People and Projects Podcast: Project Management Podcast

In this episode, Andy talks with Jia Jiang, bestselling author of Rejection Proof and creator of the 100 Days of Rejection experiment, about his new book, Easy Discipline. Growing up in Beijing, Jia was taught the value of chi ku, or "eating bitterness," the idea that the more pain you can tolerate, the more you can achieve. The problem? He was terrible at it. Over time, he discovered that his best work came when he was having the most fun.

Andy and Jia explore what easy discipline does and doesn't mean, why action goals can work better than outcome goals, and how stepping into a character, like a consultant instead of a salesperson, can change your results. They also discuss how project leaders can build a momentum loop early, how a single one-action goal can help turn around a struggling project, why some efforts work best as time-boxed sprints, and how to tell normal resistance from work that simply doesn't fit who you are. Jia closes with stories of how he and his wife apply easy discipline as parents.

If you're looking for a more sustainable way to stay consistent without constantly fighting yourself, this episode is for you!

• "It literally translates into English as eating bitterness.... The idea is the more bitterness, the more pain you can tolerate, the higher achievement you can go to."
• "If work ethic is the only thing that matters, the best factory workers will be the richest people in the world, right?"
• "It's really the inner drive that takes us to go a long way."
• "I did programming to achieve a goal, to achieve some sort of success. He did programming for fun."
• "The things I didn't like to do? I failed miserably. For the things I like to do, I was doing them so well."
• "If you can tap into the 'play' part of yourself, the enjoyment part, that's where you are at your best, even at work."
• "Having a deadline, having a finish line is sometimes magical."
• "The key for me as a parent is this: How do I enjoy being with them more?"

• 00:00 Introduction
• 01:58 Start of Interview
• 02:08 Seen as Lazy and Hopeless: Learning to "Eat Bitterness"
• 04:53 Grind Culture and the Myth of Hard Work Alone
• 06:21 Elon Musk and the Power of Inner Drive
• 08:00 What Easy Discipline Doesn't Mean
• 09:11 Chasing the Bill Gates Dream
• 11:42 Fired and Rehired by the Same Boss
• 13:26 Applying Easy Discipline to Losing Weight
• 16:05 Outcome Goals vs. Action Goals
• 17:48 What Jia Still Hasn't Made Enjoyable
• 20:28 Getting Into Character
• 22:36 Accessing a Real Part of Yourself at Work
• 23:43 Building a Momentum Loop Early in a Project
• 26:05 Delivering Early and Finding Stakeholder Support
• 27:14 One Action Goal for a Struggling Project
• 29:22 Why Jia Told a CEO to Stop After 100 Days
• 31:03 When Fast-Tracking Everything Backfires
• 32:33 Normal Resistance or the Wrong Work?
• 35:22 Living Someone Else's Dream
• 37:23 Easy Discipline as Parents
• 41:02 End of Interview
• 41:44 Andy Comments After the Interview
• 45:27 Outtakes

You can learn more about Jia and his work at JiaJiang.com. You can also watch his TED Talk, What I Learned from 100 Days of Rejection.

For more learning on this topic, check out:

• Episode 522 with Ross Blankenship and Maggie Sass. Their book Friction shares related ideas about reducing the friction in what we do.
• Episode 377 with Cassie Holmes. She's a happiness researcher who shares evidence-based approaches to live and work with more meaning and joy.
• Episode 242 with James Clear about his bestselling book, Atomic Habits, which has a lot in common with turning hard things into habits.

You can chat directly with PMeLa, the podcast's AI persona, to get episode recommendations and answers to your project management and leadership questions. Visit PeopleAndProjectsPodcast.com/PMeLa to chat with her.

I know you want to be a more confident leader–that's why you listen to this podcast. LEAD52 is a global community of people like you who are committed to transforming their ability to lead and deliver. It's 52 weeks of leadership learning, delivered right to your inbox, taking less than 5 minutes a week. And it's all for free. Learn more and sign up at GetLEAD52.com. Thanks!

Thank you for joining me for this episode of The People and Projects Podcast!

Talent Triangle: Power Skills

Topics: Discipline, Motivation, Habits, Goal Setting, Momentum, Project Management, Leadership, Stakeholder Engagement, Career Development, Self-Awareness, Intrinsic Motivation, Parenting

The following music was used for this episode:

Music: Imagefilm 034 by Sascha Ende License (CC BY 4.0): https://filmmusic.io/standard-license

Music: Laughing Children Full Version by MusicLFiles License (CC BY 4.0): https://filmmusic.io/standard-license

In this episode, Andy talks with Dr. Kelly Heuer, Vice President of Learning at PMI, where she leads global learning strategy across professional standards, training, certification, and career-long development. Kelly takes us behind the scenes of the updated PMP® exam and explains what changed in project work that made this refresh necessary.

You'll hear why the business environment domain now makes up nearly a quarter of the exam, how new multi-question case scenarios assess judgment instead of memorization, and why broader recognition of associate and vocational degrees matters to her as a first-generation college graduate. Kelly and Andy also explore what a strategic project leader actually looks like, why judgment may be the new job security in the age of AI, and practical ways early-career professionals can build judgment as entry-level rungs disappear. Kelly shares how she learned to say the thing, the difference between perishable and enduring skills, and the two capabilities she most wants to grow in her kids.

If you're preparing for the PMP, already certified, or looking to sharpen your judgment as a project leader in a world shaped by AI, this episode is for you!

• "You needed a project manager. And instead you got me, and I have no idea what I'm doing."
• "But you know, I am a firm believer that, you know, the credential associated with your name, the name of your university, whether you went to university or not, is nowhere near an adequate representation of your actual potential or your actual skill."
• "You don't have three facts. You have an entire story, right?"
• "Having a consistent measurement system where you're looking at value accumulation, value realization throughout the course of a project through project close is a really important differentiator."
• "And it's about thinking three steps ahead and three rings out like in concentric circles of influence."
• "But one of the ways you can combat that is being specific about what you mean and what it looks like, right?"
• "But, you know, the way I think of it is AI is just, like, the latest test of professional judgment."
• "But I want to make one more point as well, which is that learning by osmosis was never a good professional development strategy anyway."
• "So in here, in this case, I actually think AI is part of the solution to the problem that AI caused, which is one of the great things about AI, even the freely available tools, is it's kind of like an inexhaustible interlocutor."
• "Find ways to lead and manage small projects, even if you're just organizing trash collection in your neighborhood."
• "I think there's also just a lot of observational learning that doesn't have to hurt at all."
• "But you can do a lot of saying the thing, challenging directly, asking the question if you pair it with a lot of signals of interpersonal warmth, which can be things like smiling and eye contact."
• "It's so much less relevant to actually wordsmith your prompt now. It's much more about context engineering."
• "So in my opinion, the most enduring human skill of all is a capability for continuous learning, staying curious, staying fresh, staying open and permeable to new information, and strategic about how you build those skills so you're not wasting time doing it."
• "The robots are overconfident."

