The Science of Leading

The Science of Leading

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The Science of Leading episodes

  • From Vague to Valuable: A Plug-and-Play Leadership Review Template
    In this episode of The Science of Leading, Claire and Edwin dive into why so many leadership performance reviews feel like vague narratives—and how HR and People Ops can replace them with a structured, defensible leadership review template.
    They unpack what a strong leadership evaluation sample should include, from role context and business priorities to concrete outcomes, observable leadership behaviors, and culture impact. You’ll hear how to translate soft skills like communication, decision making, and emotional intelligence into specific, copy-paste-ready review phrases and examples that managers can actually use.
    Claire and Edwin walk through an annual performance review checklist, explore when and how to use multi-rater feedback, and explain how calibration sessions keep ratings fair and consistent across teams. They also connect leadership reviews to real development by outlining how to turn feedback into measurable 30/60/90-day plans that improve team performance over time.
    Throughout the conversation, they touch on how structured, science-based tools like OAD can strengthen leadership evaluation and succession decisions—and why testing OAD for free at OAD.ai can be a practical next step for teams that want less guesswork and more evidence in their leadership reviews.
    13 min
  • From Gut Feel to Real Data: A Practical Playbook for High-Performing Teams
    In this episode of The Science of Leading, Claire and Edwin walk through a practical, research-backed journey for boosting team performance that starts with better measurement—not louder pep talks.


    They unpack what “team performance” really means beyond vibes, why many organizations don’t have a performance problem so much as a measurement problem, and how leaders can move from individual heroics to healthy, dependable teams. Drawing on research from Google, McKinsey, Deloitte, Gallup, and OAD’s own work with growing companies, they break the conversation into three stages: diagnose, focus, and experiment.


    You’ll learn how to run a lightweight team health diagnostic, choose a small set of metrics that actually predict delivery, and separate team effectiveness, dynamics, and health. Claire and Edwin discuss what distinguishes high-performing teams (hint: it’s not just “top talent”), the human capabilities that matter most in 2026, and how tools like OAD’s behavioral assessments can de-risk hiring and team design.


    Finally, they show you how to turn insights into action with short, 2–4 week experiments: picking one performance driver at a time, defining clear behavior changes, and using simple governance and rituals so improvements stick. Along the way, they weave in soft examples of how HR leaders, founders, and managers can use OAD to match people to roles, spot emerging burnout and disengagement risks, and scale a culture of high-performing teams without burning people out.


    If you want a concrete playbook for going from gut feel to structured, scalable team performance, this episode is for you.
    16 min
  • Why Performance Reviews Fail (And How to Actually Make Them Fair)

    In this episode of The Science of Leading, Claire and Edwin unpack why so many performance reviews feel unfair, political, or just plain useless—and what leaders can do about it.

    Drawing on OAD’s performance evaluation framework, they break down the most common pitfalls in team and individual reviews: recency bias and halo/horns effects, personality-based judgments disguised as "fit," confusing effort with real outcomes, and rating scales that mean something different in every department.

    Claire surfaces the real questions managers are wrestling with—how do you keep reviews consistent, avoid bias, and still move fast?—while Edwin offers concrete, research-backed practices: anchoring reviews to shared team goals, insisting on specific evidence and work artifacts, using simple rating scales with behavioral anchors, and running calibration sessions that turn "manager opinion" into a defensible system.

    If you’re an HR leader, people manager, or founder who wants performance reviews to drive clarity, accountability, and development instead of anxiety and politics, this episode gives you a practical roadmap for doing reviews fairly—and making them actually useful.

    14 min
  • Beyond Gut Feel: Building Fair, Defensible Leadership Evaluation Systems

    In this episode of The Science of Leading, Claire Monroe and Edwin Carrington break down how HR and People leaders can move beyond political, vibes-based leadership reviews and design a fair, defensible evaluation system that actually improves leadership performance.

