Fay Niewiadomski is the founder and CEO of ICTN (International Consulting and Training Network), a strategic intervention and executive coaching firm she's run for over three decades from offices in Beirut, Amman, and New York. A pioneer of strategic intervention in the Middle East, Fay has worked with leadership teams across 40+ nationalities, helping them uncover the values, beliefs, and unspoken rules that quietly shape every decision a leader makes. She describes her work as "non-invasive neurosurgery" — a practice of listening with extreme depth to surface the assumptions, blind spots, and recurrent questions that keep otherwise capable leaders running on a treadmill.

In this conversation, Fay walks us through why "artificial intelligence" is a misnomer, the loop of values-beliefs-rules that traps people in their own way, why self-awareness is often just self-congratulation, the difference between cohesion and consensus on a leadership team, the "Impostorella" syndrome, the three life-changing decisions she made the morning her office in Beirut was bombed, and the one Gordian knot every leader should sit with — the line between deliberate cruelty and stupidity.Find Fay: https://www.ictn.com/blog/author/rima/

Buy Fay's book: https://a.co/d/07B2cgAP

ICTN: https://www.ictn.com

On LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/fayniewiadomski/

Builders & Doers is produced by Horizon Search.

0:00 Intro

0:56 What caught Fay's attention recently

1:02 Why "AI" is a misnomer — it's an information synthesizer

2:26 The Selfish Gene, biases, and what human intelligence actually is

3:49 If we programmed AI to need to survive, would it become intelligent?

4:24 Intelligence vs consciousness

5:30 Why conscious effort is overrated

6:01 Confirmation bias and our model of reality

6:37 The real leadership challenge — same language, shared purpose

8:07 What "non-invasive neurosurgery" actually means

8:50 The "I want to be CEO in 2 years" example — why values block the path

9:27 The recurrent question loop people get stuck in

10:52 Generational rules and unspoken expectations

12:01 Decision-making styles — why fast and slow leaders clash

14:38 Leadership is a set of behaviors, not a position

15:08 The Impostorella syndrome

15:58 Group coaching — what would the company lose if you all disappeared tomorrow?

16:30 What gets AI'd vs what makes a human leader

17:03 Cohesion vs consensus17:49 Living on shifting sands of uncertainty

18:04 Assume you could die tomorrow

19:13 If you want to make God laugh, tell him your plans

20:10 Resilience as doing what's needed knowing you have no control

21:17 Constructs, the teapot lid, and dysregulation

21:31 Role-swap simulations and the panic that follows

23:30 The hospital ER simulation — 17 "patients" killed in round one

25:44 Cognitive diversity and the value of being challenged

26:00 Why ICTN doesn't give the solution as consultants

27:30 The thoughts → feelings → actions → results loop

28:50 Self-awareness as self-congratulation

29:56 We don't learn from mistakes — we learn from reflection on mistakes

30:46 The morning her office in Beirut was bombed

31:44 Decision 1: leaving her alcoholic husband

33:05 Decision 2: putting her son on a hydrofoil to Cyprus

33:53 Decision 3: starting her own business from the rubble

36:21 Upon reflection, are you grateful for that experience?

36:50 Don't confuse comfort and predictability with a fulfilling life

39:12 The Gordian knot every leader should sit with — sadism vs stupidity

41:04 The practical first step — your three most difficult decisions

42:51 Psychometric profiling and the competent debrief

43:28 Where to find Fay

44:26 Closing — leadership as a gift, integrity meets credibility