• 00:00 Introduction
• 02:00 Start of Interview
• 02:12 From Philosophy to Project Management
• 04:55 What Changed in Project Work to Drive the PMP Exam Update
• 07:52 Business Acumen and the Shift Toward Agile and Hybrid
• 09:22 Recognizing Associate Degrees and Technical Education
• 11:22 Counting Project Experience After Career Gaps
• 13:29 Inside the New Multi-Question Case Scenarios
• 16:47 Exam Prep Advice That No Longer Helps
• 18:46 Closing the Gap Between the Real World and the Exam
• 20:49 What a Strategic Project Leader Does Differently
• 25:11 Avoiding Bias When Assessing Strategic Thinking
• 26:17 Judgment as the New Job Security in the Age of AI
• 29:15 How Early Career Professionals Can Build Judgment
• 34:51 Small Projects, Observational Learning, and Near Peer Learning
• 36:54 Learning to Say the Thing
• 40:17 Coming Across as an Ally, Not a Critic
• 41:21 Perishable, Durable, and Enduring Skills
• 45:14 Growing Curiosity and Humility in Our Kids
• 48:18 End of Interview
• 48:51 Andy Comments After the Interview
• 51:53 Outtakes

You can learn more about Kelly and her work on LinkedIn at LinkedIn.com/in/kelly-heuer.

For more learning on this topic, check out:

• Episode 319 with Sierra Hampton Simmons. Sierra is the former head of certification at PMI, and many of the ideas we discussed still apply to the refreshed PMP exam.
• Episode 513 with Fred Marshall. It's not about certification, but it's all about thriving in an age of AI, a major theme in today's episode.
• Episode 509 with Steve Kahle. Steve shares practical ideas for improving your ability to recall what you've learned.

You can chat directly with PMeLa, the podcast's AI persona, to get episode recommendations and answers to your project management and leadership questions. Visit PeopleAndProjectsPodcast.com/PMeLa to chat with her.

If you or someone you know is thinking about getting PMP certified, we've put together a helpful guide called The 5 Best Resources to Help You Pass the PMP Exam on Your First Try. We've helped thousands of people earn their certification, and we'd love to help you too. It's totally free, and it's a great way to get a head start.

Just go to 5BestResources.PeopleAndProjectsPodcast.com to grab your copy. I'd love to help you get your PMP this year!

I know you want to be a more confident leader–that's why you listen to this podcast. LEAD52 is a global community of people like you who are committed to transforming their ability to lead and deliver. It's 52 weeks of leadership learning, delivered right to your inbox, taking less than 5 minutes a week. And it's all for free. Learn more and sign up at GetLEAD52.com. Thanks!

Thank you for joining me for this episode of The People and Projects Podcast!

Talent Triangle: Business Acumen

Topics: PMP Certification, PMP Exam, Project Management, Business Acumen, Judgment, Strategic Thinking, Systems Thinking, Artificial Intelligence, Career Development, Early Career Professionals, Continuous Learning, Communication

The following music was used for this episode:

Music: Summer Morning Full Version by MusicLFiles License (CC BY 4.0): https://filmmusic.io/standard-license

Music: Energetic Drive Indie Rock by WinnieTheMoog License (CC BY 4.0): https://filmmusic.io/standard-license

In this episode, Andy sits down with Dr. Maggie Sass and Dr. Ross Blankenship, consulting psychologists and authors of Friction: How Tension, Emotion and Change Reveal Better Leaders. Project managers are trained to remove blockers, and much of the time that's exactly right. But Maggie and Ross draw a distinction that's easy to miss: some friction is simply waste, and some friction is information.

You'll hear how the unwritten rules we learned about emotion early in life still shape how we lead, what starts happening in a room before an irritated leader says a word, and the four words Ross thinks can rescue a team meeting. We also dig into why burnout is often a system design problem instead of a self-care problem, what a project leader can actually do about structural friction when they can't redesign the whole system, and which human capabilities are worth protecting as AI makes more of our work faster and easier.

If you're looking for a more practical way to read the tension on your team and use what it's telling you, this episode is for you!

• "But I think the unwritten rule at home was that talking about emotions and living through them safely were two distinct things."
• "Humans need things, and sometimes they don't even know what they need until you are together in a space or in a call."
• "You don't ask questions. You don't bring up creative ideas because you have no idea how that's really gonna go given what you're watching a leader do."
• "But I think the older I've gotten, the more convinced I am that our job as adults inside organizations is not necessarily to be perfect, but it's to repair as fast as possible when you make a mistake, and that's the thing that doesn't happen when people are scared."
• "I've found that these four words can save your team (and marriage): 'I'm experiencing some friction'."
• "It helps me remember that between the stimulus and the response, I have space, and the more that I give myself, the better."
• "There is no real way to separate task and relationship because the humans are doing the tasks."
• "Being the hero may allow you to solve massive problems or create really compelling products in the short term, but it's not a sustainable way to run a business because businesses are run by people and people have limits."
• "It's a good example where AI makes you more productive, like, you got 'em done faster, and almost entirely strips the meaning out of it."
• "And we need to take seriously that our kids need to learn to fail so that they develop resilience."

