Speak Your Mind Unapologetically

Most leaders believe they handle conflict well. The people who report to them often see something different. Your team can't see your intentions. They only see your behavior.

In this episode, organizational psychologist Dr. Lan Phan of Columbia University explains how she and Dr. Peter Coleman measure a leader's conflict intelligence through the eyes of their direct reports. She walks through the three behaviors that make a team see a leader as steady when tension rises. You'll hear why "my door is always open" is not enough, how to pause a heated conversation without looking like you are avoiding it, and how to extend grace to yourself and others while still holding people accountable.

About Dr. Lan Phan (her exact approved intro)

Dr. Lan Phan is an organizational psychologist and people analytics expert at Columbia University. With Dr. Peter Coleman, she developed and validated a scale to measure leaders' conflict intelligence, as rated by their direct reports. Her doctoral thesis looked at giving and receiving interpersonal grace in having difficult conversations, and she is a TEDx speaker on the quiet activists, the people who create change without a megaphone.

In this episode, you'll learn:

• The 3 dimensions of conflict intelligence your team actually observes: stabilizing presence, contextual-strategic alignment, and conflict-positive framing
• Why your team judges your behavior, not your intent, and how a "lesson for everyone" can feel like public embarrassment to the person who made the mistake
• Why "my door is always open" is not enough, and the question to ask yourself when a conflict reaches you too late
• What it takes to be the rock of your team, and why steady does not mean emotionless
• How to pause a tense conversation without looking like you are avoiding it: say when you will come back, and frame the pause as what you need
• How to look past two people arguing to the real cause, from unclear roles to anxiety about AI
• The five words that make disagreement easier to bring to you: "Thank you for bringing that up."
• How to get honest feedback on how you handle conflict, and who to ask first
• Grace with accountability: Lan's three-part definition of grace, and how leaders give it while still raising the bar
• A self-assessment from Columbia's research center to identify your own conflict pattern

Chapters (approximate; check against the final cut)

• 00:00 The gap between how you see yourself in conflict and how your team sees you
• 01:45 Meet Dr. Lan Phan
• 02:26 From Vietnam to studying conflict
• 05:09 Why measure conflict through your team's eyes
• 07:38 Intent vs. impact
• 12:43 The 3 dimensions of conflict intelligence
• 17:23 Stabilizing presence: more than looking calm
• 21:19 How long to pause before you respond
• 25:20 Feedback, power and humility
• 35:36 Grace with accountability
• 41:37 Where to start this week
• 45:29 Key takeaways

Resources and links

• Connect with Lan on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/lanhoangphan
• Lan's TEDx talk, The Quiet Activists: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J7TSGovglTY
• Phan, Coleman and Ojo (2026), Conflict-intelligent leadership in a messy, anxious world: https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/organizational-psychology/articles/10.3389/forgp.2026.1777594/full
• Conflict intelligence assessment questions and get a report on your tendencies in conflict (free, 5-10min): https://www.conflictintelligence.org/cars

If this episode made you think of a leader who handles tension well, or one who could learn from this research, send it to them.

Change is hard, yet it a common reality. Dr. Ellie Gates, who led the Adobe Check-In redesign that replaced annual performance reviews, says the old change management playbook is dead. Change is now constant, and what organizations need instead is change agility.

In this episode, Dr. Gates breaks down why people resist change even when it makes sense, why leaders and employees go through the same change at completely different times, and what it really took to get rid of annual reviews at a company the size of Adobe.

What you'll get from this episode:

• The 3 levels of resistance to change (I don't get it, I don't like it, I don't like you) and how to address each one
• Why leaders are crossing the finish line of a change just as employees find out there's a race, and what to do about it
• How a pre-mortem helps you anticipate resistance before you launch
• The early signs a change is not landing, and why waiting for those signs means you're already behind
• Which parts of traditional change management still matter, and what has to give way to change agility
• How middle managers can lead a change they didn't choose, while still processing it themselves, by focusing on what is still in their control
• Inside Adobe's Check-In: why they scrapped annual reviews, why they refused to rush a replacement, how they brought the resisters in, and how it saved over 80,000 management hours in a single year
• How one CEO told his team the truth before missing payroll, and lost no more than 10% of his people
• Three things to start this week, including how to diagnose your own resistance to change

