Positive Leadership

In December 2020, a neurologist at the Pitié-Salpêtrière told Olivier Goy he had ALS, Charcot's disease. No cure. Three to five years. He spent four months on the floor. Then a sentence came to him, so simple it almost made him laugh: if I stay depressed, I punish myself twice.

Olivier founded 123Venture in 2000, with nine months of professional experience, to open private equity to ordinary savers, then co-founded October to finance small and medium businesses. Since his diagnosis he has become an ambassador of the Paris Brain Institute and has raised more than €4.5 million for research through a film, Invincible été, a book, Invincible, written with Anne Fulda, a concert at the Olympia, La Fresque Généreuse and now Invincible Hope. In this episode he speaks through Invincible Voice, a tool built with the researchers of Kyutai that rebuilt his voice from recordings made before the disease took it, and that he made open source for every patient.

Last year I took part in a campaign where leaders spoke publicly about the things we are trained to hide, and I shared my own story. It was one of the most liberating things I have done. Olivier has taken this further than anyone I know. I came to this conversation expecting to talk about courage. Olivier gave us something rarer: a method for loving life.

In our conversation, we explore:

→ From Annemasse to Paris: building two companies as an outsider, and why legitimacy comes from being useful
→ The diagnosis, the four months on the floor, and the decision that turned him into a fighter
→ Leading without a voice or a stride: how ALS rewrote his definition of leadership
→ Why people do not follow the invulnerable: leadership as a mission, visible cracks and generosity
→ AI that gives back: Invincible Voice, patient data at the Paris Brain Institute, and the Invincible Hope mural at Mount Sinai in New York

"The door that looks locked is usually just heavy. Push it. Legitimacy is not granted to you, you take it by being useful." Olivier Goy

If you have ever waited for permission to start something, or to tell someone what they mean to you, this conversation is for you.

Olivier's initiatives:

Invincible Hope: https://www.invincible-hope.com/
Invincible été, the film: https://www.invincible-ete.com/
Invincible, the book: https://www.invincible-ete.com/livre
The Invincible été research fund: https://institutducerveau.org/actualites/linstitut-cerveau-associe-au-lancement-fonds-philanthropique-invincible-ete-pour-recherche-sur-sla
Give to AI research at the Paris Brain Institute: https://don.institutducerveau.org/invincible_hope/~mon-don

RELATED EPISODES

• Mo Gawdat, former Chief Business Officer of Google X (2021), engineering happiness through expectation management: https://www.buzzsprout.com/1798971/episodes/8944613
• Gianpiero Petriglieri, INSEAD professor (2025), leadership, love, intention and freedom: https://www.buzzsprout.com/1798971/episodes/17854175
• Dr Donna Hicks, Harvard (2026), dignity as the foundation of positive leadership: https://www.buzzsprout.com/1798971/episodes/19240650

New here? Subscribe to Positive Leadership & You for one edition a month, written for leaders who want to build companies and communities people thrive in. https://www.linkedin.com/newsletters/positive-leadership-you-6970390170017669121/

Want to go deeper? Listen to the Positive Leadership Podcast on your favourite platform. 130+ conversations with the leaders, founders and thinkers shaping a more human future of work.

🎧 Apple Podcast: https://podcasts.apple.com/fr/podcast/positive-leadership/id1574911588
🎤 Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/1EdnJcYgh9nXPTFJ5euOBf 

He kept promising himself he would fight poverty one day. First at retirement. Then in his fifties. Then his forties. Until the day it felt like he was lying to himself. So one weekend he started cold-calling nonprofits at random, and walked away from a career most people spend their lives chasing.

Atul Satija is the founder of The/Nudge Institute, one of India’s most ambitious anti-poverty organisations, and the “Founder 2.0” of GiveIndia. Before that, he spent nearly two decades in the front line of the tech industry: Google, then InMobi, where he sat in the room as it raised 200 million dollars from SoftBank and had to make the calls that come with that kind of money. He has pledged half his net worth to giving. He is the person JP wanted to talk to about the single hardest question in social impact: not how to care, but how to make caring actually work at scale.

