On The Balcony

Seeing progress differently when everyone wants quick wins

Season 3 of On the Balcony is built around one question: can change be made more predictable? Each episode is one case, told by someone who was personally accountable for a consequential transformation.

Our third case begins in 2022, when the Federal Transit Administration, after two serious safety incidents, completed a sweeping safety inspection of the Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority. The day before the report came out, the general manager called Katie Choe and gave her 24 hours to decide whether she would lead the response. Saying yes meant building a new department from scratch, with no roadmap and no room for failure. Katie had come from the construction side of the T, where she had always been fighting for time on the tracks. Now she had to find out why the people responsible for fixing those tracks had stopped asking for it.

Michael Koehler, whose firm KONU worked alongside Katie and her team during this period, talks with Katie about the moment she learned that the maintenance team had stopped asking for track access because the big construction projects always came first, and about her own place in that system. What followed included a new way of planning work on the tracks, service shutdowns that let the agency eliminate its slow zones, a slimmer rule book that encouraged people to report their own mistakes, and a public honesty about the depth of the problems that she says gave the agency more runway to fix them.

What You’ll Explore in This Episode:

Twenty-four hours to say yes Katie’s weekend call from the general manager, the confidence dip in her first two months when she was building a department alone, and why she refused to treat the federal findings as a box to check.

When the people closest to the problem stop asking How a maintenance team that never got time on the tracks learned to stop asking for it, and Katie’s admission that she had been on the other side of that fight.

From a 300-page rule book to rules to live by Why a rule book built by adding a new rule after every problem became impossible to follow, and the shift toward fewer rules and a culture where people report their own mistakes.

Honesty that buys you time Why agencies under constant scrutiny keep rewarding fixes that don’t stick, and how being open about the depth of the problems gave the T more room to do the real work.

Bringing more people into the diagnosis How case clinics that KONU helped facilitate brought people from across the agency together and built trust between departments, and the protective equipment rollout that showed how a change that seems small to leaders can feel large to the people affected.

The Artifact Katie brings a Post-it note on which she wrote “people-centric” while building her new department, and which has moved with her to every desk since.

What Katie would look for next time Leadership willing to make hard, unpopular decisions and stand behind them in public.

Quotes from This Episode:

“There came to a point where the maintenance team actually stopped asking even to get access to the tracks ’cause they knew they would never get it.” (Katie Choe)

“I was being rewarded for spending money and delivering my projects, which meant I was always fighting for that access to the tracks.” (Katie Choe)

“I think our rule book was the most technical of technical solutions.” (Katie Choe)

“You reward technical solutions because you get immediate outcomes. They don’t stick, but you can for that first two weeks, six months, three days, whatever it is, you can say, ‘Hey, I saw a change.’” (Katie Choe)

“Once that was out in the open, it actually gave us more of a runway to do the work, ’cause we were no longer hiding behind, ‘Oh yeah, we fixed this yesterday and it’s gonna be fine now.’” (Katie Choe)

“I never wanna be in a situation where I’m making someone’s life harder.” (Katie Choe)

“Nothing’s ever smooth, and you need somebody to be able to step up and say publicly, clearly, ‘This is a challenge. Here’s how we’re gonna fix it, and it might be unpopular.’” (Katie Choe)

Links & Resources:

Virginia Railway Express
https://www.vre.org

Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority
https://www.mbta.com

FTA Safety Management Inspection Report for the MBTA and DPU (Federal Transit Administration, August 2022)
https://www.transit.dot.gov/sites/fta.dot.gov/files/2022-08/FTA-Safety-Management-Inspection-Report-for-MBTA-and-DPU_0.pdf

About Katie Choe:

Katie Choe is Chief Executive Officer of Virginia Railway Express, the commuter rail service connecting Central and Northern Virginia with Washington, D.C., a role she has held since January 2026. Before joining VRE, she served as Chief of Staff to the Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority, after leading the MBTA’s Office of Quality, Compliance and Oversight through its response to the Federal Transit Administration’s safety inspection. She has also served as chief engineer for City of Boston Public Works and as a program manager at Massport, the Massachusetts Port Authority. She brings more than 25 years of experience in program management and safety oversight, and in 2022 she was named WTS-Boston’s Woman of the Year.

New episodes drop every other week.

What a leader can and can’t reach from the top

Season 3 of On the Balcony is built around one question: can change be made more predictable? Each episode is one case, told by someone who was personally accountable for a consequential transformation.

Our second case begins in 2014, when documents from the lawsuit over the San Bruno pipeline, owned by the utility Pacific Gas and Electric, revealed that one of their executives had gone to two commissioners and the commission president’s chief of staff, trying to get the case moved to a judge the company thought would be friendlier. Eight people had died in the explosion. The president of the California Public Utilities Commission resigned, and so did its executive director. Tim Sullivan had spent his career inside that agency, most recently as acting chief administrative law judge, and he was close to retirement. He offered to step in for a year, clean things up and go. He stayed three.

Michael Koehler talks with Tim about his first weeks, when he published all sixty-five thousand internal emails a judge had ordered released, and about the three years that followed, in which ten of twelve division directors turned over inside a system where almost nobody can be fired. Michael calls the email release courageous, and Tim says he didn’t see it as a decision. When Michael later describes the turnover as a creative strategy, Tim says he didn’t think of it as a strategy, he just did it. A good deal moved in those three years, and Tim is clear about where it stopped. On the thing he most wanted to shift, getting people to look at their own part in the mess, he gives himself a B minus. KONU worked with the commission during this period and Michael led that engagement, so the two of them also look at what that work did and did not accomplish.

