Cheryl Cran Podcast

In Episode 7, Cheryl Cran introduces what she believes is the next frontier of leadership intelligence — and the one she's been practicing privately for years while hesitating to name publicly. Energy intelligence.

If emotional intelligence was the leadership conversation of the last two decades, and spiritual intelligence the one quietly emerging behind it, energy intelligence is the skill Cheryl says is actually driving the leaders who make people feel seen, heard, and connected in ways that words alone can't explain. And she makes the case that in the AI era, energy intelligence isn't just an edge — it's the irreplaceable human skill.

She's candid about why she hasn't led with this topic before. For most of her career, leadership rooms weren't ready to hear the word energy without dismissing it. But as social media, AI, and broader cultural conversations normalize concepts of presence, nervous system regulation, and intuitive awareness, Cheryl names that the time for this conversation is now — and that leaders who build this skill will lead in ways others can't.

In this episode, Cheryl explores:

What energy intelligence actually is — and what it's not

The integrated model of mind, emotional body, and soul body, and how each carries its own energetic signature

Why everyone has already experienced energy intelligence (walking into a room and feeling the tension, or the peace)

How energy intelligence works together with metacognition to create deeper insight

The coaching example — sensing what's unsaid, and the question that unlocks it

How Cheryl reads the energy of an audience from stage, in real time, and adjusts accordingly

Why energy intelligence is "intuition on steroids"

The difference between a basic one-on-one and an uplevel one-on-one — and why energy reading is the bridge

Why intimacy (professionally appropriate, boundaried intimacy) is now a leadership skill

The boundaries reminder — energy intelligence without boundaries is not healthy leadership

Why AI cannot do this, and why that matters for the future of work

This is the episode for leaders who have always sensed there was more going on in their interactions than what the words were saying — and who are ready to trust and develop that knowing.

"Energy intelligence is intuition on steroids. AI can't do this. Only we can do this as humans." — Cheryl Cran

Try this week's practice: In your next one-on-one, go one layer deeper than usual. Instead of only covering what's on the task list, ask: How are things going for you overall? What's happening? How can I support you? Then listen — not just to the words, but to the energy underneath them. Notice what you sense without saying anything about it. That's energy intelligence beginning to develop.

About Cheryl Cran

Cheryl Cran is the author of What The Flux?, The Art of Change Leadership, Super Crucial Human, and more. For over two decades, she has helped leaders and organizations navigate change, lead through disruption, and build more human, more flexible, and more resilient teams.

Connect with Cheryl

www.cherylcran.com

Referenced in this episode: Brené Brown on the felt presence of others in a room.

New here? Start with Episode 1: Flux Isn't Here to Break Us — It's Here to Wake Us. And subscribe so you don't miss the next episode in the series.

In Episode 6, Cheryl Cran takes on one of the most culturally loaded words in today's leadership conversation: triggers. And she does it the way only someone with two decades in change leadership can — with compassion, directness, and a willingness to name what most people are avoiding.

The episode opens with a real question from a recent virtual keynote: "What do I do about a leader who insists I come into the office every day? It triggers me." Cheryl uses this question to open up a deeper conversation about the difference between being triggered and being in a circumstance we don't like — and why conflating the two has become a quiet form of avoidance in today's workplaces.

She doesn't dismiss the concept of triggers. She honors it. But she also names what she believes mature leadership looks like in a culture that has, in her words, become hypervigilant about almost everything: the idea that triggers are the responsibility of the person being triggered, and that leadership in the era of flux requires us to move from hypervigilance (a fear-based response) to hyperawareness (a metacognitive one).

In this episode, Cheryl explores:

• Why the concept of triggers has expanded — and how expansion sometimes distorts meaning
• The difference between being triggered and being in a circumstance we don't like
• Why triggers are the responsibility of the person being triggered (and what that looks like in practice)
• Generational differences around hybrid, virtual, and in-office work — and why location doesn't determine engagement
• The clear distinction between hypervigilance (fear-based, protective, exhausting) and hyperawareness (metacognitive, agency-based, sustainable)
• The AI example: how hypervigilance keeps us trapped on a treadmill of anxiety while hyperawareness returns agency
• How Cheryl handles her own triggers — with herself first, then in conversation
• A personal story about a trigger with a dear friend, and how decades-long trust made hard dialogue possible
• Why leaders today must be aware both of their own triggers and of how what they say might trigger others
• What it means to move from reaction to coaching — the plan shift from "what if employees call in sick" to "what's my contingency plan"

This is the episode that will challenge some listeners and give others language they've been searching for. Either way, it's the kind of grown-up leadership conversation that's rarely had out loud.