I came to this conversation from my own leap. When I moved from leading teams at Microsoft to building Live for Good, I discovered something that still surprises me: it can be harder to raise a small grant for a good cause than to close an enormous enterprise deal. Atul has lived that gap for years, and he has thought harder than almost anyone about how to close it. What he taught me is that generosity is not enough. You have to engineer it.

In our conversation, we explore:

→ What extreme poverty actually is: families of five or six living on three hundred dollars a year, and why the loss of dignity cuts as deep as the loss of income
→ Why the model that lifts a family out of poverty for good worked everywhere and scaled nowhere, and his answer: shape the state, do not replace it
→ The jar, the rocks and the sand: “you don’t want to build a parallel railroad, you want to fix what’s broken so bigger trains run on the same track”
→ Give till it hurts: why the poorest communities give a larger share of what they have than the richest do
→ AI seen from the bottom: why, for those who have almost nothing, there is nothing left for it to take

“If you’re giving what does not change anything in your life, then it is not really giving. You’re buying something with some extra money.”

Atul Satija, founder of The/Nudge Institute

If you have ever told yourself you will do the meaningful thing later, once the timing is right, this episode is about the day later stops being an option.

🎧 Related episodes:

• Nandan Nilekani, who wrote The/Nudge’s first cheque, “Achieving ambitious goals”: https://www.buzzsprout.com/1798971/episodes/13663342
• James Chen, “Seeing the Future and Transforming Millions of Lives”: https://www.buzzsprout.com/1798971/episodes/16724860
• Raj Sisodia, “How Conscious Capitalism Brings Love into Business”: https://www.buzzsprout.com/1798971/episodes/19005670

New here? Subscribe to Positive Leadership & You for one edition a month, written for leaders who want to build companies and communities people thrive in. https://www.linkedin.com/newsletters/positive-leadership-you-6970390170017669121/

Want to go deeper? Listen to the Positive Leadership Podcast on your favourite platform. 130+ conversations with the leaders, founders and thinkers shaping a more human future of work.

🎧 Apple Podcast: https://podcasts.apple.com/fr/podcast/positive-leadership/id1574911588
🎤 Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/1EdnJcYgh9nXPTFJ5euOBf 

Regrouper les infirmiers pour faire des économies. Leur retirer le téléphone, un centre d'appels s'occupera de tout. Chronométrer chaque geste : deux minutes trente pour un bas de contention, dix minutes pour une piqûre. Poser un code-barres sur la porte du patient, pour scanner à l'entrée et à la sortie. Chaque étape est raisonnable. Le résultat est un cauchemar, et c'était le vrai visage des soins à domicile aux Pays-Bas.

Frédéric Laloux est l'auteur de Reinventing Organizations, autoédité en 2014, vendu à plus d'un million d'exemplaires et traduit dans plus de vingt langues. Ancien associate partner chez McKinsey, il a tout quitté à 32 ans après une séance de coaching qui devait durer une heure et en a duré trois. Il a passé des années à étudier une douzaine d'organisations qui fonctionnent sans managers, puis a refusé la suite logique : les conférences à six chiffres, les sièges au conseil, le statut de gourou. Il vit aujourd'hui à Ithaca, dans l'État de New York, et a cofondé avec sa femme Hélène The Week, une expérience collective sur le climat suivie par plus de 75 000 personnes dans 500 entreprises.

Je suis venu à cette conversation avec un aveu à faire. « Predict and control », prévoir et contrôler : c'est un vocabulaire que j'ai moi-même utilisé, et sans doute abusé, pendant des années. Frédéric ne juge pas cela. Il montre simplement, exemple après exemple, qu'un autre regard existe, et ce qu'il libère quand on ose le porter. C'est l'une des conversations les plus dérangeantes, et les plus pleines d'espoir, que j'aie eues sur ce podcast.

