Lead Smarter Podcast

Ben Mimmack runs Sulis Capital, an independent sponsor focused on the lower middle market. He buys businesses where the founder retains a meaningful minority stake and stays operationally engaged as a leader of leaders.

Which makes day one of any acquisition a relational problem before it's an operational one. In this conversation, Ben walks through why coming in with a “my way or the highway” mindset is the fastest way to torch the value of a business you just paid millions for. He talks about how trust gets built long before the deal closes, how to free a founder to do what they love and offload what drains them, and why the best deals rarely go to the highest bidder.

The bigger thread underneath all of it is what it takes to lead people who know more about their work than you do. That's a leadership discipline most of us never get formal practice in, and Ben has built an entire business around it.

If you're building toward a future where partners, capital, or a buyer become part of your story, the relational groundwork Ben describes is exactly the kind of work we help clients with at Unbottleneck.

• (00:00) - - Introduction to Lead Smarter Podcast

Brian Anderson joined me on the show, and we explored what it takes to lead an organization through a shift as big as AI, and why that kind of leadership has to start with the leader going first.

Brian is the CEO and co-founder of Augusto Digital, where he helps organizations harness AI, custom software, and rapid innovation to drive real business outcomes. He has spent over two decades building software, products, and teams, and has guided Augusto through a full pivot toward applied AI.

In our conversation, Brian was candid about the fear and uncertainty of changing direction, the decision to go all in on AI before his team was ready and what it meant to lead by example by doing the work himself first. Brian is honest about the flip side of moving forward, that not everyone comes along for the journey, including good people he valued.

We also got into something I keep coming back to. Brian made Augusto the first client of its own services, applying the same AI systems and processes internally before ever selling them to clients. His point was that it is a lot easier to sell something you have already lived with and have your own results to point to.

This was something deeper than a conversation about AI. It surfaced that change happens when the leader is willing to go first, sit in the discomfort of being ahead of the team and let the work make the case.

Worth your time if you can see where your company needs to go but your team isn’t quite ready to follow.

About Brian Anderson:

Brian Anderson is the CEO and co-founder of Augusto Digital, where he helps organizations harness artificial intelligence, custom software, and rapid innovation to drive ROI-driven business outcomes. With over two decades of experience in software, product development, and entrepreneurship, Brian leads Augusto in guiding clients across industries through complex digital transformation and product development initiatives. His current focus is Augusto's AI Solutions practice, where he works directly with leadership teams to identify low-friction, high-ROI use cases through AI Accelerator Workshops. Guided by Augusto's Digital Pace Framework, Rumble to Quick Wins to Accelerate, he helps clients unlock momentum and clarity by delivering value early and often. Before founding Augusto in 2016, Brian built and led software practices at OST and NuSoft Solutions and launched several SaaS ventures, including Tourneytopia, PayIt2, and TallySheet.

🌐 To learn more about Augusto, head over to: https://augusto.digital

About the Host:

David Kent is the host of The Lead Smarter Podcast, where he has honest, grounded conversations with leaders shaping the future of work, leadership, and organizational growth.

👀 Watch the full episode here: https://youtu.be/gya-Qgx0dzY  

🔗 Follow David on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/david-james-kent/

• (00:00) - - Welcome to Lead Smarter Podcast

"The fact that you're even willing to doubt yourself means you're self-aware enough that if you didn't feel like you were doing a great job, you would go and try to improve yourself. So David, I pronounce you, based on the power vested in me, a good leader." - Ben Arendt

I'd just told Ben I wasn't sure I'd qualify as a good leader if I actually took the test. He gave me a pass anyway, and his reasoning was this: a leader's willingness to ask whether they’re getting it right is the very thing that suggests they might be.

In this conversation, we get into 

• Why management gets treated as a rite of passage when it should be treated as a skill set that takes real training
• The two habits Ben recommends a manager start with tomorrow, beginning with an honest conversation about where you're strong and where you're not
• Emotional regulation and self-awareness, the two qualities Ben would add to almost any list of what makes a manager effective
• The "sugar cube" idea, meaning small, specific moments of recognition that build real trust over time
• The mental shortcuts that lead managers to misread their own people
• Why sales leadership is one of the toughest management transitions, and what high performers consistently miss when they step into leading a team
• The single piece of advice Ben would give his younger self about how to read difficult moments with other people

Management rarely comes with a manual, so if you'd rather not be the manager people complain about at dinner, consider this the kind of training most people never get.