• 00:00 Introduction
• 02:14 Start of Interview
• 02:23 The Unwritten Rules Maggie Learned About Emotion
• 04:06 Growing Up in Ross's House
• 05:41 Why Ross Was Skeptical of EQ
• 08:22 What Ross's Pushback Changed for Maggie
• 11:01 Do You Have EQ, or Do You Do EQ?
• 13:06 Can We Get Too Good at Smoothing the Path?
• 16:56 Where Ross Deliberately Leaves Friction in Place
• 18:46 What AI Missed When They Tried Using It on the Book
• 20:35 Leadership as Emotional Intelligence in Action
• 20:50 What Happens When an Irritated Leader Walks In
• 24:39 Four Words That Can Change the Room
• 27:00 When Your Body Writes the Story First
• 29:28 Maggie's Physical Cue and How She Creates Space
• 32:55 Burnout as a System Design Problem
• 35:28 Patterns, Hero Ball, and Structural Friction
• 37:00 A First Move When You Can't Redesign the System
• 38:39 Which Human Capabilities Should We Protect From AI?
• 42:11 What Maggie Refuses to Outsource
• 43:27 Parenting: When to Remove Friction, When to Allow It
• 46:22 The Tin Can Phone and a Kid Who Made Her Own Plans
• 48:44 End of Interview
• 49:18 Andy Comments After the Interview
• 53:13 Outtakes

You can learn more about Maggie, Ross, and their book at TalentSmartEQ.com/friction.

For more learning on this topic, check out:

• Episode 397 with Dr. Julia DiGangi. It's a discussion about emotions that has stuck with Andy for years, and it's a great supplement to today's conversation.
• Episode 394 with Joshua Freedman. Joshua is a leading voice on emotional intelligence, making this a really good follow-up to Friction.
• Episode 446 with Adam Galinsky. Helpful insights on how to inspire those around us instead of sucking the life out of them.

You can chat directly with PMeLa, the podcast's AI persona, to get episode recommendations and answers to your project management and leadership questions. Visit PeopleAndProjectsPodcast.com/PMeLa to chat with her.

I know you want to be a more confident leader–that's why you listen to this podcast. LEAD52 is a global community of people like you who are committed to transforming their ability to lead and deliver. It's 52 weeks of leadership learning, delivered right to your inbox, taking less than 5 minutes a week. And it's all for free. Learn more and sign up at GetLEAD52.com. Thanks!

Thank you for joining me for this episode of The People and Projects Podcast!

Talent Triangle: Power Skills

Topics: Leadership, Project Management, Emotional Intelligence, Friction, Conflict, Psychological Safety, Burnout, Team Culture, Artificial Intelligence, Parenting, Self-Awareness, Communication

The following music was used for this episode:

Music: Ignotus by Agnese Valmaggia License (CC BY 4.0): https://filmmusic.io/standard-license

Music: Synthiemania by Frank Schroter License (CC BY 4.0): https://filmmusic.io/standard-license

In this episode, Andy sits down with Dr. Jeremy Pollack, a social-organizational psychologist and founder of Pollack Peacebuilding Systems, author of Wired for Peace: Using 7 Neuroscience-Based Principles to Resolve Conflicts. Jeremy looks at conflict through the lens of the brain and nervous system, which helps explain why disagreements escalate so quickly and why the fixes we reach for often make things worse.

Andy and Jeremy talk about why de-escalation has to come before problem-solving, since solutions and stress do not mix. Jeremy walks us through his Sapien Model of six basic psychological needs, giving us a far more useful lens than labeling a stakeholder difficult, defensive, or resistant. You will hear how memory and prediction shape the way we read the person in front of us, what a team learns when its leader consistently avoids conflict, and why changing our experience of conflict requires new experiences, not just new beliefs. Jeremy also shares how this shows up at home, in marriage and parenting.

If you're looking for a practical, evidence-based way to handle the conflicts that come with leading, this episode is for you!

• "The most fruitful relationships from what I've seen at work, at home, et cetera, are those that can weather storms without the real fear of abandonment."
• "That was pretty interesting to me to see how much of the science is telling us that, like, our brain is mostly a predictive machine."
• "Anytime we're in an escalated or emotionally charged state, there's something going on in our brains, usually subconsciously, that's tracking a threat or an impediment to our basic needs."
• "It's de-escalate first because solutions and stress just don't mix."
• "What I'm feeling right now is not a result of what the person's saying. It's a result of the way my body is responding."
• "I call it an experiential thumbprint. It's completely unique to you and no one else has your nervous system, and you don't have anyone else's."
• "If we have a negative experience with someone and we go into a place of fear or pain or anger or something like that, the way that we see them going forward can change very, very quickly, and it's a lot harder to get us to unsee that."
• "We access memories in edit mode. And so after we retrieve it, and when we write it back, it's not always quite the same thing, and that's always made me question not is that memory correct as much as is it completely correct."
• "All conflict is an opportunity for learning."
• "The threat of abandonment is the big thing to really watch for when we're having arguments."

• 00:00 Introduction
• 02:27 Start of Interview
• 02:35 The Family Cultures That Shaped How Jeremy Sees Conflict
• 05:51 In Awe of How Much We Still Do Not Know About the Brain
• 07:49 The Brain as a Prediction Machine
• 09:55 The Salad Lady and What Sits Underneath Defensive Behavior
• 12:45 An Introduction to the Sapien Model
• 16:19 Why a Framework Beats a Label
• 16:58 De-escalate First: Catching Yourself Before It Is Too Late
• 20:54 When Our De-escalation Attempts Backfire
• 22:43 Empathy Without Having to Agree
• 25:03 How Memory Distorts the Person in Front of Us
• 27:46 We Do Not Access Memory as Read-Only
• 30:45 Joe, the Conflict-Avoidant CEO, and What a Team Learns
• 33:03 Taking Inventory When Nobody Pushes Back
• 34:53 New Experiences of Conflict, Not Just New Beliefs
• 38:08 Tell Me More: Creating a Gap Between Stimulus and Response
• 40:31 Peace Starts in Small Ways
• 42:49 Interrupting the Pavlovian Pattern
• 44:19 Bringing It Home: Marriage, Parenting, and Attachment
• 47:17 End of Interview
• 47:57 Andy Comments After the Interview
• 51:57 Outtakes

You can learn more about Jeremy and his work at CoachJeremyPollack.com.

For more learning on this topic, check out:

• Episode 371 with Amanda Ripley. Amanda is an amazing writer, and her book High Conflict is a great follow-up to today's discussion.
• Episode 148 with Dan Shapiro. The title of his book Negotiating the Nonnegotiable sounds like it's about negotiating, but it's really about navigating the conflicts that suck the life out of us.
• Episode 61 with Mike Roberto. That discussion was over 15 years ago, and there are ideas from it that Andy still uses to this day.