Dans cette conversation, nous explorons :
→ Buurtzorg, fondé en 2006 par Jos de Blok avec quatre infirmières : aujourd'hui 15 000 soignants, zéro manager, et la moitié seulement des heures de soins que les médecins prescrivent, parce que le but n'est pas d'optimiser la minute de traitement mais de rendre le patient autonome
→ Les trois piliers de Reinventing Organizations : l'autogouvernance, la plénitude, la raison d'être évolutive, et le basculement de « predict and control » vers « sense and respond »
→ Pourquoi le problème n'est presque jamais les individus, mais la structure : ce que Frédéric a compris après quatre ans de coaching de comités de direction
→ L'IA comme révélateur : le même outil, les mêmes équipes, et deux regards qui mènent à deux mondes opposés
→ Douglas McGregor et les théories X et Y : les deux sont vraies, parce que les deux sont autoréalisatrices

« Quand on enlève la hiérarchie de pouvoir, on enlève une sorte de poison qui existe entre nous. »
Frédéric Laloux, auteur de Reinventing Organizations

Si vous avez déjà senti qu'une réunion cachait plus qu'elle ne disait, que personne n'osait nommer l'éléphant dans la pièce, cet épisode vous expliquera pourquoi, et ce qu'on peut faire d'autre.

🎧 Épisodes liés :

• Jos de Blok, fondateur de Buurtzorg, « Transforming healthcare through self-management » : https://www.buzzsprout.com/1798971/episodes/10674003
• Barbara Fredrickson, « Understanding love and positivity in leadership » : https://www.buzzsprout.com/1798971/episodes/9437036
• Raj Sisodia, « How Conscious Capitalism Brings Love into Business » : https://www.buzzsprout.com/1798971/episodes/19005670

New here? Subscribe to Positive Leadership & You for one edition a month, written for leaders who want to build companies and communities people thrive in. https://www.linkedin.com/newsletters/positive-leadership-you-6970390170017669121/

Want to go deeper? Listen to the Positive Leadership Podcast on your favourite platform. 130+ conversations with the leaders, founders and thinkers shaping a more human future of work.

🎧 Apple Podcast: https://podcasts.apple.com/fr/podcast/positive-leadership/id1574911588
🎤 Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/1EdnJcYgh9nXPTFJ5euOBf 

Every August, I offer you something different. Not a new conversation, but a pause. 

This was the year AI stopped being a headline and became part of our daily lives as leaders. I dedicated a whole series to it, from robotics to education to medicine to trust. And one paradox kept coming back, conversation after conversation: the more powerful the technology becomes, the more the difference is made by what is deeply, irreducibly human. 

So for this summer special I went back through the season and selected seven moments around one conviction. This era demands that we show up with our humanity at its best. More human than ever. 

We explore four powers together. 

→ Power one, prepare your mind. Ethan Kross on chatter, the voice inside your head, and the toolbox to master it. The brain does not come with a user's manual, so you build your own. 

→ Power two, own your story. Nicholas Thompson on recognising the generational patterns he inherited, and Raj Sisodia on why trauma cannot heal in silence and in shame. Know yourself, love yourself, be yourself. 

→ Power three, magnify your purpose with AI. Stéphane Bancel on why the CEO has to be the chief AI officer and must not delegate it, and MacKenzie Price on the school where children learn academics in two hours a day. 

→ Power four, keep humans at the center. Rana el Kaliouby on emotional intelligence and privacy by principle, and Raffi Krikorian on the hardest question of all: who owns your window to the world? 

I close with four lessons, one per power, and one practice I want to leave you with for the summer. I call it the summer walk. Fifteen minutes a day, no phone, no podcast, not even mine. Just you and four questions. 

Pick one tool, one idea from this episode, and practice it before September. 

