The Step UP - Where Leaders, Talent Managers and Leadership Development pros find expert tips for Leadership excellence

Most leaders think charisma is something you're born with. Jennifer Gardner has spent 30 years in Los Angeles courtrooms proving otherwise, and she's built a career teaching lawyers and executives that trust, not polish, is what actually moves people. In this episode she walks through the senior partner who told her she'd never be "a legal genius," how she won cases anyway, and what she's learned about magnetic leadership from CEOs who never once tried to impress her.

Guest: Jennifer Gardner is a trial attorney and communication strategist who consults with lawyers and executives on persuasive, trust-based communication in high-stakes situations.

In this episode:

• 01:46 — Meet Jennifer Gardner, trial attorney turned communication strategist
• 05:26 — The boss who told her she'd never be a "legal genius," and how she won anyway
• 09:42 — From courtroom instinct to teaching persuasive communication
• 17:18 — Why charisma is a learnable skill, not a birthright
• 19:59 — The CEO at the Peninsula Hotel: what magnetic leadership looks like up close
• 27:59 — The "big nos": why over-preparing with data and logic backfires
• 34:37 — Self-regulation and "your vibe affects your tribe"
• 36:54 — Her advice for leaders navigating a new promotion

Resources mentioned:

• "The fish smells from the head down" (German leadership proverb Jennifer references)
• Mirror neurons (the neuroscience behind why a leader's emotional state spreads through a team)

Links for today's show:

• Jennifer Gardner on LinkedIn
• jenniferbgardner.com
• Kent Kniebel on LinkedIn
• The Promoted Leader Toolkit

Music for this podcast comes from a live recording of the song Needle & Thread and is provided with permission by Pert' Near Sandstone. Check them out on pertnearsandstone.com and on all major streaming platforms.

Enjoyed the episode? Leave a rating and review wherever you listen, it helps more leaders find the show.

Newly promoted leaders keep their calendars private and their doors closed, then wonder why their team assumes they've stopped doing real work. Jennylynde Renteria-Packham spent two decades leading in long-term care and rehab hospitals before becoming an executive coach, and she joins Kent to talk about servant leadership, boundaries, and why transparency might be the most underused leadership tool there is.

Guest: Jennylynde Renteria-Packham spent over two decades leading in long-term care and rehab hospital settings, from director of nursing to director of quality, before founding Courage Coaching, where she now coaches leaders at every level from new manager to CEO.

In this episode:

• [00:50] — Meet Jennylynde: from nursing assistant to director of nursing, quality, and executive coach
• [07:49] — The mindset shift nobody warns you about when you're promoted off the front line
• [11:11] — Why healthcare leadership isn't as unique as it looks, and where it actually is
• [20:06] — The day two of her own staff called her in over an attendance policy
• [22:50] — Her working definition of servant leadership: humility, decisive ownership, and never throwing a team member under the bus in public
• [35:20] — "Make your calendar public": transparency, boundaries, and avoiding burnout
• [45:12] — Leader standard work: documenting your job so your successor doesn't inherit a mess
• [50:00] — Her advice for leaders chasing the next promotion, and leaders who just got one

Resources mentioned:

• Radical Candor by Kim Scott
• Leader standard work (Toyota Production System concept)
• Transforming Health Care: Virginia Mason Medical Center's Pursuit of the Perfect Patient Experience by Charles Kenney

Links for today's show:

• Jennylynde Renteria-Packham on LinkedIn
• https://couragecoaching.us/
• Kent Kniebel on LinkedIn
• The Promoted Leader Toolkit

Music for this podcast comes from a live recording of the song Needle & Thread and is provided with permission by Pert' Near Sandstone. Check them out on pertnearsandstone.com and on all major streaming platforms.

Enjoyed the episode? Leave a rating and review wherever you listen — it helps more leaders find the show.