You can chat directly with PMeLa, the podcast's AI persona, to get episode recommendations and answers to your project management and leadership questions. Visit PeopleAndProjectsPodcast.com/PMeLa to chat with her.

I know you want to be a more confident leader–that's why you listen to this podcast. LEAD52 is a global community of people like you who are committed to transforming their ability to lead and deliver. It's 52 weeks of leadership learning, delivered right to your inbox, taking less than 5 minutes a week. And it's all for free. Learn more and sign up at GetLEAD52.com. Thanks!

Thank you for joining me for this episode of The People and Projects Podcast!

Talent Triangle: Power Skills

Topics: Leadership, Project Management, Conflict Resolution, Neuroscience, De-escalation, Psychological Safety, Emotional Regulation, Memory, Stakeholder Management, Team Culture, Accountability, Parenting

The following music was used for this episode:

Music: On Point by Steven O'Brien License (CC BY 4.0): https://filmmusic.io/standard-license

Music: Energetic Drive Indie Rock by WinnieTheMoog License (CC BY 4.0): https://filmmusic.io/standard-license

In this episode, Andy sits down with Johan Roos, professor and executive advisor at Hult International Business School, Executive Director of the Peter Drucker Society Europe, and co-inventor of the LEGO® Serious Play® method. Johan is the author of Human Magic: Leading with Wisdom in an Age of Algorithms, and he has spent decades studying how people think, create, decide, and lead together.

Andy and Johan explore the two paths Johan calls erosion and amplification, starting with a question Andy has been wrestling with as he hands more of his manual driving over to Tesla's self-driving. You'll hear what an eroding project manager actually looks like day-to-day, why practical wisdom matters when the analytically optimal answer is not the wisest one, and how AI feeds one kind of curiosity, the laser, while starving another, the radar. Johan also explains the difference between becoming an AI concierge and practicing what he calls professional citizenship, and he shares what parents can do to help their kids hold onto the messy, hands-on curiosity that machines cannot supply.

If you're looking for a thoughtful, hopeful way to use AI without surrendering your judgment, this episode is for you!

• "Almost every good idea I've had was not in front of the screen."
• "I know what to do, but I've stopped understanding why.".... The eroding project management can no longer explain the why."
• "So in a sense, they argue that the better the system, the stronger pull down the erosion curve."
• "So the message is really when the machines are taking over more and more of some of these subtle, very valuable capabilities we have, we have to climb the value creation ladder."
• "So a complexity is exactly where our wisdom gets exposed."
• "So every metric said fantastic, but nobody asked why, and is this right?"
• "If AI can write a document that is important to you, the document was never where the value lived."
• "But we just have to be careful to not sort of delegate too much of our brain power and sort of erode our jelly bean."
• "When you lean back and you haven't struggled enough, you may be super smart and, and the best brilliant individual in the world, but, you know, friction is good."
• "Are you able to argue for your case without holding on to the AI-produced slide?"
• "Protect the wandering curiosity, unstructured exploration, questions with no immediate payoff, the freedom to follow something nowhere in particular."

• 00:00 Introduction
• 02:35 Start of Interview
• 02:44 Growing Up Inquisitive and the Power of "Because"
• 06:04 Self-Driving Cars, GPS, and the Erosion of Our Abilities
• 10:31 Becoming an Active Supervisor Instead of a Passive Passenger
• 13:55 What an Eroding Project Manager Looks Like Day to Day
• 18:52 When the Optimal Answer Is Not the Wisest One
• 22:03 Intuition, Gut Feel, and When Something Does Not Smell Right
• 25:54 The Laser and the Radar: Two Kinds of Curiosity
• 27:52 Creating Independently Before Consulting AI
• 30:44 What Happens in the AI-Free Time
• 35:18 Is It Intuition or Is It Ego?
• 37:48 Turning the Models Loose on His Own Book
• 40:00 Asking AI to Be Brutally Honest
• 41:02 AI Concierge Versus Professional Citizenship
• 45:51 Advice for Parents Raising Kids in the Age of AI
• 49:26 Staying Human: Theater, Walks, and Getting Your Hands Dirty
• 50:44 End of Interview
• 51:15 Andy Comments After the Interview
• 54:46 Outtakes

You can learn more about Johan and his work at humanmagic.one.

For more learning on this topic, check out:

• Episode 500 with Steve Brown. Steve is a former Google DeepMind futurist, and he has a unique perspective on where we've been and where we're going with AI.
• Episode 479 with Matt Mong. Matt shares his take on the AI skills we need to stay relevant in the years to come.
• Episode 463 with Faisal Hoque. Faisal helps us go beyond the fear and the hype around AI to a helpful way to think about the human-AI relationship.

You can chat directly with PMeLa, the podcast's AI persona, to get episode recommendations and answers to your project management and leadership questions. Visit PeopleAndProjectsPodcast.com/PMeLa to chat with her.

I know you want to be a more confident leader–that's why you listen to this podcast. LEAD52 is a global community of people like you who are committed to transforming their ability to lead and deliver. It's 52 weeks of leadership learning, delivered right to your inbox, taking less than 5 minutes a week. And it's all for free. Learn more and sign up at GetLEAD52.com. Thanks!

Thank you for joining me for this episode of The People and Projects Podcast!

Talent Triangle: Business Acumen

Topics: Leadership, Project Management, Artificial Intelligence, Practical Wisdom, Curiosity, Critical Thinking, Creativity, Decision Making, Judgment, Professional Development, Human Skills, Parenting

The following music was used for this episode:

Music: Echo by Alexander Nakarada License (CC BY 4.0): https://filmmusic.io/standard-license

Music: Chillhouse by Frank Schroeter License (CC BY 4.0): https://filmmusic.io/standard-license

In this episode, Andy sits down with Owen Fitzpatrick, a psychologist, speaker, and author of Inner Propaganda: Leading Hearts and Minds through Turbulent Times. Owen has spent close to 30 years studying how beliefs form and change, interviewing people everywhere from North Korea to Rwanda to Afghanistan. His thesis is unsettling: our brains do not simply take in facts and reach objective conclusions. They build a story we then experience as reality.

Owen and Andy work through what that means on real projects. You'll hear how a warning from a colleague can quietly harden into a conviction about a teammate, and how Bayesian reasoning gives you a way out. You'll learn Owen's five types of truth, how to tell courageous conviction from dangerous denial, and what leaders can actually make stable when they cannot promise a stable outcome. Owen also explains why pushing harder for buy-in is often the very reason people resist, and how an antifragile identity helps teams face uncertainty like AI without denial or panic.

