The Glowe Podcast

Every step up in leadership asks you to become someone new, and almost no one prepares you for it. Whitney Kenter and Glowe coach Ariana Jahja explore the identity shift that comes with moving up. They look at why the work that earned your promotion is often the hardest thing to let go of, and why so many leaders, even in the C-suite, stay stuck doing work that no longer belongs to them. They also talk about what it takes to lead from who you're becoming.

Key Takeaways

• Every promotion asks for a new identity. The work that earned it is often the work you now have to give away, and that can feel like grief.
• Struggling to delegate is rarely about delegation. It points to what you're still holding on to, and why.
• Leaders deserve a clear picture of what's expected at their level, just as students get a syllabus. Most organizations never provide one.
• At senior levels, the way you create value changes. Strategic thinking and developing your people are the work.
• Try this: look at your week in five percent increments and get honest about what you're holding on to.

Links & Resources

• Ariana Jahja on LinkedIn
• Glowe
• Whitney Kenter on LinkedIn
• Subscribe to The Glowe Weekly Spark
• Book a conversation with Glowe

Subscribe so you don't miss the next episode.

Disclaimer The views and opinions expressed in this podcast are those of the hosts and guests and do not necessarily reflect the views of their organizations or affiliates. This podcast is intended for informational and educational purposes only and should not be considered professional, legal, financial, or medical advice. Any examples or stories shared are illustrative and have been anonymized where appropriate. Listeners are encouraged to use their own judgment and seek professional guidance when applying ideas discussed in this podcast to their specific situations.

In this solo episode, Whitney Kenter explores an idea that often stops leaders mid-sentence: your okayness is not my responsibility. Many senior leaders quietly carry the weight of everyone else's reactions, and it shows up as softened decisions, unclear direction, and a kind of exhaustion that lives in the body long before it shows up on the calendar. Whitney shares her own journey with this pattern and what it looks like to lead with deep compassion while letting others own their responses.

Key Takeaways

• Caring about someone and carrying their reaction are two different things. You can hold deep empathy and still let their response belong to them.
• When a leader softens a hard decision, the confusion multiplies as it moves through the team and the organization. Clear is kind.
• Try the "just you and me" test. If you can say something clearly to a trusted colleague, ask what stops you from saying it to the person who needs to hear it.
• A strong reaction to a message is data for the person having it, not a problem for the leader to solve.
• Overcorrecting after a tough conversation, like offering more money or agreeing to something else, is a sign you've stepped into what isn't yours.
• You can control how you show up, your tone, and the energetic container you create. You cannot control how anyone responds.
• Rehearsing every possible reaction before you speak creates stuck energy and stress that accumulate quietly, even in leaders who believe they're powering through just fine.
• Three statements to sit with: "I am not responsible for other people's emotions." "I let go of what I can't control." "I deserve the same grace and forgiveness I extend to others."

Links & Resources

• Glowe
• Whitney Kenter on LinkedIn
• Subscribe to The Glowe Weekly Spark
• Book a conversation with Glowe

Subscribe so you don't miss the next episode.

Disclaimer The views and opinions expressed in this podcast are those of the hosts and guests and do not necessarily reflect the views of their organizations or affiliates. This podcast is intended for informational and educational purposes only and should not be considered professional, legal, financial, or medical advice. Any examples or stories shared are illustrative and have been anonymized where appropriate. Listeners are encouraged to use their own judgment and seek professional guidance when applying ideas discussed in this podcast to their specific situations.

Episode Summary Whitney sits down with her co-founder and partner of 13 years, Celeste O'Brien, to unpack the visionary integrator pairing that has shaped Glowe. Celeste went from inner-city classroom teacher to Whitney's admin, and over time to co-founder and co-decision maker. Together they get into what each role actually does, why the tension between them is where their best work happens, and how trust gets built when you stop hiding the stories running in your head.

