Second Crack — The Leadership Podcast

Why do some leaders inspire confidence and trust, while others struggle to make their voices heard, even when they have excellent expertise and a strong track record?

In this episode we explore executive presence: what it means, why it matters, and how leaders can develop it.

Executive presence often becomes a topic when talented professionals are considered for promotion. They may be technically brilliant and consistently deliver results, yet receive feedback that they are not quite ready for the next level. But executive presence matters far beyond career advancement. It also plays a crucial role in influencing others without formal authority, building trust, and leading through uncertainty and pressure.

So, what is executive presence?

It is more than charisma, a confident voice, or the right appearance. It is the impression you create through your behavior, and how that influences others' confidence in you as a leader. The good news is that executive presence is not an innate quality reserved for a select few. It can be developed through self-awareness and practice.

In our conversation we discuss several practical ways to strengthen executive presence:

• Be fully present. Give people your full attention rather than remaining preoccupied with past events or future tasks. Gerrit shares how mindfulness practice can help leaders develop this ability.
• Make others matter. Focus on the person in front of you, give credit generously, and create opportunities for others to shine.
• Listen more and speak less. Sometimes, the most influential person in the room is the one who listens carefully and speaks last.
• Focus on your intent. Before a meeting or presentation, ask yourself not only what you want to achieve, but also how you want to show up.
• Use body language effectively. Your posture, eye contact, and composure communicate messages that may reinforce, or contradict, your words.
• Communicate with impact. Use your voice, pace, tone, and pauses intentionally. Sometimes energy and enthusiasm are needed; at other times, calmness creates greater impact.
• Build genuine confidence. Know your strengths and limitations, trust yourself, and learn to remain grounded when you feel under pressure.
• Be authentic. Executive presence is not about copying someone else's style. It is about finding a way of showing up that aligns with your personality, values, and strengths.

Executive presence is not about making yourself look impressive; it is about being self-aware, building trust, and helping others feel heard, respected, and confident in your leadership.

The challenge is that these behaviors often seem like common sense when we are calm. Under pressure, however, we may become impatient, interrupt others, or try to control a situation. Developing executive presence therefore requires more than knowing what to do. It requires understanding ourselves well enough to put that knowledge into practice when it matters most.

Reflection Questions

• How well do I know myself, and can I remain present, open, and confident when I am under pressure?
• What tends to distract or upset me, and how does that affect the way I show up as a leader?
• What can I do to be more fully present in my interactions with others?

Listen to the episode and reflect on how your presence influences the people around you.

About Second Crack

More information about us and our work is available on our website: secondcrackleadership.com. Contact us now to explore how we can support your leadership development in a company-wide initiative or with individual executive coaching: [email protected].

Connect with us on LinkedIn

Martin Aldergård
Gerrit Pelzer

“Your nervous system walks through the door before you do.”

We like to think that how we show up as leaders is largely a conscious choice. We prepare, set our intentions, choose our words, and try to behave in ways that reflect the kind of leader we want to be. But what if something else is already happening before we say a word?

And what if some of the challenges we experience as leaders are not about lacking skills, mindset, or experience, but about what is happening in our nervous system?

In this episode, we speak with Carolyn Hart, leadership consultant, workplace culture architect, author of Evolve: The Path to Trauma-Informed Leadership, and co-founder of Resilient Voices. We explore how our nervous system affects our capacity to lead under pressure – and how the state we bring into the room can affect not only ourselves, but everyone around us.

Highlights

• You can't outthink your nervous system.
  We may know rationally that a situation is safe and still experience it as threatening. Our nervous system is constantly taking in signals from the environment and influencing how we respond. Often before we are consciously aware of it. Under pressure, this can affect our ability to listen, connect, think creatively, or handle disagreement.
• Leadership is not only about skills, it’s also about capacity.
  Carolyn reflects on her own executive career and the feeling that she wasn't able to lead the way she wanted to. She later came to see this not simply as a personal failing, but as her nervous system struggling to hold the level of stress and pressure she was experiencing. Sometimes the question may therefore not be “What skill am I missing?” but “What capacity do I have available right now?”
• Your state affects the people around you.
  Before we even speak, people are picking up signals from us – through our tone, facial expressions, pace, and energy. We may intend to create psychological safety, but intention alone is not enough. As Carolyn puts it: you can't have psychological safety without physiological safety.
• Resilience is not the same as toughness.
  Organizations often respond to increasing pressure by asking people to become more resilient. But if resilience means becoming tougher and continuing to push through, we may actually reinforce the problem. Carolyn describes resilience instead as fluidity: the ability to move through different nervous-system states without becoming stuck in one of them.
• Awareness gives us more choice.
  We cannot simply think our way out of our nervous system's response. But we can learn to notice what is happening and work with it. A pause, a breath, naming an emotion, or simply putting our feet on the floor can create enough space to respond differently. Sometimes slowing down may actually increase our capacity to perform.