Thank you for listening, for your messages and your ideas for guests. This community of positive leaders across so many countries is what keeps this podcast alive and growing. If this episode resonates, share it with one person who needs a spark this summer. 

I will see you in early September with a brand new season. 

New here? Subscribe to Positive Leadership & You for one edition a month, written for leaders who want to build companies and communities people thrive in. https://www.linkedin.com/newsletters/positive-leadership-you-6970390170017669121/

Want to go deeper? Listen to the Positive Leadership Podcast on your favourite platform. 130+ conversations with the leaders, founders and thinkers shaping a more human future of work.

🎧 Apple Podcast: https://podcasts.apple.com/fr/podcast/positive-leadership/id1574911588
🎤 Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/1EdnJcYgh9nXPTFJ5euOBf 

Il roule vers la Vendée un soir de Noël, coincé sur l'A10. Un TGV le double. Il sait qu'il est complet, il a essayé d'y acheter une place. Autour de lui, des centaines de voitures avec un seul passager à bord.

Frédéric Mazzella est le fondateur et président de BlaBlaCar. Normalien, physicien, passé par Stanford et la NASA, il a créé la première licorne française et l'a transformée en la plus grande communauté de voyageurs au monde : 100 millions de membres, 29 millions de membres actifs par an, et désormais 41 pays depuis l'expansion annoncée en juin 2026. Avant cela, il y a eu sept ans sans salaire, six modèles économiques testés dont cinq qui échouent, et six banques qui refusent de lui ouvrir un compte. L'une d'elles le raccompagne à la porte avec une tape sur l'épaule : « Merci monsieur, mais Internet, on a déjà donné. » Il est aujourd'hui cofondateur et président de Dift, qui redirige les budgets des entreprises vers le monde associatif, et coprésident de France Digitale.

Ce qui m'a le plus frappé, c'est la constance de sa boussole. Il m'a dit que le rôle de l'entrepreneur est d'améliorer la société, et chez lui ce n'est pas une déclaration d'intention, c'est un bilan chiffré : BlaBlaCar évite aujourd'hui 2,5 millions de tonnes de CO2 par an, soit environ 0,5 % des émissions d'un pays comme la France, deux fois le trafic routier de Paris. Puis il a recommencé ailleurs, avec Dift, sur le financement du monde associatif. Et quand je lui demande par quoi commencer, il inverse l'ordre qu'on nous enseigne : l'impact social et environnemental d'abord, le modèle économique ensuite. Parce que des modèles, dit-il, il en existe des dizaines et des dizaines.

Dans cette conversation, nous explorons :
→ Pourquoi il faut se focaliser sur l'impact social et environnemental positif d'abord, et ne chercher le modèle économique qu'ensuite
→ BlaBlaCar par les chiffres du climat : 2,5 millions de tonnes de CO2 évitées par an, et l'idée toute simple derrière, mieux vaut deux passagers par voiture que deux voitures par passager
→ Le modèle D.R.E.A.M.S. et l'étude Entering the Trust Age menée avec Arun Sundararajan (NYU Stern) auprès de 18 289 membres dans 11 pays : un membre BlaBlaCar au profil complet obtient 88 % de confiance, contre 58 % pour un collègue et 42 % pour un voisin
→ Pourquoi l'entrepreneuriat n'a pas d'ascenseurs, seulement des escaliers, et pourquoi seules les structures qui ont assimilé le sunk cost progressent vraiment
→ Ce que la musique lui a appris : la différence entre jouer du Chopin et jouer son propre morceau, et pourquoi un fondateur n'arrive pas à tuer sa propre idée
→ Le jour où la directrice de Normale Sup a accueilli sa promotion par « vous savez remplir un QCM », et pourquoi tout a basculé
→ Dift, l'éco-anxiété et le financement du monde associatif : écoper, ou boucher le trou, avec neuf modèles économiques déjà testés en trois ans
→ Des principes plutôt que des process : fail, learn, succeed, et pourquoi une culture qui ne blâme pas l'échec libère l'action

« Il faut se focaliser sur l'impact social et environnemental positif initialement, et puis ensuite on trouvera le modèle ou l'équilibre économique. »

Frédéric Mazzella, fondateur et président de BlaBlaCar

Si vous portez un projet dont la mission vous tient debout mais dont le modèle économique n'existe pas encore, cet épisode vous dira dans quel ordre construire.

