Leadership Huddle with Geoff Welch

When my brain gets the best of me in the middle of the night I use two simple techniques to short circuit the chaos:1. I count to 100 in French2. I list the 50 states in alphabetical orderBut this isn’t really about sleeping better. It’s about paying attention to what we rehearse. Because the byproduct of this exercise is that, while my conversational French is absolutely trash, I know my numbers...

When Fotini Iconomopoulos was growing up, she earned the nickname “the negotiator” and she’s been turning high-stakes conversations into high-impact outcomes ever since. In this episode, I sit down with negotiation expert, author, and speaker Fotini Iconomopoulos to unpack what real negotiation looks like in everyday leadership, not power suits and table-pounding, but clarity, empathy, and trust....

Dear Leader: you don’t have to have all the answers. I know that deep down you already know this. I know you know that NO ONE has ALL the answers. But it just feels so good to be the one who solves for X.And yet, how much better is it to give your people the chance to find X?I used to worry that I wouldn’t have the answer a coaching client needed on a given call. This will be the call where they s...

When Stephen Flanagan was 21, he wasn’t reading just leadership books, he was running a $6M restaurant. And that pressure-cooker taught him something most leaders miss: habits beat hype. In this episode of Leadership Huddle, Stephen Flanagan, Founder of Seeks Consulting, breaks down how mid-level managers become “execution-ready” leaders by translating strategy into simple daily actions. We talk a...

25 years ago I found myself across the desk from my boss expecting our usual weekly chat about how things were going around the print shop I worked in. The first words out of his mouth were not at all what I had expected…“What the hell is wrong with you?”His delivery might have been out of line, but it also may have been genius because I instantly knew exactly how my performance of late was substa...

What if the people quietly shaping your community are also carrying the most practical leadership wisdom? In this episode, I sit down with Cheyenna Kuplack, the Communications Manager at Doyon, Limited to unpack what real leadership looks like behind the scenes. Cheyenna and I talk about leading while still feeling nervous, why “we can do hard things” is more than a phrase, and how great lead...

There may be no tradition more widely embraced by busy professionals than the meeting after the meeting. We barely had time for the meeting, but we absolutely made time to find quiet hallways or text threads to talk about all the things we didn’t actually understand or accomplish during the meeting. And it’s your fault. Okay, maybe not every single time. But I’m betting you are an accidental co-co...

When Collin Henderson was chasing wins as a Division-I athlete, he didn’t realize the real opponent was in his own head…and mastering that game would change everything. In this conversation, I sit down with author, speaker, and performance coach Collin Henderson to unpack the hidden mental patterns that shape performance, leadership, and culture. Collin shares how performance anxiety, perfectionis...

The face you're going to make when you read the next sentence is the face everyone makes when they read the next sentence. You will know clarity is high on your team when people start telling you “NO.”I get it. As leaders we aren’t always hoping and praying to hear our people tell us “no,” but we should be. Here’s why:When clarity is high, everyone is so sure of what the team is trying to accompli...

Tasha Pineda’s path kept putting her at tables where decisions shape real lives. In this conversation, Tasha and I talk about leadership in the moments that actually matter: when things are messy, uncertain, and human. From growing up around foster care systems to leading through earthquakes, pandemics, and now statewide grantmaking strategy, her story is about learning to influence without n...

My wife and I genuinely like each other. So, obviously, our relationship is perfect and there are never any tense or complicated moments between us. HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHALike any couple, we overreact and underreact and misunderstand and miss-speak and forget we are on the same team. But we figured something out that makes being consistently copacetic more likely: everything just works better betwee...

It’s rare for a 43-year old to have had only one employer. And rarer still for that employer be the same employer his father and grandfather had. In this episode, I sit down with Wade Binkley, President of Riverboat Discovery, to explore what it really means to lead a legacy business in Alaska. We talk about growing up inside a family operation, carrying 75 years of reputation on every departure f...

Have you ever had to have a difficult conversation with someone on your team? Maybe they screwed something up, or were behaving poorly. Maybe you had to deliver some news they weren’t likely to enjoy. I know a few people who genuinely relish diving into a challenging conversation, but most of the people I know would wish them all away if they could. Here’s the thing: I can’t make difficult convers...