What You’ll Explore in This Episode:

Everything leaks
Why publishing sixty-five thousand internal emails within weeks of taking the job did not feel to Tim like a decision at all, and what he thought the alternative was.

Information monopolies
How holding a monopoly on what was actually happening became a source of power inside the agency, and why those silos were so stable.

The secretaries read it, the managers didn’t
Tim’s email to all staff two or three times a week, who turned out to be reading it, and what that told him about where change in the agency could come from.

“I just made it unpleasant”
Ten of twelve division directors turning over in three years, the pot that has to be kept hot without boiling over, and Tim’s flat refusal to call any of it a strategy.

What teaching couldn’t reach
The grade Tim gives himself on helping people examine their own part in the mess, and why he no longer believes education produces cultural change.

What the outside help did and didn’t do
Michael led KONU’s engagement with the commission, and the two of them look at what it moved, what it couldn’t reach, and where Tim is still uncertain.

The Artifact
Tim brings the Delphic maxim know yourself alongside Socrates in the Apology, “I neither know nor think that I know,” and what he discovered he had most completely misread about his own organization, including a complaint from his staff that was entirely true and also an excuse.

Quotes from This Episode:

“I didn’t see it as a courageous decision. I didn’t even see it as a decision to be made.”
- Tim Sullivan

“If you had a monopoly on what a situation was, you had power within the organization.”
- Tim Sullivan

“I was hoping to catch the line managers and the middle managers with this information, to make sure that it trickled down from the leadership. They just didn’t read it, and they decided they were too busy and it was unimportant.”
- Tim Sullivan

“I think there were, like, 12 division directors, and I think in the three years I was there, 10 of them turned over… it’s the public sector. Couldn’t fire people. I just made it unpleasant.”
- Tim Sullivan

“That’s an area where I would give myself, like, a B minus… I seem to think that I had this idea that education was a way of producing cultural change, and I found out no, it doesn’t work.”
- Tim Sullivan

“It was true. We were understaffed. All the things they said were true, but what I did not hear was the fact that this had become sort of a ritual excuse that people could repeat, or an incantation.”
- Tim Sullivan

Links & Resources:

Apology by Plato — the line Tim brings is at 21d, familiar in English as "I neither know nor think I know" (Benjamin Jowett translation)

California Public Utilities Commission
https://www.cpuc.ca.gov

About Tim Sullivan:

Tim Sullivan is the former Executive Director of the California Public Utilities Commission, which regulates the safety, reliability and rates of the privately owned companies supplying California with electricity, gas, water, telecommunications and transport. He was named interim Executive Director in December 2014, after the San Bruno pipeline explosion and the ex parte scandal that followed, and served until his retirement in 2018. He had spent 26 years at the commission before his appointment, most recently as Acting Chief Administrative Law Judge and before that as Assistant Chief and as an Administrative Law Judge, where he developed its rules protecting consumer data. He holds a degree in mathematics from Yale and a Master in Public Policy and a Ph.D. from Harvard, and is the author of Resolving Development Disputes Through Negotiations.

New episodes drop every other week.

What happens when the advocate becomes the authority

Season 3 of On the Balcony is built around one question: can change be made more predictable? Each episode is one case, told by someone who was personally accountable for a consequential transformation.

Our first case begins in 2022, when Mpox was first diagnosed in the United States. Dr. Raj Panjabi was White House Senior Director at the National Security Council, responsible for coordinating the federal response to public health crises. For most of his career, Raj had been on the advocacy side of the table, first as the founding CEO of Last Mile Health in Liberia, where he grew up. Now he was the one behind the door, and the advocates he had always stood beside were pushing on it.

Michael Koehler and his KONU colleague Josh Albert, who worked alongside Raj at Last Mile Health, talk with Raj about the moment he read a Guardian interview with longtime AIDS activist Peter Staley and recognized his own talking points as the same wall Staley had faced in the 1980s. What followed was a different relationship with the community most affected, and a set of concrete changes that helped bring cases down from hundreds a day to a handful.

What You’ll Explore in This Episode:

Uncertainty is not the same as risk
Why the public's demand to know whether a threat is “high or low” asks for a certainty leaders often don’t have, and the questions Raj believes leaders should answer instead.

When your talking points become a wall
How careful, well-intended communication can keep out exactly the information a response needs most.

Inviting in the people pushing on your door
Raj’s call to Tony Fauci, the one accidental email he’s ever printed out, a tense meeting with advocates who arrived with frustration and with solutions, and how he stayed steady as the target of their anger.

From listening to changing the plan
The specific moves that followed, including delivering vaccines through Pride festivals and trusted community clinics, orchestrating response from leaders the community already trusted, and a detail no one in government anticipated: a visible injection mark that, for some, felt like being publicly outed.

Trust you can’t build in a crisis
How clinics, trial networks, and a decades-long Fauci-Staley relationship built during HIV/AIDS made a faster response possible, why that trust still had to be renewed, and why tension can be read as information rather than a sign of failure.

