Upsize Your Leadership

In this episode, Dr. Mike Armour examines what he sees as a major miscalculation at the heart of the Trump Administration’s proposed peace plan for the Russia‑Ukraine war.

Drawing on years of firsthand experience in both nations, he challenges a prevailing assumption in the U.S. negotiating strategy.

Following the collapse of the Soviet Union, he managed widespread humanitarian efforts in both Russia and Ukraine. His organization's largest operations center was located in Donbas, the primary battlefield of the war.

On the eve of Russia’s 2022 invasion, he used this podcast to predict that Ukraine would mount a fierce and unexpectedly effective resistance, contrary to global expectations of a rapid Russian victory.

Time proved that prediction correct. Now, as new peace proposals circulate among world leaders, he warns that another flawed assumption may once again lead policymakers astray.

Some of their peace proposals seem to be guided by a belief that Russian‑speaking Ukrainians are naturally aligned with Moscow. In this episode Dr. Armour explains why this assumption is not only inaccurate, but dangerously misleading.

He uses this development as a case study in strategic blind spots—how leaders, even at the highest levels, can make consequential decisions based on incomplete or oversimplified assumptions that later prove costly.

A PDF transcript of this episode is available at https://www.upsizeyourleadership/transcripts/2511-flawed-assumption.pdf.

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In this episode Dr. Mike challenges conventional approaches to performance metrics by highlighting their limitations in a rapidly changing world.

Using Nokia’s dramatic fall from market dominance as a cautionary tale, he arguex that traditional business scorecards often measure the wrong things—relying too heavily on past performance to forecast what lies ahead.

KPIs and automated scorecards reflect historical success but fail to anticipate emerging threats or shifts in customer sentiment.

Examples like Wells Fargo, Blockbuster, and Kodak illustrate how companies can meet internal targets yet lose market trust or miss disruptive trends.

To counter this, he proposes a four-dimensional framework that serves as a counterbalance to overdependence on business scorecards:

Dr. Mike closes the episode with a reminder that leadership effectiveness depends not just on tracking performance, but on cultivating clarity, trust, and adaptability in the face of uncertainty.

A PDF transcript of this podcast is available at https://www.upsizeyourleadership.com/episodes/2510-biz-scoreboards.htm.

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Research consistently confirms that customers will pay more for a product or service if they trust the provider. Companies should therefore cease on every opportunity to foster a climate in which trust can flourish.

Customer loyalty never takes root where trust in a brand or company is low. And trust takes shape only in settings where ethics are held in high regard.

This episode explores five factors which are particularly powerful in determining whether customers will trust a company enough to be loyal to it. These are basically common-sense principles. But it's always worthwhile to be reminded of them so that they are not allowed to languish.

A PDF transcript of this program is available at https://www.upsizeyourleadership.com/episodes/2509-trust-and-loyalty.htm.

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For the first time in years, the possibility of peace in Ukraine is in the headlines. Ignored in most media coverage, however, is the immense complexity of getting the country back on its feet economically, industrially, and in terms of fundamental services.

In this episode, I examine realities that are unknown by most Americans, but are momentous challenges that Ukraine's postwar government must confront. The price tag for meeting these challenges is as great as the price tag for the war itself. Yet little is said about them -- or known about them -- outside of Europe.

Not the least of these issues is a nation that will have a disproportionately small population of young families, which creates demographic imbalance for decades to come. With relatively few young families, Ukraine has an exceptionally small replacement population of children and teens. Rebuilding any economy with a shrinking population is a staggering task.

Unlike nations who have made the investment to allow disabled workers to be integrated into the workplace, the infrastructure in Ukraine (and Russia, as well) is horrendously inadequate to accommodate people with physical liabilities. With hundreds of thousands of people now maimed by the war, the available workforce for rebuilding the nation will be terribly lacking in numbers.

The podcast takes up other related postwar issues. A transcript is available at https://www.upsizeyourleadership.com/transcripts/2508-postwar-ukraine.pdf.

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Have you known people with tremendous promise as managers or leaders whose careers got derailed and they never rose to the heights that they seemed destined for? No doubt you have. And as a leadership development coach, I’ve seen plenty of them.

