Jean Marie Speaks - The Renaissance Leader

Jean Marie Speaks - The Renaissance Leader We help leaders untap hidden talent and unlock new ideas among your teams using the 5 Core Renaissance Leadership Principles.

We deliver 3 & 6 month Leadership Programs, Executive Coaching and Team Effectiveness Sessions.

Before you tackle a major issue, how often do you seek out others who may have solved it before?The amount of time we lo...
09/01/2026

Before you tackle a major issue, how often do you seek out others who may have solved it before?

The amount of time we lose reinventing the wheel inside organizations can be staggering.

One team develops a tool that works beautifully.
Another team creates something nearly identical six months later.

One region solves a problem that another region is still struggling with.
Someone discovers a better way of working, but the learning never travels beyond their immediate team.

We spend so much time thinking about innovation as creating something new. Sometimes innovation begins by discovering what already exists and finding a new way to use it.

This is what I call "Magnifying the Value", the fifth Renaissance Leadership principle I share in my Leadership Programs.

Before building from scratch, get curious and ask these questions:

🎯 Who else has faced this challenge?
🎯 What solutions, tools or resources already exist?
🎯 What could we adapt rather than recreate?
🎯 Who knows something about this that we don't?

The value of a great idea grows when it travels.

This week, before you create something new, find out what already exists that you can learn from, leverage, or build upon.

Where might your organization already have an answer that no one knows about?

We spent decades designing education around producing answers.Then we invented a machine that can produce answers extrao...
08/27/2026

We spent decades designing education around producing answers.

Then we invented a machine that can produce answers extraordinarily well.

And now it's forcing our education systems and workplaces to rethink what we value.

And how we measure the importance of our...

Understanding.
Reasoning.
Discernment.
Ability to communicate.
Ability to engage another human being in conversation.

This thought came out of a fascinating rabbit hole I went down with AI this morning...about AI.

I was wrestling with the growing challenge of authenticity. If we use AI to save time, why are we then penalized when our writing "sounds like AI"?

That led me to AI detection tools, especially after I gave one something I had written years before generative AI existed and it told me some percentage was likely written by AI.

That got me thinking.

AI learned language from humans. So how accurately can a tool determine whether something was written by a human or AI based on the language alone?

And then my mind went to education.

In my day, education was often about learning (or memorizing) and then regurgitating back what I learned.

There was little test of actual understanding.

With so much technology in education, kids using smartphones for much of their communication, and AI able to create beautifully written papers, we need to start asking more questions that create dialogue and demonstrate understanding.

For example, asking students to...

Defend their position.
Respond to an unexpected question.
Apply what they've learned to a situation they haven't seen before.
Tell us what they disagree with and why.
Explain what AI suggested and why they accepted or rejected it.

This is how we deepen learning and test for understanding.

And imagine the additional benefit when those students enter the workplace:

They know how to articulate their ideas, listen, think on their feet, respond to different perspectives and have meaningful conversations.

One of the greatest gifts AI can give education is forcing us to rethink what it actually means to learn.

The same can apply in the workplace.

How are you creating experiences where people can demonstrate and deepen their learning rather than simply produce an answer?

What kinds of questions are you asking to open the dialogue, challenge thinking and help people learn from one another?

Sometimes the best answer is a great question.

☝️Follow me for tips, tools and insights to lead with curiosity in this age of AI.
🎯 Check out my Linkedin Learning courses below on "Communication Skills for the Modern Leader" and "Powerful Questions to Increase Psychological Safety, Trust and Engagement on Your Teams"

A better question will outperform a better answer almost every time.We spend so much energy getting to the right answer ...
08/25/2026

A better question will outperform a better answer almost every time.

We spend so much energy getting to the right answer that we rarely stop to check if we're answering the right question. A brilliant answer to the wrong question is just confident wasted motion.

The leaders who shift things don't always know more.
They ask differently.

They replace “How do we hit the target?” with “Is this still the right target?” — and the whole conversation changes.

This week, before solving your next problem, spend two minutes sharpening the question itself. Ask: “What are we really trying to solve here?”

You'll be surprised how often the question was the problem.

What's a question you've stopped asking because you assumed you already knew the answer?

♻️ Reshare to help another leader out.
🎯 For powerful questions to ask your team, chekc out my Linkedin Learning course on "Powerful Questions to Increase Trust, Psychological Safety and Engagement" in the comment

I don’t procrastinate. I marinate.It took me decades to figure that out.For years, I thought I was the world’s worst pro...
08/23/2026

I don’t procrastinate. I marinate.

It took me decades to figure that out.

For years, I thought I was the world’s worst procrastinator. Every paper in school. Every college project. Writing my first book.

I’d wait until the deadline was staring me in the face and then suddenly I would get it done.

Every time I promised myself, “Never again. Next time I’m starting earlier.”
And every time, I did it again.

It wasn't until I started paying attention to what was actually happening that I noticed a pattern.

The minute I knew I had a deadline, my brain went to work.
🎯 I’d capture an idea on my phone.
🎯 Bookmark something I came across.
🎯 Wake up at 3am with a thought.
🎯 Make connections while doing something completely unrelated.

I may not have been sitting at my desk working on it, but the work was happening.

That’s when it hit me: I don’t procrastinate. I marinate.