The Artifact
Raj brings the novel No Condition Is Permanent, a phrase his father carried through losing his job and rebuilding a life as a refugee.

Quotes from This Episode:

“I had been the one pushing on the door, and now I was the one behind the door being pushed on.”
- Dr. Raj Panjabi

“For my entire career I had been part of the advocacy community, and now for the first time, I was on the outside of it. I was the guy you screamed at.”
- Dr. Raj Panjabi

“You had to design the response not for somebody, but with them.”
- Dr. Raj Panjabi

“No talking point I had could stand up to that.”
- Dr. Raj Panjabi

“Working together is not a webinar, it’s a meaningful seat at the table.”
- Dr. Raj Panjabi

“[Leaders and employees] misinterpret the discomfort of disruption for failure when, in fact, it could be just the early phase of adaptation.”
- Dr. Raj Panjabi

“Sometimes when you face tension and frustration that often comes right behind it, perhaps it’s not a sign we’re failing. Perhaps it’s just information. It could be a signal that something hidden in your organization needs to come to the surface.”
- Dr. Raj Panjabi

Links & Resources:

Safer: A Playbook—Turning Fear into Action and Crisis into Community by Dr. Raj Panjabi (HarperOne, October 13, 2026)
https://rajpanjabi.com/

No Condition Is Permanent: A Historical Novel on Nigeria by Aliyi Ekineh (Galago Publications, 1989)

Last Mile Health
https://lastmilehealth.org

About Dr. Raj Panjabi:

Dr. Raj Panjabi is senior partner at Flagship Pioneering, associate physician at Mass General Brigham and Harvard Medical School, and author of Safer. He served as White House Senior Director and Special Assistant to the President at the National Security Council, helping lead the world out of the COVID-19 pandemic and create the nation’s playbook for future public health emergencies. Before that, he led the U.S. President’s Malaria Initiative and was founding CEO of Last Mile Health, bringing care to communities beyond the reach of any health system. He has been named one of TIME’s 100 Most Influential People in the World and one of Fortune’s World’s Greatest Leaders.

New episodes drop every other week.

Join us for What Stayed, a live Season Two gathering. March 31 · Virtual · Free · Limited spots · konu.org/events

As we arrive at the final conversation of Season Two, we turn to one of the deepest questions that has quietly threaded through the entire series: what happens when the conflicts we face are not simply disagreements, but conflicts about identity?

In this episode, Michael Koehler sits down with Dr. Hugh O'Doherty, longtime teacher of Adaptive Leadership at the Harvard Kennedy School and a practitioner of peacebuilding shaped by his experience growing up during the Troubles in Northern Ireland.

Hugh's life unfolded inside a history of deep division, between Protestant unionists who identified with Britain and Catholic nationalists who identified with Ireland. The Good Friday Agreement brought an end to most large-scale violence in 1998, but the deeper work of peacebuilding, identity, grief, history, and trust, continues.

Drawing on decades of work in conflict resolution, Hugh reflects on what exercising leadership looks like when people are asked to engage across seemingly unbridgeable divides. At the heart of the conversation lies a profound paradox: the very identities we cling to in order to know who we are can become the barriers that keep us trapped.

Toward the end of the episode, Hugh shares a reading from Prior Unity, a reflection suggesting something radical. Beneath our divisions, unity is not something we must create. It may already be true.

What You'll Explore in This Episode

Growing Up Inside Conflict: Hugh shares what it meant to grow up in Northern Ireland during decades of violence, where identity was shaped early and reinforced daily, in schools, communities, and public rituals. These early experiences formed the backdrop for his lifelong search to understand the roots of violence.

Learning to Sit in the Fire: Working in early peace and reconciliation efforts, Hugh describes the experience of bringing people from opposing sides of the conflict into dialogue, and discovering how little preparation there was for what happens when the "other" is truly encountered. One of the most important capacities he developed was not intellectual. It was the ability to remain in the heat of conflict without fleeing from it.

The Paradox of Identity: A turning point came when Hugh realized something unsettling: we often need the other as an enemy in order to know who we are. Letting go of that structure is not simply a change in opinion. It is a loss of identity. Adaptive leadership offers a way of understanding this. People do not resist change. They resist loss.

Peace Agreements and Adaptive Work: Hugh reflects on the limits of traditional peace agreements. While they can stop violence, they often leave the deeper adaptive work untouched. Real reconciliation requires something much harder: helping people see how they themselves are participating in the very systems that keep conflict alive.

The Inner Work of Peacebuilding: Over time, Hugh came to see that the work of peacebuilding is inseparable from inner work. The divisions we see in the world mirror divisions we carry within ourselves. The journey toward peace is therefore both political and deeply personal.

Prior Unity: In the closing moments of the conversation, Hugh shares a reading that has shaped his own path: the idea that beneath our identities and divisions, the world is already a unity. Not a unity we must build, but one we may awaken to.

Quotes from This Episode

"I learned to sit in the fire." — Dr. Hugh O'Doherty

"The more I kept him as the other, the more I realized I was keeping myself imprisoned." — Dr. Hugh O'Doherty

"We need the other as enemy in order to know who we are." — Dr. Hugh O'Doherty

"People don't resist change. They resist loss." — Dr. Hugh O'Doherty

"The world is a prior unity. It is not that there is a unity yet to be established which you must seek for and work on. Unity is so." — Adi Da Samraj, quotes by Dr. Hugh O'Doherty

Links & Resources

Lectures by Hugh O’Doherty

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f0I1yMElyFA

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jLlnwEUKxMQ

Reading Shared in This Episode Adi Da Samraj. Prior Unity: The Basis for a New Human Civilization. Middletown, CA: The Adi Da Foundation Press, 2015.