When you start off as a professional hip hop dancer, you naturally expect to become one of the most thoughtful facilitators in corporate America. Right? Well, in this episode, I sit down with Frank Ziede, founder of Common Ground Consulting, to talk about his wild evolution, explore what truly great facilitation looks like, and why most “mandatory training” feels like bamboo under the fingernails....

In my 5 Secrets of Impossibly Effective Teams workshops we do an exercise in which participant leaders write a “movie synopsis” for the projects their team is involved in. The goal is to accurately describe the project in the shortest, simplest language so it can be easily understood by anyone on the team. Team members will still need Puzzle Box Clarity about the detail and minutiae, but this syno...

I don’t think I’ve ever had someone tell me that a major inflection point in their career was the desire to wear slacks to work. But here we are. In this conversation, I sit down with Erika Smith, Chief Operating Officer at Credit Union 1, to explore the unlikely, adventurous arc of her leadership journey. From small-town barista to executive, from detours to Australia to “mad scientist mode,...

Leah Boltz was never going to accept that her daughter wouldn’t be able to play at the neighborhood park. So she led a charge that resulted in more than 25 accessible parks across her city. Leah Boltz, is the Principal for Marketing, Business Development & Community Outreach at Bettisworth North, and in this conversation we talk about how one inaccessible park turned into a citywide movem...

I’m sure someone has sorted out how many people John Wick kills across his cinematic run, but I fear I can’t count that high. I know the violence in these movies is severe and ever present, but I think about John Wick every single day when I dive into my work around leadership and building teams that produce outsized results. After all, John Wick might be the poster child for producing outsized re...

Sara Berry knew that the corporate world wasn’t meeting all of her creative needs, but she didn’t know what to do about it. And then the dots connected and she discovered her super power. Sara is the owner of Out of Office Studio and her background in corporate learning gives her a unique vantage point. She’s lived on both sides of the “I know I should… but ugh, do I have to?” dilemma faced by peo...

The next time you wake up at 3AM convinced of impending doom, I want you to ask yourself a question. What if I’m wrong? It’s fascinating to me how many smart people I know (and work with) who will ask this question non-stop about every strategy and tactic they deploy. They say, “I think I should go left…but what if I’m wrong?”They say, “I think the market is shifting and we need to adapt now…...

I was sure this interview was going to be awkward…In this episode, I sit down with workplace performance expert, speaker, and author of “Good Awkward,” Henna Pryor to unpack why discomfort, uncertainty, and “butterflies” are not obstacles to growth, but signals that you’re doing something that matters. We talk about why awkwardness isn’t a personality trait, how leaders accidentally create th...

A few months ago I needed to thaw a roast and it was the exact moment my relationship with AI started breaking down. Not knowing the best way to thaw this roast or how long it would take, I asked ChatGPT for some help. I gave it the size of the roast, the temp of my freezer, the temp of my refrigerator, and the day/time I needed the roast to be ready to go in the oven. It cited a number of so...

Dan White is a firm believer that the single biggest accelerant, and the biggest tax, for leaders is trust. In this conversation with former UAF Chancellor Dr. Dan White, we dig into what trust really looks like in practice. Not as a lofty ideal, but as a daily discipline. Dan shares how self-trust becomes the foundation for every other level of trust, why leaders can’t talk their way out of...

When my daughter texted Nicole and I to say she had gotten a 98% on her final presentation, we were ecstatic. But before we could respond we were met with a flurry of follow up texts squarely focused on the remaining 2%.Which was ridiculous, but also incredibly familiar. Leaders of all stripes fall into a similar trap. We forget to celebrate the 98% and find ourselves fixated on the 2%.It’s not th...

This is my 52nd episode of 2025.I showed up every Sunday. I showed up on the Sundays when I knew exactly what I wanted to say. And I showed up on the Sundays when I wasn’t quite sure what to say. Because showing up isn’t about being perfect or having it all figured out, it’s about contributing. Your people don’t need you to have all the answers or get it right every single time. But they...