We may not fully control how our nervous system responds, but the more aware we become of it, the more responsibility we can take for how we show up.

Reflection questions

• What do you notice, in your heart, your head, and your body?
• Before you walk into a meeting, what is your intention, and what can you do to help others in the room feel psychologically and physiologically safe?
• As a leader, how does your state impact your team? And how aware are you of that impact?

Connect with Carolyn Hart

Please reach out to Carolyn via LinkedIn, or Instagram @becomingcarolynhart, or her webpage www.resilientvoices.ca

 About Second Crack
More information about us and our work is available on our website: secondcrackleadership.com. Contact us now to explore how we can support your leadership development in a company-wide initiative or with individual executive coaching: [email protected].

Connect with us on LinkedIn
Martin Aldergård
Gerrit Pelzer

If you already know what the right decision is, what's really stopping you from taking it?

Most leaders don't struggle because they lack information. More often, they hesitate because something less visible gets in the way.

In this episode, we welcome back leadership author, former Chief Sustainability Officer, and executive advisor Jim Massey. Building on the ideas from his new book Risk in Action, we explore why risk is often misunderstood—and why the biggest barriers to leadership are rarely external.

Jim offers a thought-provoking novel perspective: risk is not something to avoid. Risk is the gap between where we are today and where we know we need to go. The real question is what prevents us from crossing that gap.

Our conversation takes us into topics that many leaders experience but rarely discuss openly:

• Why requests for "just a little more data" can sometimes hide fear rather than good judgement.
• How fear of failure and fear of inadequacy quietly shape leadership decisions.
• Why trust in yourself matters more than trust in systems.
• What artificial intelligence is revealing about leadership—not because AI is the threat, but because it exposes the fears that were already there.
• Jim's practical framework: Face. Frame. Move Forward.

Along the way, we also discuss why organisations often waste enormous amounts of energy protecting themselves from imagined threats instead of acting on what they already know. The conversation blends leadership, psychology, organisational culture, personal transformation and even a little neuroscience.

Whether you lead a global organisation, a small team, or are simply facing your own "second crack" moment, this episode offers fresh perspectives on what it really takes to move forward when the path ahead feels uncertain.

Reflection Questions for Leaders

• What is holding you back from taking the action you already know is necessary?
• Are you facing a genuine risk—or are you protecting yourself from a fear that deserves a closer look?
• What would change if you trusted yourself just a little more?
• Looking back 300 years from now, how significant will today's decision really be?

Connect with Jim Massey

You can connect with Jim on LinkedIn or visit his website at jimmassey.co.

About Second Crack

Learn more about our work at secondcrackleadership.com.

If you're looking to strengthen leadership capability in your organisation—or would like to explore executive coaching for yourself or your leadership team—we'd love to hear from you at [email protected].

In this episode, we welcome Jia Hou, a global business leader who has spent the past fourteen years helping industrial companies grow across Europe and Asia. Drawing on her experience spanning markets, organizations and regional businesses, Jia shares why business challenges are rarely just about culture. Instead, they are about leading across different business realities, decision-making logics and systems of execution.

Highlights

• The discussion begins with the concept of "China Speed"—a term that has attracted increasing attention in Europe. Jia challenges the common assumption that it is simply about moving faster. Instead, she explains that different business systems are optimized for different priorities. While one system may value planning, predictability and risk reduction, another is designed to experiment quickly, iterate and respond to uncertainty. Neither approach is inherently better; they simply solve different problems.
• This leads to a broader conversation about leadership in today's increasingly complex world. As organizations span countries, functions and disciplines, leaders are constantly bringing together people with different assumptions, incentives and ways of making decisions. In this environment, leadership is becoming less about having the right answers and more about creating the conditions where different perspectives can contribute to better decisions.
• Throughout the conversation, Jia returns to the importance of curiosity—not just about different cultures, but about understanding why people, markets and organizations operate the way they do. Rather than trying to convince others to think alike, effective leaders seek to understand what each group is optimizing for and help them move towards a shared outcome.
• Another powerful insight is the distinction between communication and translation. Leadership is not simply about communicating strategy clearly. It is about translating between different value systems, business realities and perspectives so that people develop a shared understanding, even when they approach the same challenge from different starting points.
• Together, Martin, Gerrit and Jia also explore why alignment is often more fragile than it appears. People may leave a meeting believing they are aligned, while carrying very different interpretations of the same strategy. Genuine alignment requires meaningful dialogue, diverse perspectives and the willingness to surface assumptions before they become obstacles to execution.
• The conversation concludes by reflecting on the capabilities leaders need in an increasingly uncertain world. Jia highlights three qualities that stand out: curiosity, pattern recognition, and sense-making. As complexity continues to grow, perhaps the greatest contribution a leader can make is not to provide certainty, but to help others make sense of uncertainty together.