In this short philosophical work, Adi Da argues that humanity's deepest conflicts arise from the assumption of separateness. The book proposes a different starting point: the recognition that the world is already a prior unity, and that transformation begins with awakening to that reality.

About Dr. Hugh O'Doherty

Dr. Hugh O'Doherty is an adjunct lecturer who has taught leadership and conflict resolution at the Harvard Kennedy School, the Jepson School of Leadership Studies, and the University of Maryland. Raised in Northern Ireland during the Troubles, his work has focused on peacebuilding and dialogue across deep identity divides.

He directed the Ireland–US Public Leadership Program for emerging practitioners from across the political parties in Ireland and led the Inter-Group Relations Project bringing together political and community figures to establish protocols for political dialogue. Hugh has consulted with organizations including the Irish Civil Service, the American Leadership Forum, the Episcopalian Clergy Leadership Program, and the Mohawk Community Leadership Program in Canada. His work has also taken him to Bosnia, Croatia, and Cyprus, and he has addressed the United Nations Global Forum on Reinventing Government.

He holds an M.Ed. and Ed.D. from the Harvard Graduate School of Education.

Continue the Conversation

New episodes of On the Balcony drop every two weeks. Receive additional reflections and resources at konu.org/balcony.

Season Three will turn toward practitioners, people out in the world practicing adaptive leadership: their struggles, experiments, and lessons. If you know someone whose practice we should explore, Michael would love to hear from you.

Join us for What Stayed, a live Season Two gathering.

March 31 · Virtual · Free · Limited spots · konu.org/events

There are many leadership assessments in the world. Most measure competencies — skills, behaviors, strengths, and gaps. The Leadership Circle begins from a different starting point. It integrates leadership theory, systems thinking, and adult development into a single model that connects behavior to the structure of mind beneath it.

In this episode, Michael Koehler and his colleague Judit Teichert sit down with Bill Adams and Bob Anderson — co-founders of The Leadership Circle, long-time pioneers in leadership development, and authors of Scaling Leadership and Mastering Leadership.

This conversation is less an explanation of a model and more a reflection on its evolution. Bill and Bob revisit the foundational distinction between reactive and creative leadership, share personal moments of reckoning with their own patterns, and explore what happens when even creative leadership begins to feel insufficient for the scale of today’s adaptive challenges.

If reactive leadership is driven by managed anxiety, and creative leadership introduces vision and choice, what comes next?

Bill and Bob suggest that the next stage may require something more relational than individual brilliance — a shift toward collective intelligence, deeper self-awareness, and leadership informed not by separateness, but by unity.

How strengths, when run reactively, become liabilities. Why development begins when we can see our patterns rather than be run by them. And why reactive leadership is less a comfort zone and more managed anxiety.

A powerful story of a CEO who unknowingly capped his organization’s growth — and what changed when he realized he was up against himself.

Adaptive challenges cannot be solved from within the very structure that created them.

Drawing on over a million survey comments, Bill and Bob describe the central shift in effective leadership: from leading through individual capability to developing people and building collective capacity.

Leadership scales when development becomes shared work.

Bob describes what he calls integral leadership — leadership grounded in the presumption, if not the direct realization, of the inherent unity of all things.

If our current paradigm is built on separateness, what might leadership look like if it were grounded in unity instead?

This episode does not offer easy answers. It invites deeper questions:

1. How do we lead in the unknown?
2. How do we slow down when urgency tempts us to push harder?
3. What if the future emerges not from force — but from listening?

“Strengths run reactively have liabilities.”

— Bob Anderson

“Reactive leadership isn’t a comfort zone. It’s managed anxiety.”

— Bob Anderson

“I am my own project for life. And it’s a big project.”

— Bill Adams

“If we want things to change, I have to do most of the changing.”

— Bill Adams

“Are we going to clean this up neatly? The deep recesses of racism that have been in our lineage for millennia? Patriarchy, violence, war, exploitation? We’re going to clean that up neatly? No. It’s going to be a mess.”

— Bob Anderson

“Integral leadership is founded on the presumption — if not the direct realization — of the inherent unity of all things.”

— Bob Anderson

https://leadershipcircle.com/

YouTube Channel

https://www.youtube.com/@TheLeadershipCircle

Deep Connect Series

https://leadershipcircle.com/deep-connect-series/

The Future of Leadership is Integral Informed by Unity White Paper

https://leadershipcircle.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/10/Future-of-Leadership-Integral-In-formed-by-Unity.pdf

Unity Academy

https://leadershipcircle.com/leadership-coach-certifications/unity-academy/

Scaling Leadership: Building Organizational Capability and Capacity to Create Outcomes that Matter Most

Robert J. Anderson & William A. Adams (2019)

Mastering Leadership: An Integrated Framework for Breakthrough Performance and Extraordinary Business Results

Robert J. Anderson & William A. Adams (2015)

Bill Adams is CEO of Full Circle Group and The Leadership Circle, a serial entrepreneur and executive advisor who has worked with CEOs and senior teams across Fortune 500 companies and global organizations.