🎧 Épisodes liés :

• Stephen M. R. Covey, « Building a culture of trust » : https://www.buzzsprout.com/1798971/episodes/12252258
• Muriel Pénicaud, « [FR] Diriger comme un chef d'orchestre » : https://www.buzzsprout.com/1798971/episodes/14851596
• Akhtar Badshah, « Activating Purpose Mindsets » : https://www.buzzsprout.com/1798971/episodes/9512920

New here? Subscribe to Positive Leadership & You for one edition a month, written for leaders who want to build companies and communities people thrive in. https://www.linkedin.com/newsletters/positive-leadership-you-6970390170017669121/

Want to go deeper? Listen to the Positive Leadership Podcast on your favourite platform. 130+ conversations with the leaders, founders and thinkers shaping a more human future of work.

🎧 Apple Podcast: https://podcasts.apple.com/fr/podcast/positive-leadership/id1574911588
🎤 Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/1EdnJcYgh9nXPTFJ5euOBf 

The voice in your head has been talking since before you finished this sentence. For most leaders it is the least managed instrument they own, and the most consequential.

Ethan Kross is the psychologist and author who has spent over two decades studying that inner voice. He directs the Emotion & Self-Control Laboratory at the University of Michigan, advises Fortune 500 leaders and Navy SEALs, and wrote the international bestsellers Chatter and Shift. He also discovered his single most-cited tool by using it on himself, at 3am, mid-spiral, when he caught himself typing "bodyguards for academics" into a search bar and said out loud: "Ethan, what are you doing?"

I came to this conversation with my own history with that voice. I spent my career in high-pressure rooms where the most important conversation was often the one running inside my own head, and nobody ever handed me the manual for it. Ethan has spent twenty-five years writing that manual, and he makes it practical: self-talk you can actually change, anxiety you can read instead of fear, emotions that become information. And as a new grandfather, I did not expect a conversation about the brain to end up teaching me so much about grace.

In our conversation, we explore:
→ Why your emotions are information to read, not problems to delete, and what changes the moment you believe that
→ Distanced self-talk: how the simple shift of using your own name reroutes the way your brain handles pressure
→ Why self-awareness is only step one, and the mental tools that have to follow it
→ The business case for mental fitness: how unmanaged emotion quietly consumes the attention your organisation is paying for
→ How a leader gives hard feedback from a secure base, and why leadership falters when we shy away from it

"This brain over here does not come with a user's manual." Ethan Kross, psychologist and author

If you have ever read to the end of a page and realised you absorbed none of it because your mind was somewhere else, this episode hands you the beginning of that missing manual.

RELATED EPISODES

• Pete Carroll, Seattle Seahawks head coach (2021), Learning to "always compete": https://www.buzzsprout.com/1798971/episodes/9268299
• Mo Gawdat, former Chief Business Officer of Google X (2021), Engineering happiness for yourself and others: https://www.buzzsprout.com/1798971/episodes/8944613
• Dr Caroline Leaf, neuroscientist (2024), Managing your mind: https://www.buzzsprout.com/1798971/episodes/15018482

New here? Subscribe to Positive Leadership & You for one edition a month, written for leaders who want to build companies and communities people thrive in. https://www.linkedin.com/newsletters/positive-leadership-you-6970390170017669121/

Want to go deeper? Listen to the Positive Leadership Podcast on your favourite platform. 130+ conversations with the leaders, founders and thinkers shaping a more human future of work.

