13 May 2026
Leadership Lessons From a Paralympian: Values, Resilience, and Developing People with John Register
Boss Better Now with Joe Mull
About
When sudden change or adversity strikes a team, the natural instinct is to try and quickly return to business as usual. John Register believes trying to go backward is a trap. He challenges leaders to stop looking for comfortable adjustments and start committing to true transformation.
Joe Mull welcomes John to the Boss Better Now podcast for a powerful conversation about leading your team through change. As a military veteran, Paralympic silver medalist, and former executive, John draws on a lifetime of intense personal and professional pivots to help leaders develop leadership skills and unlock potential in themselves and their teams.
Throughout the discussion, John outlines his Resilience Action Model and explains why giving people space to learn is vital for long-term success. He also shares compelling stories from his own career to illustrate the importance of upholding core values and active succession planning.
In this episode, you'll learn:
🔹 The three steps of the Resilience Action Model and how they help professionals handle sudden roadblocks.
🔹 Why your ultimate goal as a manager should be training someone else to eventually take your job.
🔹 The danger of ignoring bad behavior from tenured employees and how to strictly enforce team values.
🔹 How ongoing feedback eliminates blind spots and renders the traditional annual performance review obsolete.
🔹 A practical script to use with your boss when you need to strategically subtract tasks from an overwhelming workload.This episode is for managers and leaders focused on leadership development and management training who want to build teams that thrive through adversity.
To subscribe to Joe Mull’s BossBetter Email newsletter, visit https://BossBetterNow.com
For more info on working with Joe Mull, visit https://joemull.com
For more info on Boss Hero School, visit https://bossheroschool.com
To email the podcast, use bossbetternow@gmail.com
#leadership #management #toxicworkculture #teambuilding #workplaceculture #conflictmanagement #employeeengagement #motivation
Joe Mull is on a mission to help leaders and business owners create the conditions where commitment takes root—and the entire workplace thrives.
A dynamic and deeply relatable speaker, Joe combines compelling research, magnetic storytelling, and practical strategies to show exactly how to cultivate loyalty, ignite effort, and build people-first workplaces where both performance and morale flourish. His message is clear: when commitment is activated, engagement rises, teams gel, retention improves, and business outcomes soar.
Joe is the founder of Boss Hero School™ and the creator of the acclaimed Employalty™ framework, a roadmap for creating thriving workplaces in a new era of work. He’s the author of three books, including Employalty, named a top business book of the year by Publisher’s Weekly, and his popular podcast, Boss Better Now, ranks in the top 1% of management shows globally.
A former head of learning and development at one of the largest healthcare systems in the U.S., Joe has spent nearly two decades equipping leaders—from Fortune 500 companies like State Farm, Siemens, and Choice Hotels to hospitals, agencies, and small firms—with the tools to lead better, inspire commitment, and build more humane workplace cultures. His insights have been featured in The Wall Street Journal, Forbes, Harvard Business Review, and more.
In 2025, Joe was inducted into the Professional Speakers Hall of Fame (CPAE). This is the speaking profession’s highest honor, a distinction granted to less than 1% of professional speakers worldwide. It’s awarded to speakers who demonstrate exceptional talent, integrity, and influence in the speaking profession
For more information visit joemull.com.
Timestamps
0:00 Introducing John Register
3:16 The Nine-Year-Old Entrepreneur
5:00 Early Work Ethic
6:26 When Hard Work Isn’t Valued Equally
7:49 Saving for a Schwinn Bike
8:42 The Bike and Racial Bias
10:56 The Power of Advocates
13:08 Leadership Lessons from The Military
14:00 Slowing Down To Learn
15:39 Succession Planning
19:31 Leading With a Mentor Mindset
21:10 From Amputation to Transformational Leadership
23:26 The Resilience Action Model for Navigating Change
26:33 Practical Ways Leaders Build Trust and Support Teams
30:39 Enforcing Company Values
31:14 Strategic Subtraction
32:43 Closing Thoughts
Joe Mull welcomes John to the Boss Better Now podcast for a powerful conversation about leading your team through change. As a military veteran, Paralympic silver medalist, and former executive, John draws on a lifetime of intense personal and professional pivots to help leaders develop leadership skills and unlock potential in themselves and their teams.
Throughout the discussion, John outlines his Resilience Action Model and explains why giving people space to learn is vital for long-term success. He also shares compelling stories from his own career to illustrate the importance of upholding core values and active succession planning.
In this episode, you'll learn:
🔹 The three steps of the Resilience Action Model and how they help professionals handle sudden roadblocks.
🔹 Why your ultimate goal as a manager should be training someone else to eventually take your job.
🔹 The danger of ignoring bad behavior from tenured employees and how to strictly enforce team values.
🔹 How ongoing feedback eliminates blind spots and renders the traditional annual performance review obsolete.
🔹 A practical script to use with your boss when you need to strategically subtract tasks from an overwhelming workload.This episode is for managers and leaders focused on leadership development and management training who want to build teams that thrive through adversity.
To subscribe to Joe Mull’s BossBetter Email newsletter, visit https://BossBetterNow.com
For more info on working with Joe Mull, visit https://joemull.com
For more info on Boss Hero School, visit https://bossheroschool.com
To email the podcast, use bossbetternow@gmail.com
#leadership #management #toxicworkculture #teambuilding #workplaceculture #conflictmanagement #employeeengagement #motivation
Joe Mull is on a mission to help leaders and business owners create the conditions where commitment takes root—and the entire workplace thrives.
A dynamic and deeply relatable speaker, Joe combines compelling research, magnetic storytelling, and practical strategies to show exactly how to cultivate loyalty, ignite effort, and build people-first workplaces where both performance and morale flourish. His message is clear: when commitment is activated, engagement rises, teams gel, retention improves, and business outcomes soar.
Joe is the founder of Boss Hero School™ and the creator of the acclaimed Employalty™ framework, a roadmap for creating thriving workplaces in a new era of work. He’s the author of three books, including Employalty, named a top business book of the year by Publisher’s Weekly, and his popular podcast, Boss Better Now, ranks in the top 1% of management shows globally.
A former head of learning and development at one of the largest healthcare systems in the U.S., Joe has spent nearly two decades equipping leaders—from Fortune 500 companies like State Farm, Siemens, and Choice Hotels to hospitals, agencies, and small firms—with the tools to lead better, inspire commitment, and build more humane workplace cultures. His insights have been featured in The Wall Street Journal, Forbes, Harvard Business Review, and more.
In 2025, Joe was inducted into the Professional Speakers Hall of Fame (CPAE). This is the speaking profession’s highest honor, a distinction granted to less than 1% of professional speakers worldwide. It’s awarded to speakers who demonstrate exceptional talent, integrity, and influence in the speaking profession
For more information visit joemull.com.
Timestamps
0:00 Introducing John Register
3:16 The Nine-Year-Old Entrepreneur
5:00 Early Work Ethic
6:26 When Hard Work Isn’t Valued Equally
7:49 Saving for a Schwinn Bike
8:42 The Bike and Racial Bias
10:56 The Power of Advocates
13:08 Leadership Lessons from The Military
14:00 Slowing Down To Learn
15:39 Succession Planning
19:31 Leading With a Mentor Mindset
21:10 From Amputation to Transformational Leadership
23:26 The Resilience Action Model for Navigating Change
26:33 Practical Ways Leaders Build Trust and Support Teams
30:39 Enforcing Company Values
31:14 Strategic Subtraction
32:43 Closing Thoughts