Most learning and development spend gets justified by completion rates and course counts, not by whether anyone actually changed how they lead. Nick Gonios, VP of Learning Transformation at TalentLMS, has spent 30 years building and scaling technology companies, and he thinks L&D has been solving the wrong problem for decades. He joins Kent to unpack what he calls the capability paradox, and why building capability, not dependency, has to be the goal.

Guest: Nick Gonios is VP of Learning Transformation and company ambassador for TalentLMS (part of Epignosis), with more than 30 years building and scaling technology companies, including roles at Microsoft and Fujitsu, several startups, and a stint as public-facing CEO of a software company listed on the Australian Stock Exchange.

In this episode:

• [00:49] — Kent opens on why "building capability, not dependency" is today's topic
• [02:13] — Nick's path from Sydney to Athens: 30 years in tech, Microsoft, startups, and taking a software company public
• [05:16] — Nick's "lowercase L, uppercase T" theory of learning transformation
• [11:04] — Why HR "plant tours" miss the real problems, and what minimal viable learning looks like instead
• [19:04] — The Lou Gerstner and IBM story behind "people respect what's inspected of them"
• [20:28] — The capability paradox: how L&D metrics quietly optimized for the wrong things
• [27:49] — Why one-to-one coaching has always been too expensive, and what AI changes about that math
• [42:35] — Nick's advice for leaders in week one of a new role

Resources mentioned:

• Who Says Elephants Can't Dance? Leading a Great Enterprise Through Dramatic Change by Louis V. Gerstner Jr.
• TalentLMS, TalentHR, and TalentCards

Links for today's show:

• Nick Gonios on LinkedIn
• TalentLMS
• Kent Kniebel on LinkedIn
• The Promoted Leader Toolkit

Music for this podcast comes from a live recording of the song Needle & Thread and is provided with permission by Pert' Near Sandstone. Check them out on pertnearsandstone.com and on all major streaming platforms.

Enjoyed the episode? Leave a rating and review wherever you listen, it helps more leaders find the show.

Most leaders think they need better slides or better wording. Bryan Flanagan, who spent 14 years at IBM before a chance meeting with Zig Ziglar turned into a 29-year career at the Zig Ziglar Corporation, says the real gap is almost never content, it's delivery. In this episode, Kent and Bryan dig into why "everybody's in sales" whether it says so on your business card or not, the three keys to a presentation that actually lands, and why the leaders who pause the most tend to be the ones people trust the most.

Guest: Bryan Flanagan is CEO of Flanagan Training Group, a 14-year IBM veteran turned 29-year member of the Zig Ziglar Corporation, and a presentation skills coach who has spent decades teaching executives the difference between being comfortable in front of a room and being effective in one.

In this episode:

• 01:50 — Bryan's path: 14 years at IBM, a chance meeting with Zig Ziglar, and a 29-year career that followed
• 04:01 — "Everybody makes a living selling something," even if it's not on your business card
• 07:51 — The three keys to presenting: visual, verbal, and validation
• 13:41 — PowerPoint as a support, not a crutch: the six-lines, six-words rule
• 18:28 — Padding and filler words: what Caroline Kennedy's Senate interview revealed
• 22:15 — The four real benefits of pausing instead of filling the silence
• 27:51 — Working the stage with intention, and the Tom Peters story that shows what happens when you don't
• 34:15 — Advice for leaders chasing a promotion, and for those who just landed one

Resources mentioned:

• Silent Messages by Dr. Albert Mehrabian (source of the 7%/38%/55% communication study)
• Zig Ziglar and the Zig Ziglar Corporation (Bryan's 29-year career home)

Links for today's show:

• Bryan Flanagan on LinkedIn
• Flanagan Training Group on LinkedIn
• Flanagan Training Group website
• Kent Kniebel on LinkedIn
• The Promoted Leader Toolkit

AI can compress weeks of instructional design into minutes, but John Pike, founder and CEO of Parisos Partners, argues that speed isn't the same thing as learning. In this conversation, John and Kent dig into what happens when we remove the friction that actually forms people, why cognitive offloading isn't the same as offloading your humanity, and what leadership development gets wrong when it chases efficiency over practice and accountability.