Connect with Jia Hou

Please connect with via her LinkedIn Jia Hou

About Second Crack
More information about us and our work is available on our website: secondcrackleadership.com. 

Contact us now to explore how we can support your leadership development in a company-wide initiative or with individual executive coaching: [email protected].

Connect with us on LinkedIn:
Martin Aldergård
Gerrit Pelzer

Many leaders reach a point in their career where something feels slightly "off" — even when, on paper, everything looks successful. In this episode, Gerrit Pelzer shares his personal professional journey: from studying chemistry and earning a PhD, through senior leadership roles in the chemical industry (including several years as an expat in Thailand), to eventually becoming an executive coach.

Rather than telling a story for its own sake, this conversation uses Gerrit's journey as a case study for leadership reflection. Together, Martin and Gerrit explore what leaders can learn from moments of dissonance, gradual realization, and the courage to take inventory when a role no longer feels aligned.

Key themes explored in this episode include:

• Why career change is rarely driven by a single "aha moment," but by many small signals that form a bigger picture over time
• The difference between being competent at a job and feeling genuinely fulfilled by it
• How comfort, habit, and external success can quietly become a prison
• The importance of listening to recurring patterns: what people come to you for, what you're naturally good at, and where your energy goes
• Why reflection — not action — is often what senior leaders need most

The episode also revisits Daniel H. Pink’s concept of motivation, focusing on autonomy, mastery, and purpose, and how these factors played out very differently in Gerrit's corporate career versus his work as a coach. (For a deeper dive, listen to our earlier episode on motivation at work.)

If you sense that something in your professional life may need adjustment — without necessarily knowing what — the episode offers practical reflection questions and structured ways to explore next steps. One of these is the GAPS Grid, a tool frequently used in coaching to examine passion, abilities, and how others perceive your strengths. (We explore the GAPS Grid in detail in a dedicated earlier episode.)

This episode is especially relevant for senior leaders who:

• Feel successful but not fully engaged
• Are questioning long-held career assumptions
• Want to reflect more deeply on alignment, purpose, and direction
• Are considering change — but are unsure how to come to a clear and well-founded decision

Rather than offering quick answers, the conversation invites you to slow down, reflect honestly, and face questions head-on — trusting that clarity often emerges through exploration over time.

About Second Crack
More information about us and our work is available on our website: secondcrackleadership.com. Contact us now to explore how we can support your leadership development in a company-wide initiative or with individual executive coaching: [email protected].
 
Connect with us on LinkedIn:
Martin Aldergård
Gerrit Pelzer

In this episode, we return to the updated Inner Development Goals (IDG), and reflect on what has changed, why it matters and how IDG is now even more relevant for leaders that want to develop resilient leadership.

Why IDG matters

Today leaders are not primarily challenged by 'technical problems' where clear solutions exist. Instead they face adaptive challenges in an increasingly complex, interconnected, and fast-moving world.

IDG answers: What inner capacities do leaders need in order to lead resilient, human-centered organisations in this complex environment?

5 dimensions of IDG

BEING – Cultivating Our Inner Life

At the core is Being, highlighting that leadership starts with who we are. The revised wording emphasizes development as an ongoing practice. Skills such as inner compass, self-awareness, and presence may sound obvious, but require continuous reflection. Without them, leadership easily stays on the surface.

THINKING – Understanding Our Complex World

Thinking is no longer framed as cognitive skill alone, but as understanding complexity. The shift towards systems thinking reflects today’s reality: leaders face adaptive challenges. Leadership becomes less about control and more about sense-making and framing the right questions so collective intelligence can emerge.

RELATING – Caring for Others and the World

This dimension reflects a fundamentally different image of leadership: not dominance or certainty, but care, humanity, and relational maturity. Alongside empathy, humility, and compassion, forgiveness has been added as a key skill.