About Dr. Ellie Gates

Dr. Ellie C. Gates, DSL, is an Assistant Teaching Professor at CU Boulder's Leeds School of Business and Founder of BusinessTechne and the Human Ingenuity AI Foundation. For over 25 years, she has partnered with C-level executives at Microsoft, Adobe, T-Mobile, Box, and Snowflake on their hardest transformations. At Adobe, she led the Check-In performance redesign that saved 80,000 management hours and cut voluntary turnover by 30 percent. Trained in Strategic Foresight, she reads emerging trends before most leaders know to look. She holds a Doctorate of Strategic Leadership and a Master's in Organizational Leadership and Business Administration. She is a change agent at heart.

Connect with Dr. Ellie Gates: ✅ BusinessTechne: https://www.businesstechne.com ✅ Human Ingenuity AI Foundation: https://www.businesstechne.com/hiai/ ✅ LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/elliecgates

Mentioned in this episode:

• Beyond the Wall of Resistance by Rick Maurer
• The ADKAR change model (Awareness, Desire, Knowledge, Ability, Reinforcement)
• Mike Robbins, author and speaker on feedback

More from Speak Your Mind Unapologetically: ✅ Free Newsletter: https://assertiveway.com/newsletter/ ✅ Take the Quiz 'Do You Speak Like a High-Impact Leader?': https://myassertiveway.outgrow.us/highimpactleader ✅ Follow the show host, Ivna Curi, on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ivna-curi-mba-67083b2/

Most of us check the odds before we try something big. MIT-trained engineer and serial founder Sanjay Manandhar, author of The Why Not Advantage, says that's the wrong number to look at. A statistic describes the crowd, not you.

At 16, Sanjay applied to US schools from Kathmandu. He needed a full scholarship and airfare, and his friends asked if he was nuts. In this conversation, he shares the formula he uses to rewrite his odds, what a Nobel Prize winner's 40 years of persistence teaches about timing, and why your odds change the moment you take action.

In this episode, you'll learn:

• Why "probability does not exist," and the difference between the crowd's odds and your personal odds
• The BPCA formula (Belief x Preparation x Context x Action), and why a zero in any one variable takes your odds to zero
• The variable people underestimate most, and why the hardest negotiation is the one with yourself
• What Katalin Karikó's path to the Nobel Prize reveals about preparing for the moment context turns in your favor
• "Activation energy": why progress feels stuck right before a breakthrough, and how to push through
• Why any action beats overthinking when you're stuck, even if it isn't the perfect move
• How to keep your conviction without falling into confirmation bias or following the crowd, with lessons from the dot-com bubble and Theranos
• The deathbed test and the five-year test: two tools to decide what to do this week

About Sanjay Manandhar: Sanjay Manandhar is a serial technology entrepreneur, mentor, and author of The Why Not Advantage: How Small Probabilities Create Outsized Outcomes. Originally from Nepal, he is an MIT-trained engineer. In 1994, he helped bring the internet to Nepal, and he has since founded and led multiple technology companies. He lives in Cambridge, MA, and loves trekking and motorbiking.

Connect with Sanjay: Book and author site: https://sanjaymanandhar.com/ LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/sanjaymanandhar

The Why Not Advantage is available on Amazon in paperback, Kindle, and audiobook.

Mentioned in this episode: Bruno de Finetti, Italian mathematician Katalin Karikó, Nobel laureate and mRNA vaccine pioneer Bronnie Ware, The Top Five Regrets of the Dying

Know someone usure of which path to follow? Send them this episode.

Quotes from Sanjay: "Your odds change in your favor the moment you take action." "You don't get to run your venture 1,000 times or your career move 1,000 times. You have one chance, maybe two." "Negotiating with a counterparty is hard. The harder part is actually negotiating with yourself."

