Leading With Respect

This week, the Leading With Respect podcast turns one year old — Episode 52. I've got separate posts running on that milestone, so I'll keep this part short: thank you dear guests for your wisdom and heart, on this critical topic. I want to lead with the actual argument of this week's episode, because it's worth stating plainly before I get into the story. My guest, Adam Nemer, was a CFO and opera...

Respect Shows Up Differently by Culture Michelle Zou, PCC, MBA, PhD Candidate in Happiness Studies on happiness research, cross-cultural blind spots, and why what feels respectful to you may feel like the opposite to someone else. We tend to think of respect as something we either have or don't. A character trait. A cultural value. Something leadership declares and HR measures once a year in an en...

Treating people as objects creates the absence of respect. Phillip Cave on pattern recognition, personal responsibility, and why honoring someone is a verb — not a value on a wall. Most leaders I talk to genuinely believe they respect their people. They also have teams where trust is low, feedback is guarded, and conflict gets buried. So what's the gap? This week on Leading With Respect, I sat dow...

There is a question I have asked in boardrooms, at leadership offsites, and in quiet one-on-ones with founders who are wondering why their organizations feel harder to run than they should be. The question is deceptively simple: Do your people believe you count their needs as important? Not do you have a good benefits package? Not do you hold quarterly town halls? Not do you have a stated set of c...

We’ve all seen the corporate posters. The ones plastered in breakrooms or splashed across landing pages featuring buzzwords like Integrity, Collaboration, and, most frequently, Respect. But what happens when the rubber meets the road? What does respect actually look like when financial targets are missed, a high-paying client treats your team like scum, or a massive organizational shift is underwa...

In this week's podcast episode, I share a conversation that didn't just skim the surface of Leading With Respect—it delved into the depths of the human experience. I sat down with Dov Baron... The Science of Emotion, a global leadership powerhouse and a true polymath. Dov is also the host of the podcast, The Dov Baron Show. Link to his site below. I’ll admit, "polymath" wasn't a word I used daily...

We often think of "strategy" as a cold, analytical game—a series of spreadsheets, market forecasts, and tactical maneuvers. But what happens when we strip away the jargon and look at the humans actually making the decisions? This week on the Leading With Respect podcast, I share my conversation with, Jeroen Kraaijenbrink , a strategy expert from the Netherlands who has transitioned from the world...

In this week's episode of the Leading With Respect podcast, I had the pleasure of speaking with Anju Choudhary, Chief People Officer at Xoxoday. Her work centers on supporting leaders and teams as they navigate major change, digital transformation, and complexity. And her perspective on respect cuts straight to where most organizations get it wrong. You can be polite and still be disrespectful. Re...

In the world of Organizational Effectiveness (OE), we often get bogged down in frameworks and academic theory. But when I sat down with Christine Wickland , the Director of OE at Expedia Group, we got down to the basics. Christine’s journey didn't start in a boardroom; it started on the sales floor at Nordstrom. That "human-first" perspective has stayed with her through leadership roles at Amazon...

This week’s podcast conversation was with Njideka U. Harry . A reminder how respect is a business imperative. Not because it was theoretical. Because it was structural. We often talk about respect as a "soft skill" in culture. Njideka reframed it as something far more critical: Respect is governance. And once you see it that way, you can’t unsee it. Read the article on LinkedIn: https://www.linked...

Why “giving people space” is the leadership capability most organizations are missing. This week’s conversation, with Jovina Ang, Ph. D. , a global leader across tech, academia, and consulting, surfaced something deceptively simple and deeply urgent: Respect is giving people space to be heard. In a world defined by speed, noise, and constant change, that idea cuts through. Not because it’s new. Be...

Why the "Super Hardcore" Workplace Is Missing the Point   I recently sat down with my friend, Newton Cheng , on the Leading With Respect podcast. Newton spent 17 years as Google's Director of Health and Performance, overseeing programs that supported Googlers' health and well-being. His reasons for leaving matter to every leader reading this. They matter to all human beings. Newton opened with: "W...

There’s a moment in leadership where everything speeds up, and you can feel it in your body. Your calendar compresses. Your inbox multiplies. Expectations rise. Your responsibilities expand — and the margin you used to have for patience, reflection, and humanity quietly disappears. This week on the Leading With Respect podcast, I sat down with my longtime friend from our Microsoft days, Sabina Naw...

