Your Next Best Step

86% of leaders believe their people trust them completely. Only 33% of employees say they actually do.Sit with that math for a second. That's not a stat about bad companies. That's a stat about a blind spot.In this solo episode, Brek steps into the Locker Room to talk about the gap most leaders don't even know they have — the space between what leaders believe about their own trustworthiness and what their people are actually experiencing. And here's the hard part: it's not because leaders are lying to themselves. The higher you go, the fewer people tell you the truth. Somebody softens the feedback. Somebody hints instead of naming it. By the time it reaches you, you're leading off a filtered version of reality — without ever knowing it was filtered.Brek anchors the episode in King David's ask in Psalm 139:23–24 — search me, God, know my heart, point out anything in me that's off — and makes the case that this isn't a comfortable prayer. It's a posture. Not confidence in how we think we're leading, but the willingness to actually find out.What we get into:✔️ Why trust doesn't erode all at once — it erodes in the ordinary, untracked moments: the follow-up you never sent, the hard thing you let pass in silence✔️ Why the higher you climb, the more filtered the truth gets — and why that's not your people's fault✔️ E.D.O.T. — Everything Depends On Trust — the four-move framework for closing the gap: Examine, Define, Own, Trust✔️ Why most leaders tap out at "Own," and why that's the move that actually rebuilds something✔️ A real script for the conversation most leaders are too afraid to startYour Next Best Step: Pick one person on your team. Ask them, no ramifications: "What's it like on the other side of me — really?" Don't defend it. Don't explain it. Just keep asking "what else?" until the well runs dry — and let what you hear lead you somewhere better instead of somewhere more comfortable.Trust is the soil everything else grows out of. Go check yours this week.🎧 Listen now and take your next best step.

Most leaders diagnose a stalled team as a motivation problem. It's rarely that.

In this episode, Brek breaks down the three forces actually driving disengagement on your team — Dreams, Drains, and Doubts — and why your normal motivation playbook misses all of them. Each force is different. Each one needs a completely different move from you as a leader. And if you don't know which one is active right now, you're not leading the problem — you're just managing the symptoms.

You'll walk away knowing how to ask the question almost nobody asks, how to name what you're noticing without shutting people down, and how to close a confidence gap without leaving your people more alone in the process.

Don't build the plan until you can name the problem. That's where this episode starts.

What's It Like on the Other Side of You?

If someone said your name in a room you weren't in, what would they say? Not your title. Not your output. Who you are.

That's the question Brek Cockrell explores in this episode, drawn from a leadership workshop on building your brand with purpose. Here's the challenge: most leaders are managing their image when they should be building their impact. The gap between who you think you are and what people actually experience is where trust lives—or dies.

What You'll Learn:

This episode unpacks E.D.O.T. as the Brand Pathway—a four-part framework adapted from Everything Depends On Trust:

• Examine: What are people actually experiencing on the other side of you (not what you intend)?
• Define: What do you want to be known for in one clear sentence?
• Own: Are your daily behaviors building your brand or busting it?
• Trust: Trust grows when who you say you are matches what people experience.

You'll also walk through the 3 C's of a trusted brand—Clarity, Consistency, and Credibility—and fill in your own Leadership Brand Statement: "I want to be known as someone who ___, because people can count on me to ___."

Then comes the part that gets real. Brek shares the Brand Builder behaviors (follow-through, owning mistakes, being curious, communicating early) versus the Brand Busters (overpromising, blaming others, assuming motives, going silent) that quietly shape your reputation every single day.

The 30-Day Challenge:

Pick one Brand Builder behavior. Practice it every single day. Then ask one trusted person: "What's it like on the other side of me?" And just listen.

Because here's what matters: trust isn't built in big moments. It's built in small moments, practiced consistently, until people know what to expect from you. And when they do—trust grows.

Ready to take your next best step?

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In this episode, we're diving into something I've personally struggled with, and something I see in almost every leader I work with: the Advice Monster. You know that moment in a one-on-one when someone comes to you with a problem, and before they even finish explaining it, you've already jumped to the solution? Yeah, that's the advice monster at work.

Here's the truth: it's not a character flaw. It's a deeply wired instinct to help by solving, to contribute by answering. And while your intentions are good, rushing to advice actually robs the people you're leading of the chance to think, discover, and own their own growth.

In this episode, I'm sharing the framework that changed how I lead—pulling from Michael Bungay Stanier's The Advice Trap and John Maxwell's 21 Irrefutable Laws of Leadership. We'll walk through the five levels of leadership, explore the difference between being the hero and being the guide, and I'm giving you six specific coaching questions you can use in your very next one-on-one to tame the monster and actually develop the people you lead.

This isn't about strategy sessions or performance reviews. This is about what happens in a single conversation when you decide to stop being the expert in the room and start believing in the wisdom of the person in front of you.

If you lead people (or want to), this episode is for you. Whether you're a CEO, a manager, or a parent, taming your advice monster is the difference between people who depend on you and people who grow beyond you.

If you've ever wondered why the same problem keeps coming back from the same person, this episode answers that question and gives you the tool to fix it.

If you're serious about raising your leadership lid, this is the foundation. You cannot take your people higher than you've taken yourself, and that starts with how you show up in the moments that matter most.

Conviction is contagious, and so is curiosity. It's time to make curiosity your leadership superpower.

When was the last time someone on your team referenced your mission statement without being prompted? Not because you asked. Not because it was on the agenda. Just… because it was alive in them.

If you had to think about that — this episode is for you.

Brek gets straight to it: most mission statements are just crappy wall art. They look great in the lobby, they live on the website, and they go completely unnoticed down the hall. And here's the hard truth — that's not an employee problem. That's a leadership problem.

