mistake Jason has watched leaders make hundreds of times, avoiding a hard conversation because they mistakenly think that keeping employees comfortable is the kind thing to do ➡️ A moment from Jason's own career when avoiding the hard conversation was making things worse ➡️ What leaders should do to truly care for their people in a way that supports their performance and engagement at work JOIN THOUSANDS OF LEADERS WHO ARE HARNESSING THE POWER OF RELATIONSHIPS AT WORK. Subscribe to our newsletter: https://tinyurl.com/59nrvxnj Connect with Jason Lauritsen: Website: https://jasonlauritsen.com/ YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@JasonLauritsenVideo LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jasonlauritsen/ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/jasonlauritsen/

    What Caring Actually Looks Like as a Leader

  5. Jun 17

    Scaling Without Losing Your Culture with Spencer Douglas

    When a company grows fast, it's easy to see only the good in it. The wins keep coming, so the quieter thing underneath is easy to miss. Some of the core things that fueled the company’s growth start to drift, and it rarely shows up as a culture problem at first. It shows up somewhere else, in a client commenting that things feel different or a long-term employee deciding to leave. In this episode, Jason talks with Spencer Douglas, the chief marketing officer of BZI, about what fast growth did to a culture the company had always been proud of and how the leadership team finally recognized the problem and decided to do something about it. It's a candid look at what it actually takes to protect what makes a company special when growth is coming faster than the company is ready for. Key highlights from the conversation: ➡️Why brand and culture are really two sides of the same coin. ➡️The early signals that a culture is starting to drift, the kind that show up in how clients talk about you before they ever show up in the numbers. ➡️What it sounds like when a leadership team stops settling for good and commit to being the best. ➡️How growing fast can quietly cost you the culture you worked hard to build and why protecting it gets harder the bigger you get. — Connect with Spencer: LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/spencerdouglas98/ — JOIN THOUSANDS OF LEADERS WHO ARE HARNESSING THE POWER OF RELATIONSHIPS AT WORK. Subscribe to our newsletter: https://tinyurl.com/59nrvxnj — Connect with Jason Lauritsen: Website: https://jasonlauritsen.com/ YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@JasonLauritsenVideo LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jasonlauritsen/ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/jasonlauritsen/ #UnlockingHighPerformance #JasonLauritsen #HumanResource #Leadership

    Scaling Without Losing Your Culture with Spencer Douglas

  6. Jun 10

    Introducing the Connected Performance Group

    In this episode, Jason does something a little different and talks through his own business, newly relaunched as Connected Performance Group. He shares why he rebuilt the way he works with clients, and lays out the system he developed over two decades for getting at the root of performance problems instead of just the surface. If you've followed his work for years but were never quite sure what he actually does for organizations, this is the episode that answers it. You can learn more and schedule an exploratory conversation at https://connectedperformancegroup.com — JOIN THOUSANDS OF LEADERS WHO ARE HARNESSING THE POWER OF RELATIONSHIPS AT WORK. Subscribe to our newsletter: https://tinyurl.com/59nrvxnj — Connect with Jason Lauritsen: Website: https://jasonlauritsen.com/ YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@JasonLauritsenVideo LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jasonlauritsen/ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/jasonlauritsen/ #UnlockingHighPerformance #JasonLauritsen #Management #Leadership

    Introducing the Connected Performance Group

  7. Jun 3

    Your Leadership Blind Spots Are Hiding in Plain Sight

    Everyone carries a particular way of seeing the world. It's shaped by where we grew up, how we were taught, and the experiences we’ve collected along the way. Most of the time, it goes unnoticed. But that lens shapes how situations get read, how people get judged, and how someone leads. When it goes unexamined, it can become a dangerous blind spot for leaders. In this solo episode, Jason looks at how the lens through which we see the world can become a leadership liability. He shares a training experience that challenged a belief he'd held for years about what good management looks like. It's the kind of belief that feels like plain common sense until someone gives you a reason to question it. What he learned changed how he thinks about supporting the people on his team. Key highlights from the conversation: ➡️Why the way you see the world is never neutral, even when it feels like common sense. ➡️The belief about checking in on your team that Jason had to rethink. ➡️How our lenses lead us to dismiss new ideas and judge people too quickly. ➡️Two practical ways to broaden your perspective and lead more effectively. — JOIN THOUSANDS OF LEADERS WHO ARE HARNESSING THE POWER OF RELATIONSHIPS AT WORK. Subscribe to our newsletter: https://tinyurl.com/59nrvxnj — Connect with Jason Lauritsen: Website: https://jasonlauritsen.com/ YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@JasonLauritsenVideo LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jasonlauritsen/ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/jasonlauritsen/ #UnlockingHighPerformance #JasonLauritsen #HRLeaders

    Your Leadership Blind Spots Are Hiding in Plain Sight

  8. May 28

    Proud Employees Don't Need to Be Pushed with Chris Sund

    In this episode of Unlocking High Performance, Jason is joined by Chris Sund, President and CEO of UnityMed and GQR Healthcare and COO of Nebula. Chris leads a distributed workforce across healthcare staffing, recruiting, and AI-powered talent solutions, and he shares how his teams treat experience design as a deliberate, structured part of the business. At a time when many workplaces are leaning harder into productivity pressure, Jason and Chris explore a different perspective. They push back on the idea that fun, care, and connection somehow compete with performance. Instead, Chris makes the case that proud, connected employees often do their best work because they actually want to. Key highlights from the conversation include: 👉 How Chris and his leadership team turned experience into a company-wide thematic goal across employees, candidates, and clients 👉 Why looking for friction is one of the most practical ways Chris's team improves both customer and employee experience 👉 The kinds of shared moments, from Mario Kart in the parking lot to birthday celebrations, that become the core memories employees actually remember 👉 Why leaders should sometimes let employees run with an imperfect idea instead of stepping in with a "better" one 👉 Chris's perspective on the link between employee pride, coachability, and sustained performance — Linkedin: Connect with Chris: https://www.linkedin.com/in/christophersund/ — JOIN THOUSANDS OF LEADERS WHO ARE HARNESSING THE POWER OF RELATIONSHIPS AT WORK. Subscribe to our newsletter: https://tinyurl.com/59nrvxnj — Connect with Jason Lauritsen: Website: https://jasonlauritsen.com/ YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@JasonLauritsenVideo LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jasonlauritsen/ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/jasonlauritsen/ #UnlockingHighPerformance #JasonLauritsen #HRLeaders

    Proud Employees Don't Need to Be Pushed with Chris Sund
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5
out of 5
3 Ratings

About

Unlocking High Performance, hosted by Jason Lauritsen, is a podcast for leaders who want strong results without burning out their people. Through solo reflections and honest conversations with leaders, Jason looks at how clarity, alignment, and connection shape the way work actually gets done.

Information

  • Creator
    WRKdefined Podcast Network
  • Years Active
    2024 - 2026
  • Episodes
    76
  • Copyright
    © All rights reserved by WRKdefined
  • Show Website
    Unlocking High Performance