COLLABORATING – Building Trust and Working Together

The collaborating dimension has been reframed to place trust at its centre. Trust is no longer treated as a skill in itself, but as an outcome of behaviors such as relationship-building, inclusion, communication, and co-creation.

ACTING – Leading and Enabling Change

The final dimension focuses on enabling action, not driving it. Skills like courage, hope & optimism, and resilience point to leadership as creating conditions where people can act.

A living guide for leaders

The IDG is not a finished model, like leadership itself, it continues to evolve. Used as a self-assessment or reflection tool, it helps leaders identify strengths, development areas, and how leadership can be shared across an organization.

Working with Second Crack and IDG

We increasingly use IDG in our work. Its strength lies in its simplicity, shared language, and ability to quickly open deep, meaningful conversations about leadership behavior and culture. Please get in touch if you want to explore how we and IDG can support your organisation.

Previous episodes

• From 2022, a 6-part in-depth look at IDG. Link to part 1: https://podcast.secondcrackleadership.com/1659493/episodes/10816920
• Link to episode on Systems Thinking with Dr. Paul Lawrence: https://podcast.secondcrackleadership.com/1659493/episodes/12056252
• Find more information related to IDG at innerdevelopmentgoals.org

About Second Crack
More information about us and our work is available on our website: secondcrackleadership.com. Contact us now to explore how we can support your leadership development in a company-wide initiative or with individual executive coaching: [email protected].
 
Connect with us on LinkedIn:
Martin Aldergård
Gerrit Pelzer

In this episode, we explore forgiveness as an essential yet often overlooked capacity in leadership. Inspired by the updated Inner Development Goals 2.0, which now include forgiveness, we ask what it really means to forgive in a corporate context — and why it might be one of the strongest acts a leader can take.
We look at how resentment and hurts drain energy, how unresolved conflicts hold teams back, and how forgiveness can help rebuild trust and release energy for growth and collaboration. And we challenge the idea that forgiveness is a sign of weakness — and rather requires strength, self-awareness, and courage.

Key insights

• Forgiveness is not weakness.
  It takes strength and courage to face what happened, to let go of anger, and to move forward.
• Forgiveness and accountability can coexist.
  You can forgive someone and still hold them accountable — forgiveness doesn’t mean there are no consequences.
• Healing relationships frees up energy.
  Letting go of grudges restores focus and vitality — for individuals, teams, and the whole organization.
• Forgiveness can help make change successful.
  Acknowledging past disappointments, frustrations and hurts is essential before a team can truly move forward.

Reflection questions

• What makes you feel hurt, what makes you angry, and what creates negative feelings?
• If you are in the process of forgiving, reflect on what might this be teaching you? And even if you are still feeling hurt, how might you use this pain as a positive force for growth? 
• Where might you still be holding a grudge — maybe over many years — and is it time to forgive? And who do you need to forgive?
• Is there anybody who you might have hurt? And isn't it time to actively approach that person and reach out?
• As a leader, how can you be more observant of your team’s emotions and the impact of your own behavior?
• How can forgiveness become a force for learning and growth in your team?

Introduction to The Inner Development Goals (IDG)

Our episode introducing the IDG: https://podcast.secondcrackleadership.com/1659493/episodes/10816920

More information related to the IDG at innerdevelopmentgoals.org

About Second Crack
More information about us and our work is available on our website: secondcrackleadership.com. Contact us now to explore how we can support your leadership development in a company-wide initiative or with individual executive coaching: [email protected].
 
Connect with us on LinkedIn:
Martin Aldergård
Gerrit Pelzer

In this episode we explore what it means to lead with authenticity, courage, compassion and wisdom when the pressure is on. Our guest, Martin Farrell, author of Good Leaders in Turbulent Times, shares insights from six decades working for and with civil society organizations including the Red Cross and Save the Children.

Through the metaphor of coffee roasting—the “second crack” that releases a bean’s full flavor—Martin reminds us that it’s often the heat of turbulence that helps leaders grow, if they have the courage to face it.

Highlights

• The heat transforms: Growth happens in challenge, not comfort. Leaders evolve by facing turbulence, not avoiding it.
• Authenticity matters: Good leadership begins with self-awareness and alignment between inner and outer worlds.
• Avoidance fuels crisis: Many problems stem from ignoring early signals. Awareness and reflection are the antidotes.
• Listen to learn: Deep listening and “thinking partners” help leaders see what they can’t see alone.
• From ego to eco: Real wisdom comes from seeing oneself as part of a larger whole—organization, community, planet.
• Three enduring qualities: Compassion, courage, and wisdom form the foundation for leading well in uncertain times.

