Your most disengaged employees may not have a motivation problem. They have an identity problem. They were hired for a title, and the parts of them that don't fit the title stay switched off. After 25 years as a biotech finance and strategy executive, Tony Martignetti walked out of a boardroom to help leaders reawaken the brilliance their workplaces put to sleep.

He joins Ashish Kothari to explain why so many high performers end up outwardly successful and inwardly numb, why some people are burned out while others are simply bored, and the three questions that reveal what someone is good at but never gets asked to do.

If your team is performing but not alive, start here.

What You Will Learn:

1. Look for an identity problem before a motivation problem.

When someone checks out, ask which part of them the job stopped asking for. People rarely lose their ability. They lose the chance to use it.

2. Know the difference between burned out and bored.

Burnout is too much work. Boredom is work that stopped mattering. One needs a lighter plate, the other needs a reason to care.

3. Ask three questions that reveal what someone never gets asked to do.

When did you last feel most alive? What do you do on autopilot? What's missing in your

4. Don't just engage people. Enrich them.

Leave people better than you found them. Tell someone what you see in them, and swap one status question for "What surprised you this week?"

Episode Chapters:

• 00:00 Reconnecting with your own light as the first step to helping others do the same.
• 05:28 A personal turning point: leaving a successful career to rediscover what was missing.
• 12:55 Why employee disengagement is often an identity issue, not simply a motivation problem.
• 22:02 The human capabilities that matter most in an AI-driven workplace: integration, meaning-making, and better questions.
• 28:33 The Illumination Framework for uncovering overlooked strengths and turning them into meaningful action.
• 38:13 Three practical leadership exercises to empower others, recognize overlooked strengths, and ask better questions.

Resources:

Connect with the Guest

LinkedIn: Tony Martignetti

Recommended Reading:

• Illuminating Hidden Brilliance: The Power of Multidimensional Leadership in a One-Dimensional World

Connect with the Host

LinkedIn: Ashish Kothari

Website: Happiness Squad

Book: Hardwired For Happiness

YouTube: Happiness Squad Channel

TEDx: How to make flourishing your competitive edge

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Fear and shame get short-term results. They also burn people out, destroy trust, and make flourishing impossible, which is why those results rarely last. Host Ashish Kothari sits down with Laura Berland and Evan Harrel, founders of the Center for Compassionate Leadership (1,200+ leaders trained across 75 countries), to unpack why compassionate leadership matters most in the age of AI, and why it is the opposite of being nice. It means setting boundaries, delivering hard feedback, and holding people accountable while protecting their dignity.

You'll hear how a single interview question quietly reshaped an entire hospital network, and why the ripple reached the receptionist at the front door. You'll get three moves any leader can make this week without waiting for permission, starting with the boundary you've been avoiding. If you lead a team and suspect command-and-control is costing you more than it delivers, this conversation is your way out.

What You Will Learn:

1. Ask what AI can elevate, not what it can replace.

Replacement thinking stagnates. Elevation thinking compounds. Before your next AI decision, ask what human capability this tool could amplify.

2. Compassion is not niceness.

Nice avoids the hard conversation because it wants to be liked. Compassion speaks truth with dignity: "It's not okay for you to do this, and I believe you can do better, and I will help you do better."

3. Regulate before you deliver hard feedback.

Feedback given from anger arrives with a closed heart and a verdict already reached. Ground yourself first, then lead with curiosity about what's missing.

4. One small move in a role, routine, or network. Culture follows.

A hospital shifted its entire culture with a single interview question. Steal the meeting prompt: "Tell me one way you can be supported or challenged this week."

5. Go first. The ripple travels further than you think.

Compassionate acts move at least three degrees of contact. Set one boundary this week with kindness, or reach out to one person for no reason other than connection.

Episode Chapters:

• 00:00 Opening framing on AI, workplace humanity, and the risk of treating people as expendable.
• 05:20 Why leaders need to recognize interdependence rather than rely on individualism and control.
• 09:07 Compassion versus “being nice”: accountability, hard feedback, and dignity can coexist.
• 18:19 A hospital leader’s small hiring change that helped shift a culture toward compassion.
• 27:38 The story of a middle manager building grassroots support during organizational burnout and resistance.
• 45:08 Three practical actions leaders can take immediately: invite support, set a kind boundary, and build a new human connection.

Resources:

Connect with the Guests

LinkedIn: Laura Berland

LinkedIn: Evan Harrel

Website: Center For Compassionate Leadership

Connect with the Host

LinkedIn: Ashish Kothari

Website: Happiness Squad

Book: Hardwired For Happiness

YouTube: Happiness Squad Channel

TEDx: How to make flourishing your competitive edge

If this conversation sparked something for you, please subscribe and leave a review, it takes 30 seconds and helps more people discover the show.

