☎️ The Switchboard Exchange
6 Top LinkedIn Posts to Support Storytelling, Growth and Leadership
Welcome to The Switchboard Exchange, a summary of content that has crossed my path and captured my curiosity. I’m sharing the highlights with this community to pay it forward. I hope these thought-leaders will also make you think, grow and be inspired. Here are the three themes I focus on in this edition. Learn more in the posts and takeaways.
📚 Storytelling
📈 Growth
🎙️ Leadership
📚 Storytelling
🗽Learn from History’s Greatest Communicators | Oliver Aust
Oliver is Founder of Speak Like a CEO Academy.
Learn from six of history’s greatest communicators. The Artist Leonardo da Vinci can teach you to strip away the unnecessary by focusing on clarity and simplicity in your core message. While Former Prime Minister Winston Churchill teaches us to be direct, be bold, and repeat your message because repetition is remembered.
🎬 Take Away: Learn from leaders in past to shape the present. Artists and Politicians can teach us a lot.🍫 Be Intentional with your Brand | Dickie Bush
Dickie is Co-Founder, Premium Ghostwriting Academy.
Ferrero Rocher became the most powerful chocolate brand in the world. The family-owned company began in 1946 with a hazelnut chocolate paste. The Italian Founder’s story takes place in the aftermath of World War II and pivoting to support what the people needed while maintaining product quality. His marketing was creative — giving away free samples!
They made chocolate for everyone, from sweets for kids to the fancier moments for families. They had a philosophy of building loyalty and community through its business ecosystem, caring for his employees with education, healthcare and a foundation.
🎬 Take Away: Be creative. Seize the moment. Treat your customers and employees like gold.📈 Growth
📋 Learn from a List | Helen Tupper
Helen is CEO at Amazing If, Author of 2 Sunday Times bestsellers & host of Squiggly Careers podcast.
Create a learning list to be intentional about growth. Organize it into three categories: what to learn, what to unlearn, and what to relearn. This approach will help you personalize learning, feel more connected to the outcome, and stay motivated to take action and improve skills and habits.
🎬 Take Away: Embrace a learning mindset daily and track your successes and flops in front of you.🧭 Take Ownership | Gagan Bayani
Gagan is CEO and Co-Founder at Maven. Previously Co-Founder at Udemy.
Take ownership of everything that happens to you. It is the crucial trait for success by acknowledging and accepting responsibility for circumstances, both good and bad. By cultivating an inner voice of responsibility, you can build an internal compass.
🎬 Take Away: Treat work and life with intention.🎙️ Leadership
🛟 Build Trust | Rob Forman
Rob is Co-Founder and Coach Scalebound, coaching CEOs. He was Co-founder and President at Salesloft.
Consider your next team meeting by starting with a 10-minute check-in where members share personal and professional highlights, as well as any "set asides" - unusually challenging personal or professional issues. This enables members to build trust through vulnerability and signals their commitment to stay present despite challenges. This practice has been found to increase focus, ownership, and accountability.
🎬 Take Away: Make time to share and connect at work. It will have positive results.♣️ Take a Monopoly Approach to Work | Jenny Wood
Jenny is a Former Tech executive and Author of the upcoming book, “Wild Courage.”
Jenny tells the story of how her son destroyed her at a Monopoly game by investing in Broadway while she chose random places like Baltic Avenue. She applied this to work, saying that the “Baltics” are low-value tasks while Broadways are significant projects with positive results. My only disagreement is I think helping with the office party could lead to a Broadway moment in the future. She recommends aiming high to identify the big wins.
🎬 Take Away: Aim for the big wins with dividends for your career.
Thanks for tuning into this edition of The Switchboard. If you have a recent post that’s captured your curiosity, suggest it for a future feature. You’ll receive recognition in that edition. Reply to this email or message me.
I appreciate you letting me know if this article resonated — give it a heart, comment below or share it on LinkedIn. Since this content came from LinkedIn, I also publish it via a special edition newsletter there. Signing off. — Julia
You never cease to amaze me, Julia! Your articles are consistently jam-packed with so many actionable nuggets and suggestions from top experts. I especially resonated with these points from this edition:
1. The idea to create a "learning list" of "what to learn, unlearn, and relearn." Very creative and clever! I plan to make time for this exercise next week.
2. I love the concept of Rob Forman’s 10-minute ‘Set Asides’ and how it encourages openness while reinforcing presence in meetings. At my company, we’ve incorporated ‘connection questions’ at the start of all-hands, executive, and 1:1 meetings—ranging from lighthearted ‘Would you rather?’ questions to deeper reflections like ‘What’s one challenge you’re navigating, and how can the team support you?’ Over the past three years, this practice has helped our hybrid, multinational company build trust and psychological safety, strengthen team cohesion, and work better together.
For my direct report meetings, I include ‘Urgent Issues’ as the second agenda item—similar in spirit to ‘Set Asides’ but with a sharper focus on problem-solving. I appreciate Rob's idea, though, and plan to consider how to try it out in some of my meetings.
Thank you!