Chapters: 00:00 Agency, and why the odds you're quoted aren't your odds 01:17 "If you think of it, do it": his mother's advice about time 05:01 One talk to 60 people that led to an $80M startup 08:07 "Probability does not exist": the idea behind the book 10:39 The BPCA formula: why one zero sinks your odds 13:11 The Nobel winner who waited 40 years for her moment 18:05 The variable people underestimate most 19:55 Survivorship bias: is beating the odds just luck? 23:29 Why almost everyone who starts a marathon finishes 26:04 Activation energy: why water won't boil at 99.5°C 30:13 Overthinking? Any action beats the perfect action 34:00 Conviction vs. the crowd: lessons from bubbles and Theranos 39:07 The deathbed test: what you'll regret not doing

How do you disagree with a superior or your boss when you see a problem in a decision you still have to deliver? How do you influence senior leaders when you don't have the final say?

In this episode of Speak Your Mind Unapologetically, Ivna Curi explores managing up and upward influence through two real workplace stories from her book, Unapologetic Voice.

Amy spent six months building a business case after senior leaders dismissed a gap she saw in their plan. Rebecca challenged a leader's approach to restructuring by proposing an alternative that addressed his concern about confidentiality.

Their experiences reveal practical ways to challenge a decision, earn consideration for your ideas, and help your organization improve.

You'll discover:

• How to disagree with your boss when your first concern gets dismissed: What to reconsider before repeating the same argument.
• How to get senior leadership buy-in: Connect your recommendation to business consequences and the results leaders want.
• How to push back without sounding combative: Address what the decision-maker is trying to achieve or protect.
• How to build a stronger business case: Use individual conversations to test assumptions, understand objections, and improve your proposal.
• How to recognize progress when you don't get a full yes: Evaluate whether a workable compromise improves the decision.
• Three questions to prepare for a difficult conversation with your boss or a superior: Identify your disagreement, understand their concern, and propose a specific alternative.

If you're a manager, director, or VP navigating a rejected idea, an overlooked risk, or a decision you believe needs reconsideration, this episode is for you.

Share this episode with a colleague working to get a useful perspective heard, and follow Speak Your Mind Unapologetically for more on leadership communication and upward influence.

Being kind at work is easy when things are going well. Smiling, saying thank you, listening, remembering birthdays. The real test is what you do when there is a problem, a conflict, or a disagreement.

This episode is a self-assessment. Twelve everyday workplace moments that look polite on the surface and cost someone else something real. Escalating to a manager before ever telling the colleague what the problem is. Staying silent in a meeting, then criticizing the decision privately afterward. Calling someone disrespectful instead of naming the behavior. Saying yes when you mean no. Redoing a team member's work instead of telling them what to change.

The pattern underneath all twelve is the same. Avoiding an uncomfortable conversation feels like kindness to the person doing the avoiding, and transfers the cost to someone else in the form of lost information, lost time, lost reputation, or a lost opportunity.

Here is the test: if your discomfort leaves someone else worse off on information, time, reputation, or opportunity, that is not kindness.

Go through the twelve. For each one, decide honestly whether you are being kind or protecting your own comfort. Then pick one to change this week.

• Kindness measured in easy moments is worthless as a measure. What counts is how you behave when something is wrong.
• Avoidance is not neutral. It moves the cost off you and onto someone else.
• Directness is part of respect, not the opposite of it. Warmth plus avoidance is still a cost passed to somebody.
• Character labels like difficult, toxic, abrasive, and disrespectful attack identity and give the other person nothing to act on. Behavior plus impact plus a specific request does.
• People can only fix what they know about. Usable information delivered early is the actual kindness.
• Leaders set the standard here. How you handle a disagreement teaches your team what is allowed.

1. Escalating to a manager before telling the colleague what the behavior is
2. Escalating without one conversation plus one reminder first
3. Staying silent in a meeting, which reads as agreement
4. Criticizing the decision privately after the meeting ends
5. Using character labels instead of naming behavior and impact
6. Being warm and polite as a way to avoid the real conversation
7. Saying yes when you mean no, then delaying and under-delivering
8. Passing someone over for an opportunity without naming the gap
9. Ghosting an email because you do not know what to say yet
10. Watching work go the wrong direction for weeks before correcting it
11. Redoing someone's work instead of explaining what needs to change
12. Concluding someone is not ready without ever telling them why

Most people who challenge a superior's decision get it wrong. They oppose. Nita Patel, VP of Engineering at Otis, says the people who have changed her mind did something else: they stayed curious. They asked what happens after step two. They wanted to understand rather than object. By the end of the conversation she is the one asking them what they think, without realizing she was challenged at all.