Key Takeaways

• The visionary sees the whole picture and connects the dots. The integrator asks the hard questions, helps articulate the vision, and turns it into action that stays aligned with the company's purpose and values.
• Visionaries often feel something is wrong with them when they can't execute or explain an idea clearly. Nothing is wrong. They need a partner.
• "Yes, and" matters. An integrator who can stay curious and play with an idea before operationalizing it makes it safe for big ideas to surface.
• Productive tension is a good thing. Like belaying up a cliff, each partner pulls the other a little without leaving anyone behind.
• A company can only hold one vision. Multiple competing visionaries create factions, so everyone else's vision has to play off the one at the center.
• Roles are porous. You can work outside your strengths, but it costs more energy and you have to plan for recovery.
• Visionaries often need more space and fewer meetings, and that can bring guilt. Naming the story ("I'm not earning my keep") out loud to your partner is often how it dissolves.
• Trust requires transparency, from sharing a calendar to sharing ideas that might be stupid. Fear of judgment is usually what holds leaders back.
• The path to the right pairing starts with self-awareness: notice your thoughts, separate fact from story, then check that story with the other person.

Links & Resources

• Celeste O'Brien on LinkedIn
• Glowe
• Whitney Kenter on LinkedIn
• Subscribe to The Glowe Weekly Spark
• Book a conversation with Glowe
• Mentioned in this episode: Rocket Fuel by Gino Wickman and Mark C. Winters, and Traction (EOS)

Subscribe so you don't miss the next episode.

Disclaimer The views and opinions expressed in this podcast are those of the hosts and guests and do not necessarily reflect the views of their organizations or affiliates. This podcast is intended for informational and educational purposes only and should not be considered professional, legal, financial, or medical advice. Any examples or stories shared are illustrative and have been anonymized where appropriate. Listeners are encouraged to use their own judgment and seek professional guidance when applying ideas discussed in this podcast to their specific situations.

Episode Summary

In this solo episode, Whitney reflects on a question posed at a global leadership conference in Orvieto, Italy: five years from now, looking back at today, what will we be laughing at ourselves for stressing over. She uses that question as a lens for identifying where unnecessary suffering shows up, both in individual lives and inside organizations, and argues that leaders have an obligation to notice and help alleviate that suffering rather than treat it as a given cost of doing business.

Key Takeaways

• Whitney traces the episode's theme to a question posed at a leadership conference in Orvieto, Italy: looking back five years, what will we be laughing at ourselves for stressing over today.
• She distinguishes unnecessary suffering, created by unexamined patterns, from suffering that is actually required by circumstance.
• She frames alleviating suffering in an organization as part of a leader's job, requiring both the willingness to look for root causes and the compassion to sit with what's found.
• She invites listeners to apply the Orvieto question to their own lives before applying it to their organizations or teams.

Links & Resources

• Glowe
• Whitney Kenter on LinkedIn
• Book a conversation with Glowe

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Disclaimer

The views and opinions expressed in this podcast are those of the hosts and guests and do not necessarily reflect the views of their organizations or affiliates. This podcast is intended for informational and educational purposes only and should not be considered professional, legal, financial, or medical advice. Any examples or stories shared are illustrative and have been anonymized where appropriate. Listeners are encouraged to use their own judgment and seek professional guidance when applying ideas discussed in this podcast to their specific situations.

Whitney sits down with Kim Walker, a former principal bassoonist with the London Symphony Orchestra turned university dean turned executive coach, and founder of the Orvieto Leadership Summit in Italy. The conversation starts with Kim's path from music to academia to coaching, then digs into what she taught at this year's Summit: leading without speaking, the way a conductor holds a room through presence alone. From there the two trace a throughline between musical mastery and leadership, touching on the difference between playing it safe and doing something extraordinary, why most coaching fixes problems instead of building on what's already working, and what it actually takes to build a team, or an orchestra, that can adapt to a mistake in real time without anyone saying a word.

• The best leaders communicate without dictating.
• There's a line between competent and extraordinary, and it's uncomfortable to cross.
• Most coaching is deficit-focused. Kim built her practice around the opposite.
• Structure isn't the enemy. The question is whether it's serving you or constraining you.
• Interdependence is not the same as codependence.
• When something breaks in real time, the group adapts without a word.
• Leaders are the bridge between the people doing the work and the people receiving it.