If you're looking for a fresh way to think about belief, influence, and leading through turbulent times, this episode is for you!

• "We all live in that world where we think we're the one person that isn't the victim of propaganda, and my point or my thesis is we're all victims of our own inner propaganda."
• "We're not necessarily just convinced by others. We convince ourselves."
• "Because I think when we say, 'I'm no good at something,' we lock ourselves into it."
• "Well, if you're not great at communicating with people, get great."
• "Most of the time our beliefs just create a sort of a reality for us, and that reality can help us or harm us."
• "So our brains are prediction machines."
• "Whenever we talk about belief, believing in your ability to succeed in the future is critical if you want to succeed in the future, but that doesn't mean you deny the present."
• "It, it's not that we think negatively, it's we believe negatively, and we see the world through those lenses."
• "So I think we want to be able to challenge our beliefs and build a bit more and get more comfortable with uncertainty away from the table, but when we're at the table with our team, that's when we bring the certainty."
• "We like the idea that we are making this decision of our own free will."
• "And when you look at what a belief is, a belief is an idea we feel certain about, and that word feel is the most important word of that sentence."
• "It's okay to believe less in certain things. It's okay to believe more in certain things. It's okay to believe better."

• 00:00 Introduction
• 02:29 Start of Interview
• 02:40 The Belief About Himself Owen Took Too Long to Update
• 05:56 A Sweaty Debate Speech and What Came After
• 08:28 Not Good at Something Is a Skill Gap, Not an Identity
• 09:45 The Belief Growth Mindset
• 12:55 The Sandra Story: When a Warning Becomes a Conviction
• 14:07 Why the Brain Craves Cognitive Closure
• 17:15 Using Bayesian Reasoning to Loosen a Belief
• 21:00 Melanie Perkins and Alan Mulally: Conviction or Denial?
• 21:36 The Five Types of Truth
• 26:24 Just Because It Is Your Truth Does Not Make It True
• 28:41 Where Objective Truth Actually Belongs
• 31:47 What "Leadership Is Propaganda" Does Not Mean
• 34:45 Why Change Management and AI Adoption Stall
• 36:30 Why Owen Chose Propaganda Over Self-Talk
• 37:57 Do I Believe It Because It Makes Me Look Good?
• 38:49 Answering the AI Question Without Denial or Hype
• 40:15 Building an Antifragile Identity
• 44:27 Certainty Is Contagious, and When to Change Course
• 45:20 What Leaders Can Make Stable in a Volatile Period
• 47:45 Control What You Can, Influence What You Can, Accept the Rest
• 51:01 When Pushing for Buy-In Creates the Resistance
• 52:45 You're Asking the Wrong Question About Persuasion
• 54:30 Reading the Person Before You Make the Ask
• 57:30 Helping Kids Hold Strong Beliefs Without Contempt
• 1:01:46 End of Interview
• 1:02:15 Andy Comments After the Interview
• 1:05:09 Outtakes

You can learn more about Owen and his work at InnerPropaganda.com.

For more learning on this topic, check out:

• Episode 370 with Chantel Prat. One of the smartest, clearest, and funniest books on the brain, and why all of it matters for how you lead.
• Episodes 59 and 60 with Cathy Davidson. She explains how the brain science of attention changes everything.
• Episode 32 with Brad Kolar. A look at the direct implications of neuroscience for leadership.
• Owen's TED Talk, available here on YouTube.

You can chat directly with PMeLa, the podcast's AI persona, to get episode recommendations and answers to your project management and leadership questions. Visit PeopleAndProjectsPodcast.com/PMeLa to chat with her.

I know you want to be a more confident leader–that's why you listen to this podcast. LEAD52 is a global community of people like you who are committed to transforming their ability to lead and deliver. It's 52 weeks of leadership learning, delivered right to your inbox, taking less than 5 minutes a week. And it's all for free. Learn more and sign up at GetLEAD52.com. Thanks!

Thank you for joining me for this episode of The People and Projects Podcast!

Talent Triangle: Power Skills

Topics: Leadership, Belief, Persuasion, Influence, Uncertainty, Change Management, Growth Mindset, Psychological Reactance, Buy-In, Artificial Intelligence, Resilience, Project Management

The following music was used for this episode:

Music: The Fantastical Ferret by Tim Kulig License (CC BY 4.0): https://filmmusic.io/standard-license

Music: Funny by Frank Schroeter License (CC BY 4.0): https://filmmusic.io/standard-license

In this episode, Andy welcomes Cheryl Strauss Einhorn, founder and CEO of the decision sciences company Decisive and author of The Human Edge: Smarter Decisions in the Age of AI. Cheryl has spent decades helping people make better decisions, and her message here is a simple one: AI can gather, summarize, and compare, but it can't know what matters most unless we do the thinking first.

Andy and Cheryl talk about why "AI first" can quietly turn into AI only, and why a poor answer from AI is actually useful feedback about your own thinking. Cheryl explains why separating the what of a decision from the why can change the path forward, shares her vision of success question, and walks through how human bias and AI bias reinforce each other. You'll also hear a practical way to use AI personas to pressure test your thinking before a big stakeholder conversation, plus what parents can do to help kids strengthen their decision-making muscles instead of letting them atrophy.

If you're looking for practical ways to make smarter decisions in the age of AI, this episode is for you!

• "AI is about patterns, but we're about purpose."
• "We need to be the chief deciders in our own life."
• "We need to make sure that we actually have a way to push back and check the veracity of what it's giving us because it's a known liar."
• "And so the authenticity of human interaction is what actually builds trust, strengthens relationships, and really gives us a lot of the connections that are important to us in our home life and our work life."
• "You don't need to have a perfect prompt for AI."
• "AI is going to give you other people's answers."
• "'Knowledge is power' isn't as true now. It's what you are able to do with the knowledge, and it's why you want to collect the knowledge in the first place."
• "I almost never would accept AI's first answer."
• "We tend to have evolving hypotheses unless we really build an audit trail of our thinking."
• "So in the world of medicine, a fever tells you something is wrong, but it tells you nothing about what is wrong or where to look."
• "So first we know AI's a sycophant, right?"
• "If it's 99% accurate in its conclusion, but its underlying data is the wrong data set, you've got the wrong answer."
• "I would say the more that I've studied these cognitive biases, these mental shortcuts, the more I realize that we see the world through a dirty windshield."
• "Our brains are muscles, and just like we exercise to strengthen our muscles, if we don't exercise, they atrophy."