Once I understood my process, I stopped making myself wrong for it.
And something surprising happened.

I actually got better at managing it. I learned to give myself enough time at the end to pull everything together, sit with it, and make changes.

Sometimes we spend so much energy trying to fix the way we work that we never stop to understand how we work best.

What if something you’ve labeled a weakness is simply a process you haven’t fully understood yet?

Does every idea deserve to survive?When organizations streamline, reorganize, or rethink how work gets done, one of the ...
08/20/2026

Does every idea deserve to survive?

When organizations streamline, reorganize, or rethink how work gets done, one of the first questions is often: “What can we keep?” or "How did we do it before?"

We look at existing processes, systems, roles, meetings, and ways of working and decide what can be modified, combined, or reused.

That can make perfect sense.

But sometimes the past becomes the blueprint for the future before we’ve stopped to ask whether it should.

A powerful question to ask as you look ahead is: What processes or ideas DESERVE to survive?

Knowing what you know today...
🎯 Which processes still create value?
🎯 Which meetings still need to exist?
🎯 Which ways of working still serve the organization you’re becoming?

And, what are you carrying forward simply because it’s familiar?

Innovation sometimes requires us to stop renovating what already exists and give ourselves permission to imagine what we would build today.

If you started with a blank slate, what ideas would deserve to survive?

Accountability has a branding problem.We’ve made it sound like punishment.So when something goes wrong, people brace.The...
08/18/2026

Accountability has a branding problem.

We’ve made it sound like punishment.
So when something goes wrong, people brace.

They explain. They deflect. They protect themselves.
Why? Because in many cultures, “accountable” has come to mean “about to be blamed.”

Real accountability creates space for a team to look honestly at a miss, understand what contributed to it, and learn from it without immediately looking for someone to blame.

This week, when something slips, try opening with:

“What happened?" and What did you learn?” before “Why did this happen?”

Seeking to understand and focusing on the learning changes the conversation. It signals curiosity before judgment and gives people room to reflect rather than immediately defend.

And, that one shift can literally increase trust and respect and change the trajectory of that relationship over time.

Does accountability on your team feel like learning, or like waiting to find out who’s to blame?

♻️ Reshare to help another leader out.

08/16/2026

How well do you really know the people on your team?

And what talents might be sitting right in front of you that you've never tapped into?

Sometimes the questions we assume we know the answers to are the ones most worth asking.

Check out the two questions you can ask your team members to help you uncover hidden talent and get to know your team members at a much deeper level.

Try asking them this week. You may be surprised by what you learn.

♻️ Reshare to help another leader out.

How often do you leave a conversation assuming you're on the same page, only to find out a week later you were not?This ...
08/13/2026

How often do you leave a conversation assuming you're on the same page, only to find out a week later you were not?

This happens every day in organizations.

A leader sees resistance.
An employee sees a lack of clarity.

One team sees urgency.
Another sees unnecessary risk.

One person sees poor performance.
Another sees someone working with missing information.

The truth can look different depending on where you are sitting.
The challenges comes when we assume our view is the whole picture.

Curiosity gives us a way to widen the lens.

Powerful questions help uncover the truth.

Questions like...
“What are you seeing that I’m not?”
“What am I missing?”
“What would this look like from your perspective?”

Those questions can change the quality of a conversation very quickly...when we come from curiosity.

They help us move beyond defending our position and start understanding the reality someone else is experiencing.

Curiosity shifts the conversations.
Conversations transform the culture.

The next time you’re certain you’re right, ask yourself:
What might also be true from where they are sitting?

♻️ Reshare to help another leader out.

Three of the most expensive phrases in business usually come after the damage is already done.👉 “I assumed…”👉 “I though...
08/11/2026

Three of the most expensive phrases in business usually come after the damage is already done.

👉 “I assumed…”
👉 “I thought…”
👉 “I was hoping…”

Behind each one is often a conversation that never happened.

A deadline wasn’t clarified.
An expectation wasn’t confirmed.
A concern wasn’t raised.
Someone thought another person was handling it.
Someone hoped the problem would resolve itself.

And suddenly you have missed deadlines, rework, frustrated clients, or team members pointing fingers at each other.

Many of these situations can be prevented with a few simple questions:

🎯 “What does success look like?”
🎯 “Who owns what?”
🎯 “What could get in our way?”
🎯 “What am I assuming that I need to clarify?”

The conversations we avoid or rush through in the beginning often become the problems we spend far more time dealing with later.

Before you leave your next meeting, ask more clarifying questions.

It could save you hours of frustration later.

♻️ Reshare to help another leader out.

True or False? The role of a leader is to develop other leaders.I'd say...Mostly true.Leadership isn't measured by how i...
08/06/2026

True or False? The role of a leader is to develop other leaders.

I'd say...

Mostly true.

Leadership isn't measured by how indispensable you become.

It's reflected in how many people grow because they worked with you.

That growth happens when people are trusted to think, decide, and learn for themselves.

You coach instead of rescue.

You ask instead of tell.

You create opportunities instead of waiting until people are "ready."

Renaissance Leaders allow others to think through challenges, make decisions, and learn from mistakes, even when it would be quicker to give the answer.

Every conversation becomes an opportunity to build someone else's confidence.

One day, they walk into a meeting without you and lead with confidence.

That's when you know you've done your job.

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