The Power Of Raising Your Hand — Barry Moline

Have a story or inflection point to share? Tap here to message us — we’d love to hear it.The career moments that change us rarely arrive with spotlights. Sometimes they show up as an awkward pause in a staff meeting, a simple request for volunteers, and a quiet choice to raise your hand when nobody else will. Becky Fraser sits down with longtime CEO and leadership consultant Barry Moline to unpack a story that starts with a holiday party committee and ends with real executive visibility, clearer leadership habits, and a practical approach to building organizational culture through everyday actions.We talk about what happened when the CEO unexpectedly joined the committee as a true peer and how that created trust, comfort, and better ideas without the usual hierarchy. Barry shares one of the most useful meeting tools we’ve heard in a long time: asking “What’s our goal here?” when a conversation drifts. It sounds basic, but we dig into why it works for team alignment, decision-making, and ethical influence and persuasion, especially when projects get complicated and opinions multiply.From there, the story widens into a leadership lesson about momentum. Barry explains how he became the person tasked with asking the first question at major conferences to break the silence and get others participating. We also go into the harder side of stepping into bigger roles: the shock of becoming CEO before feeling fully ready, how a leader’s words can be mistaken for commitments, and why every level of leadership needs a nonjudgmental sounding board. Along the way, Barry shares what crisis leadership looked like in hurricane response and how he developed employees by helping them connect their strengths to meaningful opportunities.Subscribe for more conversations on leadership, career growth, coaching, and building great teams and if this helped you, share it with a friend and leave a review. What’s one small “yes” you could say this week that might open a door?Connect with BarryWebsite: BarryMoline.comLinkedInFacebookYouTubeConnect with Beki on LinkedIn: Linkedin.com/in/BekiFraserLearn more about her coaching: TheIntrovertedSkeptic.comFollow Short Story Long's LinkedIn Page: Linkedin.com/showcase/shortstorylongpodGet her book, C.O.A.C.H. Y.O.U.: The Introverted Skeptic’s Guide to Leadership - AmazonShort Story Long is produced by Crowned Culture Media LLC