About Ben Arendt 

Ben is the author of the Amazon best-selling How to Suck Less as a Manager and the founder of Depth Charge Consulting. He has spent his career advising leaders across technology, energy, government, healthcare, financial services, and beyond, supporting hundreds of executives through growth, transformation, and the work of becoming a leader people actually want to follow.

📘 Ben’s resources and books can be found here:
https://depthchargeconsulting.com/tools-and-templates/

https://depthchargeconsulting.com/published-works/ 

🌐 To stay up to date with all of Ben’s work, head over to: 

https://depthchargeconsulting.com/ 

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About the Host:

David Kent is the host of The Lead Smarter Podcast, where he has honest, grounded conversations with leaders shaping the future of work, leadership, and organizational growth.

👀 Watch the full episode here: https://youtu.be/0ibK8lRUlvE  

🔗 Follow David on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/david-james-kent/

If you got value from this episode, hit subscribe and leave a review. It genuinely helps us bring more conversations like this to the feed.

Building a team that needs the right people behind it? That's exactly the kind of work we help clients with at Unbottleneck: https://cal.com/david-kent/meeting-with-david-kent-unbottleneck  

Tracey Grove says the best leaders ask before they tell. In this episode she explains why and how question-led leadership builds ownership in a team while answer-led leadership builds dependency.

Tracey is a leadership consultant, executive coach, and the founder of Pure Symmetry Coaching and Consulting. She frames trust as behavior multiplied by time, and she makes the case that character is what shows up when things go wrong or when no one is watching. From there, the conversation moves through:

• The difference between being kind and being nice, and why withholding honest feedback is a disservice to the person you think you are protecting
• A story about a brilliant team member whose delivery was hurting her team, and the conversation that turned it around
• Practical ways to lead across cultures without stereotyping
• Inviting honest feedback when a real power gap exists, especially on remote teams
• Communicating through uncertainty
• Why mission, vision, and values belong in everyday language

About Tracey Grove

Tracey Grove is an award-winning executive coach, author, and leadership development consultant. She is the founder of Pure Symmetry Coaching and Consulting, where she applies organizational psychology, neuroscience, and cognitive behavioral approaches to help leaders build trust, communicate with clarity, and lead with consistency. A Professional Certified Coach with the International Coaching Federation, Tracey previously held communications leadership roles at Microsoft and has taught the practice of resilient leadership to audiences around the world. She is the author of Taming the Sabertooth: Resilient Leadership in a Stressful World.

📘 Tracey’s resources and books can be found here: 

Taming the Sabertooth: https://puresymmetry.com/book-1 

Pure Symmetry: https://puresymmetry.com  

Connect with Tracey on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/traceygrove 

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About the Host:

David Kent is the host of The Lead Smarter Podcast, where he has honest, grounded conversations with leaders shaping the future of work, leadership, and organizational growth.

🎙️ Watch the full episode here: https://youtu.be/xaB6OCsBW1k  

🔗 Follow David on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/david-james-kent/

If this episode gave you something useful, please follow the show and leave a review. It helps more leaders find these conversations.

Building trust and honest communication on a distributed team is the kind of work we help clients with at Unbottleneck. If that challenge is on your desk right now, you can book a call with David here: https://cal.com/david-kent/meeting-with-david-kent-unbottleneck

Dr. Aurora Dawn Benton joined me on the show, and we explored how leaders underestimate the power of change management at the microlevel and often mistake human problems as something that can be fixed with structure and policy.

Aurora is the Founder and Chief Change Agent of Astrapto LLC, a sustainability consultancy that helps organizations turn social and environmental ambitions into operational reality. She is the author of Exponential Impact: Harnessing Human Potential to Drive Sustainability in Organizations, holds a Doctorate in Business Administration in Social Impact Management, and was named a 2021 Top 30 Sustainability Champion by the International Hospitality Institute.

