The Leadership Project Podcast

Who taught you what “strong” is supposed to look like and what part of you did you learn to hide to fit that picture? That question kicks off a conversation that might change how you think about leadership, persuasion, and your own emotional life.

We’re joined by Jennifer B. Gardner, a trial lawyer with nearly four decades of courtroom experience and a keynote speaker on persuasive, emotionally intelligent communication. Jennifer grew up believing she had to be the strong one, then entered a profession that often rewards a hard shell and punishes sensitivity. What she found, through years of winning cases and studying the craft, is that sensitivity is not a credibility problem. It’s a pattern-spotting, connection-building advantage when you know how to use it.

We unpack what high sensitivity looks like in real life, from intense emotional resonance to being deeply affected by environments, noise, and group dynamics. Then we get practical: self-awareness that goes beyond naming emotions, self-regulation that helps you choose response over reaction, and empathy that reads the room without projecting your own feelings onto others. Jennifer shares her go-to tools for deep listening, including the deceptively simple “Tell me more about that,” plus how mirroring someone’s language can build trust fast in negotiations, sales, and leadership conversations.

We also put up a guardrail: where does influence end and manipulation begin? We explore intention, service, consent, and the sobering next-day test: will both people feel good about the outcome tomorrow?

If you want to lead with more authenticity, communicate with emotional intelligence, and persuade without losing your integrity, hit play. Subscribe, share with a friend who needs it, and leave a review so more people can find the show.

🌐 Connect with Jennifer:
• Website: https://jenniferbgardner.com/
• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jenniferbgardner/
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/iamjenniferbgardner/

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✅ Follow The Leadership Project on your favourite podcast platform and listen to a new episode every week!

📝 Don’t forget to share your thoughts on the episode in the comments below.
 
🔔 Join us in our mission at The Leadership Project and learn more about our organisation here:  https://linktr.ee/mickspiers

📕 You can purchase a copy of the Mick Spiers bestselling book "You're a Leader, Now What?" as an eBook or paperback at Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B09ZBKK8XV

If you would like a signed copy, please reach out to [email protected] and we can arrange it for you too.

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A meeting ends and your calendar moves on, but your brain doesn’t. We’ve all had that moment where we replay a comment, hear a different “tone” in an email, or walk into the next conversation with part of our attention still stuck in the last one. That lingering mental noise is more than stress, it’s a leadership and team performance problem.

I’m joined by organizational psychologist and author Dr. Liane Davey to unpack her idea of thought load: the invisible tax on performance created by rising cognitive demands, increasing emotional burdens, and declining energy reserves. We talk about why so many teams feel less than the sum of their parts, how unresolved moments turn into conflict debt, and why the biggest drain often isn’t the workload, it’s the human friction we don’t process.

Leanne shares a sticky metaphor and a practical playbook: when the dragon is breathing fire, it’s protecting treasure. Instead of grabbing a sword, a shield, or a bucket, we practice “opening the drawbridge” with curiosity using simple questions like “What’s at stake here?” and “What am I missing?” We also look inward at our own triggers, name what we’re protecting, and create zero-input space to metabolize conflict so it doesn’t follow us home.

If you want better workplace communication skills, healthier conflict, and less burnout, hit play, then subscribe, share the episode with one person, and leave a review with the most useful question you’re taking into your next tough conversation.

🌐 Connect with Liane:
• Website: http://www.lianedavey.com/
• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/lianedavey/

📚 You can purchase Liane's books on Amazon:
• Thoughtload: https://www.amazon.com/dp/1774586517/
• The Good Fight: https://www.amazon.com/dp/1774587408/
• You First: https://www.amazon.com/dp/1118636708/

Send us Fan Mail

Support the show

✅ Follow The Leadership Project on your favourite podcast platform and listen to a new episode every week!

📝 Don’t forget to share your thoughts on the episode in the comments below.
 
🔔 Join us in our mission at The Leadership Project and learn more about our organisation here:  https://linktr.ee/mickspiers

📕 You can purchase a copy of the Mick Spiers bestselling book "You're a Leader, Now What?" as an eBook or paperback at Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B09ZBKK8XV

If you would like a signed copy, please reach out to [email protected] and we can arrange it for you too.

