Southern Methodist University

Instructor, Cox School of Business Executive Education

Winding River Consulting

Leadership Management Consultant

S & J Allen, LLC

Principal

Practical Wisdom for Leaders Podcast

Practical Wisdom for Leaders is your fast-paced, forward-thinking guide to leadership. Join host Scott J. Allen as he engages with remarkable guests—from former world leaders and nonprofit innovators to renowned professors, CEOs, and authors. Each episode offers timely insights and actionable tips designed to help you lead with impact, grow personally and professionally, and make a meaningful difference in your corner of the world.

Founder and Host

John Carroll University

Professor of Management

Associate Professor of Management

Assistant Professor of Management

Visiting Assistant Professor of Management

Collegiate Leadership Competition

Collegiate Leadership Competition (CLC), a nonprofit founded in 2015, creates a digital practice field where students can actively apply what they learn via CLC’s global virtual competition. CLC makes leadership a tangible, high-impact learning experience for future leaders. It's leadership development... for the digital age.

Co-Founder and Board Chairman

Captovation

Captovation builds your confidence and skills as an online presenter. We use our AI-powered technology to help you improve your abilities, adding a human touch via live coaching. We’ll help you craft a crisp message, design an engaging deck, and deliver with confidence. We are building a global hub of digital resources including our new book—Captovation: Online Presentations by Design—and our library of podcasts, online tutorials, and everything you need to improve and deliver your most successful presentation yet.

Co-Founder

Case Western Reserve University

SAGES

King's Daughters Medical Center

Leadership Development Educator

Beta Theta Pi

I am an award-winning educator, keynote speaker, and leadership expert.

With over 17 years as a professor and more than 60 peer-reviewed publications, I bring academic rigor, humor, and real-world insight to every engagement.

I’ve co-authored five books on leadership and host Practical Wisdom for Leaders, a podcast ranked in the top 2.5% globally. I also publish a weekly newsletter for busy practitioners, highlighting four leadership articles.

I energize audiences at marquee organizations such as Toyota Motor North America, Cleveland Clinic, NASA-Glenn, Nestlé, Nordson, Key Bank, Crestron, Whiting Turner, Sam's Club, the Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland, and Progressive through my dynamic keynotes, workshops, and retreats.

Whether on stage or in the boardroom, my expertise in leader development, the future of work, and executive communication empowers leaders to drive meaningful, lasting change.

For a full bio, visit https://www.scottjallen.net/about

Leadership isn’t about the title. 
It’s about the behaviors

And it's not easy.

As Amy Edmonson says, "The soft skills are the hard skills."

Here are 9 behaviors that will set you apart and accelerate your career.

Embody these words through your actions, and you will build trust.

And trust is the currency of leadership. 

In fact, when employees strongly agree that they trust their organization's leadership, they are 3.5 times more likely to be engaged at work.

Sounds pretty solid to me...

What have I missed? What behavior would you add to the list? 👇 

Source: Gallup, Leadership Development Overview.

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Scott J. Allen, Ph.D.

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Forget the CEO.
The real culture-shapers are middle managers.

Most organizations have values on the wall. But whether those values live depends on one critical group... 

Middle managers. 

The individuals who bring culture to life every day.

In fact, according to McKinsey, relationships with management account for 86% of workers’ satisfaction with their interpersonal ties at work.

Put another way, if your team doesn’t feel connected to their manager, you are leaving a lot to chance.

Middle managers bring your values to life. 

When done well, they translate, they inspire, they connect.

Their skill is critical to your organization's success.

Source: McKinsey, Stop wasting your most precious resource: Middle managers

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Fitting in is easy.
Belonging takes courage.

Harvard Professor Herminia Ibarra calls this the 'authenticity paradox.'

When we step into bigger roles, the very behaviors that help us grow can feel less like “the real me.” 

Growth often starts with acting before we fully feel it. That is normal, not fake. 

Think of it this way:

✅ Fitting in = editing yourself to blend.
✅ Belonging = bringing your full self, while you experiment with new behaviors to meet the moment. 

Leaders shape that environment. When people experience true belonging, performance rises and turnover risk drops. One HBR study linked high belonging to a 56% increase in job performance, a 50% drop in turnover risk, and 75% fewer sick days. 

So , here's the question. Are people just fitting in, or do they belong and have room to stretch?

Sources: The Authenticity Paradox, HBR; The Value of Belonging at Work, HBR.

Leader development is a $366 billion industry.
And...there's little evidence showing ROI.

I wrote an article for Fast Company with two awesome colleagues, Martin Gutmann and Alexis Zahner. We explore this very topic (link in the comments).

So what's going on? 

It’s rarely about the intelligence or motivation of the participants. It’s about the design of the system around them.

If there’s no strategic anchor, the training becomes noise. If leaders aren’t modeling the behaviors, adoption dies in a cloud of skepticism. If the culture rewards the old way of doing things, even the best content won’t survive.

Add in the usual culprits of misdiagnosing the real problem, failing to build clarity and consistency, and ignoring ROI, and you have the recipe for wasted time, money, and trust.

Here’s the truth: training is the easy part.

The real challenge is aligning strategy, leadership, culture, and accountability so the learning actually sticks.

When you get those foundations right, training stops being an event and it becomes an engine for transformation.

What other reasons come to mind for you? Why do training programs fail?

Source: Forbes, Leadership Development Is A $366 Billion Industry: Here's Why Most Programs Don't Work; Forbes, The Wasted Dollars Of Corporate Training Programs

Most managers think they need more time.
The truth? You might be the problem.

Here’s what I see:

✅ Accepting meetings you don’t need
✅ No protected time for real work
✅ Saying yes when you should say no

Here’s the hack that the best managers use: Timeboxing.

Steps:
1. Define your 30-minute window
2. Block it in your calendar
3. Set a clear task
4. Eliminate distractions & go!

Research suggests that task switching can reduce productivity by 40%. Yikes.

Mantra: Protect the block.

Now stop reading and go protect three blocks for next week! Go!

Source:  Executive control of cognitive processes in task switching, Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Performance

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Failure can shake your confidence or sharpen your leadership.
The difference? How you frame it.

Every leader hits a wall. Misses a mark. Lets someone down.
But what separates those who spiral from those who rise isn’t perfection; it’s perspective.

Turns out, a growing body of research suggests that resilience is learned.

The words you say to yourself in those moments of doubt matter.
They shape how you recover, how you show up, and whether people trust you to lead again.

This post is for the moments after things go wrong.
The moments when self-talk turns brutal, and leadership feels out of reach.

Here are 9 mindset shifts to help you turn failure into fuel.

Because leadership isn’t about never falling.
It’s about how you stand back up.

What are some phrases that help you overcome setbacks?

Source: The Science of Bouncing Back, Time Magazine

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