    Drawing on real-world best practices, they explore how to define a clear, role-specific leadership competency model, translate it into observable behaviors, and align it with your organization’s strategy and culture. They unpack how to combine tools like 360-degree feedback, validated assessments, performance reviews, and simulations without creating noise or burnout.

    Claire and Edwin also discuss how to protect psychological safety and DEI, ensure anonymity and trust in feedback, and turn assessment data into concrete development plans, coaching priorities, and promotion decisions. If you’re an HR or People leader tired of biased talent conversations and fuzzy ratings, this episode will help you build a leadership evaluation system your executives can trust—and your leaders will actually use.

    13 min
  • Build a Scalable Job Fit Engine: From Gut Feel to Predictive Hiring
    In this episode of The Science of Leading, Claire Monroe and Edwin Carrington break down how to turn job fit from a fuzzy, gut-driven concept into a scalable, data-backed hiring engine.
    They explore why job fit—defined as the match between a person and the real demands of the role, the work environment, and the team context—is the hidden driver behind quality of hire, time-to-productivity, and long-term retention. Drawing on research and front-line experience, they unpack how structured methods like performance-based job descriptions, cognitive ability tests, skills assessments, and validated personality tools such as the OAD Survey can dramatically improve predictive power compared to unstructured interviews and intuition alone.
    Across three segments, Claire and Edwin walk HR leaders and talent partners through a practical blueprint for building a repeatable job fit system: defining success outcomes for each role, selecting and sequencing assessments into a candidate-friendly flow, scoring and comparing candidates with standardized rubrics, and validating that your process actually predicts performance over time. They then extend the conversation beyond Day One, showing how 30/60/90-day check-ins, stay interviews, and ongoing manager feedback can feed back into your hiring model.
    Whether you’re an HR leader under pressure to do more with less, a TA lead trying to standardize hiring across multiple locations, or a founder tired of expensive mis-hires, this episode gives you a concrete playbook for scaling a science-based job fit system. Stay tuned to the end for a clear invitation to test OAD for free at OAD.ai and see how a structured, psychometrically validated fit model can plug directly into your next critical hire.
    15 min
  • From Gut Feel to Data: Using Teamwork Self‑Assessments to Build Stronger Teams
    In this episode of The Science of Leading, Claire and Edwin unpack how team managers can use a simple, well-designed teamwork self‑assessment questionnaire to see what’s really happening inside their teams—and then actually do something about it.
    They explore what great teamwork questionnaires measure (communication, listening, collaboration, flexibility, decision making, leadership, and problem solving), how to design and run them without creating a culture of blame, and why clarity around anonymity and data use is non‑negotiable for honest responses.
    Then they walk through how to interpret the results and turn them into behavior change: reading patterns in subscale scores, linking them to real performance issues like missed handoffs or stalled decisions, and translating the findings into 2–3 focused team experiments over a 4–6 week period rather than overwhelming people with initiatives.
    Throughout the conversation, Claire brings the questions and concerns of frontline managers—How do I introduce this without spooking people? What if scores are bad?—while Edwin connects the dots to research on team effectiveness, psychological safety, and leadership behavior. Together, they show how moving from gut feel to structured data can help managers coach more fairly, improve collaboration, and keep teams moving in the same direction without turning assessment into bureaucracy.
    11 min
  • Team Dynamics Assessments: A Practical Playbook for Better Team Performance
    This episode of The Science of Leading walks HR leaders, founders, and managers through a practical, step‑by‑step playbook for running a team dynamics assessment that actually improves performance. Claire and Edwin unpack what a team dynamics assessment really measures (beyond “good vibes”), why team environment is a leading indicator of results, and how research from Google’s Project Aristotle and Amy Edmondson on psychological safety connects to everyday execution.