That works because of the larger skill underneath it. Nita calls herself a translator, estimating 30 to 40% of her time goes to it: working out why a meeting matters, what the goal is, and which pieces of information will get someone there. The translation changes depending on whom you're speaking to. What she presents to a CEO is different from what she presents to the team building it or to a cross-functional peer.

She splits translation in two. Translating an idea to stakeholders means finding the intent and explaining it separately to each group that has to buy-in. Translating an idea into action means breaking the problem down and moving forward before the full plan is in place. She used both to launch the first IEEE Women in Engineering International Leadership Conference, arguing that sometimes you take the leap and build the wings on the way down.

She also names the Toastmasters feedback that changed her most: that she assumes too much and jumps straight to the answer. And she explains why technical leaders labeled direct or difficult are usually being read as too focused on the detail.

If you have ever had a good idea die on the way up, this episode is about the trip.

00:00 Meet Nita Patel, VP of Engineering at Otis 01:17 What Chess Teaches About Anticipating the Other Side 02:11 Know the Rules So the Unexpected Move Does Not Derail You 02:58 How to Make a Fair Call When the Rulebook Runs Out 03:56 Where Confidence Comes From in a Gray-Area Decision 04:35 Rules, Experience, Fallbacks: The Three Sources of Confidence 06:15 When Following the Process Costs You the Objective 07:30 Why the Analytically Best Move Is Not Always the Right One 09:02 How to Translate an Idea So Each Stakeholder Cares 10:25 Breaking a Big Idea Down So Others Can Act on It 10:47 Pitch Before It Is Perfect: Build the Wings on the Way Down 13:09 Hold the Why, Stay Flexible on the How 14:03 How to Challenge Your Boss Without It Feeling Like a Challenge 16:39 The Questions That Actually Change a Leader's Mind 19:39 Why "Too Direct" Usually Means "Too Detailed" 22:13 Find the Real Problem Before You Solve the Wrong One 25:56 The Feedback That Changed How She Briefs Executives 30:57 Why 30 to 40% of a VP's Week Goes to Translation 32:13 Nita's Closing Advice: Everyone Has Influence to Use

Two Ways to Fail: Give Up or Die." How Sigma Software CEO Katherine Built a Foreign Office, Completed a Half Ironman, and Learned to Lead on One Rule

"There are only two ways to fail: give up or die. And neither is a reasonable option."

That is the saying Katherine's team uses to remind themselves who they are. She means it literally. When she was trying to open Sigma Software Group's first Latin American office, she tried recruiting agencies, acquisition targets, universities, and different countries for an entire year. Nothing worked. Then in a brainstorming session, someone mentioned speaking at a developer conference. She found one in Brazil, submitted a paper, got accepted to one of the most selective conferences in the region, went, fell in love with the community, and pivoted the entire Latin American strategy to Brazil on the spot.

Then she went back to the same conference the following year and gave her talk in Portuguese. She had submitted the paper in December, in Portuguese, with a translator. The conference was in March. She did not speak Portuguese. She had three months to learn.

Katherine rose from junior software developer to CEO of Sigma Software Group Americas in 16 years. In this episode, she is completely direct about how she actually did it — not as a philosophy, but as a series of specific situations where she refused to stop.