Of course, we could cite hosts of reasons why this happens. From what I’ve observed, failure to make appropriate change in one of five mindsets may be the single greatest the single greatest contributor to derailed careers.

In this episode, I chronicle these five and explain why they are so pivotal in determining how high up the ladder you can climb.

A PDF transcript of the program is available at https://www.upsizeyourleadership.com/transcripts/2507-management-ladder.pdf

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Our business world is not merely competitive. It's hypercompetitive. Run-of-the-mill performance is no longer acceptable. To stay ahead, companies need leaders who build and maintain sustained high performance.

Over two decades ago, I began studying leaders who had done

that very thing. I started to identify common denominators in organizations –

both profit and nonprofit – which had attained exceptional, pacesetting

performance.

Even more importantly, I began to condense what I learned into

models and methodologies which I could share with clients. Along the way, I came to realize that I could categorize the leadership principles for achieving peak performance under four

headings:

·   

People      

Alignment      

Culture

·        

Engagement

Recently I've embarked on developing an online course entitled how to be a PACEsetting leader, with the letters P-A-C-E intentionally capitalized. These letters form an acronym consisting of the first letters of the words people, alignment, culture, and engagement.

In this podcast, I survey critical leadership traits under each of those headings. They are indeed the pillars that support PACEsetting leadership.

A PDF transcript of this program is available at https://www.upsizeyourleadership.com/episodes.

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After bouncing around in district and appeals courts for months, the Corporate Transparency Act (CTA) and its mandated Beneficial Ownership Information Report had their first day before the Supreme Court this month.

On January 23, the Court lifted a temporary restraining order (TRO) which had suspended enforcement of the reporting requirement since December 2. But perhaps for the first time in the history of the Supreme Court, the justices lifted a TRO and their decision made no practical difference whatsoever.

I trace this strange development in this episode and lay out the possible scenarios which may play out in the weeks ahead with the CTA. I look at the question, is the Beneficial Ownership Information Report going away? Or coming back? Some 30 million small business owners are waiting to find out.

You can download the script for this program at https://www.upsizeyourleadership.com/transcripts/2505-boi-coming-back.pdf.

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One of the shortcomings of modern accounting systems is that they have no mechanism for showing the capability and dedication of your workforce as an asset on a balance sheet. Workers appear only as liabilities: payrolls due, cost of benefits, Social Security obligations, etc.

Yet workers are the manager's most valuable asset. That's one of seven things that I feature in this podcast about the relationship between managers and workers. Seven things which should always be front-of-mind for anyone in a managerial position.

A transcript of this program can be downloaded at https://www.upsizeyourleadership.com/transcripts/2504-seven-things.pdf.

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Recent studies confirm that worker distrust of the company and its managers is solidly entrenched.

These studies found that fewer than half of employees trust their manager. And only one in three trusts upper management.

In today's episode I examine some historic roots of this distrust. It gained its foothold in the business and corporate world in the 1980s. I trace what happened in those years that provide the backdrop for the kind of distrust that has plagued companies ever since.

A printed copy of today's podcast is available at https://www.upsizeyourleadership.com/transcripts/2503-workplace-distrust.htm.

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As I predicted in my podcast two weeks ago, the court challenge to the Beneficial Ownership Information Report has now made its way to the steps of the Supreme Court.

At the time of my previous podcast regarding this case, the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals had given assent to a nationwide temporary restraining order on the Corporate Transparency Act, which is the legislation authorizing the BOI Report.

In this episode, we look at what happened within hours of the podcast going live and in the days since. Presently, the Supreme Court is in the early stage of deciding whether to override the Fifth Circuit's decision. Today's episode looks at possible scenarios which could play out, depending on what the Court decides.

I also sound a warning about a proliferation of scams that try to trick small business owners into filing their Beneficial Ownership Information Report with bogus firms who take the owner's money, but never file a report.

You can download a transcript of the podcast at https://www.upsizeyourleadership.com/transcripts/2502-boi-latest-turns.pdf.

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