Guest: John Pike is the founder and CEO of Parisos Partners, an executive assessment and development firm, with a background spanning finance, Gallup's strength psychology work, and Korn Ferry's assessment practice.

In this episode:

• 02:01 — John's path from accounting to executive assessment and founding Parisos Partners
• 08:23 — Why human-to-human leadership is the work AI won't replace
• 09:01 — How AI has disintermediated instructional design, and why the ROI hasn't shown up yet
• 16:29 — The nephews story: what happens when you rescue people instead of letting them struggle
• 20:49 — What "friction that forms people" actually means for learning professionals
• 23:19 — The rise and fall of the LMS-everything era in leadership development
• 30:46 — Why group coaching and learning circles worked when eLearning alone didn't
• 36:21 — Cognitive offloading: what AI should take off your plate, and what it shouldn't
• 46:16 — Advice for leaders seeking their next promotion
• 48:04 — Advice for leaders in their first 90 days after a promotion

Resources mentioned:

• Bob Pike Group's Creating Training Techniques Conference September 13 - 18, 2026
• The 70:20:10 learning model
• TEDx Minneapolis

Links for today's show:

• John Pike on LinkedIn
• Perissos Partners website
• Kent Kniebel on LinkedIn
• The Promoted Leader Toolkit

Music for this podcast comes from a live recording of the song Needle & Thread and is provided with permission by Pert' Near Sandstone. Check them out on pertnearsandstone.com and on all major streaming platforms.

Enjoyed the episode? Leave a rating and review wherever you listen, it helps more leaders find the show.

Most leaders never think about speaking as a skill until they're standing in front of a room that expects them to have one. Antoniette Roze, Founder and CEO of WPC Speakers Global, has spent 30 years turning speakers' expertise into careers, and in this episode she breaks down why the best communicators care less about performance and more about the person in front of them. Kent and Antoniette cover everything from executive presence to the neuroscience of the number three, and why nearly every rule of the stage applies just as much in a three-person meeting.

Guest: Antoniette Roze is Founder and CEO of WPC Speakers Global, host of the top-ranked SPEAKPact podcast, and a speaker agent who has spent 30 years helping experts build revenue-generating speaking careers.

In this episode:

• 02:00 — Meet Antoniette Roze, CEO of WPC Speakers Global and host of the SPEAKPact podcast
• 04:00 — Why speaking is one of the most underused leadership tools
• 06:00 — Executive presence and how it actually shows up on stage
• 09:00 — The two keys to effective speaking (hint: it's not performance)
• 15:00 — How to actually study your audience before you speak to them
• 23:00 — Why the best communicators only give you three things at a time
• 34:00 — The power of silence, pacing, and why fast talkers lose trust
• 49:00 — Advice for leaders chasing a promotion, and for those who just landed one

Resources mentioned:

• SPEAKPact, Antoniette's podcast (speakpact.com)
• Speaker Revenue Lab, Antoniette's 3-day speaker workshop (speakerrevenuelab.com)

Links for today's show:

• Antoniette Roze on LinkedIn
• SPEAKPact podcast
• Speaker Revenue Lab
• Kent Kniebel on LinkedIn
• The Promoted Leader Toolkit

Music for this podcast comes from a live recording of the song Needle & Thread and is provided with permission by Pert' Near Sandstone. Check them out on pertnearsandstone.com and on all major streaming platforms.

Enjoyed the episode? Leave a rating and review wherever you listen, it helps more leaders find the show.

Most leaders write policies, meetings, and office norms for "the average" employee. Hailey Meyer explains why that instinct quietly costs organizations their best thinking, and what it actually takes to build a culture where neurodivergent team members, and everyone else, can do their best work.

