In The Lead

We spend a lot of time in leadership paying attention to outcomes. Performance. Accomplishments. What about intentions? Does it matter what someone "meant" to do? Do we care if the "intent" was good? Should we? In this episode of In The Lead, Nathan discusses the first half of the question: the intentions going in. What should/could leaders accomplish if we ask about the intentions before the even...

Every job has a what and a why. The what is the same for everyone who does it. The why isn't, and it changes more than you'd think: how the day feels, what gets done that nobody assigned, and what your team learns from you without you saying a word. This week is about the difference, and about who's handing out the why in your building.

Starting something new is the fun part. The real test comes in week nine, when the buzz is gone and nobody's checking. Using a simple morning huddle, Nathan shows why the payoff usually comes late, and why your team is watching what you do in the boring middle.

You've attended one at some point. It's the meeting. It's the meeting that happens after the meeting. Sometimes, that second meeting is just a casual and friendly debrief. Othertimes, it's where the real stuff gets said. Why? In this episode, we're going to dissect this second meeting, find out why it happens and see if we can't figure out how to pull it all back into the room. If it works, you ge...

There's a common fact of leadership that is rarely discussed. You didn't pick this team. You inherited them. Sometimes, if you stay long enough, you will lead a team of people that you yourself hired. But that's not common. What is common? Inheritance. In this episode, we talk about leading anyone, regardless of whether you hired them or they came with the building or got promoted by the leader be...

It's just a light bulb. How could it possible shape culture? In this episode, we are looking at all the stuff we've walked past. And...better put...how walking past things shapes culture. Every step teaches.

It's lonely at the top. Have you ever heard that phrase about leadership? There's a lot of truth in it but it's important to distinguish what kind of "lonely" we're actually talking about here. In this episode, we're looking at Ernest Shackelton who referred to the loneliness as his greatest challenge. It's not a bad thing. It's an honor. It's a good weight.

In this episode, we 're listening in on Priya Parker, author of The Art of Gathering, on why gatherings don't begin when people walk in the room — they begin the moment someone receives an invitation. Parker spoke with Big Think as she unpacked what she calls "generous authority": the practice of using your position as a leader to connect people to a shared purpose, protect them from each other, a...

The pressure is on. You are the clear leader. Everyone is looking to you. What do you do?

Most leaders aren't stealing from people. But many are. Not money — something harder to replace. This episode names three things leaders take without knowing it: agency, voice, and life. And it asks a harder question than "are you stealing?"  Are you giving?

You can manage your time perfectly and still arrive at Friday completely emptied. Time management doesn't fix depletion. That's a different problem — and that's what this episode is about. In five minutes, Nathan Metz walks through three kinds of rest that most leaders aren't getting: the decision to actually stop (cessation), knowing the place that fills you back up (location), and the deepest re...

July is vacation month. And if you're like most leaders, you're already negotiating with yourself about how available you need to stay. This episode is for you. Time is the one resource every person has in exactly equal measure — twenty-four hours — and yet something happens to it when nobody's paying attention. In this episode, Nathan Metz draws from Gordon MacDonald's Ordering Your Private World...

Great listeners aren't born — they're built. In this episode, Nathan steps back and hands the floor to one of the most-watched communication talks of the last decade. Celeste Headlee spent decades as a public radio host before she asked herself a hard question: What actually makes a conversation good? Her answer, delivered in a 2015 TEDx talk, is one of the most practical things a leader can hear.

Congrats coach! You've put in the time. You've invested. And then they get up from their chair, leave your office and...nothing changes. Why? How? The most common coaching mistake is the loss of the last two minutes. After spending the scheduled time in valuable coaching conversation, the close it where the rubber hits the road. In this episode, we focus on exactly that...the last two minutes.

Most leaders think coaching is something they schedule. A one-on-one. A development conversation. A blocked-off hour on the calendar. In this episode, we make the case that coaching is actually a language — and it happens in real time, in the flow of the work, in the moments nobody planned for. Drawing on the experiences of David Marquet, retired U.S. Navy Captain and author of Turn the Ship Aroun...

Frequently, we promote people into leadership based on a criteria that doesn't translate and often works to undercut their own success. To begin addressing the issue, we're starting with one many angles: the pressure to have the answers. In this episode, Nathan Metz introduces a concept from author Michael Bungay Stanier that every leader needs to hear: the advice monster. It's the part of you tha...

The average employee spends two hours and twenty-six minutes every workday in what researcher Cy Wakeman calls drama — not conflict, not hard conversations, but the mental energy spent rehearsing grievances, replaying meetings, and building the case for why things are unfair. Multiply that across your building. That number adds up fast. What if the lost time and energy is all a response to nothing...

What does it mean to be hard to offend? Not hard-hearted. Not checked out. But the kind of leader who can absorb a difficult moment — a sharp word, an unfair situation, a bad day — and still lead well on the other side of it. In this episode, we bring in two voices to build one argument. Neuroscientist Lisa Feldman Barrett has spent twenty-five years studying what emotions actually are — and what...

The previous episode showed how even good leaders can get trapped in cycles that drain their teams. Today we flip it. Drawing on research from MIT's Nelson Repenning and Harvard's Amy Edmondson, we explore what happens when you invest in your people instead of burning them out. The virtuous cycle isn't motivational theory—it's science. Capability builds slowly, but when it does, the work gets easi...

Are you running as fast as you can just to keep from falling off the treadmill? In this episode of In the Lead , we kick off a vital two-part series on Efficacy —the power to produce a result. We dive deep into the "vicious cycle" of turnover and burnout that plagues many healthcare facilities, exploring the scientific reason smart leaders get stuck: The Capability Trap . Learn why we instinctivel...

In this poignant second installment on leadership and candor, we continue the conversation with Jerry Batterbee, Denise McGarvey, and Martha Blackburn. While the previous episode focused on the "spine" of leadership—the courage to speak hard truths—this session delves into its soul. Our guests challenge the modern obsession with climbing the corporate ladder, suggesting instead that true influence...

In this episode of In the Lead, host Nathan Metz sits down with guests Jerry Batterbee, Denise McGarvey, and Martha Blackburn in Brooksville, Florida, to explore the character strength of candor—the courage to speak truth with grace. Together they unpack how honesty, trust, and timing shape authentic leadership. From protecting others through tough decisions to balancing humility with decisiveness...

In our latest episode, we pull the mission statement off the wall and put it into the crosshairs of the Monday morning boardroom. We sat down with the Corporate Ops team to see what happens when the "theory" of a mission hits the "fog" of regulations, construction projects, staffing shortages and clinical pressures. What we found wasn't a rehearsed corporate script, but a raw conversation about th...

In this first episode of season two of In The Lead  we explore the mission statement’s evolution from a 1500s Jesuit mandate into a vital modern management tool. Host Nathan Metz takes this opening episode to analyze how "the fog of growth" creates organizational entropy, causing departments to drift into conflicting "mini-missions". By examining the "Corporate Trinity"—vision, values, and mission...

Following the first half of this conversation on the personal strength of celebration, we now turn to the leader. What happens when a leader celebrates? Are there right/wrong ways to do it? Has there been a leader who celebrated you in a memorable way? Host Nathan Metz is joined again by his friends (and coworkers) Angie, Kim, Amy and Brooke to discuss leaders who celebrate.