March invites reflection. Not just celebration, but recalibration. Women’s History Month is often framed in terms of achievement, progress, and recognition. All important. And yet, this conversation with Karen E Simpson, MBA (she/her) points to something deeper—something less visible, but far more foundational: Have we misunderstood respect itself? I had the privilege of sitting down with Karen—a...

Every conversation in this series reminds me how many different paths lead people to the same realization: respect is not a “soft” concept in organizations. It is a performance driver. In my latest conversation, I had the pleasure of speaking with Elizabeth Brady . Her story alone is a reminder of how far workplaces have come, and how far they still need to go. Early in her career, she was the onl...

When a leader says “we value people,” there’s a simple way to test if it’s true: What happens when someone sets a boundary? In my latest Leading With Respect podcast conversation, Brenda Herrera DeLeon (a former VP in the agency world) said respect at work is fundamentally this: Dignity. Being seen. Being heard. Being valued. Being included. And she offered the clearest cultural signal I’ve heard...

This week on Leading With Respect, I had the privilege of speaking with Stephen Bullock , President of Power Curbers Companies, a North Carolina–based manufacturer of concrete paving equipment operating in over 100 countries. If most of my network lives in tech, Stephen represents something equally powerful: frontline leadership. Manufacturing floors. Safety risks. Heat. Heavy machinery. Generatio...

What a former Microsoft CVP taught me about respect, allyship, and the discipline of slowing down There was a moment in my recent podcast conversation with a former Microsoft Corporate Vice President, Gavriella Schuster , that stopped me. She said: “Respect is really listening. Listening to understand where someone is coming from — and recognizing that everyone has value.” Simple. Obvious. And yet...

With Valentine’s Day approaching, love tends to get framed as something personal. Romantic. Private. Something that belongs outside the walls of work. But what if love does belong in the workplace — just not in the way we usually think about it? Not sentimentality. Not forced positivity. Not heart emojis or motivational posters. In organizations, love shows up as respect. And when respect is prese...

This week on Leading With Respect, I had the pleasure of sitting down with Christina Rowe, a deeply thoughtful talent development and organizational effectiveness leader who truly embodies what human-centric leadership looks like in practice. From the moment Christina began sharing her story, one theme stood out: She sees herself first and foremost as a problem solver — someone who brings the righ...

A Conversation with J.D. Roux , Chief People & Culture Officer at IGT When I invited J.D. Roux to join me on the Leading With Respect podcast, I knew the conversation would be thoughtful. What I didn’t expect was how grounded, practical, and quietly powerful his perspective would be. J.D. is a fellow Microsoft alum and currently serves as Chief People & Culture Officer at IGT (Internationa...

Respect Is The Baseline For Inclusion It shows up most in what we invite (and what we ignore). Some conversations stay with you. Not because they were dramatic. Not because they were controversial. But because they were grounded… human… and quietly powerful. That’s exactly how I’d describe my recent podcast conversation with Megan Cadd, Director of Inclusion at Gartner, who supports Gartner’s eigh...

Ferose V R is a dear friend, mentor, a leader I admire deeply, and one of the most grounded storytellers I know. Ferose currently serves as a Senior Vice President at SAP, leading the SAP Academy for Engineering based in the Bay Area. But titles, as Ferose reminded me, don’t tell the full story. In fact, he opened our conversation with what he calls his “love introduction:" “We all introduce ourse...

Why “therapy/companionship” is now Gen AI’s #1 use case — and what leaders must do next This morning on my beach walk, I had an “aha.” I was thinking about rip currents. Not as a beach safety topic— but as a metaphor for the world we’re living in right now. Follow the companion LinkedIn newsletter to this podcast: https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/rip-currents-age-ai-bobby-bakshi-g8h0c/?trackingId=uC...

Azurée Montoute-Lewis (Global Chief People Officer, Burson) shares how respect manifests in measurable ways across regions, generations, and real-world cultural challenges. I recently sat down with Azurée S. Montoute-Lewis, MBA, SPHR , Global Chief People Officer at Burson, a global communications agency with a truly international footprint. She offered one of the most grounded definitions of work...