Most leaders treat fear as the thing blocking them. Amy Elizabeth Fox, CEO of Mobius Executive Leadership and Nicholas Janni, both co-authors of Leading in Chaos, argue the opposite: you block fear, and that blocking is quietly costing you presence, judgment, and your team's best thinking.

Along with host Ashish Kothari, you'll discover why emotional intelligence in leadership starts in the body, the practices that ground you when everything is unpredictable, and why the times are urgent enough that we must slow down. For leaders and executives who are done white-knuckling through chaos and ready to lead from somewhere deeper.

What You Will Learn:

1. Fear isn't the block. You are. "Fear doesn't block me. The problem is I block fear." Let the wave move through you before the hard conversation. What's on the other side is presence, not paralysis.

2. Get in your body before you decide. Soften the out-breath. Feel your feet, feel your chair. Thirty seconds changes your brainwave state, and you can do it mid-meeting. You can't steady a room you haven't steadied yourself in.

3. Stop performing certainty. The picture is too big for one mind. Sit with your team in "we don't know," listen until other views actually land, and watch the periphery for early signals instead of rushing to fix.

4. Slow down because the times are urgent. When you're moving fast in ten directions, you're busy but not effective. Block out time that's unplugged and unscheduled. One well-aimed move beats a dozen rushed ones.

5. Don't shrink, don't inflate. Humility isn't making yourself small. It's owning what you're actually good at while letting go of the need to control how things turn out. Try saying: "I don't know, but together we can figure it out."

Episode Chapters:

• 02:58 Healing inherited trauma is part of leadership.
• 07:27 - Sense-making must go beyond intellect.
• 12:19 - Practical ways to become more grounded.
• 18:08 - Opening the heart strengthens teams.
• 21:23 - Emotions are meant to be felt, not suppressed.
• 31:51 - Spaciousness is a leadership discipline.
• 39:01 - Humility means occupying the right space.
• 43:29 - Intuition and “field intelligence” emerge through presence.
• 49:17 - Collective healing needs both justice and inner development.

Resources:

Connect with the Guest

LinkedIn: Amy Elizabeth Fox

LinkedIn: Nicholas Janni

Recommended Reading:

• Leading in Chaos

Connect with the Host

LinkedIn: Ashish Kothari

Website: Happiness Squad

Book: Hardwired For Happiness

YouTube: Happiness Squad Channel

TEDx: How to make flourishing your competitive edge

If this conversation sparked something for you, please subscribe and leave a review, it takes 30 seconds and helps more people discover the show.

700 CEOs have gone through McKinsey's Bower Forum, and the data points to one uncomfortable truth: the best leaders spend less time telling people what to do. Ramesh Srinivasan, McKinsey senior partner, dean of the Bower Forum, and co-author of The Journey of Leadership, joins Ashish Kothari to unpack how top CEOs practice vulnerability in leadership without losing authority and why one of them was told he should fire any leader who says "I have no clue" in a crisis.

You'll discover the to-be list that reshapes how you show up in your biggest meetings, the 15-second reframe elite athletes use under pressure, and why feedback you ask for is 10 times more effective than feedback you're given. If you lead people through uncertainty and want psychological safety at work that actually produces results, this conversation is your playbook.

What You Will Learn:

1. How to write a daily "to-be list" that decides how you show up in your biggest meetings, not just what you accomplish
2. Why the best CEOs spend less time telling people what to do and what they do instead
3. How to practice vulnerability with judgment: when "we don't know yet" builds trust, and when it should get a leader fired
4. The "five sources of meaning" that mobilize a whole workforce beyond shareholder value
5. How to make feedback ~10x more effective by asking for it first and cascade that habit through your team
6. How to metabolize stress with Ramesh's "fear in the backseat" model, so purpose drives and fear keeps only a voice

Episode Chapters:

• 04:49 Why leadership begins from the inside out
• 07:44 How leaders can reconnect with their values and purpose
• 09:57 Shareholder value, stakeholders, and the business case for purpose
• 13:16 Moving from constant doing to reflection and “to-be” leadership
• 16:43 Creating the emotional conditions for difficult conversations
• 18:55 What today’s uncertainty demands from leaders
• 19:28 Humility, vulnerability, truth-telling, and fearless learning
• 23:29 Building a culture where people can learn from failure
• 27:18 What vulnerability really means for leaders
• 32:38 Making stress an ally rather than a source of burnout
• 37:44 What gives Ramesh hope about the future of leadership

Resources:

Connect with the Guest

LinkedIn: Ramesh Srinivasan

Recommended Reading:

• The Journey of Leadership How CEOs Learn to Lead from the Inside Out

Connect with the Host

LinkedIn: Ashish Kothari

Website: Happiness Squad

Book: Hardwired For Happiness

YouTube: Happiness Squad Channel

TEDx: How to make flourishing your competitive edge

If this conversation sparked something for you, please subscribe and leave a review, it takes 30 seconds and helps more people discover the show.

