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

In this episode, Andy sits down with Attia Qureshi, a coach and negotiation expert who is co-author, with John Richardson, of Never Settle. There's no shortage of great negotiation advice out there, yet in real conversations with real stakes and real emotions, that advice often fails to turn into action. This book tackles that gap between insight and habit.

Attia shares why emotions are not a distraction from negotiation but central to it, why getting clear about what you actually want is harder than it sounds, and how we leave value on the table without realizing it. You'll hear practical stories, from resetting a difficult relationship with a glass of lemonade to expanding the pie in a salary negotiation, plus small daily exercises for building resilience to rejection and learning to say no in a way that strengthens relationships rather than damaging them.

If you're looking for practical, doable ways to become a more confident negotiator and influencer, this episode is for you!

• "You can get more by caring about what the other person needs and building a strong relational foundation."
• "People are not born amazing negotiators. They develop that skill over time, just like people are not born confident."
• "You have to practice that small step out in the real world where the stakes are low and build that skill day after day, month after month."
• "You and I have probably already negotiated half a dozen times today."
• "When someone gives us something, we want to return the favor."
• "New studies now show that 90 to 95% of decision-making comes from unconscious emotional processing."
• "So many of us quit before we even start."
• "But if we do have a goal and we do prepare for the conversation, our likelihood of success is double."
• "A good negotiation doesn't always mean getting 'yes' at the end of it."
• "I always tell my students, people can almost always help you. It depends on if they want to or not."

• 00:00 Introduction
• 02:06 Start of Interview
• 02:17 Growing Up: Early Lessons in Conflict
• 07:10 Negotiation and Confidence Are Skills, Not Personality
• 08:04 Life Is Full of Everyday Negotiations
• 10:30 Why Negotiation Training Often Fails
• 12:30 Resetting a Difficult Relationship
• 17:20 Influence vs. Manipulation
• 22:33 Emotions, Fear, and Building Resilience
• 28:00 Using the Emotion Wheel
• 29:36 Getting Clear on What You Really Want
• 33:39 Expanding the Pie: Creating Value
• 40:50 The Power of Saying No
• 47:27 Teaching Kids to Negotiate
• 51:23 End of Interview
• 51:55 Andy Comments After the Interview
• 55:22 Outtakes

You can learn more about Attia and her work at AttiaQureshi.com.

For more learning on this topic, check out:

• Episode 157 with Dr. Robert Cialdini. Known as the godfather of influence, his name came up several times during today's discussion, making this a great follow-up.
• Episode 412 with Scott Walker. A former Scotland Yard hostage negotiator who shares a lot of practical lessons about influence.
• Episode 385 with Vanessa Patrick. She wrote one of the best books on how to say no, a fitting companion to today's conversation.

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: Negotiation, Influence, Leadership, Project Management, Reciprocity, Emotional Intelligence, Resilience, Saying No, Stakeholder Management, Relationship Building, Value Creation, Confidence

The following music was used for this episode:

Music: Quantum Sparks (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 sits down with Fred Marshall, entrepreneur, founder of Quantum Learning, and author of Thrive: The Antidote to Future Shock. Fred introduces his Super Eight, eight interconnected areas of life that shape our ability to adapt, lead, and grow in a world of accelerating change.

Together, they explore why doing all the seemingly right things, the endless life hacks, can still leave you feeling off. Fred makes the case that attention is the single variable that governs almost everything, and that you can ignore almost all of the change coming at you and still thrive. You'll hear about managing your neural net, guarding your time with two 90-minute focus blocks, clearing the open loops that clog your thinking, and choosing the relationships and ecosystems that lift you up. Fred also walks through PANDA, a simple five-step method inspired by a panda that helps you stop a mental spiral and regain focus.

If you're looking for a practical, hopeful way to lead through an age of AI and constant change, this episode is for you!