Bob Anderson is Founder and Chairman of The Leadership Circle and co-creator of the Leadership Circle Profile™, integrating adult development, systems thinking, and leadership theory into a comprehensive developmental framework.

New episodes of On the Balcony drop every two weeks.

Receive reflections and additional resources at:

konu.org/balcony

Join us for What Stayed, a live Season Two gathering. March 31 · Virtual · Free · Limited spots · konu.org/events

Mindfulness has become respectable.

It improves focus. It reduces stress. It helps leaders perform under pressure.

But what if mindfulness isn't primarily about performance?

In this episode of On the Balcony, Michael Koehler sits down with Dr. Matthias Birk—organizational psychologist, executive coach, former Global Head of Coaching & Advisory at Goldman Sachs, Global Director of Partner Development at White & Case, Zen teacher, and founder of Self-Transcendent Leadership.

What unfolds is not a conversation about mindfulness as a productivity tool.

It's a conversation about perspective.

Matthias distinguishes between what he calls within-paradigm mindfulness—using meditation to cope more skillfully within the identity you already inhabit—and beyond-paradigm mindfulness, which loosens that identity altogether.

One reduces suffering within the game. The other questions the game itself.

At the heart of the episode is a passage from Rainer Maria Rilke:

For Matthias, meditation isn't an accessory to leadership. It's not like playing golf. It's about being fully alive in the here and now—and discovering what remains when achievement, anxiety, and identity begin to soften.

What You'll Explore in This Episode

Meditation before it was fashionable Matthias began practicing Zen as a teenager, long before mindfulness entered corporate vocabulary.

Within-paradigm vs. beyond-paradigm mindfulness Mindfulness can help you manage stress inside demanding roles. But it can also invite you to question who you are beyond those roles.

Achievement and insecurity From McKinsey to Goldman Sachs to global leadership, Matthias reflects candidly on ambition and belonging—and how meditation shifted his relationship to that inner voice.

Self-transcendence Drawing on Abraham Maslow's later work, Matthias explores what it means to move beyond ego-centered striving toward expression, service, and alignment with something larger.

Leadership as expression What if leadership isn't about constructing a persona—but about listening deeply enough to express what's already there, this one only time?

Quotes from This Episode

"Meditation is not a hobby. It's not like playing golf. It's not something you do on the side. It is about being fully alive in the here and now." — Dr. Matthias Birk

"If you don't brush your teeth, they're going to rot. If you don't brush your mind, it's going to come up with not great stuff." — Dr. Matthias Birk

"The real benefit of mindfulness is that you can live a free life." — Dr. Matthias Birk

"One of the saddest things is to live a life and never hear your innermost sound." — Dr. Matthias Birk

Links & Resources

Self-Transcendent Leadership — Dr. Matthias Birk https://www.self-transcendent.com/

Publications & Articles by Dr. Matthias Birk https://www.matthiasbirk.com/publications

Selected Articles

1. Why Leaders Need Meditation More Than Ever — Harvard Business Review (March 2020)
2. Now Is a Great Time to Start Practicing Mindfulness — Harvard Business Review (January 2021)
3. Why It Is Important (Especially for Leaders) to Feel Their Fear and Pain — Mindful Magazine (September 2022)
4. At the Beginning You Hold the Structure, Then the Structure Holds You — Tricycle: The Buddhist Review(September 2023)

Guided Meditation 7-Minute Guided Mindfulness Meditation — Insight Timer

https://insighttimer.com/Matthias_Birk/guided-meditations/guided-mindfulness-meditation-2

Continue the Conversation

New episodes of On the Balcony drop every two weeks. Receive additional reflections and resources at konu.org/balcony

About Dr. Matthias Birk

Dr. Matthias Birk is an organizational psychologist, executive coach, and founder of Self-Transcendent Leadership. He began his career at McKinsey & Company advising clients on leadership development and organizational change, and later served as Global Head of Coaching & Advisory at Goldman Sachs and Global Director of Partner Development at White & Case.

He is an ICF-certified executive coach, trained in family therapy at the Ackerman Institute in New York, and has taught leadership for over a decade as an Adjunct Professor at Columbia Business School and NYU. He is also a long-time Zen practitioner and teacher at New York's Still Mind Zendo.

He lives in Brooklyn with his wife and two children—and is an equally passionate and mediocre surfer.

Some challenges don't fail because we lack intelligence, expertise, or good intentions. They fail because the systems meant to hold them — the structures, relationships, and shared stories — aren't strong enough to carry the weight.

In this episode of On the Balcony, Michael Koehler sits down with Tim O'Brien to explore one of the most quietly powerful ideas in Adaptive Leadership: the holding environment.

At the center of the conversation is a real public case — Gina Raimondo's leadership of pension reform in Rhode Island — where the technical problem was solvable, but the adaptive challenge was immense. Retirements, livelihoods, and deeply held beliefs were at stake. Data alone couldn't move the system. Logic was not enough for people to absorb the loss.

What made progress possible was the deliberate construction of a holding environment — one capable of containing fear, grief, anger, and conflict long enough for new meaning to emerge.

Tim and Michael use this case to unpack what holding environments really are — not abstract "safe spaces," but designed conditions that help people stay in hard conversations without fleeing, fixing, or polarizing.

