Kevin Carroll has an amazingly cool background. Raised by his grandparents in Philadelphia, his first job really was with the U.S. Air Force where he served as a language interpreter and translator. And in those ten years he became fluent in Croatian and Czech and Russian and German. But while being fantastic at languages, he was also an athlete and soon an athletic trainer. Leaving the Air Force, he worked his way up to be the head athletic trainer for the Philadelpha 76ers. So he’s already cool. But then he was tapped on the shoulder by Nike. He spent a number of years at Nike helping to deepen their understanding of athletic performance and team dynamics and interpersonal connection, basically helping Nike become one of the forces it is today.

And then things shifted again, and he put his experience and wisdom into a terrific series of books, starting with the Rules of the Red Rubber Ball. In this interview we talk about:

• How it was a ball that saved and changed Kevin’s life.
• Why ‘encouragers’ are so crucial to sustaining success
• The role of curiosity and play in connecting with your great purpose and Great Work
• The role of “lonely work” is setting up for success.

You can follow Kevin on Twitter at @KCKatalyst and find him on the web at www.Kevincarrollkatalyst.com.

Listen to my interview with Kevin Carroll

If you’re interested in leadership, you know that a new book on the topic gets published, oh, about every 20 seconds. And most of them are eminently missable – the same tired truisms with a new smear of lipstick – with the life of a mayfly.

And then there are a few classics, books that have really stood the test of time. One of those is The Leadership Challenge, co-authored by Jim Kouzes and his long-time writing partner Barry Posner. It was recently nominated by 800 CEO Reads as one of their best business books of all time, and in part its strength lies in the fact that it is insight based on research, not just someone’s thought du jour. Jim is not only a author, he’s also the Dean’s Executive Professor of Leadership at the Leavey School of Business in Santa Clara University and at one stage was CEO of the Tom Peters Company for ten or eleven years.

In our interview we talk about:

• How 25% of the success of leadership can be explained (and what to do about that other 75%)
• Why challenging the process is a crucial part of Great Work
• A terrific story from Ben & Jerry’s. (Anything involving icecream fits into Great Work as far as I’m concerned.)
• The power of a creative partnership – and how he and Barry have maintained their working relationship for close to three decade

You can get access to a wide range of leadership materials at Jim’s website

Listen to my interview with Jim Kouzes

Here’s a confession.  I want to be able to think like Merlin Mann.

He’s really smart on the topic of productivity, and in fact some part of his success comes from 43Folders.com which is a reference to David Allen’s Getting Things Done system.  But his work is not just about productivity.  It’s about creativity and purpose and striving to stay human and sane in a busy and distracting world and doing work that matters, doing Great Work. And he does all of this in funny, provocative, iconoclastic way.

In fact, writing this introduction and listening to the interview again has already provoked me to shift some of my own commitments in an effort to, as he puts it, “identify and destroy small return bullshit.  Shut off anything that’s noisier than it is useful.”  Great stuff indeed, and this is a wise and funny interview.

In our conversation we talk about:

• How the present is a “remedial course for the future” – and the pros and cons of those ‘creation myth’ stories of where people find clues for their Great Work
• The importance of an open heart and just where that might lead you
• The connection between productivity and creativity
• The two levels of prioritization (and how freeing it is to know that)
• And quite a bit more

You can follow Merlin on Twitter at http://twitter.com/hotdogsladies

The interviews are all between 25 and 30 minutes long.
You can either download them here as mp3s, or go to iTunes, type in “Great Work Interviews” and you’ll see them all there.

Listen to my interview with Merlin Mann

Follow Michael Bungay Stanier/@boxofcrayons on Twitter

I’m Australian, and Australians seem to be wanderers.  Maybe it’s because we suffer from a “tyranny of distance” – which means that when we do travel, we don’t just do it for a week or two, we do it for years.  That’s why about 70% of bar staff in the UK are Aussies, with a similar percentage for ski instructors in Europe and Canada.

I’ve done my own share of living in different countries, but I’m put to shame by Grahame Maher, currently CEO of Vodafone Qatar.  In his time with the company he’s lead the Australian, New Zealand, Swedish, Czech and now Qatar organizations.

So he brings to this conversation a unique mix of loyalty to one company, but the perspective of living and working in many countries.  Even better, he is (in his own words) “a small business guy who never wanted to work for a big organization” and a baker by trade.  Intrigued?  You should be.

In this conversation, we look at:

• The tactics he used to move the Vodafone brand in New Zealand from 2% recognition to 96%
• The power of mission and values to drive Great Work
• What happened when an engineer accidentally turned off the network for 600,000 people’s phones
• How stories can carry the DNA of success (and why the right words matter)

Listen to my interview with Grahame here

The interviews are all between 25 and 30 minutes long.
You can either download them here as mp3s, or go to iTunes, type in “Great Work Interviews” and you’ll see them all there.