• "You can ignore almost all of it."
• "So everything, everything you look at, every book you read, every text you read, everything you do is shaping your neural net."
• "If you look at that rock, you're gonna hit that rock."
• "Two 90-minute blocks a day is my new normal."
• "If you want time to go fast, turn on your computer, open your iPad, or look at your phone."
• "An open loop is something that needs to get done, that's not done yet, that's still taking up space in your head."
• "The worst thing is to think of something when you can't act on it."
• "The people you surround yourself with have an enormous impact on your life and how you think and how everything unfolds, and it's probably the most important choice you make is who you hang out with."
• "If you develop relationships with people in a growing ecosystem, you're gonna have a great career, you're gonna have a great life."
• "I want to prepare people so that it's, it's more of surfing a big wave rather than getting overwhelmed by a tsunami."
• "And I think if you're in your head and you're spiraling, getting out of your head and into action is how you really close the loop."
• "But if you can just stop for a second and give that person your full attention, even if it's just for a minute, it's so powerful."

• 00:00 Introduction
• 01:47 Start of Interview
• 02:00 Getting to Know Fred
• 04:29 What Most People Get Wrong About Change
• 06:29 Designing Your Life
• 08:03 The Life Hack Paradox
• 08:34 Attention: The Single Variable
• 10:20 The Super Eight and the Neural Net
• 13:00 Guarding Your Time: Fred 3.0
• 15:38 Take Care of Your Cells
• 16:09 Rethinking Sleep and Open Loops
• 17:46 Minimum Viable Exercise
• 21:23 The PANDA Method
• 26:22 Designing Your Relationships
• 28:32 Riding Growing Ecosystems
• 31:00 Building Systems for the Future
• 34:12 Applying It at Home
• 36:48 End of Interview
• 37:19 Andy Comments After the Interview
• 40:32 Outtakes

You can learn more about Fred and his work at thrivefutureyou.com.

For more learning on this topic, check out:

• Episode 437 with Nada Sanders. A conversation about future-prepping your career in the age of AI.
• Episode 382 with Hal Hershfield. Ideas from his book Your Future Self that remain completely relevant to our times today.
• Episode 313 with futurist Brian David Johnson. A discussion that changed how Andy thinks about trying to predict the future.

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: Artificial Intelligence, Change Management, Leadership, Attention, Focus, Productivity, Resilience, Relationships, Systems Thinking, Future of Work

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

In this episode, Andy sits down with Cornelia Choe, leadership advisor and founder of global CEO peer groups, author of The Panoramic Leader: How Great Leaders See Differently, co-authored with Marshall Goldsmith. Cornelia's core idea is that the "mental maps" we form early in life quietly shape how we lead today, and that our decisions are only as good as the world we're actually able to see.

Andy and Cornelia explore why so many new executives fail within their first 18 months, what she calls a visibility problem rather than an execution problem. They dig into practical tools: microtranslations for sharing ideas others can absorb, optimistic fear that lets us move forward without ignoring real risk, and the balcony-and-dance-floor balance of perspective and proximity. Cornelia also shares how getting up close to stakeholders, and even to her own kids, opens up options we couldn't see before.

If you're looking for practical ways to see more clearly and make better decisions in an uncertain world, this episode is for you!

• "And the truth is, sometimes the problem is not that we lack data, it's that we're not seeing broadly enough."
• "And if you truly believe something, stick with it, keep it on your map, and have the courage to go through with it."
• "But the problem is it's no longer enough to be right in today's world, and having an incomplete picture is just as dangerous as getting it wrong."
• "Optimistic fear is the ability to keep the risks and the danger in mind, yet to still go forward and to use our fear to fuel our momentum going forward."
• "We don't need to have everything solved, but just getting up close can reward us with a lot of options."
• "I mean, in some ways you could argue that our brain's autopilot is not a bug, it's a feature."
• "You don't have to accept everything you hear or everything your stakeholders tell you, but we do need to think about it and, in a thoughtful way, choose to accept it or not."
• "And in a world that's constantly changing, this is going to be an even more crucial skill because your decisions are only as good as the world you see, and the most successful leaders learn to see more in today's world."
• "It's just a good reminder to me that a smart, well-intentioned person can see situations quite differently."
• "Our identity is created by the people around us, the people who share their perspectives with, and the perspectives that we allow to become part of our mental maps."
• "I heard someone once say that we're all driven by just a few lines of code that run in the background, and as a former software developer, I can relate to that."