What a holding environment actually is. Holding environments are the structures, relationships, and shared stories that make it possible for people to engage adaptive challenges without becoming too overwhelmed. As Tim describes it, a holding environment is not about removing distress — it's about recognizing and legitimizing what people are already carrying.

The three components of a holding environment. The conversation explores structures and boundaries (time limits, spatial design, process clarity, and role boundaries all matter — from how long a meeting lasts, to who holds the microphone, to how a forum is framed); relationships both horizontal and vertical (holding environments depend on the quality of relationships among peers and the relationship between people and authority — trust, legitimacy, and containment travel through these relational channels); and story, meaning, and purpose (facts matter, but they must be held within a shared narrative — in Rhode Island, Raimondo's "Truth in Numbers" report didn't just inform, it created a common reality people could argue within, rather than argue about).

The Rhode Island pension reform case. The episode walks through how Raimondo resisted the pressure to act as a technical savior and instead orchestrated a process where loss could be named, anger expressed, and responsibility shared. Public forums, clear data, and repeated engagement weren't accidental — they were elements of a holding environment intentionally designed to stretch the system's capacity.

Why some systems collapse under pressure. Many organizations already have holding environments — but not ones strong enough for the challenges they're facing. When the heat exceeds the container, people disengage, scapegoat, or polarize. Exercising leadership often means strengthening the container rather than supplying answers.

Holding environments vs. psychological safety. The conversation distinguishes between team-level psychological safety and the broader, more demanding work of holding environments — especially in public or cross-boundary systems where authority is diffuse and stakes are high.

"A holding environment might be a place where one's inner world is recognized, legitimized, or validated." — Tim O'Brien

"She creates a space where cognitive and emotional turmoil could give way to meaning. People are upset, angry, full of rage — but something has to be done." — Tim O'Brien

"They're not forging lifelong relationships, but on this particular issue they're meeting the other people who are implicated — hearing them, getting to know their story, and taking in the complexity of the situation." — Tim O'Brien

"Holding environments are spaces in which cognitive and emotional turmoil give way to meaning.” —Gianpiero Petriglieri (shared by Tim O'Brien)

Leading Pension Reform in Rhode Island: Building Holding Environments to Achieve Change: https://case.hks.harvard.edu/leading-pension-reform-in-rhode-island-building-holding-environments-to-achieve-change/

Holding Environments and Public Problem Solving: https://case.hks.harvard.edu/holding-environments-and-public-problem-solving/

Petriglieri, G. & Petriglieri, J. L. (2010). Identity Workspaces: The Case of Business Schools. Academy of Management Learning & Education, 9(1), 44–60.

Gianpiero Petriglieri — LinkedIn https://www.linkedin.com/in/gpetriglieri/

Gianpiero Petriglieri — YouTube Talk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9UNey2CS4Lk

Tim O'Brien — Harvard Kennedy School Faculty Page https://www.hks.harvard.edu/faculty/timothy-obrien

Tim O'Brien is a senior lecturer at the Harvard Kennedy School, where he teaches Adaptive Leadership and public problem-solving. His work focuses on adult development, leadership education, and the design of holding environments that help individuals and systems engage complexity without becoming overwhelmed.

New episodes drop every two weeks.

Season 2 of On the Balcony continues by looking sideways — exploring frameworks that stretch Adaptive Leadership into new terrain.

In this episode, Michael Koehler sits down with Judit Teichert, Managing Director and Partner at KONU Germany. Judit's work is shaped by her background as a licensed psychotherapist trained in cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT), and more than a decade of coaching and facilitation around adaptive leadership and adult development with teams and organizations across Europe, the Middle East, Asia, and the U.S.

The conversation explores a question that sits quietly underneath so much leadership work: If we already understand the challenge, why is change still so hard?

Judit's answer: insight alone isn't enough. We need practice — repeated iterations that build new pathways, not just in our thinking, but in our emotions, behaviors, and relationships. Change requires more than understanding. It requires reps.

This episode also spends time with loss — not as something to fix or rush past, but as something that needs to be named, held, and lived through if change is going to last.

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What You'll Explore in This Episode

The triangle of change: thinking, feeling, acting

How cognitive behavioral therapy offers multiple entry points into change — and why limiting ourselves to "thinking our way" into new behavior often falls short.

Why insight isn't enough

The gap between understanding a pattern and actually changing it. Why we underestimate how many iterations — how many "reps" — real change requires.

Practice as pathway-building

The metaphor of building a road through a jungle: the first time you take a new route, everything is unfamiliar and threatening. Only through repetition does a path become a highway.

Managing loss in organizations

Why naming loss is both diagnosis and intervention. How holding space — without rushing to solutions — allows groups to grieve and then reorient on their own terms.

The role of ritual and structure in grief

What we can learn from cultural and religious traditions about allocating time and space for mourning — and why organizations often skip this step.

Reframing loss as sacrifice

How, after grief has been processed, framing loss as "in service of something bigger" can restore meaning and commitment.

A live example from client work

How one organization combined adaptive leadership diagnosis with CBT-informed skills practice — role-playing difficult conversations repeatedly to build new muscles for candor.

