Level 10 Leaders

Ryan Castle sits down with Mike Ashby, founder and CEO of The Breakthrough Co and Level 10 Leaders, to unpack his Forbes article on how to become a better leader. An AI critique of Mike’s guitar playing told him he cared more about avoiding mistakes than making a great sound. Plenty of experienced leaders have the same problem. Mike also walks through six behaviours to practise, from letting go of...

This Level 10 Leaders Power Tip is from Megan Long of Second First, on why integrators need a clear end goal before they can build the plan. Megan’s point is that the number one frustration for integrators in the second in command seat is not knowing what they’re working towards. The fix is to start with the exit: selling, an ESOP, or handing the business to the next generation. Even without an ex...

Ryan Castle sits down with Darryl “DJ” Heffline, a manufacturing leader with 40 years of experience and author of “Shifting Gears in the Crossroads.” DJ’s first leadership role failed. His team hated working for him. The turnaround became his four pillars of trustworthy leadership: vulnerable, approachable, patient and caring. DJ also explains the three questions everyone you do business with is s...

This Level 10 Leaders Power Tip is from Rachel Downey of Guide Studio, on the quiet inner voice most leaders talk themselves out of listening to. Rachel spent 18 months crying on her drive to work at a business she loved, and could not explain why. Her point is that the quiet voice usually knows before you do, and the noise around you is what stops you hearing it. Acting on hers meant building the...

Ryan Castle sits down with Sam Yankelevitch, LinkedIn Learning instructor and author of five books, whose courses have reached more than a million learners globally. Sam trained as an industrial engineer, and his conclusion after decades in manufacturing is blunt: the standard you pass by is the standard you set. Sam also walks through the five step commitment framework, who, what, by when, plus w...

This Level 10 Leaders Power Tip is from Scott Anderson, former US Army Major and former UN humanitarian leader, now COO at Real Property Management Express, on why the way you receive bad news determines whether anyone brings it to you. Scott's point is that consistency shows in the hard moments, not the easy ones. Anyone can take good news well. Staying calm when the news is bad is what makes peo...

Ryan Castle sits down with Liane Davey, team effectiveness adviser and author of Thoughtload. Liane's argument is that leaders keep solving the wrong problem. They strip back the workload and nothing moves, because what is flattening people is thought load, the invisible overload nobody else can see. Liane also explains conflict debt, why avoided conflict compounds until it erupts, and why conflic...

This Level 10 Leaders Power Tip is from Jen Hamilton of Hamilton COOs, on how to win back someone's trust after you have got it wrong. Jen's sequence has five parts: let them vent without cutting in, validate what they felt without necessarily agreeing, own the specific thing you did, apologise in a way that shows you understand the harm, then make a promise for something new. The step most people...

Ryan Castle sits down with Kyle McDowell, author of the bestselling "Begin With WE" and a thirty year veteran of corporate America. Kyle led teams of 15,000 people and hated what he had become. His inner circle eventually told him the truth: they feared him more than they respected him. Kyle also explains the ten WEs, the observable behavioural standards he wrote the night before addressing 50 of...

This Level 10 Leaders Power Tip is from Gretchen Heinen, Founder and CEO of Authsnap Inc, drawn from her full episode, on getting the structure of a business right from day one. Gretchen's advice is to spend a couple of hours with a lawyer or a CPA before you build anything. A good attorney set up her cap table for the structure she would need five years out, so she could build from there. Founder...

Ryan Castle sits down with Mike Ashby, founder of The Breakthrough Co and Level 10 Leaders, on his latest Forbes piece about why AI coaching fails without human intelligence. Mike's argument is simple: AI coaches are a supplement, not a replacement. Content is only 10% of what changes behaviour. Mike also walks through the 10/20/70 model and why generic AI gets stuck in the 10, what the great trai...

This Level 10 Leaders Power Tip is from Alex Franklin of First Principles Consulting, sharing why the smallest piece of a large consulting project turned out to be the one that multiplied everything else. Alex's point is that we hire for technical competency, which is eligibility for the role, and forget behavioural competency, which is suitability for it: passion, interests, work preferences, int...