• 00:00 Introduction
• 01:48 Start of Interview
• 02:00 How Early Life Experiences Shape Our Maps
• 07:50 Why New Executives Fail in the First 18 Months
• 12:20 Microtranslations
• 16:01 Optimistic Fear vs. Pessimistic Fear
• 21:53 Keeping Curiosity Alive and Getting Off Autopilot
• 25:59 How We React When Our Map Is Challenged
• 29:25 The Balcony and the Dance Floor
• 34:41 How Our Circles Shape and Narrow Our Maps
• 38:33 Panoramic Leadership at Home
• 41:20 End of Interview
• 41:57 Andy Comments After the Interview
• 45:00 Outtakes

You can learn more about Cornelia and her work at substack.com/@corneliachoe.

For more learning on this topic, check out:

• Episode 489 with Marty Dubin. It's a book about blind spots and how they can easily derail us, an excellent complement to this discussion.
• Episode 318 with John Stepper. He's the author of Working Out Loud, and his approach to developing people has a lot of similarities to the leader circles that Cornelia runs.
• Episode 54 with Roger L. Martin. Roger is often in the top 10 of the Thinkers50, and we talk about how you can hold opposing ideas at the same time, very aligned with this book.

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: Leadership, Decision-Making, Mental Models, Stakeholder Engagement, Perspective, Curiosity, Self-Awareness, Change, Psychological Safety, Executive Effectiveness, Project Management

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

In this episode, Andy welcomes back Marcus Buckingham, bestselling author and researcher, to discuss his new book, Design Love In: How to Unleash the Most Powerful Force in Business. For 25 years, Marcus studied the most productive teams, loyal customers, and effective leaders in the world, and the word that kept appearing in his data was one he kept changing: love.

Andy and Marcus explore what love actually means in a business context, including how leaders are really experience makers whether they know it or not. You will hear the remarkable story of Josh D'Amaro, the CEO of Disney, and what his leadership reveals about designing love into a team's daily experience. Marcus unpacks the five feelings that lead people to say they love working for a leader, starting with something counterintuitive: control. The conversation also covers tough love, AI's limits as an experience maker, and how these principles can transform how we lead our families too.

If you're looking for a fresh, evidence-based look at what drives sustained high performance, this episode is for you!

• "I kept hearing that word (love) and shame on me, but I did keep changing it because I felt like it was a careless exaggeration of the word like or something."
• "Don't keep changing the word (love). The word's the word. The question really should be why and how do we replicate it?"
• "You're paid to change behavior. That's all you're paid to do. You're not paid to run a project. You're paid to change behavior as a leader."
• "When you send an email, it's not an email. It's an experience for the person on the other end. When you call that team meeting, it's not a team meeting. It's an experience."
• "You join a company and then you quit your boss."
• "Undesigned experiences lead to unpredictable outcomes."
• "It's cowardly, not loving. It's cowardly to leave them in that job."
• "I am for you. I am for you. That doesn't always mean that I am going to tell you what you wanna hear. It means I want you to flourish."
• "Loving's an ingredient, right? Loving isn't, 'Be nicer.' Loving's like, 'What are you trying to do for me?'"
• "The beginning of love is rules. The beginning of love is clarity."

• 00:00 Introduction
• 01:48 Start of Interview
• 01:57 Why Marcus Spent Decades Avoiding the Word "Love"
• 05:47 Misconceptions About Love in Business
• 11:29 Inside the "Josh Effect"
• 18:02 What Great Leaders Don't Do
• 22:13 Local Leadership and Variation in Team Experience
• 27:54 When Senior Leaders Couldn't Say the Word
• 31:04 Applying the "Is This Loving or Unloving?" Lens
• 37:43 Tough Love and Difficult Performance Conversations
• 46:20 Practical Takeaways: The Five Feelings of Love
• 50:25 AI and the Role of Love in Leadership
• 56:34 Designing Love Into Parenting and Family
• 1:01:26 End of Interview
• 1:01:57 Andy Comments After the Interview
• 1:05:03 Outtakes

You can learn more about Marcus and his work at BuckinghamInstitute.com.