• Kim Walker
• Orvieto Musica (home of the Orvieto Leadership Summit)
• Glowe
• Whitney Kenter on LinkedIn
• Subscribe to The Glowe Weekly Spark
• Book a conversation with Glowe

Subscribe so you don't miss the next episode.

The views and opinions expressed in this podcast are those of the hosts and guests and do not necessarily reflect the views of their organizations or affiliates. This podcast is intended for informational and educational purposes only and should not be considered professional, legal, financial, or medical advice. Any examples or stories shared are illustrative and have been anonymized where appropriate. Listeners are encouraged to use their own judgment and seek professional guidance when applying ideas discussed in this podcast to their specific situations.

Episode Summary

In part two of a two-part conversation, Whitney and Ryan Wickes nerd out on the science of flow: what's happening in the body and brain when someone (or a team) is performing at their best. They get into the four-stage flow cycle of struggle, release, flow, and recovery, why unmanaged notifications and always-open-door policies quietly kill performance, the difference between group flow and team flow, and the seven conditions, including collective ambition and psychological safety, that determine whether a team ever gets there.

Key Takeaways

• Flow is an optimal state of consciousness (total absorption in a task, where self disappears and performance spikes) and it's biologically hardwired into everyone, not reserved for elite athletes or performers

• Notifications and unprotected calendars are invisible performance killers; teams that agree on blocked, uninterrupted focus time outperform teams running on an always-open-door model

• Team flow depends on seven conditions: collective ambition, common goals, aligned personal goals, high skill integration, open communication, psychological safety, and mutual commitment

• Trust can't be built directly, only earned, but leaders can build the conditions for psychological safety. Google's Project Aristotle found it's the strongest predictor of team success, and the best teams don't make fewer mistakes, they just surface and fix them faster

• Flow moves through four stages: struggle, release, flow, and recovery. Skipping recovery is the fastest route to burnout, no matter how strong the first three stages are

• Leaders who make space for people's personal goals alongside team goals see more loyalty and retention, because intrinsic motivation drives people whether or not they're getting paid for it

Links & Resources

• Glowe Connective

• Whitney Kenter on LinkedIn

• Ryan Wickes on LinkedIn

• Flow Research Collective

• If you want to learn more about the science behind flow and how you can practically apply the cutting edge of performance neuroscience, you can get the first module for free: stevenkotler.com/glowe

• Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, the psychologist who coined the term "flow"

• Keith Sawyer, whose research on group flow built on Csikszentmihalyi's work

• "Team Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Collaboration" by Jef J.J. van den Hout and Orin C. Davis, the book behind the "collective ambition" framing

• Amy Edmondson, Harvard Business School, whose research underpins the concept of psychological safety

• Google's Project Aristotle, the internal study Ryan referenced on what makes teams effective

• Dr. Glenn Fox, USC neuroscientist referenced for his environment-management tip during the release phase

• Part One: Ryan Wickes on the Glowe Podcast

• Book a conversation with Glowe

• Subscribe to the Glowe Weekly Spark

Disclaimer: The views and opinions expressed in this podcast are those of the hosts and guests and do not necessarily reflect the views of their organizations or affiliates. This podcast is intended for informational and educational purposes only and should not be considered professional, legal, financial, or medical advice. Any examples or stories shared are illustrative and have been anonymized where appropriate. Listeners are encouraged to use their own judgment and seek professional guidance when applying ideas discussed in this podcast to their specific situations.

Episode Summary

In part one of a two-part conversation, Whitney talks with Ryan Wickes about the winding road that took him from quarterback to competitive skier to teacher to social worker to running a psychological resilience program for the Army and Air Force in Nevada, and eventually to his current work with Steven Kotler at the Flow Research Collective. They get into what flow actually is, why multitasking is a myth and task switching is what's really happening, the four-stage cycle of struggle, release, flow, and recovery, and why hustle culture's obsession with grinding without rest works against the biology it's trying to override.