But let me take a step back and give you a bit of a breakdown on the juicy bits of the conversation that we explored.

Aurora's specialty is what she calls the micro. Not the macro strategy decks. Not the trends. The level where a banquet captain calls the kitchen demanding more chicken and torpedoes the whole food waste initiative the executives signed off on six months ago. That's where she works, and that's where she thinks most leaders are flying blind.

We explored:

• How she invests upfront time helping team members understand their own strengths using tools like Clifton Strengths.
• Why she thinks self-awareness in a team is a leverage point most founders miss.
• How she's been working through her own recent epiphany around the difference between power and force. That part of the conversation got real in a way I wasn't expecting, and I think it's the most useful thing in the episode.

This stood out to me as something deeper than just a leadership conversation. It surfaced a truth about how leaders create change. It’s rarely through the big announcement and almost always through the small, repeated decision to focus on something that looks too small to matter (like rice).

Worth your time if you've ever rolled out something that looked great on paper and stalled in practice.

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About Aurora Dawn Benton:

Dr. Aurora Dawn Benton is the Founder and Chief Change Agent of Astrapto LLC, where she helps organizations make sustainability practical, actionable, and human-centered. With a 35-year career spanning industries from software and finance to hospitality and higher education, she brings a unique ability to translate complex sustainability goals into real-world behavior change. Aurora has spent over two decades coaching social entrepreneurs, empowering more than 130 young professionals to launch green teams and training over 1,000 professionals globally in sustainable procurement and supplier diversity. A recognized thought leader in the hospitality and events industry, she has contributed to major sustainability standards and education programs, holds a Doctorate in Business Administration in Social Impact Management, and is the author of Exponential Impact: Harnessing Human Potential to Drive Sustainability in Organizations.

📘 Aurora’s resources and books can be found here:
https://www.astrapto.com/product/exponential-impact/ 

https://www.astrapto.com/buy-course/ 

🎙️ Learn more from Aurora’s keynote events: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCJgNjcIblVPNh35EUX96dbA 

🌐 To stay up to date with all of Aurora’s work, head over to: https://www.astrapto.com/ 

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About the Host:

David Kent is the host of The Lead Smarter Podcast, where he has honest, grounded conversations with leaders shaping the future of work, leadership, and organizational growth.

🎧 Listen on your favorite podcast app

🔗 Follow David on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/david-james-kent/

Perfectionism can get mistakenly glorified as a commitment to quality. Todd Greider has spent years coaching leaders through the fear response that sits underneath it.

In this conversation, Todd and David work through the patterns that cause leaders to stall decisions, block releases, and stay behind the scenes longer than serves them or their teams. Todd draws on his own experience as a recovering perfectionist and the frameworks he uses daily with clients who are still living it.

Leadership reluctance tends to start exactly where Todd describes, with a fear of imperfect outcomes. The frameworks he shares in this episode are designed to help leaders move through that without dropping their standards in the process.

Key Themes Covered:

➟ The "ship at 70%" framework in practice and how to build guardrails so good enough doesn't lower the bar

➟ How the brain's safety bias keeps leaders comfortable and organizations stuck.

➟ The ability to make calculated, informed decisions when everything around you is a mess, without letting what you cannot control define how you move forward. 

➟ Task hoarding: the first trap founders fall into when they start leading others.

➟ The difference between capacity, interest, and motivation, and why leaders routinely confuse them.

➟ The one question to end every one-on-one that builds more trust than most leadership frameworks.

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About Todd Greider

Todd Greider is the founder of AEG Performance Coaching and a leadership development professional who works with founders, executives, and emerging leaders to tackle the mindset patterns that quietly limit effectiveness, including perfectionism, avoidance, and fear-based decision-making. His approach is practical and grounded, helping leaders move from overthinking to action without sacrificing standards or team trust. Todd is particularly sought after for his work on executive presence and helping leaders balance decisiveness with empathy in high-pressure environments.