• 00:00 Introduction
• 02:00 Start of Interview
• 02:12 Growing Up Surrounded by Questions
• 04:30 What Leaders Should Watch Out for in "AI First"
• 07:07 When AI Confidently Makes Things Up
• 09:04 How AI First Turns into AI Only
• 09:20 Why Polished Doesn't Mean Authentic
• 11:59 A Prompting Problem or a Problem Definition Problem?
• 14:37 The Vision of Success Question
• 15:45 Why a Bad Answer Is Useful Feedback
• 19:06 Separating the What from the Why
• 20:32 Research: More Information Isn't Better Judgment
• 24:35 Progressive Prompting and Never Accepting the First Answer
• 25:18 Fabricated Quotes and the Trouble with Attribution
• 26:50 Documenting Assumptions and Building an Audit Trail
• 29:25 Committing to Your Own Thinking
• 32:29 How Human Bias and AI Bias Reinforce Each Other
• 34:55 Knowing About Biases Doesn't Make You Immune
• 36:51 Using AI Personas to Challenge Your Thinking
• 40:20 AI and Stakeholder Management
• 42:42 Helping Kids Become Better Decision-Makers
• 44:25 End of Interview
• 44:51 Andy Comments After the Interview
• 48:13 Outtakes

You can learn more about Cheryl and her work at AREAMethod.com.

For more learning on this topic, check out:

• Episode 460 with Joe Sutherland. It's an interesting look at the intersection of AI, data, and decision-making, and a great follow-up to this discussion.
• Episode 381 with Jim Loehr. One of Andy's favorite conversations about decision-making, from a remarkable figure in the human performance world.
• Episode 99 with Mike Roberto. A conversation about his book Why Great Leaders Don't Take Yes for an Answer, recorded long before ChatGPT showed up, and still insightful today.

You can chat directly with PMeLa, the podcast's AI persona, to get episode recommendations and answers to your project management and leadership questions. Visit PeopleAndProjectsPodcast.com/PMeLa to chat with her.

If you or someone you know is thinking about getting PMP certified, we've put together a helpful guide called The 5 Best Resources to Help You Pass the PMP Exam on Your First Try. We've helped thousands of people earn their certification, and we'd love to help you too. It's totally free, and it's a great way to get a head start.

Just go to 5BestResources.PeopleAndProjectsPodcast.com to grab your copy. I'd love to help you get your PMP this year!

I know you want to be a more confident leader–that's why you listen to this podcast. LEAD52 is a global community of people like you who are committed to transforming their ability to lead and deliver. It's 52 weeks of leadership learning, delivered right to your inbox, taking less than 5 minutes a week. And it's all for free. Learn more and sign up at GetLEAD52.com. Thanks!

Thank you for joining me for this episode of The People and Projects Podcast!

Talent Triangle: Power Skills

Topics: Decision Making, Artificial Intelligence, Leadership, Project Management, Critical Thinking, Cognitive Bias, Problem Solving, Stakeholder Management, Judgment, Curiosity

The following music was used for this episode:

Music: Echo by Alexander Nakarada License (CC BY 4.0): https://filmmusic.io/standard-license

Music: Tuesday by Sascha Ende License (CC BY 4.0): https://filmmusic.io/standard-license

In this episode, Andy sits down with Gustavo Razzetti, culture consultant and author of Forward Talk. Gustavo makes a case that surprises a lot of leaders: fear is only part of why people stay quiet at work. The bigger driver is what he calls the pointlessness paradox, the belief that speaking up will not change anything.

Andy and Gustavo talk about conversational debt and how it compounds over time, why silence is so often mistaken for alignment, and the subtle signs that a team is drifting into avoidance, blame, or groupthink. Gustavo unpacks the difference between backward talk and forward talk, offering practical ways to turn an objection into a question that opens possibilities. You'll also hear about conversational agency, why the second person who speaks up matters more than the first, and how the CPR approach of courage, perspective, and responsibility plays out under pressure. Along the way, Andy shares stories from Alfred Sloan at GM and Alan Mulally at Ford, and Gustavo shares a memorable one about his son and a crashed car.

If you're looking for a more confident way to raise the issues your team keeps avoiding, this episode is for you!

• "However, fear only explains part of why people don't speak up. At some point, people feel nothing will change."
• "I like to say that agreement happens in the room, alignment happens after the meeting."
• "When you become the team leader, the number of people giving you feedback reduces, and when you become a senior executive, no one gives you feedback. Or if they do, it's not honest."
• "But what you want is people to challenge your perspective, to show you what you're missing, to see the things you're not seeing or maybe you stop seeing."
• "The problem is when we put being accepted, being respected over the outcome."
• "So forward talk is when can we frame that objection into a question."
• "So you're not being difficult. You're being realistic, but trying to find a solution, and you're giving the other person options."
• "Most people don't regret the difficult conversations they had. What we regret are the ones that we never had."
• "There's research that shows that the person who speaks up first is not the most important person. The second person who reciprocates is actually the one that creates the change. That moment when two people are talking about the same issue, it gives permission to the other people to jump in and also participate."
• "Staying silent also backfires, not only because it hurts the company, but if you're seeing the problem and you're staying silent, you become part of the problem."
• "It's not the absence of conflict that makes us a good team. It's that we can do it and we can work through it."

• 00:00 Introduction
• 02:05 Start of Interview
• 02:17 Growing Up in a Family of Nine in Argentina
• 05:18 Learning New Ways Beyond Your Family Culture
• 06:16 Why Fear Is Not the Whole Story
• 09:06 Why Waiting for Perfect Psychological Safety Backfires
• 10:37 Explaining the Pointlessness Paradox
• 11:37 Mistaking Silence for Alignment
• 13:35 Alfred Sloan and the Value of Disagreement
• 15:32 Subtle Signs You Are Drifting Into Groupthink
• 17:58 Backward Talk vs. Forward Talk
• 19:43 The Way to the Sun Is Through the Storm
• 21:05 How Organizations Quietly Reward Avoidance
• 23:08 When Speaking Up Gets You Labeled
• 25:09 Alan Mulaly, Ford, and the Power of the Second Voice
• 27:39 Alignment Debt, Belonging Debt, and Collaboration Debt
• 29:11 Why Conversational Debt Compounds
• 30:05 Surrendering Conversational Agency
• 32:40 Complaining, and the CPR Approach
• 36:31 You Get What You Tolerate
• 37:42 Applying These Ideas at Home
• 40:06 Conflict Is Fuel When You Channel It
• 41:07 End of Interview
• 41:37 Andy Comments After the Interview
• 45:10 Outtakes

You can learn more about Gustavo and his work at GustavoRazzetti.com.