You'll learn:

• How she spent a year hitting walls trying to open a Latin American office, the random brainstorming idea that changed everything, and why resolve in the goal combined with total flexibility in the approach is what finally broke through.
• Why she submitted a conference paper in a language she couldn't speak, learned Portuguese in three months with 15 minutes a day of consistent practice, and used the speech itself to encourage Brazilian engineers not to be afraid of making mistakes in English.
• The grandmother she is named after: a high-level judge described by everyone as tough, smart, and fair. Never nice or sweet. And why Katherine wants to invoke strong opinions rather than be universally liked.
• Why she believes being perceived as aggressive is an acceptable trade-off for being decisive and authentic — and where she draws the line between assertive and actually offensive.
• Her father's career advice that drives her decisiveness: "A wrong direction is better than no direction." Make the call, correct fast, keep moving.
• What she learned from completing a Half Ironman — 1.2 miles of swimming, 56 miles on a bike, then a half marathon. She was terrified of the bike, had crashes, had scars, genuinely questioned whether to continue. She finished. She signed up for another one.
• How she managed a solo transatlantic flight from Barcelona to Dallas with a one-year-old and a not-yet-three-year-old by accepting beforehand that it would be horrible — and why pre-accepting the struggle removes the frustration when it arrives.
• The two tools she uses when doubt sets in: reminding herself of hard things she has already done, and surrounding herself with people who will do the same reminding when she can't.

About Katherine: CEO of Sigma Software Group Americas, Katherine rose from junior software developer to CEO in 16 years. She leads the Americas expansion for a global software company originally founded in Eastern Europe, including building the company's Brazilian office from the ground up. She is also a Half Ironman finisher and a Portuguese speaker.

Her first year in corporate. She noticed her male peer was getting more technical work than her. She raised it with her supervisor — not loudly, not aggressively, just directly. Instead of addressing it with her, the supervisor took it to a broader forum and told others there was "a trouble candidate in the team." The message filtered back to her. She had asked for fair treatment and had been labeled a problem for it.

What happened next is what makes the story worth hearing. A senior leader stepped in, routed someone to talk to her properly, understood what she actually needed, and gave her a product certification project. She suspected it was a test. She treated it like an opportunity. She delivered. That quarter, she won a company excellence award.

Aditi is Managing Director at Accenture's Cloud First Data and AI Group, where she leads digital transformation for large clients. She has been called outspoken — a label she has never apologized for — and decisive, a word she noticed women rarely claim for themselves.

In this episode she gets specific about what it actually looks like to speak up when you're new, when the reception is hostile, and when the outcome is uncertain.

You'll hear:

• Why being labeled "trouble" for asking a fair question was the moment that taught her the most about how organizations actually work — and why she considers the outcome a net positive even though it was uncomfortable to live through.
• What she did when a senior client contact told her directly "I don't think you even know this stuff." She didn't react. She absorbed it, reported it proactively to her leadership before it could reach them filtered through someone else, and stayed focused on delivery. What she learned about the difference between reacting and responding.
• Why outspokenness without data is just noise — and why outspokenness backed by facts, research, and conviction is one of the most useful things a leader can bring to a team.
• How she creates conditions for her own team members to speak up — and why, when she opens a conversation by sharing her own honest view first, she consistently finds that people who had something to say but were waiting for permission start talking.
• What "decisive" actually means in practice when you're managing a team with competing voices, a client with high expectations, and no time to wait for perfect information.

About Aditi: Managing Director, Accenture Cloud First Data and AI Group. Digital transformation leader.

She Stopped Leading With Her Title and Started Saying "I'm a Technology and Business Diplomat." People Immediately Wanted to Know More. Equifax SVP D'Lovely on Networking, Personal Boards, and Career Infrastructure

She was laid off twice. Both times, by the time the hiring manager called her, three or four people at the company had already been talking about her. Not because she got lucky. Because she had spent months having breakfasts, following up on cold contacts, asking questions instead of pitching, and making it easy for people to pass her name along. One of those contacts had been on a month-long holiday — not ignoring her. She kept following up. They finally had lunch. That person said: "You're the real deal." She talked to people. The hiring manager called within a month.

D'Lovely is SVP of Product, Data and Analytics, and Technology Planning and Execution at Equifax, a finalist for Woman of the Year in Engineering by the Women in Technology organization, and the person who calls herself a "Technology and Business Diplomat" — a title that took years to develop and immediately makes people want to know more.

In this episode, she breaks down how networking actually works as a career infrastructure system, not a social obligation.

