Humility isn’t “I suck.” It’s “I’m listening.”

In this episode, Taylor and Pete sit down with their long-time friend Jihad Alex Sakhnini (former Army linguist, performance consultant in oil & gas and aerospace, ex–head of sports strategy at EA, and current leadership coach) to dismantle the “hero leader” myth.

They unpack the difference between formal and informal leadership, how humility shows up as receptivity, and why management is a technical skill while leadership looks more like great teammateship. Expect stories from aircraft maintenance bays, gaming studios, oil rigs, and therapy rooms, plus a simple way to diagnose whether your team has a leadership problem, a humility problem, or a management problem.

Guest

Jihad Alex Sakhnini
Leadership & performance consultant, former Army linguist and contractor, ex–head of Sports Strategy & Content at Glu / EA, high school football coach, and lifelong builder of weirdly great teams.
📧 [email protected]

Key Takeaways

• Humility is a skill. It’s not a personality trait you either have or don’t; it’s practiced receptivity: feedback, differences, and other people’s excellence are not threats.
• Anyone can lead. Picking up the metaphorical soda can and putting it in the right bin — behavior that inspires others — is leadership, with or without a title.
• Titles = accountability, not superiority. On high-performing teams, the only real difference between “leader” and “everyone else” is whose name is on the fallout when things go wrong.
• Teammateship is undertrained. We train people to be “leaders” and “top performers,” but almost never train them to be great teammates. That’s where humility lives.
• Boundaries protect trust. Being kind and open does not mean giving people unlimited access to you. For leaders and therapists, over-closeness eventually kills the work.
• Output is the scoreboard. When people overstep, disengage, or pull sideways, the clearest signal is declining or distorted output — not vibes in a meeting.

Chapter List

00:00 – Cold open & Jihad’s “friend test”
02:10 – Introducing Jihad’s background (Army, consulting, EA, coaching)
06:00 – Formal vs informal leadership
09:40 – Adapting leadership style to different teams
13:40 – Politics vs team-first leadership (leaving EA)
18:30 – Curiosity as a career engine
20:55 – What is humility? (receptivity vs self-abasing)
23:50 – Accurate self-assessment: strengths, limits, and deference
31:15 – Power, expertise, and informal leadership
41:00 – Servant leadership & “citizenship” on a team
55:30 – Teammateship, humility, and the management vs leadership split
1:05:10 – How to reach Jihad + teaser for balanced living series