"Hypervigilance comes from fear. Hyperawareness is a form of metacognition." — Cheryl Cran

Try this week's practice: The next time you feel triggered by something — a comment, a request, a situation — pause before reacting. Ask yourself: Am I in hypervigilance right now, or hyperawareness? What am I afraid of? What can I actually control? Then choose your response from awareness, not reaction.

About Cheryl Cran

Cheryl Cran is the author of What The Flux?, The Art of Change Leadership, Super Crucial Human, and more. For over two decades, she has helped leaders and organizations navigate change, lead through disruption, and build more human, more flexible, and more resilient teams.

Connect with Cheryl

www.cherylcran.com

Agree? Disagree? Cheryl genuinely welcomes dialogue on this topic. Message her through her website or LinkedIn — this is a conversation that deserves more voices.

New here? Start with Episode 1: Flux Isn't Here to Break Us — It's Here to Wake Us. And subscribe so you don't miss the next episode in the series.

In Episode 4, Cheryl Cran explores one of the most powerful reframes of the entire Flux, Flex, Flow series: that every major disruption in our lives — painful, unwanted, unchosen — has been quietly awakening us into who we're becoming.

This isn't spiritual bypassing. It isn't rose-colored glasses. It's the lived experience of looking backward with honest eyes and recognizing a pattern: the disruptions shaped the direction. The hard moments wrote the next chapter. And the collective disruptions we're all navigating right now — politically, economically, technologically, personally — are doing the same work on a societal scale.

Cheryl shares her own timeline of formative disruptions, from a childhood that taught her early independence, to a horse accident at 10, to losing her father at 20, to the recent experience of becoming a caregiver during her husband's health challenges. Each one, she names, was a wake-up call to a new version of herself.

She then turns the lens outward: what if the disruptions happening across society right now — the mass awareness around nervous system regulation, sovereignty, trauma, AI, self-responsibility — are evidence of a collective awakening, not a collective breakdown?

In this episode, Cheryl explores:

• Why major disruptions almost always precede major growth — individually and collectively
• The timeline exercise: how to map your own disruptions and see the pattern in your growth
• How childhood instability, loss, and life-changing events shape our adult trajectory
• Why mass awareness around psychology, sovereignty, and self-regulation is a gift of this era
• The difference between being a victim of change and being a soulful participant in it
• Why reframing isn't denial — it's expanding perspective to see from multiple angles at once
• How leaders can stop blaming circumstances and start asking what is this change asking me to grow into?
• The question Cheryl asks leaders in coaching that creates an immediate shift in thinking
• Why society is in a maturation phase — and what that asks of each of us
• The data behind the optimism: crime at decade lows, health breakthroughs, global philanthropy, cancer vaccines in development

This is the episode for anyone who has ever wondered why this is happening to them — and is ready to ask a better question.

"Change isn't here to break us. It's here to awaken us." — Cheryl Cran

Try this week's exercise: Draw a timeline from birth to today, marked every five years. Plot the major disruptions you remember at each stage. Then go back through and ask: what happened as a result of that disruption? What did it awaken? What trajectory did it put you on? Notice the pattern.

About Cheryl Cran

Cheryl Cran is the author of What The Flux?, The Art of Change Leadership, Super Crucial Human, and more. For over two decades, she has helped leaders and organizations navigate change, lead through disruption, and build more human, more flexible, and more resilient teams.

Connect with Cheryl

www.cherylcran.com

New here? Start with Episode 1: Flux Isn't Here to Break Us — It's Here to Wake Us. And subscribe so you don't miss the next episode in the series.

In Episode 5, Cheryl Cran goes deeper into the leadership skills the era of flux is actually asking us to build — and why the ones that matter most are the ones AI will never be able to replicate.

She introduces two concepts at the heart of her work: metacognition (the observer self — your ability to watch yourself think in real time, act as your own coach, and course-correct in the moment) and union cognition, a term Cheryl coined to describe the skill of holding a positive, connective intention while you're leading, speaking, or interacting. Together, these two skills form the foundation of flexible leadership in the AI era.

Cheryl shares personal examples of both — a difficult interpersonal moment where metacognition helped her show up as the most loving version of herself, a conflict where her observer self caught her mid-spiral and helped her course-correct, and how she uses metacognition on stage when reading the energy of a room. She also pulls back the curtain on her own two-decade journey through emotional intelligence, spiritual intelligence, and alternative modalities like breathwork, cranial sacral, and EMDR, and why she's currently in a phase of integrating what she's already learned rather than chasing the next framework.

