ABOUT THIS PODCAST 🔗
About the Podcast
The Step Up brings together experts who help leaders elevate their impact. Each 45-minute episode features conversations with thought leaders, practitioners, and innovators who are changing how we think about leadership development and helping leaders step up their game.
Why This Podcast Exists
Throughout my career—from my time at organizations like Korn Ferry, Cargill, General Mills, and Buffalo Wild Wings to my current work as an independent leadership consultant—I've witnessed firsthand how leaders struggle during moments of change and transition and when learning higher-level skills. Work never slows down, and leaders often find themselves trying to grow while in the thick of daily demands.
The Step Up is designed to provide practical wisdom and actionable strategies that busy leaders can implement immediately to enhance their effectiveness.
What to Expect
Each episode follows a two-part format:
Part One: Leadership Journeys
We explore our guest's background, expertise, and unique perspective on leadership development. You'll hear authentic stories about their experiences supporting leaders and the insights they've gained along the way.
Part Two: Actionable Strategies
Our guests share three specific, practical tools or approaches that you can apply to your leadership right away. We dig into each one, discussing how to implement it effectively in your unique context.
Your Host
Kent Kniebel brings over 20 years of experience in leadership development, talent management, and DEI consulting to each conversation. Drawing on his background in corporate HR roles and external consulting work, Kent guides discussions that bridge theory and practice, focusing on what really works in today's leadership landscape.
Connect with Kent
Have questions about the podcast or want to continue the conversation? Connect with Kent on LinkedIn or visit Kniebel Leadership Advisory to learn more about his work supporting leaders during critical transitions.
The Step Up brings together experts who help leaders elevate their impact. Each 45-minute episode features conversations with thought leaders, practitioners, and innovators who are changing how we think about leadership development and helping leaders step up their game.
Why This Podcast Exists
Throughout my career—from my time at organizations like Korn Ferry, Cargill, General Mills, and Buffalo Wild Wings to my current work as an independent leadership consultant—I've witnessed firsthand how leaders struggle during moments of change and transition and when learning higher-level skills. Work never slows down, and leaders often find themselves trying to grow while in the thick of daily demands.
The Step Up is designed to provide practical wisdom and actionable strategies that busy leaders can implement immediately to enhance their effectiveness.
What to Expect
Each episode follows a two-part format:
Part One: Leadership Journeys
We explore our guest's background, expertise, and unique perspective on leadership development. You'll hear authentic stories about their experiences supporting leaders and the insights they've gained along the way.
Part Two: Actionable Strategies
Our guests share three specific, practical tools or approaches that you can apply to your leadership right away. We dig into each one, discussing how to implement it effectively in your unique context.
Your Host
Kent Kniebel brings over 20 years of experience in leadership development, talent management, and DEI consulting to each conversation. Drawing on his background in corporate HR roles and external consulting work, Kent guides discussions that bridge theory and practice, focusing on what really works in today's leadership landscape.
Connect with Kent
Have questions about the podcast or want to continue the conversation? Connect with Kent on LinkedIn or visit Kniebel Leadership Advisory to learn more about his work supporting leaders during critical transitions.
Hosts:
Update frequency:
weekly
Average audio length:
45 minutes
Guest interviews
English
United States
64 episodes
since May 8, 2025
episodic
IN THIS PODCAST 🔗
LATEST EPISODE 🔗
John Manuel's boss once called him a 30,000 foot thinker living in a thousand foot job. Then a merger turned him from a manager of a few people into a director overnight, with temps to onboard and no leadership training to lean on. John, VP of commercial operations and merchandising at Puris Foods,…
SEARCH PAST EPISODES
Search past episodes of The Step UP - Where Leaders, Talent Managers and Leadership Development pros find expert tips for Leadership excellence.
PREVIOUS EPISODES 🔗
Most leaders think charisma is something you're born with. Jennifer Gardner has spent 30 years in Los Angeles courtrooms proving otherwise, and she's built a career teaching lawyers and executives that trust, not polish, is what actually moves people. In this episode she walks through the senior pa…
Newly promoted leaders keep their calendars private and their doors closed, then wonder why their team assumes they've stopped doing real work. Jennylynde Renteria-Packham spent two decades leading in long-term care and rehab hospitals before becoming an executive coach, and she joins Kent to talk …
Most learning and development spend gets justified by completion rates and course counts, not by whether anyone actually changed how they lead. Nick Gonios, VP of Learning Transformation at TalentLMS, has spent 30 years building and scaling technology companies, and he thinks L&D has been solvi…
Most leaders think they need better slides or better wording. Bryan Flanagan, who spent 14 years at IBM before a chance meeting with Zig Ziglar turned into a 29-year career at the Zig Ziglar Corporation, says the real gap is almost never content, it's delivery. In this episode, Kent and Bryan dig i…
AI can compress weeks of instructional design into minutes, but John Pike, founder and CEO of Parisos Partners, argues that speed isn't the same thing as learning. In this conversation, John and Kent dig into what happens when we remove the friction that actually forms people, why cognitive offload…
Most leaders never think about speaking as a skill until they're standing in front of a room that expects them to have one. Antoniette Roze, Founder and CEO of WPC Speakers Global, has spent 30 years turning speakers' expertise into careers, and in this episode she breaks down why the best communic…
Most leaders write policies, meetings, and office norms for "the average" employee. Hailey Meyer explains why that instinct quietly costs organizations their best thinking, and what it actually takes to build a culture where neurodivergent team members, and everyone else, can do their best work.
Gu…
Businesses in the U.S. are losing an estimated $2 billion a day to rudeness and incivility. Not layoffs, not bad strategy, just people being sour, sarcastic, or careless with each other. Dr. John O'Brien has spent 30 years as a psychologist watching what that does to people, and he's spent the last…
George Parada spent thirteen years learning to lead inside Cargill's highly structured system, then walked into Meta with almost none of that structure in place, and had to rebuild it from scratch. Today, as an account executive at JLL leading a 300-plus person team, he's still relearning the same …
Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from Kent Kniebel, which is the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Listen Notes, Inc.
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