For more learning on this topic, check out:

• Episode 284 with Peter Boghossian. He wrote a book about how to have impossible conversations, and it's full of ideas Andy still uses almost every week.
• Episode 148 with Daniel Shapiro. Dan is the author of Negotiating the Nonnegotiable, an insightful guide to dealing with difficult conversations and influence situations.
• Episode 371 with Amanda Ripley. Her book High Conflict offers practical guidance on navigating even the most challenging of conflicts in an empowering way.

You can chat directly with PMeLa, the podcast's AI persona, to get episode recommendations and answers to your project management and leadership questions. Visit PeopleAndProjectsPodcast.com/PMeLa to chat with her.

I know you want to be a more confident leader–that's why you listen to this podcast. LEAD52 is a global community of people like you who are committed to transforming their ability to lead and deliver. It's 52 weeks of leadership learning, delivered right to your inbox, taking less than 5 minutes a week. And it's all for free. Learn more and sign up at GetLEAD52.com. Thanks!

Thank you for joining me for this episode of The People and Projects Podcast!

Talent Triangle: Power Skills

Topics: Difficult Conversations, Conversational Debt, Psychological Safety, Groupthink, Team Culture, Leadership, Project Management, Conflict, Alignment, Accountability, Communication, Speaking Up

The following music was used for this episode:

Music: Summer Morning Full Version by MusicLFiles License (CC BY 4.0): https://filmmusic.io/standard-license

Music: Tropical Vibe by WinnieTheMoog License (CC BY 4.0): https://filmmusic.io/standard-license

In this episode, Andy welcomes back his friend Stuart Taylor, a PMO leader and PMI PMO Awards judge, author of Becoming the Project Manager. Most of us didn't grow up dreaming of leading projects. We drifted into the role, and then discovered it's far less about plans and methodologies than it is about people, pressure, and learning to lead while you yourself still feel unsure.

Stuart shares the story behind the book, including the university project where he publicly chastised a teammate and the response from his dad that changed how he understood leadership. He and Andy dig into the real value and limits of PM certifications, why AI can help you communicate but can't replace the human part, the stakeholder questions younger Stuart was afraid to ask, what his mentor Wayne taught him about proximity and follow-through, and why a new sponsor has to be sold on your project rather than assumed into it. You'll also hear the 30-minute CV rule and the trouble it once caused him.

If you're looking for an honest, human look at what it actually takes to become the project manager, this episode is for you!

• "Well, now that you've reprimanded that person, you do realize you've got to go and pick them back up again?"
• "So going out into the world with this as my toolkit, and I thought it was a toolkit, but actually it turned out to be more like a life raft because I ended up clinging onto it without reasoning at an early point in my career."
• "There's an awful lot that falls between the processes, and that's what the early part of the book is really exploring."
• "I don't believe there's great value in repeatedly recycling the same learning over and over and over again. I think there's much greater value in taking that energy and going to learn something about your industry, the, actual industry that you're working in."
• "And also, I should add, you will have greater value to them by being there too, because you're the interesting change person in the room then, rather than one of another 200 change people walking around all talking about the same methodologies."
• "So be the person who is not avoiding hearing about challenges, but actively seeking them out, and cataloging them, and managing them."
• "Something else I've learned: they don't like you tiptoeing around them."
• "But if anybody's having to go into the office more frequently now, go and spend some of that time sitting with the people whose world you are changing."
• "But if your own leader, the person who's supposed to be championing you in the organization just doesn't get it, then you've got an impossible task on your hands."
• "When your sponsor goes or leaves and somebody else comes in and replaces them, don't just assume that, that because they've now been told they're gonna have to be the sponsor of your project, that they understand it and they can see the value in it."
• "Every project that you work on, the benefits, they are your accomplishments."
• "There is no point in being loyal to organizations. Be loyal to people."

• 00:00 Introduction
• 01:56 Start of Interview
• 02:15 Growing Up in Walsall and Learning Leadership from Dad
• 07:15 Drifting Into Project Management
• 09:06 When the Methodology Becomes a Life Raft
• 10:14 Why the Playbook That Worked Elsewhere Fails Here
• 11:49 Will AI Create PMs Who Look Prepared but Aren't?
• 13:37 Using AI to Understand a Difficult Stakeholder
• 15:31 The Value and Limits of PM Certifications
• 17:44 The Talent Triangle and Learning Your Industry
• 19:34 Stakeholders Are People, Not Org Charts
• 20:46 Curiosity and Asking Better Questions
• 21:54 Stop Tiptoeing: Busy Stakeholders Want the Point
• 22:55 What Wayne the Mentor Taught Stuart to Notice
• 25:47 Go Sit With Operations
• 28:19 The Power of Proximity
• 29:33 Sponsorship and Why PMOs Collapse
• 34:18 Earning Support and Managing Up
• 35:07 When a New Sponsor Takes Over
• 37:08 Keep Your CV 30 Minutes From Ready
• 39:39 When the 30-Minute Rule Got Stuart in Trouble
• 41:28 Project Lessons That Carried Into Family Life
• 43:23 End of Interview
• 43:58 Andy Comments After the Interview
• 47:08 Outtakes

You can learn more about Stuart and his work at InfluentialPMO.com.

For more learning on this topic, check out:

• Episode 474, which is an earlier and pretty candid conversation with Stuart about LinkedIn, careers, and AI.
• Episode 429 with Bill Dow. Bill and Andy talk about the signs that your PMO is going to fail, and you don't have to be in a Project Management Office to get value out of that discussion.
• Episode 441 with Michaela Flick. A discussion on the human side of project management that resonates with much of what you hear from Stuart.

You can chat directly with PMeLa, ;the podcast's AI person, to get episode recommendations and answers to your project management and leadership questions. Visit PeopleAndProjectsPodcast.com/PMeLa to chat with her.