🌐 To stay up to date with all of Todd’s work, head over to: https://www.aegperformancecoaching.com/ 

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About the Host

David Kent is the host of The Lead Smarter Podcast, where he has honest, grounded conversations with leaders shaping the future of work, leadership, and organizational growth.

🔗 Follow David on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/david-james-kent/

The instinct to step in, solve the problem, and move the team forward is exactly what made you a great individual contributor. It's also what keeps many leaders stuck.

In this conversation, Katie Anderson and David explore what it really means to make the shift from doing to leading, and why most leaders underestimate how hard that shift actually is. Katie draws on her work with Toyota's learning culture, her own experience as a leader and coach, and the simple yet demanding framework she developed: a leader's role is to set the direction, create the conditions for people to succeed, and develop themselves. That's it. But unpacking each of those three things reveals a set of habits most of us have never been asked to examine.

This is a practical, honest conversation, not a motivational talk. Katie shares specific tools for navigating the coaching-versus-execution decision in real time, how to quantify the cost of "just getting it done," and why building learning into your processes is one of the highest-ROI decisions a leader or business owner can make.

Key Themes Covered

• The doer trap and why it doesn't come from a bad place, it comes from wanting to help. 
• Why the "telling habit" exists in leaders regardless of whether they know the technical work.
• The difference between urgent execution and developmental coaching, and how to know which mode to be in. 
• Toyota's plan-do-study-adjust cycle and what Western organizations consistently skip. 
• How to frame organizational improvement as a hypothesis so that reflection has a natural home in your process. 
• Why a people-first, then process, then results sequence produce more durable outcomes.
• How to quantify waste and rework to build the business case for a learning culture. 
• The growing pains moment every business hits when the leader's way of operating hasn't kept pace with the business's scale.

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About Katie Anderson:

Katie Anderson is a global leadership consultant, keynote speaker, and award-winning author who helps leaders elevate people, align with purpose, and build cultures of continuous learning that drive innovation and sustainable performance. Katie is the author of the Shingo Award-winning international bestseller Learning to Lead, Leading to Learn and host of the transformational leadership podcast Chain of Learning®.

A Stanford graduate and Fulbright Scholar, she has lived and worked across seven countries, including 18 months in Japan learning from Toyota leaders. Katie has inspired tens of thousands of leaders across 20+ countries to lead with intention, develop capability, and create cultures where both people and performance flourish.

📘 Katie’s resources and book can be found here: 

https://kbjanderson.com/speaker-resources/

🌐 To stay up to date with all of Katie’s work, head over to: 

https://kbjanderson.com/

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About the Host:

David Kent is the host of The Lead Smarter Podcast, where he has honest, grounded conversations with leaders shaping the future of work, leadership, and organizational growth.

🎧 LISTEN ON THE WEBSITE: https://leadsmarterpod.com/

🔗 Follow David on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/david-james-kent/

Most leaders think their title gives them influence. It doesn’t.

In this episode of Lead Smarter, leadership consultant Wesley Dove shares the lessons he learned early in his career when he was tasked with implementing change in a manufacturing facility — while having zero authority.

He had to convince people who had been doing their jobs longer than he’d been alive to change the way they worked. What followed was a masterclass in influence, culture, and leadership.

In this conversation, you’ll learn:

• Leading without authority

• Why most companies fail to live their values

• The leadership mistake causing massive turnover

• Why authority works… until you leave the room

• The leadership approach that actually drives performance

If you're responsible for people, culture, or results — this conversation will change how you lead.

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About Wesley Dove

Wesley Dove is a leadership consultant, Certified Human Behavior Consultant, and DISC specialist with more than two decades of experience helping organizations strengthen communication, engagement, and culture through his Emerging Leader Development and Leading at the Next Level programs. He is also a multi-time Amazon #1 bestselling author who works with teams to reduce conflict, improve retention, and increase productivity by developing stronger leaders.

📘 If you want to read Wesley's books, head to: https://www.dove-development.net/publications

🎙️ Learn more from Wesley's Leading At The Next Level Community: https://www.dove-development.net/latnl-community

🌐 To stay up to date with all of Wesley's work, head over to: https://www.dove-development.net/

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About the Host

David Kent is the host of The Lead Smarter Podcast, where he has honest, grounded conversations with leaders shaping the future of work, leadership, and organizational growth.