Guest: Hailey Meyer is founder of Compassionately Transparent Coaching, a leadership development consultant, ICF-certified coach, and certified ADHD coach practitioner who helps individuals and organizations build neuro-inclusive environments.

In this episode:

• 01:50 — Kent welcomes Hailey Meyer to the show
• 02:04 — Hailey's background and her two-part coaching practice
• 04:33 — How Hailey became passionate about neurodiversity coaching
• 09:02 — Kent's own first exposure to neuro-inclusion during the pandemic at Cargill
• 12:00 — Defining neuro-inclusive culture and the business case behind it
• 19:33 — What gets in the way: why leaders label differences as problems
• 22:47 — A practical example: redesigning meetings so every brain can contribute
• 30:16 — Office design, open floor plans, and the case for hybrid work
• 38:52 — Two pieces of advice, one for leaders climbing and one for leaders who just arrived

Resources mentioned:

• Temple Grandin and her work on reducing animal stress (search for this)
• "Astrophysics for People in a Hurry" by Neil deGrasse Tyson
• The Neuroleadership Institute (search for this)
• Adam Grant's research on return-to-office mandates (search for this)
• The "devil's floor plan" concept, attributed to Carla McLaren (search for this)

Links for today's show:

• Hailey Meyer on LinkedIn
• Compassionately Transparent Coaching
• Kent Kniebel on LinkedIn
• The Promoted Leader Toolkit

Music for this podcast comes from a live recording of the song Needle & Thread and is provided with permission by Pert' Near Sandstone. Check them out on pertnearsandstone.com and on all major streaming platforms.

Enjoyed the episode? Leave a rating and review wherever you listen, it helps more leaders find the show.

Businesses in the U.S. are losing an estimated $2 billion a day to rudeness and incivility. Not layoffs, not bad strategy, just people being sour, sarcastic, or careless with each other. Dr. John O'Brien has spent 30 years as a psychologist watching what that does to people, and he's spent the last several turning it into a mission: teaching leaders and teams how to catch it before it wrecks a culture.

Guest: Dr. John M. O'Brien is a licensed psychologist, executive coach, and founder of Activate Success, and the author of Rudeness Rehab: Reclaiming Civility in the Workplace and Your Home Space.

In this episode:

• 00:40 — Kent's intro and why 1 in 3 promotions fail
• 01:44 — John's path from psychotherapy to workplace civility
• 05:00 — The billion-dollar cost of incivility
• 08:44 — How social media and digital tools fuel workplace rudeness
• 12:54 — Return-to-office mandates and the narcissism research behind them
• 17:57 — The three types of incivility, and the one John worries about most
• 23:19 — What leaders and HR should actually be doing about it
• 31:50 — The BAM framework for staying calm under pressure
• 39:16 — Advice for leaders stepping into a new role

Resources mentioned:

• SHRM's research on the cost of workplace incivility (shrm.org)
• Dr. Christine Porath's research on civility at work
• Andrew Huberman's physiological sigh research, Huberman Lab (hubermanlab.com)
• Adam Grant, Marissa Shandell, and Courtney Elliott's study linking CEO narcissism to return-to-office mandates (fortune.com)
• Rudeness Rehab: Reclaiming Civility in the Workplace and Your Home Space (rudenessrehab.com)
• Civility Matters, John's podcast - (https://civilitymatters.buzzsprout.com )

Links for today's show:

• John O'Brien on LinkedIn
• John's TEDxTufts Talk: Small Slights, Big Consequences
• Activate Success
• Rudeness Rehab (book)
• Kent Kniebel on LinkedIn
• The Promoted Leader Toolkit

Music for this podcast comes from a live recording of the song Needle & Thread and is provided with permission by Pert' Near Sandstone. Check them out on pertnearsandstone.com and on all major streaming platforms.

Enjoyed the episode? Leave a rating and review wherever you listen, it helps more leaders find the show.

