Your Preshift

In the final episode of our Fantastic Four series, we explore how curiosity keeps teams engaged, adaptive, and human.

We unpack what healthy curiosity looks like—and how unhealthy curiosity can subtly erode trust. You’ll learn how curiosity is rooted in trust, agency, and hope—and why cultivating it makes leadership easier, not harder. We offer practical ways to model and inspire curiosity on the frontline, including how to turn reactive moments into reflective ones.

Plus, we dig into how humility powers curiosity, and how staying open as a leader helps your team grow. Because when you lead with curiosity, you don’t just solve problems—you develop people.

In this episode of Your Preshift, we explore the quiet but powerful role of hope in frontline leadership. Hope isn’t just wishful thinking—it’s the belief that the future can be better, and that we have a role in making it so. We talk about how hope grows in gritty, everyday moments, how it connects to trust and agency, and why it can feel so out of reach when people are just trying to survive. You’ll hear how leaders can inspire hope through presence, truth-telling, and belief—especially when hope is hardest to find. And we’ll close with two practical challenges to help you give hope to your team and yourself this week.

Resources:

1. Workplace Stability by Ruth Weirich

What if the real power of leadership isn’t just about giving direction—but giving people the belief that they can lead too? In this episode of Your Preshift, we explore the second trait in our Fantastic Four of frontline leadership: agency.

Agency is more than motivation or job clarity—it’s the deep, internal belief that I can act, I can decide, and what I do matters. We’ll talk about how leaders inspire agency by giving trust, not just tasks—and why believing in someone’s judgment is what actually helps them grow.

You’ll learn how to spot the difference between low-agency and high-agency language, why connecting work to human impact is essential, and how the way you describe a job can either flatten or elevate a person’s sense of purpose.

Plus, we offer three practical challenges you can try this week to build agency on your team—one step, one conversation, one shift at a time.

Research Links:

1. Center for Self Determination Theory
2. Ryan, R. M., & Deci, E. L. (2020). Intrinsic and extrinsic motivation from a self-determination theory perspective: Definitions, theory, practices, and future directions. Contemporary Educational Psychology, 61, 101860. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cedpsych.2020.101860

In this episode of Your Preshift, we explore what it means to inspire trust—not build it, earn it, or create it. Inspiring trust is different because it’s rooted in presence and belief, not performance or control. The big idea: when leaders GIVE trust freely, they spark ownership, but when they make people earn it, they create compliance and entitlement. We talk about how giving trust connects to the human spirit, shifts power dynamics, and develops both the team and the leader. Plus, we’ll reflect on how trustworthy we are as leaders—and challenge ourselves to take one small step toward trust this week.

Resources:

The Thin Book of Trust by Charles Feltman

Toseef M, Kiran A, Zhuo S, Jahangir M, Riaz S, Wei Z, Ghauri TA, Ullah I, Ahmad SB. Inspirational Leadership and Innovative Communication in Sustainable Organizations: A Mediating Role of Mutual Trust. Front Psychol. 2022 Jul 28;13:846128. doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2022.846128. PMID: 36003091; PMCID: PMC9394427.

Martino J, Pegg J, Frates EP. The Connection Prescription: Using the Power of Social Interactions and the Deep Desire for Connectedness to Empower Health and Wellness. Am J Lifestyle Med. 2015 Oct 7;11(6):466-475. doi: 10.1177/1559827615608788. PMID: 30202372; PMCID: PMC6125010.

Vagisha, P S J, Iyer V. Mapping inspiration in human resources: A systematic review of themes and approaches. F1000Res. 2023 Jun 16;12:694. doi: 10.12688/f1000research.128853.1. PMID: 37635944; PMCID: PMC10448870.

Legood, A., van der Werff, L., Lee, A., & Den Hartog, D. (2021). A meta-analysis of the role of trust in the leadership-performance relationship. European Journal of Work andOrganizational Psychology, 30(1), 1-22. https://doi.org/10.1080/1359432X.2020.1819241

In this episode of Your Preshift, we explore what inspiration really means on the frontlines of leadership—and why it’s not about big speeches or grand gestures. Instead, real inspiration happens in everyday moments through presence, belief, and how you show up. Ryan introduces the “Fantastic Four” of frontline leadership: Trust, Hope, Agency, and Curiosity—the four human experiences every great leader inspires in their team. Tune in to discover how small shifts in your daily leadership can create big ripple effects.

Some of Ryan's favorite inspirational talks from real life:

I Have a Dream by Martin Luther King, Jr.

The Power of Vulnerability by Brene Brown

and from movies: (some have explicit language)

Any Given Sunday Pre-Game Speech (Al Pacino)

Barbie - America Ferrera's Speech

Miracle Speech Herb Brooks (Kurt Russell)

Welcome to the very first episode of Your Preshift.

This podcast is for the people leading where the work actually happens. The managers opening the restaurant, running the shift, leading the classroom, supervising the floor, taking care of customers, and trying to help a group of people have a good day together.

In this first episode, Ryan Bond shares why he believes frontline leaders have one of the most important jobs in any organization.

As Chief People Officer at Thrive Restaurant Group, Ryan has spent years working alongside leaders responsible for thousands of people across nearly 200 restaurants. And one thing has become pretty clear: most of what we care about in a business eventually comes back to the experience people have with the person leading them every day.

The numbers matter. The results matter. But behind almost every number is a person, and somewhere close to that person is a leader shaping what work feels like.

That’s what Your Preshift is about.

A few minutes each week to think about how we lead, how we show up for people, and how we get a little better at work that can be incredibly rewarding and incredibly hard.

Because if you lead people, what you do matters more than you probably realize.

Have feedback, a question, or a story to share? Email [email protected].

Your Preshift

Showing up human. Leading with heart.