In this episode, Cheryl explores:

• Why emotional intelligence, developed over the past two decades, is no longer enough
• What spiritual intelligence actually means (and the misconception that keeps leaders from engaging with it)
• Metacognition — the observer self, and how to develop the skill of watching yourself think
• How metacognition helps us coach ourselves through high-stakes moments, in real time
• Union cognition — Cheryl's coined term for leading with connective intention
• Why these skills are the joy of leadership — and where flow actually comes from
• How energy attunement differs from NLP mirroring, and why it's a higher-level skill
• The difference between hypervigilance (fear-based) and awareness vigilance (goodness-based)
• Why AI can mimic cognition but cannot love, emote, or truly connect
• What pragmatic optimism looks like for leaders navigating flux

This is the episode for leaders who are ready to move beyond managing change and start developing the inner skills that make flexible, human-centered leadership actually possible.

"AI can mimic the cognitive part. It cannot love. It cannot emote. It cannot connect. That is an innately human ability." — Cheryl Cran

Try this week's practice: The next time you're in a meaningful conversation — easy or hard — see if you can activate your observer self for even a few seconds. What are you saying? How is your body feeling? What is the other person's energy doing? This is metacognition in its simplest form. Don't judge what you observe. Just notice.

About Cheryl Cran

Cheryl Cran is the author of What The Flux?, The Art of Change Leadership, Super Crucial Human, and more. For over two decades, she has helped leaders and organizations navigate change, lead through disruption, and build more human, more flexible, and more resilient teams.

Connect with Cheryl

www.cherylcran.com

New here? Start with Episode 1: Flux Isn't Here to Break Us — It's Here to Wake Us. And subscribe so you don't miss the next episode in the series.

In Episode 3, Cheryl Cran completes the arc of the framework: from flux (the constant disruption we're all living in), to flex (the mindset and skill to navigate it), to flow — the destination so many of us have stopped believing is available to us.

Flow is the part most of us get wrong. We confuse it with slowing down. We assume it's something we'll earn when life finally calms down. And so we defer it — until the kids are older, until the project is done, until the world is less chaotic. Cheryl's message in this episode: flow isn't waiting for the noise to stop. Flow is learning to access a different relationship with the noise entirely.

She shares her own shift from equating flow with slow to understanding flow as ease, peace, and a calm nervous system — available even in speed, even in demanding seasons. She opens up about the role her environment plays in her own regulation (her new waterfront home, the ocean view, the sea wall, the hummingbirds and eagles), and why calming the environment is a leadership skill, not an indulgence.

In this episode, Cheryl explores:

The full Flux → Flex → Flow progression and why each stage matters

Why flow is the opposite of burnout — and what it actually feels like to live in it

The consuming vs. creating question that reveals why so many of us feel depleted

Why her granddaughter Olive's crocheting is a better model for flow than most productivity advice

How environment shapes nervous system regulation, and why this isn't materialism

The reframe from flow is slow to flow is ease — and why the distinction unlocks everything

How to access flow in the middle of real-life circumstances: sick parents, soccer games, work deadlines

Why speed and flow are not opposites (you can be fast and in flow at the same time)

The existential questions Cheryl has been asking herself about hard work, abundance, and relationships

Why AI and the changing nature of work make flow not just possible, but necessary

"Flow is being able to go fast while keeping aware of the impact of that." — Cheryl Cran

Try this week's reflection: Ask yourself the question Cheryl read recently — am I consuming or am I creating? Notice the balance across a single day. What happens when you add back one small creative act — writing, cooking, crocheting, building, gardening? Flow often starts there.

About Cheryl Cran

Cheryl Cran is the author of What The Flux?, The Art of Change Leadership, Super Crucial Human, and more. For over two decades, she has helped leaders and organizations navigate change, lead through disruption, and build more human, more flexible, and more resilient teams.

Connect with Cheryl

www.cherylcran.com

In Episode 2 of the new series, Cheryl Cran moves from naming the problem to charting the path forward. If Episode 1 asked what the flux?, this one answers with a single word: flex.

Cheryl introduces the idea of morphing identities — the quiet, often unspoken process of becoming someone new as disruption reshapes our lives. Who were you before the change? Who are you in it? And who are you becoming on the other side? These aren't abstract questions. They're the actual work of leading and living in an era where nothing sits still for long.

Drawing from her own life-transforming disruption over the past two years — including stepping into a caregiving role — Cheryl shares what she learned about speed, achievement, and the trap of chasing a future feeling you can actually have right now. She also names why this moment in the AI era is an invitation, not just a pressure: an opportunity to ask how do I want to feel? rather than what do I need to do next?

