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Greg sits down with Neil Thompson, founder of Teach The Geek, to talk about why technical experts so often struggle to communicate with non-technical decision-makers. Neil shares how a canceled project early in his engineering career pushed him to fix his own presentations, and why it's easier to teach presentation skills to the people who hold the knowledge than to expect someone else to present it for them. Neil walks through the self-awareness gap and the three things technical people should prioritize when they present to management: clarity, relevance, and actionability. Chapters: 0:00 Introduction 3:08 Neil's first presentations to the C-suite 4:53 How Neil started Teach The Geek 6:58 The technical expert's biggest strength 8:42 The self-awareness gap 15:08 A six-step process for any presentation 20:00 Clarity, relevance, and actionability Connect with Neil Thompson: https://teachthegeek.com Do your technical experts know their stuff but struggle to get buy-in? Visit https://uniquedevelopment.com to talk with our team about your organization's leadership development needs.

Your plant has hundreds of improvement opportunities and a small continuous improvement or quality team to work through them. The same problems keep coming back, shift after shift. The people who know the most about those problems are standing right next to the process, but they’re not the ones solving them. Greg sits […]

In this special dual-podcast episode, Greg Schinkel (our President at Unique Training & Development) sits down with Dr. Pelè Ugboajah of ResultPal to tackle one of L&D’s oldest unsolved problems: how do you actually prove that training drives business results?

When tariffs hit and work dried up, Mary Fehr had a spreadsheet answer and a small-town answer. She took the small-town one. Choosing their workers over the spreadsheet. Mary is President of Unifab, a 200-person custom metal fabricator in Leamington, Ontario, founded by her father, Abe, 35 years ago. Before she joined in […]

Seanna Pickard, HR Director at the Federal Bridge Corporation, breaks down the 3-word mantra she uses to make every decision: fair, equitable, transparent.

Structure will get a team to its KPIs, but it doesn’t always get them past them. In this episode of Accelerating Operational Performance, host Greg Schinkel talks with Umesh Vendargon, COO of Core Linen Services, about the gap between management and leadership. Umesh traces his own path from the operations floor through a […]

On this bonus episode, we're sharing a conversation from the Chemical Engineering podcast. Senior editor Scott Jenkins speaks with Greg Schinkel, CEO here at Unique Training & Development and host of the Accelerating Operational Performance podcast. The conversation focuses on career paths open to engineers and offers thoughts on what engineers and companies can do to develop leadership skills for their teams. This episode originally aired on the Chemical Engineering podcast.

What does it actually take to build confidence as a leader? Communication expert and keynote speaker Mimi Brown joins Greg Schinkel to break down her “Own Your Swag” framework and her new book, Lead at Full Volume: The 10 Beats to Amplify Your Confidence, Influence and Presence. Mimi shares the moment a boss […]

Most plant managers pick up one or two of these five patterns in their first year — not because they’re bad leaders, but because nobody warned them. In this special edition of Accelerating Operational Performance, Greg walks through five common mistakes first-year plant managers make, from thinking day-to-day instead of long-term to confusing […]

After 49 interviews with senior leaders, operators, engineers, and executives — including a former London, Ontario mayor — Greg pulls back the curtain on the three themes that keep surfacing no matter who’s in the chair. What do success and struggle actually have in common across industries, roles, and experience levels? Spoiler: it’s […]

If you’re an operations leader with any responsibility for growth, sales isn’t someone else’s problem — it’s yours. In this episode of Accelerating Operational Performance, Greg Schinkel sits down in-studio with sales strategist, speaker, and author Shawn Casemore to tackle the sales challenges that manufacturing and operations leaders face every day — whether […]

Most business owners have heard of a fractional CFO. Far fewer have heard of a fractional COO, and that might be exactly the role their business needs. In this episode of the Accelerating Operational Performance podcast, Greg Schinkel sits down with Josh Post, a fractional COO and executive coach who spent more than […]

Kevin Schinkel, President of Schinkel’s Legacy, joins Greg on the Accelerating Operational Performance podcast to share what 14 years on the plant floor taught him about leadership. From the Easter ham disaster that humbled him, to overcoming imposter syndrome, to the simple question that transformed how he delegates—Kevin opens up about the real […]

Nadia Dawe, a people, learning, culture, and operations leader with deep experience in transportation, transit, maintenance, safety, compliance, and frontline leadership, shares what she learned as she moved from L&D into Operations and why the work ultimately comes back to people. Together, Greg and Nadia explore how leaders can get closer to the work, […]

How do you transition from a “top-down” manager to a strategic leader who drives operational excellence? Greg sits down with industry veteran Darcy Scott to unpack over 30 years of experience in high-velocity logistics and 3PL. Darcy shares his personal journey of leadership evolution. This conversation provides a roadmap for empowering teams, leading […]