If you're thinking about starting a podcast or upgrading your hosting, Buzzsprout is a great option! This link will give both of us a $20 credit when you upgrade:

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Send us Fan Mail

Support the show

✅ Follow The Leadership Project on your favourite podcast platform and listen to a new episode every week!

📝 Don’t forget to share your thoughts on the episode in the comments below.
 
🔔 Join us in our mission at The Leadership Project and learn more about our organisation here:  https://linktr.ee/mickspiers

📕 You can purchase a copy of the Mick Spiers bestselling book "You're a Leader, Now What?" as an eBook or paperback at Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B09ZBKK8XV

If you would like a signed copy, please reach out to [email protected] and we can arrange it for you too.

If you're thinking about starting a podcast or upgrading your hosting, Buzzsprout is a great option! This link will give both of us a $20 credit when you upgrade:

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Your team does something that frustrates you and your brain fills in the blank fast: “They don’t care,” “They’re careless,” “They’re avoiding ownership.” I take a different angle in this monthly solo reflection, pulling together the most practical leadership lessons from four recent guests and turning them into a simple, usable lens: leadership is not about controlling behavior. Leadership is about creating conditions that make certain behaviors more likely than others.

We start with clarity, because unclear outcomes and unspoken expectations force people to guess, and guessing is where friction thrives. I unpack the difference between being clear about the result versus prescribing every activity, plus the leadership shift from telling to asking. When you raise your question to statement ratio, you stop becoming the bottleneck and start becoming the catalyst.

Then we move inward to self-awareness and the stories we build. “Do I actually know this to be true?” sounds small, but it can prevent weeks of tension built on a bad assumption. From there, we explore identity and relationships through the platinum rule, treating people the way they want to be treated by simply asking. We close with emergence, generative listening, and the question that keeps leaders adaptive without losing purpose: “What is true now?”

If you want better team culture, stronger accountability, and fewer avoidable conflicts, this is a sharp reset. Subscribe, share this with a leader on your team, and leave a review with the condition you plan to change this week.

Send us Fan Mail

Support the show

✅ Follow The Leadership Project on your favourite podcast platform and listen to a new episode every week!

📝 Don’t forget to share your thoughts on the episode in the comments below.
 
🔔 Join us in our mission at The Leadership Project and learn more about our organisation here:  https://linktr.ee/mickspiers

📕 You can purchase a copy of the Mick Spiers bestselling book "You're a Leader, Now What?" as an eBook or paperback at Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B09ZBKK8XV

If you would like a signed copy, please reach out to [email protected] and we can arrange it for you too.

If you're thinking about starting a podcast or upgrading your hosting, Buzzsprout is a great option! This link will give both of us a $20 credit when you upgrade:

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What if the most effective leadership move in a messy, fast-changing world is simply admitting, “I don’t know yet”? We sit down with executive coach and systems change practitioner Jeanine Becker to unpack emergence, complexity, and why certainty can quietly make leaders worse at the very problems they are trying to solve.

We talk about the difference between having purpose and pretending you can predict the future. Purpose can stay steady as a North Star, while strategy becomes more agile, iterative, and experimental. Janine shares how leaders can use a simple question, “What is true now?”, to update decisions based on reality rather than old assumptions. We also dig into how metrics are signals, not answers, and why teams stay aligned when the purpose feels lived instead of repeated like a tagline.

Then we get practical about the human side of change: why some people feel energized by uncertainty while others feel threatened, how to name what is known and frame what is open, and how to invite resistance with genuine curiosity. We draw a hard line between performative consultation and real co-creation, where leaders accept that what emerges may not match the answer they walked in with. Along the way we explore presence, listening, confirmation bias, and how leaders can create conditions for people to show up stronger over time.

If you want better leadership tools for complex times, subscribe, share this with one person who will use it, and leave a review so more thoughtful leaders can find the show.

🌐 Connect with Jeanine:
• Website: https://www.onpurposetogether.com/
• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/beckerjeanine/

Send us Fan Mail

Support the show

✅ Follow The Leadership Project on your favourite podcast platform and listen to a new episode every week!