🎧 Apple Podcast: https://podcasts.apple.com/fr/podcast/positive-leadership/id1574911588
🎤 Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/1EdnJcYgh9nXPTFJ5euOBf 

Six months into her first management job, Anu Bharadwaj got the feedback no leader wants to hear: she was too intense, she pushed her team too hard. She was stunned. She was only asking them to do what she would do herself.

Anu Bharadwaj began at Microsoft building video games, then made a bold leap to Atlassian in 2014, where she rose from product lead on Jira to COO and then President. Along the way she shaped Team Anywhere, led one of the company's hardest cloud transformations, and kept returning to a single question: how do teams actually work better together?

I came to this conversation as someone who made the same early mistake she did. In my first years at Microsoft I was known as Mr Plus, always asking for more, always raising the bar, until coaching taught me the difference between driving people and leading them. Anu and I share a Microsoft DNA, and most of this episode felt like comparing notes.

In our conversation, we explore: 
→ Why leading people is never about you, and the manager feedback that taught her the hard way 
→ How a values exercise she runs with every team becomes the real source of psychological safety 
→ Energy management over time management, and why self-care is not selfish 
→ Why an AI rollout fails when leaders treat it as a tools problem instead of a human fear 
→ What an AI-native company actually looks like, and why judgment stays human

"When you lead people, it is not about you. It is about them. You want to understand what they want, and take them to a place they want to go." Anu Bharadwaj, former President of Atlassian

If you have ever pushed a team toward your finish line and wondered why they were not following, this conversation will stay with you.

RELATED EPISODES

• Pete Carroll, Seattle Seahawks head coach (2021), Learning to "always compete": https://www.buzzsprout.com/1798971/episodes/9268299
• Kathleen Hogan, Microsoft Chief People Officer (2022), Empowering people to achieve more: https://www.buzzsprout.com/1798971/episodes/10382268 
• Ranjay Gulati (2023), Creating purpose-driven teams: https://www.buzzsprout.com/1798971/episodes/12903145

New here? Subscribe to Positive Leadership & You for one edition a month, written for leaders who want to build companies and communities people thrive in. https://www.linkedin.com/newsletters/positive-leadership-you-6970390170017669121/

Want to go deeper? Listen to the Positive Leadership Podcast on your favourite platform. 130+ conversations with the leaders, founders and thinkers shaping a more human future of work.

🎧 Apple Podcast: https://podcasts.apple.com/fr/podcast/positive-leadership/id1574911588
🎤 Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/1EdnJcYgh9nXPTFJ5euOBf 

In 2011, Stéphane Bancel walked away from the security of leading a 6,000-person diagnostics company to join a startup of about 50 people, built on an idea most scientists had dismissed: that messenger RNA could become medicine. Almost everyone told him not to do it. He gave the bet roughly a five percent chance. Nine years later, that same bet helped the world face a pandemic in 63 days.

Stéphane Bancel is the Chief Executive Officer of Moderna. Under his leadership the company designed a COVID-19 vaccine on a computer within days of the genetic sequence being posted, delivered the first dose to a human just 63 days later, and scaled from zero manufacturing to a billion doses in twelve months. Today Moderna is building personalized cancer vaccines and using AI to reinvent how medicines are discovered and made.

This conversation sits right at the heart of what I believe about leadership. That the chief executive is really the chief energy officer. That the boldest decisions are rarely about appetite for risk, they are about the asymmetry between what you could give the world and what you could actually lose. Stéphane lives both, and he is refreshingly honest about the storms, the doubts and the mistakes along the way.