I know you want to be a more confident leader–that's why you listen to this podcast. LEAD52 is a global community of people like you who are committed to transforming their ability to lead and deliver. It's 52 weeks of leadership learning, delivered right to your inbox, taking less than 5 minutes a week. And it's all for free. Learn more and sign up at GetLEAD52.com. Thanks!

Thank you for joining me for this episode of The People and Projects Podcast!

Talent Triangle: Business Acumen

Topics: Project Management, Leadership, Stakeholder Management, Sponsorship, PMO, Mentoring, Career Development, Certifications, Artificial Intelligence, Communication, Influence, Professional Growth

The following music was used for this episode:

Music: Brooklyn Nights by Tim Kulig License (CC BY 4.0): https://filmmusic.io/standard-license

Music: Fashion Corporate by Frank Schroeter License (CC BY 4.0): https://filmmusic.io/standard-license

In this episode, Andy sits down with Tom Rath, one of the most respected researchers on wellbeing and human potential, author of What's the Point? Turning Your Purpose Into a Superpower. Tom argues that we can be incredibly busy while slowly drifting away from what matters most, optimizing our schedules while our lives quietly leak away.

Andy and Tom explore why "follow your passion" can be harmful advice, how status seeking becomes career quicksand, and why our smartphones may be one of the greatest threats to purposeful living. They also discuss how many of us inherit ambitions from our parents that we never consciously chose, and how an honest awareness of mortality can sharpen our clarity, intentionality, and sense of purpose. Rather than treating purpose as one grand calling, Tom reframes it as something we create in small moments throughout the day.

If you're looking for a practical, and honestly a little uncomfortable, guide to leading and living with more purpose, this episode is for you!

• "Here's what I know with absolute certainty: you're wasting most of your day. Not because you're lazy, but because you've never asked the right question. You're so busy being busy that you've forgotten to ask why. You're optimizing your schedule while your life leaks away, hour by hour in meetings that don't matter and tasks that won't be remembered next week, let alone next year."
• "If you fail to do those things in a day and take that initiative and have those meaningful and purposeful conversations, and you put those off until tomorrow, tomorrow never really comes because we get into that responsive mode."
• "Passion by definition starts with you, and it's a little self-oriented, whereas I would argue purpose by definition has an other orientation to it, which is a much better idea for anchoring your energy in a day."
• "If you're not connecting back with the impact that it made on one person that day, it fails to kind of count in the way we motivate ourselves and think about our work on a daily basis."
• "I would argue that 90% of the purpose in life is built in those moments, not in some epiphany on a sunny day."
• "I would estimate that at least 80% of people, maybe 90%, make it all the way to the very end of their career in their life without ever seeing what they could have been best at in life."
• "Even as managers and leaders, if we don't take care of our own health and wellbeing first, we just have no shot at even being our best for other people that we manage."
• "There's always someone making twice as much as you or 10 times as much as you, and there's always somebody with more followers or more listeners or more readers or whatever it might be."
• "The eulogy virtues are about what am I doing today so I'll be a better dad, a better husband, a better friend, to help readers, to help people with the products I'm working on."
• "I would argue that 80% of people I see out in public today, out in the wild, are essentially working for their smartphone."
• "Their smartphone's running their life, and they're the ones salivating like one of Pavlov's dogs every time the darn thing blinks or buzzes or vibrates, right?"
• "Having your phone out sends an implicit message to the other person that the little black box on the table matters more than the other person, and it degrades the quality of the conversation."
• "The one thing we've all got in common is we have today to try and do some things that serve a purpose and help another person, and if you miss that opportunity, it's gone."
• "None of them, none of the headstones say anything about those kind of resume virtues that we were talking about."

• 00:00 Introduction
• 02:00 Start of Interview
• 02:08 Busy, Yet Drifting from What Matters
• 05:50 Rethinking the "One True Calling"
• 07:38 Why "Follow Your Passion" Can Backfire
• 09:26 From "What Do I Do?" to "Who Do I Help?"
• 11:20 How Our Parents' Paths Shape Us
• 12:11 When Admirable Influence Becomes a Limiting Script
• 15:01 Unlearning the "Always the Hardest Worker" Mindset
• 16:55 Are We Nudging Our Kids Into Our Dreams?
• 19:23 Status Seeking as Career Quicksand
• 22:02 Choosing Your Own Scoreboard
• 23:38 Smartphones and the Threat to Purpose
• 26:28 Making Technology Work for You
• 28:05 How Mortality Sharpens Purpose
• 30:52 What the Headstones Don't Say
• 32:33 Helping Kids Build Lives That Matter
• 35:21 End of Interview
• 35:48 Andy Comments After the Interview
• 40:20 Outtakes

You can learn more about Tom and his new book at tomrath.org/whats-the-point.

For more learning on this topic, check out:

• Episode 132 with Tom Rath. An earlier conversation with Tom, digging into his story and his research on wellbeing.
• Episode 140 with Tom Rath. Another previous discussion with Tom on wellness and living with strengths.
• Episode 31 with Adam Grant. Adam's first-ever podcast interview, where he shares insights on how to lead with meaning.
• Episode 261 with David Epstein. A conversation about his book Range, a helpful complement on career decisions for kids and for us.

You can chat directly with PMeLa—the podcast's AI persona—to get episode recommendations and answers to your project management and leadership questions. Visit PeopleAndProjectsPodcast.com/PMeLa to chat with her.

I know you want to be a more confident leader–that's why you listen to this podcast. LEAD52 is a global community of people like you who are committed to transforming their ability to lead and deliver. It's 52 weeks of leadership learning, delivered right to your inbox, taking less than 5 minutes a week. And it's all for free. Learn more and sign up at GetLEAD52.com. Thanks!

Thank you for joining me for this episode of The People and Projects Podcast!

Talent Triangle: Business Acumen

Topics: Purpose, Leadership, Career Development, Passion, Wellbeing, Intentionality, Status, Comparison, Digital Distraction, Mortality, Parenting, Meaningful Work, Project Management

The following music was used for this episode:

Music: Summer Awakening by Frank Schroeter License (CC BY 4.0): https://filmmusic.io/standard-license

Music: Tuesday by Sascha Ende License (CC BY 4.0): https://filmmusic.io/standard-license