Courage to Advance with Kim Bohr

The confidence gap that holds women back in leadership doesn't start in the workplace. It starts around age 14, and most organizations spend years trying to coach the symptom without ever naming where it began. That's the throughline Kim Bohr , CEO of SparkEffect, and guest Jilyne Jarvis follow in this episode. The hesitation leaders see in capable women, the reluctance to take the role, raise the...

Trust is the one thing every leader says they want more of, and the one most are quietly getting wrong. The instinct is to build it through competence or charisma: prove yourself, earn people's confidence, move on. Then the team goes quiet, the executive room gets political, and the organization stops believing what leadership says. Executive coach Andrea Butcher has spent years inside executive a...

Most organizations say they care about employee wellbeing. But when your therapist's office hours don't fit the windows your employer leaves open, when you're the only person trained to run a Friday report so you can never actually take a Friday off, when the word "accommodation" makes you feel like a problem before the conversation even starts, the message your people receive is different from th...

Most culture problems don't surprise anyone. That's the uncomfortable truth at the center of Scott McInnes's research - a study of Chief People Officers across Ireland that set out to identify what's actually blocking progress from the culture organizations have to the one they need. When Scott debriefed a group of respondents on his findings, the room didn't react with shock. They responded with...

Most leadership advice assumes everyone on your team is okay. What happens when they aren’t?  That gap between caring deeply and not knowing how to help is where most leaders live right now. Dr. Gretchen Schmelzer names what’s underneath it. Leaders aren’t undertrained on strategy. They’re undertrained on what to do when the people they lead are struggling. Many try to skip straight to healing wit...

Kim Bohr , CEO of SparkEffect and host of Courage to Advance, sees it all the time: leaders who don’t think about professional visibility until they’re forced to. A layoff, a reorg, a pivot they didn’t plan for. And suddenly they’re trying to build a presence from scratch on a platform they’ve been ignoring. That’s not just inconvenient. That’s starting from zero when the stakes are at their highe...

Most companies treat employee motivation like a personality trait. When engagement drops, the default assumption is that the employee isn't driven enough or doesn't care enough. But what if the problem isn't who you hired? What if it's what you never asked them? Host Kim Bohr sits down with Daniela Tancau to unpack where the disconnect starts. That's the pattern Daniela has spent 18 years diagnosi...

Most leadership development programs don’t fail because the content is wrong. They fail because of what organizations do, and don’t do, the moment the program ends.  Richard Mirabile, PhD , is a leadership development researcher and practitioner with more than 30 years of applied work across organizational psychology, corporate environments, startups, and consulting. He is the creator of SparkEffe...

What does it actually look like when a CEO spends years intentionally handing over the reins, and both leaders are willing to tell the whole story?  This episode of Courage to Advance is different from any we’ve done before. There’s no outside guest. Instead, Kim Bohr sits down with Mike Humphries , her colleague, predecessor, and the leader who shaped Waldron for decades before the 2023 merger th...

What if the most important skill for leading a technology transformation has nothing to do with technology? It's a question Kim Bohr has been asking for years. And when she met Bob Wallis , she found someone who had spent his entire career proving the answer. Bob Wallis, fractional CIO and founder of 61 Keys LLC, has spent his career proving that the difference between a system rollout that succee...

We’ve spent years implementing HR technology to fix workplace problems that technology was never going to fix. Calli Bakken built a career inside that system, watched it fail, and came out the other side with a different answer: if you want employees to show up fully, start by solving the problems they carry through the door. After 15 years in HR, HR tech, and an employee engagement startup, Calli...

What if 70% of change initiatives are failing for the exact same reason and your AI rollout is next?  Ted Wolf , founder of Guidewise AI, has spent decades building businesses and overseeing technology implementations, including 300+ ERP rollouts, watching the same failure pattern repeat. The technology worked. The business case was solid. People just didn't change. After scaling a staffing compan...

What if your organization’s biggest people problems aren’t a skills issue — they’re an access issue?  Only 2% of global CEOs have ever been CHROs. Dr. Suzi Potts spent 25 years watching family-owned businesses hit critical moments, generational transitions, restructurings, down markets, without anyone in the room who understood the human side of the decision. So she left a prestigious SVP role and...