Key Takeaways

• Flow is a task-dependent cognitive state, biologically hardwired into all of us, not something reserved for elite athletes, artists, or founders
• Multitasking isn't real. What we call multitasking is task switching, and it comes with a real cognitive cost even when you get good at it
• Flow moves through a four-stage cycle: struggle, release, flow, and recovery. Frustration in the struggle phase is often a signal you're on the right path, not a sign to quit
• Low-grade physical activity, like a short walk, helps move through the release phase and flush stress hormones out of the system
• Hustle culture treats sleep deprivation and constant grinding as a badge of honor, but performance without recovery isn't sustainable
• Leaders who access flow drive their teams into flow. The shift in a leader's mood and regulation is visible to the people around them
• Peak performers operate from an internal locus of control: the belief that their actions shape outcomes, rather than feeling like things are happening to them

Links & Resources

• Glowe Connective
• Whitney Kenter on LinkedIn
• Ryan Wickes on LinkedIn
• Book a conversation with Glowe
• Subscribe to the Glowe Weekly Spark

Disclaimer

The views and opinions expressed in this podcast are those of the hosts and guests and do not necessarily reflect the views of their organizations or affiliates. This podcast is intended for informational and educational purposes only and should not be considered professional, legal, financial, or medical advice. Any examples or stories shared are illustrative and have been anonymized where appropriate. Listeners are encouraged to use their own judgment and seek professional guidance when applying ideas discussed in this podcast to their specific situations.

Whitney sits down again with Glowe's executive coach Ariana Jahja to break down the difference between self-awareness and self-mastery, and why conflating the two leaves leaders stuck. Ariana frames self-awareness as only the first of three steps (awareness, understanding, mastery) and splits awareness itself into internal (what you're feeling and noticing in your body) and external (how your team actually experiences you, regardless of your intent). The conversation moves through the gap between intent and impact, the danger of overfunctioning as a leader, how to take in feedback without either dismissing it or absorbing all of it as identity, and what "coherence" means across the individual, the team, and the organization as a whole. Ariana closes with a practical four-step hack for catching yourself in the moment.

• Self-awareness is not self-mastery. Self-mastery is the full arc: awareness of what's happening inside you, understanding why, then building the tools to actually work with it differently.
• Internal vs. external awareness are two different things. Internal is what you're feeling and noticing somatically. External is how your team is actually experiencing you, which can diverge sharply from your intent.
• Intent doesn't equal impact. A leader who sees themselves as decisive can be experienced by their team as controlling, and missing that gap erodes trust.
• Overfunctioning is its own failure mode. Taking on other people's emotions, mistakes, or unresolved issues as a leader doesn't help them grow, and it isn't sustainable.
• Feedback requires a filter, not a flood gate. The goal isn't to absorb all feedback as truth or reject all of it as noise. It's identifying the small percentage that's actually the highest-leverage thing to work with, including feedback from people you don't respect or who don't report to you.
• Coherence is the goal at every level. When the individual, the team, and the organizational system aren't aligned, that friction burns energy that could otherwise go toward the work itself.

The hack, as promised on the episode:

1. See it — notice the actual behavior in the moment
2. Understand it — ask what's driving it (fear, an old motivator, a pattern that used to work)
3. Work with it — identify a strategy (breath, a pause, whatever's in your toolkit)
4. Practice it — repeat it daily, weekly, and keep learning from other leaders doing the same work

• Glowe Connective
• Whitney Kenter on LinkedIn
• Ariana Jahja on Linkedin
• Subscribe to The Glowe Weekly Spark
• Book a conversation with Glowe

The views and opinions expressed in this podcast are those of the hosts and guests and do not necessarily reflect the views of their organizations or affiliates. This podcast is intended for informational and educational purposes only and should not be considered professional, legal, financial, or medical advice. Any examples or stories shared are illustrative and have been anonymized where appropriate. Listeners are encouraged to use their own judgment and seek professional guidance when applying ideas discussed in this podcast to their specific situations.

Episode Summary

Whitney sits down with Stephanie Martinez, a shamanic healer and multi-business entrepreneur she has worked with for 15 years, for a conversation on wisdom, indigenous culture, and organizational hierarchy. Stephanie traces her path from a childhood fascination with anatomy and physiology through training under a medicine man in Milwaukee to two decades in health and wellness. The conversation moves through how tribal communities preserved and transferred wisdom, why modern corporate structures push people out at an arbitrary retirement age instead of using their experience, and what businesses could learn from role clarity, rites of passage, and fire council-style spaces for guidance. They close on self-mastery, healthy conflict, and why avoiding a hard conversation usually costs more time than having it.

