Carla Miller [00:00:02]:
This is the Influence and Impact for Leaders podcast, the podcast that helps leaders like you increase your impact and build a happy and high performing team. Each episode delivers focused, actionable insights you can implement immediately to be better at your job without working harder. Ready to be more impactful? Let's get started and to celebrate the return of the podcast. Our first mini episode is all about why Influence and Impact for Leaders is more important than ever. The podcast is back after a three month break and I thought it was about time when someone said to me that they had listened to the entire back catalog twice since I'd stopped recording new episodes, so it was clearly time to make sure that she had some new content to be listening to. I've had a really lovely break from podcasting and all the different things that go with it, but I'm excited to be back and there's a few changes coming to the podcast and the business I want to tell you all about. There are going to be three episodes today just to give you a chance to hear about the podcast and get some great content as well. And then after that there's also a little bit of a competition that you can enter if you would like to.

Carla Miller [00:01:23]:
Then we'll be reverting to fortnightly episodes again and they're going to be about half hour long unless I'm having a super interesting conversation with a guest expert and it runs a little bit longer. So this first episode is all about just letting you know what's changing about the podcast and what's staying the same. So let's start with the reassuring stuff. Lots of things are staying the same. It's still very much going to be me holding a space for what I hope are very honest and helpful conversations about the realities of leading and how to keep going and keep growing. So still very much about navigating the ups and downs of leadership and helping you to feel less alone as a leader. The episode you'll be pleased to hear will still be super practical and full of actionable advice and there's still going to be a mixture of solo episodes on my areas of expertise and guest experts on other leadership topics. I'm still going to be calling out gender bias and its negative impact and highlight where women have different experiences as leaders.

Carla Miller [00:02:31]:
I still work one to one coaching women leaders and I still work within organizations supporting women leaders and I do a lot of work with women's networks, running courses and workshops and giving talks for them. So the work that I do with women and making sure that this podcast is highly relevant to women is not going away. However, the name of the podcast is changing slightly and I'd like to give you a little bit of context as to why that is happening. Over the last couple of years, my business has been evolving. For a start, it's no longer just me, it's still me running it and it's my energy driving it. But. But those of you who are regular listeners will know that it's really hard for me to travel at the moment. So not only did I move up to Cumbria, which is absolutely lovely, but my child also has type 1 diabetes, which means it's a very big ask asking someone to have him overnight.

Carla Miller [00:03:34]:
And if you live in Cumbria, trying to deliver anywhere at 9 in the morning in person definitely means staying overnight. So I have a great team of associates who deliver in person and then I do the majority of my work virtually, which worked brilliantly a couple of years ago, and now we're having more and more requests for in person work, so really delivering more and more through associates. We're also delivering a lot more gender neutral versions of our training. So initially it was a lot of women's training on confidence and influence and leadership, but a couple of years ago, King's College London asked for a bespoke. Bespoke gender neutral version of my Bebolder Confidence course. Two years later, that's still going strong. Every time we run a cohort they have a long wait list of people wanting to take part in it. And since then we've then delivered that gender neutral version to a range of organizations from government departments to tech companies and charities.

Carla Miller [00:04:30]:
And the same with my Influence and Impact leadership development program and my Confidence to Lead course for new and aspiring managers. In fact, we've even delivered my Influence for Success workshop for managers at the House of Commons. The other piece that we've been doing, a lot more, which I haven't really talked about on the podcast at all, but you will hear a lot more about soon, is running training for entire teams. So I've worked with teams in marketing, finance, IT and HR on how they can work together better as a team, but also increase their impact and in particular their internal influence. How they are valid, valued and respected and perceived by the key stakeholders within their organization. So that is a long way of saying the name of the podcast is changing slightly because half of the work that I do is with mixed gender groups and I'm delivering to these groups that include men and then telling them about my podcast, which is at the moment just for women leaders. I'd really love this podcast to feel like an accessible and relevant resource to everyone on our workshops. I've also discovered that quite a lot of my friends husbands listen and find it relevant.

Carla Miller [00:05:41]:
So the name is going to become Influence and Impact for Leaders rather than Influence and Impact for female or women leaders. Another thing that's changing is there's going to be a much bigger focus on supporting you to get the best out of your team. And that's a topic we've not really explored in much depth on the podcast. And at 181 episodes in, I need all the new topics, more that I can get. And so much of your success and your headspace at work is linked to your team. So we're going to look at how you can help your team build their influence and impact, how you can support them to collaborate effectively, how you can get the best out of them, what you can do as a leader to do that. That aligns with the new Influence and Impact team framework that I've developed, which includes some powerful away days that help your team build genuine connection, something that seems to be increasingly needed when we're doing so much hybrid working and increase their impact. And I am sure you'll hear more about those along the lines.

Carla Miller [00:06:44]:
And for some of the team's episodes, I'm hopefully going to have a co host. So watch this space. Now. The final change that's relevant to you as a listener is not so much about the podcast, but about the business, which is in 2025 we're not running any more open courses and I wanted to explain why, because this has been a big decision for me and it's been a bit of a mixed decision for me, to be honest, because I love running open courses. It's when people like you who want to work with me off your own back rather than because the organization introduced me to you, get a chance to work with me and dive deep on the sort of content that I talk about. And at its peak, Influence and Impact had 170 women in it when it was running as a 12 month program. Whilst these days, I'll be totally honest, it's really quite a struggle to sign up the minimum of six people to run an Influence and Impact cohort. And I have been spending a lot more time marketing those courses than delivering them and it's the delivering of those courses which brings me joy.

Carla Miller [00:07:50]:
So I am a bit sad because it means I won't be able to work with you in that way in 2025, but you can still work with me one to one in terms of coaching and and never say never. It's undecided what's going to happen with Open courses in 2026. So if you know you want to take part in one, drop me an email and I'll I'll put you on a list. If that list gets big, I'll run another one. Now, the last thing I wanted to say in this intro episode is that there are two things I would love you to do right now. The first, if you are listening on Apple Podcasts, is I want you to follow the show. Because I haven't been producing any new episodes for a while, it will have paused your subscription or following to the show, which means you won't be notified when new episodes are live. So if you are on Apple Podcasts on your phone and you go to the top right hand corner of the podcast page, there should be something that allows you to just click follow.

Carla Miller [00:08:46]:
That means you'll find out about all the episodes. So that's the most important thing. The second thing is that we want this podcast to go up the charts because we've sunk right down the charts having been away for a while, although I think we still are somewhere in the top 30, which is crazy after having three months off. So what I would love you to do, and there's a great incentive for this, is either leave a review. So if you're listening on Apple Podcasts, you can leave a review. So not just a rating a review please. And that's really easy to do from the podcast page. Or if you've left a review before or you're listening on another platform, share this podcast on Social Media so write a post about why you're pleased the podcast is back.

Carla Miller [00:09:34]:
Either way, take a screenshot and send it to me@helloarlamiller.co.uk on the 16th or 17th of June and I, as a thank you, will send you a pack of my Influence and Impact affirmation cards to help you build your confidence as a leader. These have never been on sale. I only give them away when I do occasional courses in person. They are a really handy way of reminding you of some of the important stuff that you hear in this podcast. So step one Please follow if you're listening on Apple Podcast. Step two Please leave a review on Apple Podcasts or or share about my podcast on social media. Take a screenshot and send to me at hello@carlamiller.co.uk and then I will reply to that email and we will get a set of my influence and impact. Affirmation cards to you.

Carla Miller [00:10:26]:
There's a limited number of those, so do get on that. And it is just for the 16th and 17th of June. Right. I'll see you in a minute. Over on the next episode.