For more learning on this topic, check out:

• Episode 252, which is our earlier interview with Marcus Buckingham. That book still impacts how Andy leads years after having Marcus on the first time.
• Episode 332 with Kevin Eikenberry and Wayne Turmel. A discussion about keeping your teams engaged and connected, even if they're not co-located.
• Episode 324 with Jim Harter. Jim is the Chief Scientist at Gallup and they have an insightful discussion about building resilient and thriving teams.

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: Leadership, Love in Business, Team Culture, Employee Engagement, Customer Experience, Project Management, AI, Artificial Intelligence, Parenting, Organizational Culture, Experience Design

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

In this episode, Andy welcomes back Steve Kahle, entrepreneur, executive, and fractional CIO, author of Leadership Recall: Harness Insights. Accelerate Innovation. LEAD WITH AUTHORITY. Steve first joined the podcast in episode 184 to discuss email overload. This time, the conversation turns to a challenge every leader faces: the forgetting curve. Research suggests we forget up to 83% of what we learn within a week, and Steve argues this is not just a learning problem, it's a leadership problem.

Steve shares his CCR framework (Capture, Catalog, and Recall), along with practical tools such as the Anki flashcard app and the Email Me voice-note app, to build what he calls a learning operating system. The discussion covers how to design a recall fitness practice in as little as three minutes a day and how removing friction at every step keeps the system sustainable.

If you're looking for a practical system to stop letting great insights slip away and start leading with more authority, this episode is for you!

• "I think God put in my heart to be a relentless optimizer. I like to see things work and work well."
• "When you really zoom out in life, those who are really successful have figured out what are the frameworks, what are the methodologies that work, and they simply apply those."
• "Our subconscious mind can handle about 11 million bits of data per second, but about 40 bits conscious mind."
• "I went all in. Christ totally transformed my heart, and I'm realizing that scripture memory is a superpower."
• "Time swiftly washes away the obvious."
• "Learning really is a privilege, and we need to be able to find time that works with our daily rhythms."
• "Three minutes a day is really all you need to be able to see tremendous traction on being able to recall things that matter"
• "Instead of 'I'm bad at remembering names,' you could, do a reframe like, 'Hey, I'm getting better at remembering people's names.'"

• 00:00 Introduction
• 01:48 Start of Interview
• 02:06 Early Experiences and the Instinct to Remember
• 04:08 Is Memory a Natural Gift or a Trainable Skill?
• 05:19 Forgetting as a Feature, Not Just a Bug
• 07:10 The Leadership Cost of Forgetting
• 09:10 Shifting the Bottleneck from Input to Retention
• 12:02 The Five-Hour Rule and Three Learning Archetypes
• 14:19 The CCR Framework in Practice: Capture, Catalog, and Recall
• 19:50 Removing Friction from Your Learning System
• 23:23 Inside Anki: Cloze Deletions and Building Cards
• 26:10 Organizing Your Recall Decks
• 27:30 Real-World Results: When Readers Apply the System
• 28:56 Building Recall Habits in Your Kids
• 32:50 How to Get the Book
• 34:01 End of Interview
• 34:17 Andy Comments After the Interview
• 37:46 Outtakes

You can learn more about Steve and his work at leadershiprecall.com.

For more learning on this topic, check out:

• Episode 184 with Steve Kahle. It's our previous conversation about keeping your head above water when drowning in email and commitments. Definitely recommend checking it out.
• Episode 411 with Laura Mae Martin. She's the head of productivity at Google and shares ideas that I still use to this day.
• Episode 376 with Nick Sonnenberg. It's a book about helping you and your team stop drowning in all the information and commitments at work.

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: Leadership, Memory, Learning, Productivity, Knowledge Management, Recall, Spaced Repetition, Personal Development, Continuous Learning, Networking, Project Management

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