Quotes from This Episode

"I think sometimes we underestimate how much practice, how many flight hours or reps it takes to actually change." — Judit Teichert

"When you take a new route the first time, you're in a deep jungle. You don't know what the next step looks like. That's why it feels so tense and sometimes threatening to do something you've never learned to do before." — Judit Teichert

"Paradoxically, one of the strategies to manage loss is not to manage — but to hold." — Judit Teichert

"Grief and sadness — their function is to support us to reorient. If we don't take that time, we're clinging to something and we cannot wholeheartedly commit to something new." — Judit Teichert

"There's a deep hole in the sidewalk. I walk around it. And there's like the absence of any drama in that sentence. That's one of the biggest changes." — Judit Teichert

The Poem: Autobiography in Five Chapters

Judit shares Autobiography in Five Chapters by Portia Nelson — a short poem that captures the long arc of change: from falling into the same hole, to noticing the pattern, to finally walking a different street.

Portia Nelson, "Autobiography in Five Chapters," from There's a Hole in My Sidewalk (1977). Short excerpts are quoted in this episode for reflection and discussion. All rights remain with the author's estate. We highly recommend reading the full poem, which offers a powerful meditation on awareness, responsibility, and change.

Links & Resources

KONU — Growing and Provoking Leadership https://konu.org

On the Balcony Newsletter https://konu.org/balcony

About Judit Teichert

Judit Teichert is a Partner at KONU and Managing Director of KONU Germany. Her work is shaped by her own journey as a leader — learning to stay grounded under pressure, bring care into tough conversations, and align action with what truly matters.

Her early experiences at the Lee Strasberg Theatre Institute in New York and as a licensed psychotherapist sharpened her ability to read human dynamics and support deep, sustainable change. She originally set out to become an actress — and left acting school with the humbling realization that her drive to "get it right" was getting in the way of being fully present. That insight has stayed with her ever since.

Over more than a decade, she has worked as a facilitator, coach, and program designer with leadership teams across Europe, the Middle East, Asia, and the U.S. Her approach blends psychological depth with a systems perspective and strategic clarity — creating experiences that build trust and connection, encourage high standards and accountability, and lead to meaningful results.

Next Episode

New episodes drop every two weeks.

Key Notes

This episode complements Episode 1's focus on individual development (Immunity to Change) by exploring how insight translates into action through practice. Together with Episodes 2 and 3, it builds a picture of change that spans the cognitive, emotional, systemic, and behavioral.

The poem Autobiography in Five Chapters offers a gentle, humorous mirror for anyone who has ever found themselves back in the same place — and a reminder that the hole doesn't disappear. We simply learn, over time, to walk around it.

Season 2 of On the Balcony continues by looking sideways — exploring frameworks that stretch Adaptive Leadership into new terrain.

In this episode, Michael Koehler is joined by Dr. Mary C. Gentile, creator and director of Giving Voice to Values (GVV) and longtime professor of ethics and leadership. Mary’s work centers on a deceptively simple but deeply challenging question: How do we actually act on our values when it matters most?

GVV begins with a clear premise: most of us already know what we believe is right. The real challenge is not ethical analysis — it’s ethical action.

Throughout the conversation, Mary and Michael explore why good people so often stay silent, how organizations normalize small compromises, and what it takes to prepare ourselves to speak with clarity, credibility, and courage when the moment arrives.

As Mary describes it, GVV is less about persuasion and more about practice and rehearsal — building the capacity to respond before we’re under pressure.

GVV challenges the assumption that ethical failure stems from moral confusion. Instead, it asks what gets in the way after we know what we believe.

Rather than waiting for confidence or certainty, GVV emphasizes practice. By scripting, rehearsing, and testing our responses, we grow into new ways of thinking and acting.

Instead of asking “What’s the right thing to do?”, GVV begins with:

“If I were going to act on my values, what would I say and do?”

Mary shares how effective values-driven action requires anticipating resistance — the rationalizations, pressures, and fears that show up in real systems — and preparing responses that are grounded and practical.

Both frameworks support leaders in:

• acting amid uncertainty
• navigating authority and risk
• tolerating loss and resistance
• taking responsibility without certainty
• Asking powerful questions
• Experimenting and learning

GVV adds a practice-based bridge between values and action — especially in moments when silence feels safer.

Mary reflects on how speaking up is shaped by role, identity, and context — and how playing to one’s strengths (asking questions, telling stories, naming stakes) makes action more possible.

“Giving Voice to Values is not about persuading people to be more ethical. It’s about preparing people to act on the values they already hold.”

— Dr. Mary C. Gentile

“If you don’t remember anything else about Giving Voice to Values, remember this: it’s about asking a different question.”

— Dr. Mary C. Gentile

“The folks who study positive deviance have a good phrase. They say, if you want to have an impact on people’s behavior, rather than asking them to think their way into a different way of acting, it’s more impactful to ask them to act their way into a different way of thinking.”

— Dr. Mary C. Gentile

“We justify what we do, not by belief in its efficacy, but by an acceptance of its necessity.”

— Karl Weick, Small Wins: Redefining the Scale of Social Problems (shared by Dr. Mary C. Gentile)

Giving Voice to Values

 https://www.GivingVoiceToValues.org

Contact Dr. Mary C. Gentile

 GentileM(at)darden.virginia.edu

Giving Voice to Values: How to Speak Your Mind When You Know What’s Right

Mary C. Gentile, Yale University Press

Karl Weick (1984)

“Small Wins: Redefining the Scale of Social Problems”

American Psychologist, January 1984, p. 48

Dr. Mary C. Gentile is the creator and director of Giving Voice to Values (GVV), an internationally recognized approach to values-driven leadership development. Her work has been used in more than 1,500 educational and organizational settings worldwide, helping individuals and institutions move from ethical intention to ethical action.