    You’ll learn how to define clear business goals for your assessment, choose or design the right questionnaire, and protect anonymity so people tell the truth. The conversation then turns to turning raw survey data into decisions: identifying strengths, constraints, and risks; leader–team perception gaps; and high‑variance items that signal inconsistent norms. Finally, Claire and Edwin translate insights into action with a simple prioritization filter, concrete behavior‑based interventions (from decision rights and role clarity to conflict hygiene and accountability routines), and an implementation cadence of reviews and pulse checks that keeps teams improving over time.
    14 min
  • Recruit Talent: Strategic Guide to Hiring Top Talent
    In this episode of The Science of Leading, Claire Monroe and Edwin Carrington unpack what it really takes to recruit top talent in 2026—beyond flashy interviews and gut feel. Speaking directly to HR and talent leaders in growing companies, they frame recruiting as a repeatable decision system that reliably produces high-performing hires.
    Claire and Edwin break down how to define roles by outcomes instead of buzzword wishlists, design a sourcing strategy that goes beyond inbound applicants, and build structured interviews and scorecards that make hiring decisions explainable, fair, and defensible. They explore the 80/20 of recruiting: the few process choices that drive most results in speed, quality, and candidate experience.
    A major focus of the conversation is using behavioral and psychometric data as the backbone of smarter hiring. Edwin explains how OAD’s assessments help leaders clarify role demands, spot behavior-fit and risk early, and dramatically improve quality-of-hire, ramp time, and retention. Together, they show where OAD plugs into each stage of the recruiting system—from role design and candidate profiles to interview guides, final offers, and onboarding.
    Whether you’re tightening up your existing recruiting process or rebuilding it for scale, this episode gives you a clear, hard-hitting blueprint for hiring better people, faster—with OAD as your decision engine rather than relying on inconsistent gut feel.
    13 min
  • Work Motivations: A Practical Framework to Improve Employee Motivation and Satisfaction
    This episode of The Science of Leading gives HR and People leaders a practical, research-backed framework to understand and improve employee motivation and satisfaction.
    Claire and Edwin unpack why motivation is not a personality trait but a system outcome, and how to separate motivation from engagement and satisfaction so HR stops guessing. They explore the core drivers of workplace motivation – meaning, autonomy, mastery, fairness, psychological safety, belonging, and clarity – and connect them to Self-Determination Theory in plain language.
    Then they translate theory into action: how to design intrinsic and extrinsic motivators that actually work, how to distinguish motivation problems from role-fit problems, and how tools like OAD’s organization analysis and design system help HR add a structured assessment layer instead of relying on "diagnosis by vibes."
    Finally, the episode walks through a concrete implementation playbook for HR: short, effective pulse surveys, a minimal motivation dashboard, and a 60–90 day pilot roadmap HR can run with managers to improve clarity, autonomy, and psychological safety – with clear before-and-after metrics.
    If you’re an HR leader who wants fewer engagement slogans and more practical levers you can pull within a quarter, this conversation is your field guide.
    15 min
  • Performance Tracking: How to Track Employee Performance and Improve Team Outcomes
    This episode of The Science of Leading breaks down how to build a practical, trust-based performance tracking system in organizations with 50+ employees. Co-hosts Claire Monroe and Edwin Carrington walk through what to measure (and what to ignore), how to set clear goals and KPIs, and how to design simple rhythms for check-ins and feedback that actually improve results. You’ll learn how to balance output, quality, timeliness, and reliability metrics; connect individual goals to business objectives; avoid surveillance-style tracking; and turn performance data into better hiring, promotion, and development decisions. Ideal for HR leaders and hiring managers who want a usable, modern approach to tracking performance without killing trust or drowning in dashboards.
    16 min

About The Science of Leading

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Powered by the experts at OAD, The Science of Leading is your behind-the-scenes guide to smarter hiring, stronger teams, and workplace strategies that actually work. Whether you’re a busy HR leader, a founder scaling fast, or a manager navigating team dynamics, this podcast helps you cut through the noise with real, research-backed insights.