Ruth Gotian is the former Chief Learning Officer and Associate Professor of Education in Anaesthesiology at Weill Cornell Medicine. Thinkers50 has ranked her the #1 emerging management thinker in the world, and she’s a top LinkedIn voice in mentoring. She’s the author of The Success Factor and, with Andy Lopata, The Financial Times Guide to Mentoring.

Most of us recognize the value of building a better network, but we also know the time and dedication it takes. In this conversation, Ruth and I explore how we can use AI tools to do some of the administrative legwork so that we can spend more time on the real relationship-building.

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Martin Dubin is a clinical psychologist, serial entrepreneur, business coach, and adviser to C-suite executives and Silicon Valley entrepreneurs. He has founded several companies, including a multimillion-dollar health-care company where he also served as CEO. He is the author of Blindspotting: How to See What’s Holding You Back as a Leader (Amazon, Bookshop)*.

Whenever I ask leaders, “What’s getting in the way of you moving forward?” the most common answer I hear is, “Myself.” In this episode, Marty and I explore what’s likely holding you back and how you can take the first steps to get traction.

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Elizabeth Lotardo is a consultant, writer, and online instructor who helps organizations drive emotional engagement. Elizabeth writes for Harvard Business Review, is a Top Voice on LinkedIn, and the author of Leading Yourself: Find More Joy, Meaning, and Opportunities in the Job You Already Have. She’s also the author of the Harvard Business Review article, Stop Solving Your Team’s Problems for Them.

Jumping in to solve problems feels like we’re doing important work. The issue is that leaders need to be enabling work – both for scale and to grow the skills of others. In this conversation, Elizabeth and I detailed how to get out of the trap of solving your team’s problems for them.

Five questions that will help your team step up:

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Scott is a senior partner in McKinsey’s Southern California office. He co-leads the firm’s global CEO Excellence service line and is the author of six books, including the bestseller Beyond Performance. Scott spent his early consulting years working on business strategy and operational topics until his life was turned upside down when his second child was born with profound special needs.

After taking time off to attend to his family, Scott returned to McKinsey with the desire to bring the best of psychology, social science, and the study of human potential into the workplace. He is a cofounder of Digital Divide Data and one of a few hundred people in history known to have traveled to every country in the world. His most recent book written with Carolyn Dewar and Vikram Malhotra is titled CEO Excellence: The Six Mindsets That Distinguish the Best Leaders from the Rest.

In this conversation, Scott and I examine McKinsey’s research on what the top CEOs do (and avoid) when building great teams. We look at a few of the key mindsets that the best CEOs bring to their organizations — and how teamwork plays into this. Plus, we explore some of the key questions top leaders should ask when determining if it’s time to exit someone from the team.

The best CEO’s ensure that have positively addressed all four questions below before removing somebody:

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Frances Frei is a professor at Harvard Business School. Her research investigates how leaders create the context for organizations and individuals to thrive by designing for excellence in strategy, operations, and culture. She regularly works with companies embarking on large-scale change and organizational transformation, including embracing diversity and inclusion as a lever for improved performance. In 2017, Frances served as Uber’s first senior vice president of leadership and strategy to help the company navigate its very public crisis in leadership and culture.

Her partner Anne Morriss and her are the authors of Uncommon Service and The Unapologetic Leader’s Guide to Empowering Everyone Around You. They are also hosts of Fixable, a leadership advice podcast from the TED Audio Collective, and they are recognized by Thinkers50 as among the world’s most influential business thinkers. Their newest book is Move Fast & Fix Things: The Trusted Leader’s Guide to Solving Hard Problems.

A lot of us assume that going fast is reckless. There are certainly times when that’s the case, but it’s also true that leaders going too slow at the wrong time can make things worse. In this conversation, Frances and I discuss how to do a better job of moving quickly when it’s time to address the toughest problems.

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Colonel Eileen M. Collins, USAF (retired), earned a place in history as the first American woman to pilot, and later to command, a space mission. She flew on the space shuttle four times, twice as commander – including the 2005 “return to flight” mission after the tragic Columbia accident. She is the subject of the documentary movie Spacewoman and author of the book Through the Glass Ceiling to the Stars: The Story of the First American Woman to Command a Space Mission (Amazon, Bookshop)*.

We all have times in our careers where all eyes are on us. In this conversation, Eileen and I explore the critical moments of her career and how she stayed grounded while soaring among the stars.

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Claude Silver is on a mission to revolutionize leadership, talent, and workplace culture. She is Chief Heart Officer at VaynerX and partners with CEO Gary Vaynerchuk to drive their success. Claude has earned Campaign US’s Female Frontier Award, and AdWeek’s Changing the Game Award and she’s the author of Be Yourself at Work: The Groundbreaking Power of Showing Up, Standing Out, and Leading from the Heart (Amazon, Bookshop)*.

We’ve all heard the advice to be ourselves at work. It’s easier said than done. In this conversation, Claude and I explore how we can actually move past some of the unhelpful self-talk so that we can show up better, faster.

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Dave shares the results of the 2025 listener survey and previews what’s next for Coaching for Leaders. If you’re not already getting the weekly update and wish to receive Dave’s forthcoming FocusFive messages, join the free membership for access.

Steve Blank is an Adjunct Professor at Stanford and co-founder of the Gordian Knot Center for National Security Innovation. Credited with launching the Lean Startup movement and the curriculums for the National Science Foundation Innovation Corps and Hacking for Defense and Diplomacy, he’s changed how startups are built, how entrepreneurship is taught, how science is commercialized, and how companies and the government innovate. Steve is the author of The Four Steps to the Epiphany and The Startup Owner’s Manual and is the author of his recent article at steveblank.com: Blind to Disruption: The CEOs Who Missed the Future.

Leaders may see the future coming, but we aren’t always incentivized to act on it. In this conversation, Steve and I discuss what we can learn from the common patterns of disruption so we don’t miss what’s next.

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Shannon Minifie is the CEO of Box of Crayons, a learning and development company that helps unleash the power of curiosity to create connected and engaged company cultures. They are the organization behind the bestselling book The Coaching Habit by Michael Bungay Stanier. Shannon and her team recently released a report along with the Harris Poll titled Navigating a Fractured Workplace: How Relational Curiosity increases engagement, trust, and productivity.

Of course, you’ve heard that being curious and coach-like will help in leadership. But sometimes the very thing we think we’re doing well is actually getting in the way. In this conversation, Shannon and I explore the kind of curiosity that leaders often miss.

The 7 Essential Questions:

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