📝 Don’t forget to share your thoughts on the episode in the comments below.
 
🔔 Join us in our mission at The Leadership Project and learn more about our organisation here:  https://linktr.ee/mickspiers

📕 You can purchase a copy of the Mick Spiers bestselling book "You're a Leader, Now What?" as an eBook or paperback at Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B09ZBKK8XV

If you would like a signed copy, please reach out to [email protected] and we can arrange it for you too.

If you're thinking about starting a podcast or upgrading your hosting, Buzzsprout is a great option! This link will give both of us a $20 credit when you upgrade:

👉 https://www.buzzsprout.com/?referrer_id=1701891

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One of the biggest things standing between you and the leader you could become is not a skill gap, it’s a story gap. The story you repeat about yourself shapes what you attempt, how you show up, and what you decide is “just not you.” And at work, a second story is always running in parallel: the story other people believe about your value, your ceiling, and what they can trust you with.

I’m joined by leadership coach and author Uma Subramanian, founder of The Limitless Leader and author of *The Sought After Leader*. Uma shares her personal path from a 20-year career at Microsoft to launching her coaching business, including the tough lessons that came with her first manager role. We dig into why leading people feels so different from doing the work yourself, how assumptions quietly damage trust, and why the platinum rule matters more than the golden rule if you want your team to thrive.

We also get practical about growth. Uma breaks down her Bridge framework for limiting beliefs, showing how small actions create new evidence and help you rebuild confidence. Then we tackle the “perception gap” that keeps high performers overlooked and introduces her SOAR framework for closing it with integrity: strategic impact, communication and influence, authentic authority, and real relationships. If you’ve ever worried that sharing your wins feels like bragging, we reframe communicating value as service, so the right people can actually find and leverage your strengths.

If this resonates, subscribe on your favorite podcast app, share the episode with someone who needs it, and leave a quick review so more leaders can find the show.

🌐 Connect with Uma:
• Website: https://thelimitlessleaders.com/soughtafterleader
• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/uma-subramanian-limitless/

📚 You can purchase Uma's book on Amazon:
• The Sought-After Leader: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0H7L9SSDZ/

Send us Fan Mail

Support the show

✅ Follow The Leadership Project on your favourite podcast platform and listen to a new episode every week!

📝 Don’t forget to share your thoughts on the episode in the comments below.
 
🔔 Join us in our mission at The Leadership Project and learn more about our organisation here:  https://linktr.ee/mickspiers

📕 You can purchase a copy of the Mick Spiers bestselling book "You're a Leader, Now What?" as an eBook or paperback at Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B09ZBKK8XV

If you would like a signed copy, please reach out to [email protected] and we can arrange it for you too.

If you're thinking about starting a podcast or upgrading your hosting, Buzzsprout is a great option! This link will give both of us a $20 credit when you upgrade:

👉 https://www.buzzsprout.com/?referrer_id=1701891

Create forms easily with Jotform! Sign up with my link: https://www.jotform.com/?referral=AkWimLxOBz

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You’ve probably had this moment: something small happens, and your reaction feels bigger than the situation. That gap between “what happened” and “what I told myself it meant” is where so much leadership, stress, and conflict is born. We sit down with Coach Monique DeMonaco, founder of EQ Wize and an emotional intelligence and change expert, to unpack why awareness is the first step to any sustainable change and why fixing behavior alone rarely works.

We get practical and personal, moving from childhood messages and limiting beliefs to the inner critic that talks to us in a voice we would never use on a friend. Monique breaks down the brain-based drivers that sit under so much human suffering: the belief of not being enough, fear of rejection, the need for connection, and the sense that what we want is not available to us. We also explore how memory and interpretation can shape present-day workplace culture, from tense feedback conversations to the way we read a manager’s tone.

You’ll hear actionable tools you can use in real time, including Monique’s “delete delete” pattern interrupt to stop spiraling thoughts and replace them with something true or at least neutral. We also talk confirmation bias and the reticular activating system, the brain’s filter that decides what you notice, and why that matters for communication, empathy, and better decision-making. We close by connecting emotional intelligence to the modern hiring landscape, including the skills employers keep asking for: EQ, business etiquette, and critical thinking.