In our conversation, we explore: 
→ The five percent bet: how he weighed an enormous upside against a manageable downside, and why his wife was the only one who said yes 
→ What sailing without GPS taught him about staying calm when the storm hits, and why a storm always passes 
→ The 63-day sprint, and the Sunday phone call that saved the manufacturing of a billion doses 
→ Why he slowed a trial down so it would be a vaccine for the world, not a vaccine for white people 
→ The future he sees: personalized cancer vaccines, the human body mapped in silico, and why he calls chemotherapy tomorrow’s barbaric history

“I still believe that we have not invented yet our best drug.” Stéphane Bancel, CEO of Moderna

If you have ever faced a decision that everyone around you called too risky, this one is about how to think, and how to stay calm, when you choose to leap anyway.

🎧 Related Episodes: 

• Pascal Soriot on the purpose-led culture that transformed AstraZeneca, and the assume-good-intent principle Stéphane says he shares: https://www.buzzsprout.com/1798971/episodes/18782083
• Satya Nadella on mission, mindset, and why the CEO has to own the technology shift: https://www.buzzsprout.com/1798971/episodes/8966432
• Bertrand Piccard on exploration and staying comfortable in the unknown: https://www.buzzsprout.com/1798971/episodes/14487275

New here? Subscribe to Positive Leadership & You for one edition a month, written for leaders who want to build companies and communities people thrive in. https://www.linkedin.com/newsletters/positive-leadership-you-6970390170017669121/

Want to go deeper? Listen to the Positive Leadership Podcast on your favourite platform. 130+ conversations with the leaders, founders and thinkers shaping a more human future of work.

🎧 Apple Podcast: https://podcasts.apple.com/fr/podcast/positive-leadership/id1574911588
🎤 Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/1EdnJcYgh9nXPTFJ5euOBf 

Donna Hicks spent three decades at the world's hardest conflict tables and found one hidden injury beneath them all: a violation of human dignity. From the Middle East to Northern Ireland, she watched negotiations stall not over policy, but over something no one in the room had named. This episode is the word that changed everything, and the model she built around it.

Dr Donna Hicks, author of Leading with Dignity and Associate at the Weatherhead Center for International Affairs at Harvard University, spent her career as a third party in unofficial diplomacy across the Middle East, Sri Lanka, Colombia and Northern Ireland. She co-facilitated the BBC series Facing the Truth alongside Archbishop Desmond Tutu, and her earlier book, Dignity, reshaped how the world understands conflict, connection and leadership.
 
This one runs close to home for me. As a young boy from a Pied-Noir family — French people of European origin who had left Algeria after its independence — newly arrived in Nice, I was once told by a schoolmate to “get out of here.” I came home devastated. My father’s answer, that I should be proud of where I came from and that I had something real to give, was dignity restored long before either of us had a word for it.

In our conversation, we explore:
 → Why respect is earned but dignity is not, and how leaders who confuse the two quietly damage their teams
 → The ten elements of dignity, and the single one that 80% of employees say is violated most at work
 → What happened when the BBC sat victims and perpetrators face to face, and why healing did not require forgiveness
 → Why Donna now teaches dignity to eight-year-olds, and her advice to young leaders entering a harder world
 → Mandela consciousness: the three connections that rebuild dignity in any team, family or boardroom

"I don't believe we need to find common ground. I believe we need to find higher ground."
 - Dr Donna Hicks, Harvard University

If you have ever watched a meeting derail over something that was never really about the agenda, this conversation hands you the missing word, and a practical model for what to do next.

🎧 Related Episodes:

•  Amy Edmondson on psychological safety, the dignity element 80% of employees say is violated most at work: https://www.buzzsprout.com/1798971/episodes/15687150
•  Stephen M.R. Covey on trust as the foundation of culture, and what sits beneath even trust: https://www.buzzsprout.com/1798971/episodes/12252258
•  Barbara Fredrickson on Love 2.0, and why dignity is the fastest path to genuine connection: https://www.buzzsprout.com/1798971/episodes/9437036

New here? Subscribe to Positive Leadership & You for one edition a month, written for leaders who want to build companies and communities people thrive in. https://www.linkedin.com/newsletters/positive-leadership-you-6970390170017669121/

Want to go deeper? Listen to the Positive Leadership Podcast on your favourite platform. 130+ conversations with the leaders, founders and thinkers shaping a more human future of work.