🎧 LISTEN ON THE WEBSITE: https://leadsmarterpod.com/

🔗 Follow David on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/david-james-kent/

leadership,leadership podcast,leadership development,influence without authority,leadership mindset,company culture,leadership skills,management advice,leadership lessons,david kent,wesley dove

Expectations sound reasonable.

But they create an imbalance.

In this episode, Andrew D. Wittman breaks down why expectations often fail teams and how agreements transform accountability.

Andrew shares lessons from military leadership, federal service, and decades of resilience training to explain:

• Why expectations create takers
• How agreements create shared ownership
• Why predictability builds trust
• How leaders must master identity before leading others
• The difference between tactical and strategic resilience

This is a conversation about discipline, clarity, and building teams that perform under pressure.

If you’re serious about leading smarter, this one’s worth your time.

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About Andrew Wittman:

Andrew D. Wittman, PhD, is the creator of Inner Armor: Perpetual Resilience™, a mental resilience system originally developed for the U.S. Marine Corps and now used by leaders and high-stakes teams across industries. A Marine infantry combat veteran, former police officer and federal agent, and security expert who has protected global political and business figures, Andrew has trained elite military units and coached executives operating under pressure. He is the author of seven books on performance, identity, and resilience, and has been featured in major outlets including Forbes, Inc., and The Wall Street Journal. His work focuses on helping individuals lead themselves with clarity, teams perform under stress, and organizations build resilience before challenges arise.

📘 Andrew’s resources and books can be found here: https://getwarriortough.com/store/

🎙️ Learn more from Andrew’s keynote events and articles: https://getwarriortough.com/media/

🌐 To stay up to date with all of Andrew’s work, head over to: https://getwarriortough.com/

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About the Host:

David Kent is the host of The Lead Smarter Podcast, where he has honest, grounded conversations with leaders shaping the future of work, leadership, and organizational growth.

🎧 LISTEN ON THE WEBSITE: https://leadsmarterpod.com/

🔗 Follow David on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/david-james-kent/

Most leaders believe multitasking makes them more productive.

Research suggests the opposite.

In this episode of Lead Smarter, David Kent speaks with leadership strategist Michael de Lisser about the hidden performance costs of multitasking — and why focus, communication, and self-awareness are the real leadership accelerators.

Michael has coached over 500 senior leaders and designed leadership programs for organizations across industries. His work focuses on helping executives strengthen emotional intelligence, communication habits, and leadership effectiveness.

In this conversation, we discuss:

• Why multitasking reduces focus and memory

• The communication skills executives often neglect

• The “Leadership Core Four” that drives performance

• How ego and blind spots slow leadership growth

• Practical ways leaders can retrain their habits

If you lead teams or organizations in a world of constant distraction, this episode will challenge how you think about focus and leadership.

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About Michael de Lisser:

Michael de Lisser is a leadership strategist with more than 25 years of experience designing leadership development programs and coaching senior executives across industries, including healthcare, technology, manufacturing, and government. He has created over 100 custom leadership programs and coached more than 500 leaders, helping them strengthen emotional intelligence, communication skills, and leadership effectiveness. Michael is the co-founder of de Lisser Leadership Consulting and the author of Leadership Accelerators, a book focused on practical communication skills that drive stronger leadership and results.

📘 If you want to read Michael's book, Leadership Accelerators, head to: https://bit.ly/LeadershipAccelerators

🎙️ Learn more from Michael's other featured podcasts: https://www.youtube.com/@UCoqVV5QCKzadJNEIP85WsGQ 

🌐 To stay up to date with all of Michael's work, head over to: https://www.delisserconsulting.com/

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About the Host

David Kent is the host of The Lead Smarter Podcast, where he has honest, grounded conversations with leaders shaping the future of work, leadership, and organizational growth.

🎧 LISTEN ON THE WEBSITE: https://leadsmarterpod.com/

🔗 Follow David on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/david-james-kent/