Dynamic Leadership Discussions: The Cultural Impact of Leader Priorities

Hosts: Stacy Mandock 

Stacy Mandock provides support to the Risk Mitigation team as the program director. With the purpose of providing the safest possible experience for travelers both foreign and domestic, Stacy assists in doing the initial research for travel destinations and identifying potential concerns and/or risks before and during travel. Her specialty is working with collegiate travelers and ensuring that they’re thoroughly prepared before travel as well as tracking potential risks or threats throughout their trips. Listen here or your favorite platform!

Guest: Lorenzo Stephenson

Lorenzo is a Senior Program Manager at Amazon and oversees the cross-functional, full lifecycle deployment of Amazon Robotic Sortable sites in North America. He develops and implements his program’s strategy, creates roadmaps, and leads at both the tactical and strategic levels in Amazon’s North American Customer Fulfillment operations. 

He is an expert instructor and passionate facilitator. Lorenzo collaborates with Amazon’s Learning, Talent, and Development team and develops training and onboarding for Amazon’s junior, mid-level, and senior leaders. Lorenzo, himself, has trained over 500 Amazonians and has earned recognition for his ability to connect with diverse groups of leaders and sharing real-world experiences to improve the experience and quality of new leaders. Additionally, Lorenzo is a mentor and supports Amazon’s mentor program for all Amazonians as well as Amazon’s military population. 

Lorenzo served for 24 years in the US Army as both a Non-Commissioned Officer and Commissioned Officer. Lorenzo spent 15 years in the US Army Special Forces in various capacities and deploying to the Central Command Area of Operation numerous times. 

Lorenzo holds a Bachelor of Science in Public Management, Master of Arts in Management and Executive Certifications from Cornell and The University of Pennsylvania. Currently, Lorenzo is working on a Master of Science at the University of Southern California. 

Guest: Terry Peters  

Terry is the Founder and Chief Executive Officer of Leader Solutions Decisions Support (LSDS) which provides executive coaching to leaders of all levels and empowers and supports individuals and organizations with the skills and knowledge to achieve their professional vision.  Terry has led leadership development forums with Amazon’s North American Customer Fulfillment, Global Engineering Services (GES), and has built a resident leadership academy for Riot Games. He is a 27-year Army Veteran and has numerous decorations and foreign awards for his service to the Nation.

On this topic: Priorities are hugely important to an organization and/or team. Equally important is the need to accurately select them at the leadership level and then communicate them down throughout the organization with clarity. Whether this is done well - or not - can have powerful effects on organizational culture. 

 In this podcast you will learn more about: 

• The importance of evaluating a task and establishing priorities

• Managing priorities as a leader

• Cascading priorities to the team best practices

• Changing priorities and how to manage them to minimize negative effects on organizational culture.

Key takeaways:

• Managing priorities is essential to achieving personal, leadership, and organizational goals.

• The best leaders are thinking about consequence management well ahead of the actual announcement