In this episode, Cheryl explores:

• What morphing identities means — and why it's happening to all of us right now
• The difference between flex and positive thinking, spiritual bypassing, or radical optimism
• Why heightened self-awareness is the foundation of flex (and how to practice it)
• How the pandemic cracked open our relationship with speed, achievement, and downtime
• The personal story behind Cheryl's shift — caregiving, trauma responses, and the lie that there's never enough time
• Why urgency and speed aren't the same thing — and when each one serves us
• The cause-and-effect mirror: how self-responsibility changes everything about how we lead
• Why leadership today requires flex of mindset, flex of identity, and flex of interaction
• The concept of mutual accountability — and why it's only possible when you're sovereign in yourself first
• What it means to transcend and include previous versions of who you've been

This isn't about thinking more positively. It's about becoming more aware — of yourself, your patterns, your reactions, and the new skills this era is quietly asking you to build.

"We are expanding our identities to be more encompassing of who we really are." — Cheryl Cran

About Cheryl Cran

Cheryl Cran is the author of What The Flux?, The Art of Change Leadership, Super Crucial Human, and more. For over two decades, she has helped leaders and organizations navigate change, lead through disruption, and build more human, more flexible, and more resilient teams.

Connect with Cheryl

www.cherylcran.com

New here? Start with Episode 1: Flux Isn't Here to Break Us — It's Here to Wake Us. And subscribe so you don't miss the next episode in the series.

After 18 months of quiet reflection, Cheryl Cran returns with a new podcast series and a new framework for the era we're all living in. In this kickoff episode, she introduces the thinking behind her upcoming book What The Flux? 44 Questions to Help You Flex and Flow — and names what so many leaders are feeling but haven't had language for.

Global chaos. Political disruption. Economic uncertainty. AI reshaping how we work. Personal pressures stacking up. It's easy to respond with overwhelm — and Cheryl admits she has too. But in this episode, she offers a different lens: Flux isn't something to manage. It's something to learn from.

In this conversation, Cheryl explores:

Why we're in a new level of disruption that old leadership playbooks can't handle

The rise of sovereignty, self-resourcing, and discernment as essential leadership skills

How AI is changing not just our work, but how we ask questions as humans

Why flexibility is now the non-negotiable skill for leaders

The Flux, Flex, Flow framework — and what each element asks of us

How to recognize when resistance is actually information

The gift hidden inside disruption (and why it's the reason she wrote the new book)

Whether you lead a team, a family, or just yourself through uncertain times, this episode is an invitation to stop bracing against change and start asking better questions.

'"Flux isn't here to break us. It's here to help wake us." — Cheryl Cran

About Cheryl Cran Cheryl Cran is the author of What The Flux?, The Art of Change Leadership, and Super Crucial Human. She has been speaking on change leadership for over two decades and works with leaders and organizations navigating disruption around the world.

Connect with Cheryl www.cherylcran.com 

New to the show? This episode launches a new chapter of the podcast. Subscribe so you don't miss what's coming.

What does it mean to futureproof our leadership? 
How can we ensure we are on the leading edge of people first leadership guiding others to lead change and embrace transformation? Find out more. 

Unlock the secrets of harnessing AI to revolutionize your organization with our latest episode, featuring my co-founder Brad Breininger. We explore the current landscape of AI adoption across various industries, from media buying to healthcare, and dive deep into the critical role data plays in these initiatives. Together, we address the common apprehensions organizations face, such as the fear of early investment or selecting the wrong technology, and offer insights on balancing innovation with caution, especially in highly regulated sectors.

Discover the groundbreaking advancements AI is bringing to the healthcare sector, including the use of Monjaro for diverse medical conditions and the latest AI-driven developments in Alzheimer’s research. Brad and I also discuss how AI is democratizing entrepreneurship, making it accessible to more individuals and businesses. We emphasize the need for involving the entire organization in AI strategy to foster a more inclusive and effective approach, contrasting it with traditional top-down decision-making processes.

Join us as we delve into how leaders are integrating AI into their everyday routines, using tools like ChatGPT and Adobe Firefly to boost creativity and productivity. Hear about the importance of effective prompt engineering and the necessity of being aware of AI's advantages and pitfalls, including data privacy. Lastly, we discuss the future of AI integration in leadership and work processes, stressing the importance of starting now to pioneer your industry. Don't miss our actionable insights and real-world examples designed to propel your organization into the future with AI.

Join me with Brad Breininger where we discuss the secret currency to success in today and the future of work 'energy'. Much of us get caught up in urgency when in fact time is about what gives us energy, boundaries and have a 'heck yes' to what we agree to do.