George Parada spent thirteen years learning to lead inside Cargill's highly structured system, then walked into Meta with almost none of that structure in place, and had to rebuild it from scratch. Today, as an account executive at JLL leading a 300-plus person team, he's still relearning the same lesson: letting go of the work that made him successful in the first place.

Guest: George Parada is an Account Executive at JLL, where he has strategic oversight of a 300+ person team supporting a life sciences client in the Bay Area. His career spans 13 years at Cargill (production supervisor to Director of Engineering), an 18-month stint in food and beverage, three years at Meta, and now JLL.

In this episode:

• [02:14] — George's career path: Cargill to Meta to JLL, and why he stepped back into an individual contributor role on purpose
• [06:04] — What changed moving from a 150-year-old structured company to a startup-like Meta
• [10:38] — The hardest transition of his career: becoming the person the buck stops with
• [13:30] — Leading functions he has no background in, using a RACI framework
• [17:19] — The line from his facilitator that reframed how he leads: "I may no longer be six feet from the work, but I'm six feet from the solution"
• [23:08] — Working "miles across but only inches deep," and why he forces his team to plant progress flags
• [25:50] — Why he keeps his own name off the RACI for the roles he's filled
• [32:14] — The lesson he wishes he'd learned sooner: setting expectations and accountability from day one
• [37:33] — Why "meets expectations" isn't a bad rating, and the trap of grade-inflating it anyway
• [40:50] — His advice for leaders chasing the next promotion: build your board of directors
• [42:54] — His advice for newly promoted leaders: read The First 90 Days and establish your norms before you get popular

Resources mentioned:

• The First 90 Days by Michael Watkins
• RACI framework (Responsible, Accountable, Consulted, Informed)

Links for today's show:

• George Parada on LinkedIn
• Kent Kniebel on LinkedIn
• The Promoted Leader Toolkit

Music for this podcast comes from a live recording of the song Needle & Thread and is provided with permission by Pert' Near Sandstone. Check them out on pertnearsandstone.com and on all major streaming platforms.

Enjoyed the episode? Leave a rating and review wherever you listen, it helps more leaders find the show.

Dana Echert has spent her career watching the same pattern repeat across hospitality, a Forbes Five Star resort, and a hypergrowth tech company: organizations know emotional intelligence matters, and still struggle to build it. In this episode, she and Kent dig into why EQ, not technical skill, now decides who survives the flattening happening across middle management, and what it actually looks like to lead yourself before you try to lead a team.

Guest: Dana Echert, CPTM, SHRM-CP is the founder of INSPIRE, where she helps organizations build emotional intelligence, trust, and psychological safety into their leadership pipelines.

In this episode:

• 02:18 — Dana's path from 22-year-old restaurant manager to building leadership development programs
• 05:48 — The director who pulled Dana and her team aside to apologize, and what it taught her about leadership
• 13:36 — Why middle managers have become the emotional shock absorbers of constant change
• 14:32 — Why EQ, not technical skill, decides who survives organizational flattening
• 21:01 — The difference between a leader who reacts and one who responds
• 25:07 — Why "you need EQ training" backfires, and what actually shifts behavior
• 26:40 — The Five Guys fries analogy for making the business case on trust
• 37:01 — Dana's advice for leaders preparing for their next promotion

Resources mentioned:

• Google's Project Aristotle (research on psychological safety as the top driver of team performance)
• The EQ Lab, Dana's three-month leadership development journey
• Trust and EQ Reset Workshop, Dana's single-session offering for teams navigating change

Links for today's show:

• Dana Echert on LinkedIn
• INSPIRE (Dana's company)
• Kent Kniebel on LinkedIn
• The Promoted Leader Toolkit

Music for this podcast comes from a live recording of the song Needle & Thread and is provided with permission by Pert' Near Sandstone. Check them out on pertnearsandstone.com and on all major streaming platforms.

Enjoyed the episode? Leave a rating and review wherever you listen, it helps more leaders find the show.