Key Takeaways

• Whitney raises a workforce shift: by 2030, roughly a quarter of workers will be in the 45 to 65 range, carrying institutional wisdom that current business structures aren't built to use.
• In tribal communities, everyone worked and held a defined role for their whole lifetime rather than exiting at a set age, which Stephanie ties to longevity research on blue zones and sustained cognitive function into old age.
• People in those communities often held multiple roles at once (a healer might also herd or farm), which Stephanie argues kept the community functioning holistically rather than in silos.
• Stephanie describes rites of passage that marked life transitions in tribal communities with explicit ceremony and clarity. Whitney draws the parallel to a corporate promotion, where the title and pay change but the new expectations often go uncommunicated.
• Stephanie introduces the "fire council" concept, a cross-generational gathering where anyone could ask for guidance; Whitney likens it to what a cross-functional committee could look like at work.
• Both agree that avoiding direct feedback doesn't remove the friction, it just relocates it into "meetings after the meeting" and delays resolution.
• Reference point raised in the conversation: The Four Agreements (Don Miguel Ruiz), in relation to how people take things personally during conflict.

Links & Resources

• Connect with Stephanie

• Whitney Kenter on LinkedIn

• Glowe Connective

• Book a conversation with Glowe

Disclaimer

The content of this podcast is for informational and educational purposes only and is not intended as medical, psychological, financial, or legal advice. Views expressed by guests are their own and do not necessarily reflect those of Glowe Connective. Please consult a qualified professional before making decisions based on anything discussed in this episode.

Episode Summary

Whitney sits down with Dr. Edythe Heus, founder of Rev6 and a neurofascia specialist with over three decades of clinical experience, for a conversation that keeps circling back to the same idea from two different directions. Dr. Edythe walks through her path from watching how people walked as a child, to twenty years treating everyone from Broadway dancers to professional athletes in New York, to developing the fascia-based movement system that became Rev6. Along the way, she and Whitney land on a parallel neither of them expected going in. The pain a body presents with, and the problem an organization presents with, are almost never the actual source. They're a signal pointing somewhere else, and chasing the signal instead of the source is why the same issue keeps coming back.

Key Takeaways

• Dr. Edythe Heus, founder of Rev6, on her path from a childhood fascination with how people move to twenty years treating dancers, athletes, and neurologically compromised patients in New York City, and what that clinical experience translates to for how leaders operate under pressure

• What fascia actually is, how it connects the nervous system to the muscles, and why understanding it changes how you think about alignment, whether in a body or in a business

• Why the pain someone feels is rarely where the actual problem started, using low back pain and failed back surgeries as an example, and what that means for leaders who keep solving the same symptom without touching the root cause

• The parallel Whitney draws between treating a body and treating an organization, and why the presenting issue in a team or a company is almost never what actually needs to be addressed

• How an old, forgotten injury or pattern can keep showing up in the body for years, and the leadership version of that: unresolved patterns that keep resurfacing on a team or in how a leader operates, long after the original moment has passed

• Dr. Edythe on Rev6's role in performance and longevity, and why she and Whitney see the same throughline between physical alignment and how a leader shows up

Links & Resources

• Rev6 On-Demand — Dr. Edythe's on-demand fitness studio. Glowe listeners get 50% off a 3-month subscription

• Dr. Edythe Heus on LinkedIn

• Whitney Kenter on LinkedIn

• Glowe Connective

• Book a conversation with Glowe

Disclaimer

The views and opinions expressed in this podcast are those of the hosts and guests and do not necessarily reflect the views of their organizations or affiliates. This podcast is intended for informational and educational purposes only and should not be considered professional, legal, financial, or medical advice. Any examples or stories shared are illustrative and have been anonymized where appropriate. Listeners are encouraged to use their own judgment and seek professional guidance when applying ideas discussed in this podcast to their specific situations.