What if the skill that makes a comedian great on an unscripted stage is the same skill that makes a leader great in an unpredictable economy?

Layoffs and AI have left a lot of people feeling like a line item instead of a human being. Jordana Cole flips that on its head: you are not the resource, you are the source.

Jordana is an applied improviser, Gallup Strengths Coach, and University of Pennsylvania positive psychology grad. In this episode she joins host Ashish Kothari to turn a decade on the improv stage into a practical playbook for leading through uncertainty.

Together they dig into why AI has no source material without us, why uncertainty is the constant rather than the exception, why an 80/20 tilt toward strengths beats the grind of fixing what is broken, and why play is not a reward for hard work but the thing that makes hard work possible.

Improvisation, not certainty, is the human edge in the age of AI. You will walk away with three things you can try this week and one brainstorming trick that changes how your team thinks.

What You Will Learn:

1. You are the source, not the resource. AI has nothing to learn from without us.
2. Uncertainty is the constant, not the exception. Possibility, not threat.
3. Play to the scene you're in. Accept reality first, then decide what's next.
4. Lead with your strengths. Gallup: 3x higher quality of life, 6x more engagement.
5. Co-create, including with AI. Treat AI as a partner, not a vending machine.
6. Don't carry your mistakes. Park it and return to center.

Episode Chapters:

00:00 Why human creativity and connection matter even more in an AI-driven world.

08:09 Jordana reframes uncertainty as a constant—and an opportunity.

10:17 Use AI to amplify your strengths rather than simply replace tasks.

17:17 How improv helps people adapt when plans change.

24:25 Focus on the reality you’re in and what you can control.

36:00 Co-creation: building better ideas by building on others’ input.

45:30 Why play is a catalyst for creativity, energy, and better work.

50:27 Three practical ways to navigate uncertainty with more confidence and play.

Resources:

Connect with the Guest

LinkedIn: Jordana Cole

Website: Ignited by Jordana

TEDx: What to do when you don't know what's next

Connect with the Host

LinkedIn: Ashish Kothari

Website: Happiness Squad

Book: Hardwired For Happiness

YouTube: Happiness Squad Channel

TEDx: How to make flourishing your competitive edge

If this conversation sparked something for you, please subscribe and leave a review, it takes 30 seconds and helps more people discover the show.

Cortney McDermott had the titles, the accolades, and the corporate jet and she was, in her own words, "miserably successful."

In this episode, the two-time author joins Ashish Kothari to unpack why you can't win the game of externally sourced success, and how to trust your intuition when you're running on empty.

You'll walk away with three deceptively simple practices - rest, movement, and yes, yawning - that change your state in minutes and turn the volume back up on your intuition.

What You Will Learn:

1. Source your success from the inside, not the outside.

2. Responsibility is your ability to respond, not your share of the blame.

3. When you're overwhelmed, don't add more. Lie down.

4. Change your state before you try to change your story.

5. Treat your intuition as a faculty to develop, not a fluke.

Episode Chapters:

• 1:31 - From corporate success to inner transformation
• 5:49 - When “having it all” still feels empty
• 11:49 — Why real change begins within
• 23:39 — Three practical ways to reconnect with yourself
• 33:02 — Cultivating intuition in a distracted world

Resources:

Connect with the Guest

LinkedIn: Cortney McDermott

Recommended Reading:

• Give Yourself Permission:Be Confident. Be Happy. Be You.
• Change Starts Within You:Unlock the Confidence to Lead with Intuition.

Connect with the Host

LinkedIn: Ashish Kothari

Website: Happiness Squad

Book: Hardwired For Happiness

TEDx: How to make flourishing your competitive edge

YouTube: Happiness Squad Channel

If this conversation sparked something for you, please subscribe and leave a review, it takes 30 seconds and helps more people discover the show.

AI now hands the average worker 2.5 hours back every week. Most of us pour it straight into more busywork, then wonder why we are busier than ever.

That reclaimed time is the most valuable thing AI has given us, and we are giving it away without deciding to.