In this episode, Brek breaks down the difference between a mission that's operational and one that's merely ornamental — and gives you three frameworks to close the gap: the 3 A's (Authenticity, Alignment, Application), the Translate · Tie · Teach method, and a Simple · Specific · Shared filter to test whether your mission can actually guide behavior.

Every conversation you have is either making a deposit or a withdrawal — and most leaders never stop to examine which one it is.

In this solo episode, Brek walks through the E.D.O.T. framework — Everything Depends On Trust — as a practical roadmap for communication that actually connects. Using stories from Theodore Roosevelt, Abraham Lincoln, and three all-too-familiar workplace moments, Brek breaks down why your intentions don't matter nearly as much as your behavior, and why the leaders people trust most aren't just good at what they say — they're intentional about what they don't.

You'll learn:

• Why communication is interpreted emotionally before it's processed logically
• Dr. John Townsend's Four Quads framework — and why most leaders skip straight to #3 and #4
• The difference between making deposits and making excuses
• How to run the Quad Check before any meaningful conversation this week

This episode won't let you off the hook. But it will give you a clear next best step — before your next one-on-one, hard email, or hallway exchange.

Your Next Best Step: Run the Quad Check before one real conversation this week. Ask yourself: Which quad does this person need from me right now — and which one am I about to skip?

Dave Rust didn't start with a playbook. He started with a problem: in 2012, Buffalo's high school graduation rate was 49%. Half the kids weren't making it. Today, it's 79%. That's not just a statistic — that's thousands of lives redirected.

As the founding CEO of Say Yes Buffalo, Dave has spent over eleven years proving that when you remove barriers and build trust across systems that historically don't trust each other, transformation becomes possible. This isn't a nonprofit success story. This is a trust story.

In this episode, Dave and Brek sit down in the Locker Room to talk about what it actually takes to build something that lasts — the coalition work, the culture work, the soul work. From raising $90 million in scholarships to leading 150+ employees to expanding the model into Niagara Falls, Dave opens up about the lessons that only come from staying in the grind.

In this conversation, you'll hear:

✓ Why opportunity gaps create the deepest fractures in communities — and what leaders can actually do about it

✓ How Dave built a coalition that brought together school districts, unions, higher ed, city government, and the private sector around one table (and why trust was the only variable that mattered)

✓ The difference between being a leader who wants something FROM people versus FOR people — and how that shift changes everything

✓ What a 30-point graduation rate increase actually reveals about sustainable, people-first leadership

✓ Why culture doesn't stay fixed — it drifts — and how Dave's team protects it through anonymous feedback, listening to boots-on-the-ground ideas, and refusing to lead from the mountaintop

✓ Dave's next best step for leaders: learn to be an independent thinker in a world built on groupthink, and remember that hard work (not workaholism) is still a sustainable trait

The locker room question you leave with today: What are you building that will still be standing when you're not in the room?

Culture isn't created through mission statements on a wall. It's created in moments—specifically, in the moment between trigger and trust.

In this solo episode, Brek explores one of the most overlooked yet critical aspects of leadership: emotional intelligence in real time. Most leaders are trained operationally but not emotionally. We know strategy, execution, and systems—but very few of us are taught how to pause before reacting, how to stay curious under pressure, or how to lead ourselves emotionally.

Drawing from Daniel Goleman's groundbreaking work on emotional intelligence and the practical Six Seconds model, Brek breaks down four simple practices that help leaders navigate high-pressure moments with groundedness instead of reactivity:

1. Pause yourself — Slow the moment down before you react
2. Know yourself — Name what you're actually feeling
3. Choose yourself — Lead from values, not impulses
4. Give yourself — Ask what trust requires of you in this moment

Because the truth is: people experience your leadership emotionally before they experience it strategically. And most leadership damage happens at the speed of reaction.

If you've ever wondered why culture shifts so quickly in a room after one tone, one impatient response, or one defensive comment—this episode is for you.

Most leaders think they have values. What they usually have are positions.

In this return visit to the locker room, Nick Kennedy — founder of RISE, author of The Good Entrepreneur, and executive coach — joins Brek to unpack a distinction most leaders miss until it's too late: the difference between a value (unmoving, like a rock) and a position (a finger in the wind). Nick traces the idea back to his summer internship with Watergate-figure-turned-minister Chuck Colson, who asked a room at Harvard not "Why do good people do bad things?" but "Why do bad people do good things?" — and why the answer matters for anyone building a company, a team, or a marriage.

The conversation moves from the corporate DEI whiplash at Target, Coca-Cola, and Ford, to Nick's 28-year marriage, to a forearm tattoo that reminds him trust can't be broken by a single fight. Brek and Nick close with one prompt for the leader who's starting to feel hollow: what's the next best step back toward integrity?

Values are built in the calm. They're tested in the storm. Press play.

🎧 Listen now wherever you get your podcasts.

You promoted your best performer. Six months later, they're overwhelmed, their team is disengaged, and everybody's wondering what went wrong.

In this episode, Brek Cockrell digs into one of the most common — and most costly — leadership mistakes happening right now: promoting people because of what they produced, without preparing them for what leadership actually demands.

Backed by research from Gallup, Harvard Business Review, and the National Bureau of Economic Research, Brek breaks down why 65% of frontline leaders were placed in their roles based on past performance — not leadership readiness — and what that one decision costs everyone underneath them.

He also walks through a real coaching case study of a leader who got the title, inherited the team, and was set up to struggle from day one. Not because she lacked talent. Because the structure around her was never reset for her to succeed.

If you're the leader who got promoted without a plan — or the one doing the promoting — this episode will challenge how you think about what your people actually need from you.

E.D.O.T. — Everything Depends On Trust.