If this sparked an insight, subscribe, share the episode with someone who would benefit, and leave a review so more people can find the show.

🌐 Connect with Monique:
• Website: https://www.coachmonique.com/
https://eqwize.com/
• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/moniquedemonaco/
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/thecoachmonique/

Send us Fan Mail

Support the show

✅ Follow The Leadership Project on your favourite podcast platform and listen to a new episode every week!

📝 Don’t forget to share your thoughts on the episode in the comments below.
 
🔔 Join us in our mission at The Leadership Project and learn more about our organisation here:  https://linktr.ee/mickspiers

📕 You can purchase a copy of the Mick Spiers bestselling book "You're a Leader, Now What?" as an eBook or paperback at Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B09ZBKK8XV

If you would like a signed copy, please reach out to [email protected] and we can arrange it for you too.

If you're thinking about starting a podcast or upgrading your hosting, Buzzsprout is a great option! This link will give both of us a $20 credit when you upgrade:

👉 https://www.buzzsprout.com/?referrer_id=1701891

Create forms easily with Jotform! Sign up with my link: https://www.jotform.com/?referral=AkWimLxOBz

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Most leaders think they’re fixing a performance problem when they’re actually managing a clarity problem. Dusty Holcomb, CEO and founder of The Arcqus Group, joins me to break down a deceptively simple idea: remove ambiguity and performance follows. We get specific about what “clarity” really means in leadership and why it has nothing to do with barking orders or tightening control.

We talk through one of the hardest career transitions, moving from the person who gets results to the person who creates the conditions for other people to get results. That includes letting go of the spotlight, hiring people who are better than you, and shifting from “how to do it” instructions to clear outcomes that give your team agency. Along the way, Dusty shares a practical lens that instantly changes how you communicate: your question to statement ratio. The higher you go, the more questions you should ask and the better you must get at listening.

We also explore the hidden friction that comes from expectations trapped inside a leader’s head. Dusty explains how “rules of engagement” act like a decoder ring for your team: what you value, how you make decisions, how you prefer to communicate, how you give feedback, and what your non negotiables are. If you’ve ever felt frustrated that people “should just know,” this conversation gives you a better path, plus a simple two minute meeting prep framework you can use today.

If you found this useful, subscribe on your favorite podcast app, share the episode with a leader who needs it, and leave a review so more people can find the show.

🌐 Connect with Dusty:
• Website: https://arcqusgroup.com/
https://rulesofengagement.com/en/
• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/dustyholcomb/

Send us Fan Mail

Support the show

✅ Follow The Leadership Project on your favourite podcast platform and listen to a new episode every week!

📝 Don’t forget to share your thoughts on the episode in the comments below.
 
🔔 Join us in our mission at The Leadership Project and learn more about our organisation here:  https://linktr.ee/mickspiers

📕 You can purchase a copy of the Mick Spiers bestselling book "You're a Leader, Now What?" as an eBook or paperback at Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B09ZBKK8XV

If you would like a signed copy, please reach out to [email protected] and we can arrange it for you too.

If you're thinking about starting a podcast or upgrading your hosting, Buzzsprout is a great option! This link will give both of us a $20 credit when you upgrade:

👉 https://www.buzzsprout.com/?referrer_id=1701891

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Most leadership advice assumes people are fixed and organizations are machines. We don’t buy that. People change, teams adapt, and every interaction leaves a trace, which is why we’re using a garden metaphor to tie together the biggest lessons from Antoniette Roze, Ron Friedman, and Frans Campher. When leadership is a living ecosystem, your job is not to “control the machine,” it’s to tend the conditions where trust, clarity, and good work can grow.

We start with communication as planting: the difference between having an idea and helping someone receive it. If you’ve ever explained something “clearly” and still met confusion or resistance, the problem may be soil, not seed. We dig into generative listening, how people interpret messages through history and emotion, and how real co-creation happens when input can actually shape outcomes.