Bonnie Davis, co-author of Still Human with AI alongside Bijal Choksi, joins Ashish Kothari to talk about how to stop wasting it. Not with another productivity system, but by getting deliberate about what those freed-up hours are actually for: your wellbeing, your relationships, and the people you lead.

Bonnie gives us a practical framework, and a step-by-step way to use it, for building a workplace where people flourish even as AI turns up everywhere. Her argument is that culture doesn't survive this shift by accident. Somebody has to shape it on purpose.

What you'll learn:

• Decide what your reclaimed 2.5 hours are actually for, then put them on your calendar.
• Name the moments AI will never own, and ask your AI which ones.
• Write a human value proposition, not just an employee value proposition
• Give purpose a line of sight: carry the stories of who your work serves.
• Make learning a team sport. Courses are outdated, become a micro university: capture learning in the moment.

Episode Chapters:

• 00:00 - The essence of flourishing: energy and resilience
• 06:37 - AI’s potential to help us flourish—or weaken connection
• 17:43 - The seven factors of flourishing
• 20:49 - Purpose and values as organizational building blocks
• 38:00 - Generative leadership for sustainable performance

Resources:

Connect with the Guest

LinkedIn: Bonnie Davis

Recommended Reading:

• Still Human with AIHow to Build Organizations where Leaders and Teams Thrive with AI by Bonnie Davis andBijal Choksi.

Connect with the Host

LinkedIn: Ashish Kothari

Website: Happiness Squad

Book: Hardwired For Happiness

YouTube: Happiness Squad Channel

If this conversation sparked something for you, please subscribe and leave a review, it takes 30 seconds and helps more people discover the show.

Only 39% of employees strongly agree that someone at work cares about them as a person, and that number has fallen faster than any other engagement measure since 2020.

Zach Mercurio, organizational psychologist and author of The Power of Mattering, joins Ashish Kothari to explain why billions spent on recognition platforms and perks can't fix what only an interaction can, and shares the three research-backed practices leaders use to show people they're noticed, affirmed, and needed.

You'll discover why people need to feel valued before they can add value, the "noticing notebook" that transformed a factory team, and the five words that instantly show someone they're relied on. If you lead people and want performance without burning them out, this conversation is for you.

What You Will Learn:

• Value people before they perform, not after.Zach's research shows feeling seen and valued is what fuels performance, not a reward for it. Start with who someone is, not what they produce.
• Mattering is built through interactions, not programs.Belonging and inclusion respond to initiatives. Mattering, the sense that the group wouldn't be complete without you, is built one conversation at a time. Spend less on programs and more on your managers' daily interactions.
• Upgrade your thank-you with four parts.Name when and where it happened, the specific behavior, the person's unique gift, and the impact it made. "Good job" is appreciation. This is affirmation: it shows people exactly how they made a difference.
• Say the five words: "if it wasn't for you."Needing is the practice leaders score lowest on. Tell someone what wouldn't have happened without them. Tell people what you missed when they were gone. Being relied on, and knowing it, is one of our deepest needs at work.

Episode Chapters: – 4-5 key stamps (Key moments YouTube)

• (00:29) Janitor study: a moment of mattering, a 30-year career
• (08:04) What mattering is
• (10:40) Why feeling valued comes before adding value
• (15:38) The three practices: noticing, affirming, and needing
• (17:47) The biggest gap: showing people they're relied on
• (36:45) Affirming: proof of impact and the four-part thank you
• (44:56) $50b in recognition can't replace one caring interaction
• (51:23) Three anti-mattering forces: distraction, busyness, and AI

Resources:

Connect with the Guest

LinkedIn: Zach Mercurio

Recommended Reading:

• The Power of MatteringHow Leaders Can Create a Culture of Significance

Connect with the Host

LinkedIn: Ashish Kothari

Website: Happiness Squad

Book: Hardwired For Happiness

YouTube: Happiness Squad Channel

TEDx: How to make flourishing your competitive edge

If this conversation sparked something for you, please subscribe and leave a review, it takes 30 seconds and helps more people discover the show.

Over half of us identify as generalists and most workplaces still aren't built for us.

Siobhán O'Riordan, founder of Big Sea Strategies and author of Reframe, joins Ashish Kothari to make the case that in a world changing faster than any playbook, the "ubiquitous and yet unseen" generalist is exactly the talent leaders need.

She shares the story behind her own pattern of "crushing it or crashing out," why fit beats effort every time, and three concrete moves any generalist can use to name their value and thrive in a system wired for specialists: know your value from the outside in, manage up to make it visible, and protect your range by saying no on purpose. A conversation for anyone who has ever felt like they didn't fit the org chart and for the leaders who keep losing their most adaptive people.

