Podcasts and Interviews Featuring Misha
I love being on podcasts and I love talking to smart people.
On change gatherings
I spoke with Michael Bungay Stanier about the three big questions I help my clients answer to improve their change gatherings:
- What if the way you’re structuring your events is stopping the very change you want to create?
- How might things shift if you assumed everyone involved was a competent adult?
- Are your “best practices” actually working against your goals?
A conversation about p(doom)
At Manifest 2024 I facilitated a conversation between Scott Alexander (Astral Codex Ten) and Josh Rosenberg (CEO of the Forecasting Research Institute) on their opinions about p(doom) from AI. We discuss why consensus is so hard to reach, why beliefs are so strongly held, and why there is so much resistance to change.
Building a bot that worries
I had Claude scan a year of meeting transcripts for every instance of “Ugh. We should have caught that earlier. We should worry about this sort of thing in future” Then I built a bot on a timer that worries about all those things and stops them from happening. Listen
You Are Not So Smart
David McRaney is an award-winning science journalist and multiple best-selling author, including his book How Minds Change.
In this episode, David and I talked about how to avoid the pitfalls associated with debate. This turned out to be one of David’s most popular You Are Not So Smart episodes! Listen
In this episode, David and I discussed how to talk about divisive political issues, in this case, about vaccine hesitancy. The episode includes a live demonstration of how to have this kind of conversation. Listen
In this episode, David and I talked about how best to improve your communication skills and how to turn difficult interactions into something marvelous and fruitful. Listen
Making a career out of making events better
In this episode of David Nebinski’s Portfolio Career Podcast, I spoke about how to improve your event and how I’ve built a career around this kind of work. I share my four-step framework for successful events (starting with having a clear goal), practical techniques like helping attendees find their conversation partners, and discuss why most event organizers focus on entertainment instead of connection. Listen
Read David’s Substack article about it here.
A conversation with Sasha Chapin
This is a conversation between me and my smart friend Sasha Chapin. Sasha writes about meditation and perfume and being a person. In this conversation we talked about feelings in the workplace, about my dislike of hard work, and a bunch of other things… Listen
With Spencer Greenberg
I’m a big fan of Spencer’s podcast where he talks about how to think more clearly and be rational.
In this episode, we talked with an IPCC climate scientist about how to understand the scope of the human impacts of climate change. The conversation got challenging at times in ways that I found really interesting. Listen
In this, we talked about how to communicate more effectively. I particularly enjoyed coaching Spencer through a challenge he was having in his own life. I also talked about some very personal stuff in my life, like what I learned from the experience of my own divorce and how I grew from that. Listen
More conversations
Jeffrey Frederick and Douglas Squirrel literally wrote the book on how to have better conversations within agile teams. I talked to them here on how to create effective connection in virtual environments.
Michael Bungay Stanier wrote the best-selling coaching book of this century and was named the #1 thought leader in coaching. His book The Coaching Habit has sold almost a million copies and has thousands of 5-star reviews online. He has me on his podcast to talk about how to communicate better.
Wiretap was a hilarious show on CBC by Jonathan Goldstein of This American Life and Heavyweight that I guested on multiple times. On this episode I give people advice on their interpersonal problems.
In another episode, that I can't seem to find, Jonathan and I play charades over the radio and he falls in love with me.
In this episode, Mary O'Carroll and I tackled the real human problems in business and how to approach them.
Recorded coaching sessions
Here’s a rare chance to hear what a coaching session sounds like in real life, and the ways people can learn to get better at communicating.
I recorded multiple coaching sessions with Tanya (who volunteered to be a part of this) prior to an important conversation she needed to have.
At Tanya’s company, one of the regional offices is not performing financially as well as it needs to and they’ve been struggling to find the right person to lead it and turn things around. Tanya believes the right person is Frank, a long-time employee currently working in another department. However, the region’s key leader Jack has concerns. So Tanya and Jack need to resolve this.
In this recording we hear a couple of coaching calls with Tanya, and also her report back after her conversation with Jack. (It went well!) Listen