Reflection questions

• When I’m going through turbulent times as a leader, what are the signals I might be missing — or perhaps don’t want to see? How can I stay more open to them?
• So even if there is a crisis, how can I create space for reflection and ask myself, “What’s really going on here?”
• And whatever the outcome, success or failure, ask: what can I learn from it, and how can that learning become part of who I am as a leader?
• How can I turn discomfort or pain from crisis, into fuel for growth, rather than something to resist or suppress?

About Martin Farrell

He is an author and long-time international facilitator with over 60 years’ experience in civil society organizations. His book ‘Good Leaders in Turbulent Times’ is available through major booksellers.

Learn more at martinfarrell.org

Martin has also published leadership articles on his Substack

About Second Crack
More information about us and our work is available on our website: secondcrackleadership.com. Contact us now to explore how we can support your leadership development in a company-wide initiative or with individual executive coaching: [email protected].
 
Connect with us on LinkedIn:
Martin Aldergård
Gerrit Pelzer

So often leaders tell people what to do, expecting change to follow. But real, lasting change happens when people understand, process, and make sense of change for themselves. In this episode, we dive into the "Power of learning” as a key to leading change and transformation. 

We share a practical, five-step approach that every leader can use to involve people, spark motivation, and create ownership of change. It’s about moving from telling to engaging, from compliance to commitment — and putting people at the center of transformation.

Highlights

• Why traditional “telling” approaches fail to create lasting change
• The tension between speed and engagement — and how to handle it
• Compliance vs. commitment: the difference between “I do this because I have to” and “I want to”
• The five steps* leaders can use to enable learning and change:
  1. Spark curiosity
  2. Provide information and context
  3. Create opportunities to process
  4. Enable “aha” moments
  5. Support action
• How learning journeys turn communication plans into true change processes
• Why shared insights matter more than individual understanding

* These steps are what Klas Mellander refers to as "The Power of Learning" and you can read more about them in his book with the same name.

Reflection questions

As always, we wrap up the conversation with a couple of self-reflection prompts:

• How do you balance the need for speed with the importance of engaging people in a change process?
• As a leader, where do you get support for your own learning during change?
• Are you truly interested in what your people have to say — and open to letting their perspectives shape the outcome?
• What would make the change you are currently leading truly meaningful and relevant for the people you need to get on board?

About Second Crack – The Leadership Podcast
Learn more about the podcast and our work at secondcrackleadership.com. To explore how we can support leadership development in your organization—whether through company-wide initiatives or individual executive coaching—email: [email protected].
 
Connect on LinkedIn:
Martin Aldergård
Gerrit Pelzer

As a senior leader, you've achieved significant success. But how do you keep evolving into the best leader you can be—and is executive coaching the right lever?

In this special 49th episode of Second Crack, co-hosts Gerrit Pelzer and Martin Aldergård take a candid look at the purpose and value of executive coaching. Marking his 15th anniversary in the field, Gerrit shares his core philosophy: coaching is about helping leaders create the conditions in which people—including the leaders themselves—can be their best, not just do their best. This crucial shift from doing to being  is what unlocks authentic, effective leadership.

Gerrit and Martin explore:

• Common Myths vs. Reality: Coaching isn't a "fix" for underperformers. Like top athletes—and leaders such as Eric Schmidt—high performers rely on coaches to keep their edge.
• The Value Beyond ROI: The most significant benefits of coaching are often intangible. For senior leaders, a confidential space to think is rare—but vital to gain clarity, reflect without pressure, and navigate the reality that "it can be quite lonely at the top".
• The Power of Candid Feedback: A coach can be the one person who provides the direct feedback that others may be unwilling to share, breaking through blind spots and making further personal growth possible.
• Goals and Emergence: Is coaching always about setting SMART goals? Or does the real magic happen when we trust the process and allow new insights to surface? Ultimately, it's about finding the intricate balance between allowing for emergence and delivering tangible results.

Reflection Questions for Leaders:

• What have I invested in my personal development over the past months—and is it enough for the scope I hold?
• What belief or assumption might be holding me back from working with an executive coach?
• What might I be failing to see about myself, and what would happen if I continued in the same way for the next few years?

Curious whether executive coaching is right for you? Gerrit offers complimentary and obligation-free exploratory conversations to look at your context—and will happily suggest alternatives if coaching isn’t the best path.

About Second Crack – The Leadership Podcast: Learn more at secondcrackleadership.com. For leadership development in your organization—or to enquire about executive coaching with Gerrit—email [email protected] 

Connect on LinkedIn: Martin Aldergård • Gerrit Pelzer