What You Will Learn:

• Flourishing is a fit problem, not an effort problem.The same person, bringing the same energy, can thrive in one role and be shown the door in another. Before you push harder, examine the context: do you have the freedom, authority, and cover to do what you actually do well?
• Generalists are defined externally so define yourself first.Specialists come with built-in expectations; generalists don't. Ask five to ten colleagues what value you brought them, then learn to name how you think out loud: "I'm someone who sees patterns and gaps."
• Control your talents, or they will boss you around.A room full of ideas is a liability if you dump all 100. Know your strengths, bring the best three, and pair with people (and AI) who turn ideas into finished work. Generalists cannot work alone.
• In a fast-changing world, generalists lead adaptation.As "expert practitioners," they test, connect dots, and absorb the risk specialists can't. Think of the hospitalist who knows enough about every specialty to prioritize care for one whole patient.
• To thrive in a specialist world, get strategic.Know your value, stay connected to other generalists, and get smart about what you say no to. Don't fight gravity, build specialization where you must, and augment your gaps with technology and partnership.

Episode Chapters:

00:00 Why fit matters more than effort

01:08 Flourishing starts with self-knowledge

03:40 What actually defines a generalist

11:18 Expert practitioners and the hospitalist metaphor

16:19 Crushing it or crashing out: Siobhán's story

23:56 Context, freedom, and the right roles for generalists

29:46 Turning curiosity into disciplined value

34:36 How AI powers the one-person unicorn

35:02 From seeing the pattern to naming it

41:50 Thriving as a generalist in a specialist world

44:44 Three moves you can make today

Resources:

Connect with the Guest

LinkedIn: Siobhán O'Riordan

Recommended Reading:

• ReframeHow Generalists Thrive in a Changing World

Connect with the Host

LinkedIn: Ashish Kothari

Website: Happiness Squad

Book: Hardwired For Happiness

TEDx: How to make flourishing your competitive edge

YouTube: Happiness Squad Channel

If this conversation sparked something for you, please subscribe and leave a review, it takes 30 seconds and helps more people discover the show.

Every year, 200,000 veterans leave the military and more than half can't get hired. But this isn't just a veteran story. It's a story about everyone whose talent the system was never built to see.

AETHEON co-founders Marie Gill and Gina Jeneroux join Ashish Kothari to unpack one powerful idea: we don't have a talent problem, we have a problem translating real human experience into language employers can recognize. Across veterans, women returning to work, caregivers, and students, there is no shortage of capability. What's missing is the ability to see it, articulate it, and validate it.

They explore why skills are the new currency of work, why the language women use on resumes quietly costs them interviews, how real-world skills validation beats keyword-screening, and the audacious idea that could change how every company makes workforce decisions: putting human capital on the balance sheet.

What You Will Learn:

• People in transition don't need more talent. They need translation: a way to turn what they've lived into language the world can recognize and value.
• Veterans' skills are real. The hiring system just has no language for them.
• Skills without context are just labels. Proficiency level, recency, and complexity are what turn a skill into a signal employers can act on.
• Cutting people to fund AI often destroys more value than it saves. The 90% left behind only need to drop 1% in productivity to wipe out the gain.
• People appear on the income statement as a cost. Never on the balance sheet as an asset. Until that changes, they'll keep being the first thing cut.
• Students can now graduate with a skills transcript, not just a degree. Every experience, from babysitting to campus leadership, becomes a named, validated asset.

Episode Chapters:

1. 0:00— Why military experience is often misunderstood in hiring
2. 0:22— Veterans transition out with real talent, but the market doesn’t see it
3. 0:54— The “jump master in the army” example
4. 1:09— Many people don’t have the language to explain their skills
5. 1:30— Translating experience into a form employers can understand
6. 2:05— Life experiences shouldn’t be left off resumes or LinkedIn
7. 3:04— Leaning into what people enjoy and celebrate about themselves
8. 13:33— Women often downplay their abilities on resumes and LinkedIn
9. 14:02— Culturally, women are expected to fit a certain mold, and when they don’t, people don’t know how to read their value
10. 49:12— Life experiences must be captured and promoted to tell the story of skills and proficiency

Resources:

Connect with the Guests

LinkedIn: Marie Gill

LinkedIn: Gina Jeneroux

Recommended viewing:

Aetheon The skills operating system for the future of work

Connect with the Host

LinkedIn: Ashish Kothari

Website: Happiness Squad

Book: Hardwired For Happiness

YouTube: Happiness Squad Channel

If this conversation sparked something for you, please subscribe and leave a review, it takes 30 seconds and helps more people discover the show.