🎧 Apple Podcast: https://podcasts.apple.com/fr/podcast/positive-leadership/id1574911588
🎤 Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/1EdnJcYgh9nXPTFJ5euOBf 

À 27 ans, il a marché seul jusqu'au bout de la Terre. Ce qu'il a trouvé là-bas n'était pas un sommet.

À 27 ans, Matthieu Tordeur devient le plus jeune explorateur au monde à rallier le pôle Sud à ski, en solitaire et sans ravitaillement. 1 150 kilomètres en 51 jours. Un traîneau de 115 kilos. Moins 50 degrés. Et la solitude la plus radicale qu'un être humain puisse choisir.

Né à Rouen, formé chez les scouts et nourri aux aventures de Tintin, Matthieu fait ses études à King's College London et à Sciences Po Paris avant de transformer une thèse de fin d'études en tour du monde en 4L, à travers 90 pays, pour donner une voix aux invisibles de la microfinance. À 27 ans, il atteint le pôle Sud. Aujourd'hui, il consacre ses expéditions à la science : il vient de rentrer d'« Under Antarctica », 4 000 kilomètres en kite-ski en 80 jours avec la glaciologue Heïdi Sevestre, sous l'égide de l'UNESCO et de la Décennie d'Action pour les Sciences Cryosphériques.

Sa conviction n'a jamais été d'accumuler des sommets. « Je ne suis pas un collectionneur de sommets », dit-il. Ce que Matthieu a découvert dans la solitude antarctique n'était pas un record, mais un pôle intérieur, la capacité de se rejoindre soi-même quand tout autour disparaît, et la conviction que toute traversée se sépare en deux niveaux : ce qu'on contrôle et ce qu'on doit lâcher.

Quatre routines apprises à -50°C qui tiennent à 9 heures du matin, dans n'importe quelle traversée professionnelle ou personnelle :

1. L'inconfort est temporaire. Les douleurs, les cloques, les courbatures, ça ne dure pas pour la vie.
2. Remets ton rêve de pôle Sud à la surface. Quand tout est difficile, retourne dans l'état d'esprit où tu rêvais ce projet.
3. Séquence la longue route en petits pas atteignables.
4. Lâche prise sur l'incontrôlable. La météo, la neige molle, ce ne sont pas tes leviers. Ta respiration, ton geste, ton alimentation, eux, le sont.

Cette conversation rejoint un fil que je porte depuis des années à travers Live for Good : comment aider chaque jeune à trouver sa propre boussole intérieure dans un monde qui les bombarde de distractions. Mes années chez Microsoft m'ont appris qu'aucune stratégie ne tient si elle n'est pas portée par des personnes qui savent pourquoi elles se lèvent le matin. 

Dans cette conversation, nous explorons :

1. Pourquoi Matthieu est parti seul, pas par défaut, mais comme un cadeau qu'il s'offrait à lui-même
2. La lettre de son père, à n'ouvrir qu'en cas d'abandon, qu'il a portée tout au long de l'expédition
3. Les quatre routines de leadership apprises au pôle Sud
4. « Under Antarctica » avec Heïdi Sevestre : transformer l'aventure en science climatique sous l'égide de l'UNESCO
5. Pourquoi il refuse l'image du collectionneur de sommets, et ce qu'est pour lui le vrai sommet

« L'inconfort, les douleurs, les cloques, les courbatures, c'est temporaire. Ça ne va pas durer pour la vie. »
 Matthieu Tordeur, explorateur polaire

🎧 Épisodes liés :

• Bertrand Piccard, "Exploration and innovation toward sustainable future" 
• Dr Nadia Medjad, "Neuroscience of effective leadership"
• John Elkington, "Sustainability, Systems Thinking & Regenerative Business" 

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