Your policies are not failing because of the 5% who might abuse them, but because they quietly erode trust with the 95% who are doing their best work. When disruption hits, control-heavy policies put managers in an impossible spot and make your top performers feel punished instead of trusted.​ Mitchell Jeffery , founder of Ember Collective, helps organizations redesign HR policies from control-bas...

Your leadership skills vanish when fight-or-flight kicks in. Learn how to build trust when your brain screams "run." For executives facing high-stakes pressure.  Key Takeaways:  Why technical competence is useless if you can't access it under pressure  The exact moment manager trust collapses—and how to prevent it  Strategic NeuroRegulation: training your nervous system like a musician trains thei...

71% of employees experienced a crisis in the past 24 months, but only 36% of organizations emerged with strengthened trust. The difference? Leaders who understand that rebuilding trust requires listening, not fixing. When Tammy Green became the third CEO in three years, 160 employees were in survival mode. Physicians were leaving. The board said, "Everything's broken." Most leaders would have arri...

71% of employees experienced a crisis in the past 24 months, but only 36% of organizations emerged with strengthened trust. The difference? Leaders who understand that career transitions trigger real grief.  Former NFL quarterback BJ Coleman learned this when told to "find your own way home." Now CEO of Pivotal Health Partners and author of The Pivot, he's developed eight rules for navigating iden...

Here's a boardroom paradox: The person who can make or break your organization—your CEO—receives the least comprehensive performance evaluation. Most boards focus narrowly on KPIs and operating objectives, missing the nuanced competencies that truly predict success. In this conversation, Kim Bohr and SparkEffect Board Chair Mike Humphries reveal why well-intentioned boards still get CEO evaluation...

The traditional change management playbook doesn't work for AI—and most organizations are about to learn this the hard way.  David Eliot, PhD candidate and author of Artificially Intelligent: The Very Human Story of AI, reveals a critical insight: those building AI systems actively benefit from keeping people confused. When confusion reigns, democratic participation gets deferred to tech executive...

Your best leaders aren't leaving because they lack passion—they're leaving because you're using motivational myths that defy brain science.  Dr. Bobby Hoffman reveals research on 6 million college students showing extrinsic motivation (money, recognition, status) drives performance—yet we shame people for wanting it. The result? Self-doubt, anxiety, burnout, and during change initiatives, your top...

Your best employees aren't leaving because they became parents—they're leaving because you don't know how to support them. Mason Donovan and Mark Kaplan reveal shocking research: 100% of parents believe becoming a parent made them better employees—more empathetic, resilient, and organized. Yet the "motherhood penalty" persists (4% income decrease per child), while men get a 6% bonus. The culprit?...

71% of employees just faced major disruption—most of it AI-driven. Yet in most organizations, HR isn't in the room when AI strategy gets decided. In this urgent conversation, Kim Bohr and change management expert Maria Ross reveal why HR has approximately six months to claim their seat at the AI transformation table—or risk watching technology teams make people decisions without you. Drawing on Sp...

Your direct managers are your organization's greatest trust asset—and your most dangerous vulnerability during crisis. New research reveals why. In partnership with cultural anthropologist Dr. Aaron Delgaty , SparkEffect conducted the most comprehensive study on organizational trust during disruption. The findings flip conventional crisis management wisdom: 71% of employees experienced significant...

While AI can ask powerful questions and validate feelings, it can't synchronize nervous systems or call your B.S. when you need it most. In this essential conversation, SparkEffect's Chief Coaching Officer Rod Bacon reveals why the most transformative leadership breakthroughs require human connection, productive tension, and biological synchronization that technology cannot replicate. Discover why...

Your Gen Z employees aren't difficult. They're revolutionizing how we work. Dr. Meisha Rouser , organizational behavioral scientist with 20+ years experience, reveals groundbreaking research on why this generation's "why" questions are transforming outdated workplace paradigms. Discover what happens when employees who watched their parents lose homes in 2008 refuse to sacrifice everything for comp...