You'll learn:

• Why being laid off the first time forced her to admit her network wasn't working — she was going to events and talking to people, but she wasn't being methodical. What changed after that realization and how she got both subsequent roles entirely through network relationships.
• The five-week story: how she targeted a specific company, got stonewalled on LinkedIn, shifted to building relationships across the organization, finally got a lunch, listened more than she talked, and had the hiring manager call her a month later saying people had been talking about her.
• Why "I need a job" is the wrong thing to be broadcasting in your network — and what to ask for instead. Almost nobody has a job in their pocket, but everybody can give you their story, their honest read on a company's culture, and an introduction to someone who needs to know you exist.
• The three-tier model for a personal board of directors: close inner circle, mid-range colleagues in similar roles and at similar levels, and the periphery of executive mentors and coaches. Who belongs in each tier, how often you should connect with each, and why having everyone at the same level above you actually limits what your board can do for you.
• Why you should never introduce yourself by listing what you do — and how to develop a power statement that makes the other person immediately want to know more. The difference between "I manage software projects" and "I turn engineering chaos into customer results."
• The exact tactics for staying top of mind without being annoying: leaving voicemails during your commute, following up twice without apology, sending a draft message someone can forward on your behalf so they have to do almost nothing to help you. Make it easy, close the deal, don't wait to be remembered.
• Why the most important networking conversations never mention work at all — and how those are often the ones that lead to the most powerful long-term relationships.

About D'Lovely: SVP of Product, Data and Analytics, and Technology Planning and Execution at Equifax. Finalist, Woman of the Year in Engineering, Women in Technology. Self-described Technology and Business Diplomat. Based in Atlanta.

She credits three people with transforming her career trajectory at AWS and beyond. Tatiana got her into AWS. Wayne sponsored her advancement within it. Dan helped her break into venture capital as a partner at Felicis Ventures. She did not stumble into these relationships. She built them intentionally, maintained them with discipline, and gave back at every stage — even when what she could give seemed small compared to what she was receiving.

Nancy was Director and General Manager at AWS Data Protection when this episode was recorded. She has since been promoted to CTO. She is also the founder of Advancing Women in Tech (AWIT), a venture partner at Felicis Ventures, and served on the board of UPenn's School of Engineering Online. She gave the commencement speech at the University of Pennsylvania. The central idea of that speech: build your personal board of directors.

In this episode, she breaks down the full framework.

You'll learn:

• Why she calls her personal board of directors the most important career strategy she has used, and what it gave her that mentors, managers, and luck could not.
• The three specific people on her board, what each one did for her, and how those relationships were built over time rather than asked for upfront.
• The right way to ask for raw, unfiltered feedback from someone who outranks you significantly — including why the first or second meeting is almost never the right time, and what you need to establish first.
• Why follow-through is a bigger differentiator than IQ, communication skills, or credentials. "They need to want it more than you want it for them" — the advice from her own board member that she now uses with every mentee she works with.
• How compound interest applies to professional relationships: why small, consistent gestures build more than a single impressive one, and what she does quarterly to keep her board relationships healthy without it feeling transactional.
• She was preparing to meet a Fortune 500 CEO to ask him to join her board. His dog had just had surgery. She planned to bring dog treats. The reminder: every successful person is still just a human being, and treating them that way is both the right approach and the most effective one.
• The Lululemon wardrobe mistake: her first Silicon Valley job, she bought a whole new wardrobe to fit in with the casual culture. Hated it. Didn't feel herself. What she learned about knowing who you are and using that as a career filter rather than a liability.
• Why at her leadership level she says no far more often than yes, why she uses Amazon's "have backbone, disagree and commit" principle to push back when the room disagrees with her, and what she tells her mentees about having the courage to hold the unpopular opinion.

About Nancy: At the time of this recording, Nancy was Director and General Manager, AWS Data Protection at Amazon Web Services. She has since been promoted to CTO. She is also the founder of Advancing Women in Tech (AWIT), a venture partner at Felicis Ventures, and has served on the board of directors of the UPenn School of Engineering Online. AWIT's Coursera curriculum has reached tens of thousands of learners globally.

Advancing Women in Tech: https://www.advancingwomenintech.org/