Then we zoom out to team performance and team productivity. Individual optimization does not guarantee collective performance, especially when focus time becomes someone else’s bottleneck. We walk through what a high-performing team needs: shared goals people understand, role clarity that prevents waiting, and interdependence that matches how work really flows. Along the way, we bring in behavioral humility (with a nod to Robert Sapolsky) to replace snap character judgments with curiosity and smarter accountability.

Finally, we go inward. Leadership masks, persona, authenticity, and shadow show up in the room whether we admit it or not. You’ll leave with five questions to use before your next important conversation and a simple one-week experiment to run in a single team or meeting. Subscribe, share this with a leader who needs it, and leave a review so more people can find the show.

Send us Fan Mail

Support the show

✅ Follow The Leadership Project on your favourite podcast platform and listen to a new episode every week!

📝 Don’t forget to share your thoughts on the episode in the comments below.
 
🔔 Join us in our mission at The Leadership Project and learn more about our organisation here:  https://linktr.ee/mickspiers

📕 You can purchase a copy of the Mick Spiers bestselling book "You're a Leader, Now What?" as an eBook or paperback at Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B09ZBKK8XV

If you would like a signed copy, please reach out to [email protected] and we can arrange it for you too.

If you're thinking about starting a podcast or upgrading your hosting, Buzzsprout is a great option! This link will give both of us a $20 credit when you upgrade:

👉 https://www.buzzsprout.com/?referrer_id=1701891

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If you’ve ever felt pressure to “look like a leader” instead of actually leading, this conversation will land. I sit down with executive coach and author Frans Campher (Dynamic Leadership in a Disruptive World) to talk about the masks we inherit, the behaviors we copy, and the quiet cost of bending ourselves out of shape to fit an old leadership template.

We get practical fast. Frans shares his head, heart, and gut framework for decision-making and why ignoring intuition and emotion can push smart people into the wrong roles for the wrong reasons. We also challenge the way we talk about imposter syndrome, reframing it as imposter thoughts and exploring how authenticity grows through small, deliberate experiments rather than big performative leaps. Along the way, we unpack what it really means to “be yourself” at work without using authenticity as an excuse to be unfiltered or careless.

The deeper thread is identity. If you don’t know who you are, you’ll default to mimicry, technique, and performance. Frans lays out reflective practices like life story work, values inventories, and daily journaling to build self-awareness and a grounded leadership signature. We also talk about leading people dynamically as they evolve, meeting them fresh instead of relying on old mental files, and how presence and listening to understand can change the quality of trust in every conversation. Finally, Frans’ orchestra analogy makes the shift clear: leadership growth often means moving from expert to conductor, creating results through others.

Subscribe for more conversations on authentic leadership, leadership development, executive coaching, and leading through disruption, and if this sparks an insight, share it and leave a review so more leaders can find it.

🌐 Connect with Frans:
• Website: https://www.ildynamics.com/
• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/franscampher/

📚 You can purchase Frans' book on Amazon:
• Dynamic Leadership in a Disruptive World: https://www.amazon.com/dp/1068365803/

Send us Fan Mail

Support the show

✅ Follow The Leadership Project on your favourite podcast platform and listen to a new episode every week!

📝 Don’t forget to share your thoughts on the episode in the comments below.
 
🔔 Join us in our mission at The Leadership Project and learn more about our organisation here:  https://linktr.ee/mickspiers

📕 You can purchase a copy of the Mick Spiers bestselling book "You're a Leader, Now What?" as an eBook or paperback at Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B09ZBKK8XV

If you would like a signed copy, please reach out to [email protected] and we can arrange it for you too.

If you're thinking about starting a podcast or upgrading your hosting, Buzzsprout is a great option! This link will give both of us a $20 credit when you upgrade:

👉 https://www.buzzsprout.com/?referrer_id=1701891

Create forms easily with Jotform! Sign up with my link: https://www.jotform.com/?referral=AkWimLxOBz

Get extra Dropbox space—sign up with my link: Dropbox Referral Link

Wise Referral link: https://wise.com/invite/dic/michaels11434

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