Next time on On the Balcony, Michael is joined by Judit Teichert to explore cognitive behavioral theory — continuing the Season 2 inquiry into how insight becomes action.

New episodes drop every two weeks.

When Your Team's Anxiety Is Actually the Answer

Season 2 continues looking sideways — exploring frameworks that stretch Adaptive Leadership into new terrain.

In this episode, Michael Koehler sits down with Dr. Candice Crawford-Zakian, a psychoanalytic psychologist and lecturer at the Harvard Graduate School of Education. Candice's work focuses on systems psychodynamics — a field that helps us see the hidden life of groups.

The conversation explores what lies beneath the surface of organizational life: the unconscious patterns, projections, and anxieties that shape what happens in teams and organizations long before anyone names them.

What's fascinating is that this work sits in the background of Adaptive Leadership itself. Systems psychodynamics was one of the practices that informed Ron Heifetz's early teaching — and it remains a place where many practitioners go to sharpen their ability to consult with groups in real time.

This episode feels like stepping behind the curtain of Adaptive Leadership — into the terrain where authority, anxiety, and imagination meet.

What systems psychodynamics is — and why it matters

How this field helps us understand the hidden, unconscious social elements in groups that are highly impactful but intangible. The dynamics that shape whether work actually gets done.

When anxiety is data, not disruption

Why the distress in a group — the tension, reactivity, and discomfort — isn't something to manage away, but vital information about what the group actually needs. Learning to read anxiety as a signal rather than a problem to solve.

Group relations conferences

A unique learning experience where the content is the live experience of the group itself. No talks, no papers — just studying what emerges in real time as people navigate authority, roles, and group dynamics.

Consulting without memory, intent, or desire

A practice from Wilfred Bion about meeting groups with spaciousness and openness — not inserting your agenda or expectations, but listening for what the group actually needs in the moment.

The intersection with Adaptive Leadership

How systems psychodynamics deepens the practice of reading the "heat map" — understanding what the anxiety in a group is actually about, which tells you what the group needs. Anxiety isn't random noise; it's a compass pointing toward the adaptive challenge.

Why this work matters now

The origins of systems psychodynamics in studying authoritarian regimes and the Holocaust — and why these insights are resources for navigating the rise of authoritarianism today.

The role of the consultant as instrument

How practitioners open themselves as channels through which hidden, unconscious dynamics can surface and be named. When the group triggers you publicly, that's not about you — it's telling you how high the distress is in the system.

"We're carrying all this stuff, and my stuff dances with your stuff dances with the third person, and it creates this whole thing in and of itself."

— Dr. Candice Crawford-Zakian

"These unseen forces are born from our individual histories, assumptions, and feelings, which merge to create a powerful collective dynamic that is highly impactful, but difficult to see."

— Dr. Candice Crawford-Zakian

"Everything is data. So if this group has found a way to trigger me in a way that actually makes me publicly reactive, that tells me that's how high the distress is. It is not about me."

— Dr. Candice Crawford-Zakian

"To lead effectively, we must learn to see these hidden dynamics not as personal attacks, but as vital data that reveals what the group truly needs to make progress on its most important work."

— Dr. Candice Crawford-Zakian

"You are paying attention to this stuff not to navel-gaze, but because you're trying to get work done. You're trying to understand more clearly what might be impeding progress."

— Dr. Candice Crawford-Zakian

"The experience of the group is the content of study."

— Dr. Candice Crawford-Zakian

"Your instrument of self, of body, of energy, of spirit has to be in some relative open space — open a channel — so that these hidden, unconscious things can travel through you to be known."

— Dr. Candice Crawford-Zakian

A.K. Rice Institute for the Study of Social Systems (Group Relations Conferences)

https://www.akriceinstitute.org/

Dr. Candice Crawford-Zakian's Faculty Profile

https://www.gse.harvard.edu/directory/faculty/candice-crawford-zakian

Dr. Candice Crawford-Zakian is a psychoanalytic psychologist and lecturer at the Harvard Graduate School of Education, where she teaches in the doctoral program "Practicing Leadership from the Inside and Out" alongside Michael Koehler and Dr. Lisa Lahey.

Her work focuses on systems psychodynamics and group relations — helping individuals and organizations understand the unconscious dynamics that shape group life, authority, and leadership. She is also a musician, singer, and songwriter, bringing a creative lens to her practice.

Candice came to this work after a transformative experience at a group relations conference while working in the startup chaos of XM Satellite Radio. That week-long conference changed the trajectory of her professional life and sent her back to school for psychology.

Next Episode: Dr. Mary Gentile on Giving Voice to Values — bridging the gap between what we believe is right and what we actually do.

New episodes drop every two weeks.

This episode complements Episode 1's focus on individual development (Immunity to Change) by exploring group-level dynamics. Together, they show how personal and systemic forces interact — why change is hard both internally and in the systems we inhabit.

The practice of "consulting without memory, intent, or desire" offers a powerful counterpoint to more directive leadership approaches — creating space for groups to discover what they actually need rather than what we think they should do.