Ryan Castle sits down with Rajiv Mehta, aerospace engineer turned product leader turned researcher, founder of the nonprofit Atlas of Care and author of the new book "Camaraderie." Rajiv spent the first half of his career at NASA, Apple, Adobe and Motorola before walking away to spend 20 years on a single question: how do people actually take care of each other? His answer for leaders is blunt. Re...

This Level 10 Leaders Power Tip is from Kenny Cao of Cultivator Co, sharing why the decisions you refuse to let go of are the ones capping your ability to scale. Kenny calls it the Sovereignty Trap. As a company grows, complexity increases but the decision architecture doesn't, so ambiguity in the organisation resolves the only way it can: authority concentrates upwards until the leader becomes th...

Ryan Castle sits down with Kyle Harkema, Chief Marketing and Strategy Officer at KMC Controls, scholar practitioner, and author of the newly released book "Strategic Clarity." Kyle unpacks the idea at the heart of his work: if your strategy isn't changing what people do on a Monday morning, it's not a strategy, it's a slogan. He explains why organisations don't execute strategy, they execute behav...

This Level 10 Leaders Power Tip is from Dr Mike Ashby, sharing where leaders should focus their energy to drive real team growth. Mike explains that developing a team isn't one size fits all. Give your top performers autonomy and high impact challenges, limit the drag from your bottom 20%, and pour your energy into the middle, where the biggest opportunity for progress sits. He also lays out how g...

Ryan Castle sits down with David Alsop, Chief Human Resources Officer at Ultradent Products, a founder-led dental manufacturing company ranked in Fortune's top ten Best Workplaces for large manufacturing and production for five consecutive years. David shares the philosophy behind his book "Making HR Matter," co-authored with Ted Forbes, and unpacks what it actually means to build HR strategy arou...

This Level 10 Leaders Power Tip is from Sara Reece of Workmind, sharing why understanding your operations has to come before any decision to automate them. Sara explains that automation doesn't fix broken processes, it amplifies them, and that the real problem is usually leadership not understanding how the work actually gets done day to day. Her advice is to go to where the work happens, observe...

Ryan Castle sits down with Tanner Kinzler, CEO of Kinzler Corporation, a multi-generational, partially employee-owned construction services business operating across the United States. Tanner shares three interconnected leadership principles that have shaped how he builds for the long term: structure for alignment, ask for help and give it generously, and play the long game. He unpacks why the bes...

This Level 10 Leaders Power Tip is from Adam Law, sharing a practical approach to managing your issues list so your team meetings stay focused and productive. Adam explains that reviewing the issues list before the meeting, resolving quick wins in advance, and filtering out topics that don't require full team discussion keeps meeting time locked on what actually moves the organisation forward. The...

Ryan Castle sits down with Mike Ashby, co-founder of Level 10 Leaders and newly published Forbes contributor, to make the case that most businesses don't have a strategy problem. They have a consistency problem. Drawing on 25+ years in organisational development, Mike argues that the real gap isn't strategy or innovation. It's the daily failure to do the vital few things that actually move the nee...

This Level 10 Leaders Power Tip is from Jessica Sanchez, founder and CEO of Daughters of Both Sons, sharing how community leaders can escape burnout by building systems instead of carrying every piece of the mission alone. Jessica reveals that burnout in community and service leadership rarely comes from a lack of passion. It comes from becoming the entire infrastructure for a mission by yourself....

Ryan Castle sits down with Ken Bogard, nine-year EOS implementer and author of Know Honesty , to challenge everything you think you know about communication in business. Ken's core argument is deceptively simple, and most leadership teams are only doing half of it. He unpacks why honesty and openness are two completely different behaviours, why your scorecard is useless without courageous conversa...

This Level 10 Leaders Power Tip is from Justin Maust, expert EOS implementer, sharing three uphill mindsets every leader needs to break through ceilings faster and drive real team performance. Justin highlights that success demands discipline, that whatever you tolerate you endorse, and that the speed of your vulnerability determines the speed of your breakthrough. By combining all three, leaders...

Ryan Castle sits down with Darren Tompkins, founder of the Vedra Ray Group, to unpack what really holds technical professionals back from making the leap into people leadership, and it has nothing to do with their qualifications. Drawing on years of experience placing candidates across engineering, construction, and manufacturing, Darren exposes the hidden traps in the hiring process, why cultural...