The PIVOT: Navigating Uncharted Territory with Dave Schoof

We live in a culture that rewards movement. Answer faster. Decide sooner. Keep going. But movement and navigation aren't the same thing. You can move all day and still become increasingly lost. What actually makes navigation possible isn't a better map, more information, or greater confidence. It's something that happens before any of that. Its orientation. Knowing where you are before deciding wh...

Dr. Rodney King has navigated some of the hardest terrain a person can cross — homelessness on the streets of Johannesburg, a health crisis that ended his career, and the disorienting question that follows when everything you've built around yourself falls away: who am I now? He came out the other side not with a framework, but with a direction. As a philosopher, coach, and founder of Coaching Phi...

What leadership instrument are you actually navigating with when the information environment breaks down? In this solo episode, Dave Schoof explores one of the most disorienting challenges facing leaders right now: the gap between what the official story says and what people are actually living. Prices move week to week. Markets say one thing while experienced leaders feel something else entirely....

What does leadership look like when the old maps stop working — and the social contracts that guided your career have dissolved? In this second conversation with JJ Vega, leadership coach and founder of Art of Unfolding, Dave Schoof goes deeper into the territory most leadership development avoids: grief as a necessary passage, natural cycles as an organizational practice, and the embodied awarene...

Leadership in a crisis nobody's playbook covers — what happens when the map runs out. Three weeks into Operation Epic Fury, the Strait of Hormuz effectively closed and crude above $100 a barrel — this episode covers what's happening inside the people running organizations through it. The financial briefings tell you what's happening to the system. I want to talk about the moment leaders reach for...

Leadership coaching meets consciousness work in this wide-ranging conversation with JJ Vega — exploring what actually guides us when the old maps stop working.   What if desire, not strategy, is the real GPS for navigating complexity? That's where this conversation ended up — and neither of us saw it coming.   JJ Vega is a leadership coach working at the intersection of the inner world and organiz...

Navigating the Polycrisis and Meta-Crisis: Strategies for Leaders in Uncertain Times In this episode, Dave Schof explores the complex landscape of multiple simultaneous crises shaping our world — the polycrisis and the metacrisis — and offers practical tools for leaders to respond with clarity, resilience, and purpose. Discover how shifting from reactive survival to strategic navigation can transf...

What if your strongest strategic signal feels like your weakest hunch?     In this rich conversation, Dave Schoof sits down with Maurice Jenkens—host of The Intuitive Leader™ Podcast and an expert in psychological safety and high-performing teams—to explore the vital yet often overlooked role of intuition in leadership.   Chapters/Timestamps:  
00:00 - Introduction 
03:00 - Maurice's origin story...

Episode Description:  A senior executive had all the green lights for a major reorganization—board approval, stakeholder buy-in, perfect timing. Yet something in his gut wouldn't settle. When he tuned into subtle signals—brief sidebar conversations, shifts in energy, what wasn't being said—a deeper intelligence emerged. In this episode, Dave reveals the four essential capacities for future-sensing...

There’s an anxiety humming beneath everything—like tinnitus that never stops. You feel it in leadership meetings where reactions explode out of proportion. In hair-trigger responses to small disruptions. In that 3am wakefulness that’s become a collective companion. In this second conversation, Rob McNamara and I go deep into the question: How do we metabolize the poly-crisis, both personally and r...

🎙️ Part 1 — Depth, Coherence, and Leadership When the Maps Fail Subtitle: “What if the space between us is the map?”   Rob McNamara joins Dave to explore how relational depth, love, and presence may be the most strategic responses to the crises of our time. Guest Bio – Rob McNamara Rob McNamara is a transmitted Zen master, advisor, consultant, and executive coach. He is the author of four books, m...

🎙️ Episode Overview
What if leadership isn't about control, but resonance? In this episode of The Pivot, Dave Schoof speaks with Sonja Blignaut about rewilding, untaming, and how to lead through complexity and change. They explore how to find your way in liminal times — when the old maps no longer work — and why resonance, embodiment, and imagination may be the skills most needed now. Sonja is a W...

Episode Description In this compelling conversation, Dave speaks with Florian Irminger about his journey from high-visibility political leadership to behind-the-scenes human rights advocacy, and what he calls the "Global Realignment" we're all navigating. This episode explores how leaders can pivot from old ways of working to meet unprecedented challenges, why admitting "I don't know" is becoming...

Episode 1: Pivoting into Possibility with Amah What if the pivot you’re seeking isn’t a sharp turn — but a deep surrender into something bigger? Welcome to the very first episode of The Pivot! I’m your host, Dave Schoof, and today we’re not doing a classic interview. Instead, I’m sitting down with the brilliant Amah for an open exploration of what it means to navigate uncertainty, embrace emergenc...

Paul Auston, CEO of Thirdwave , and I explored the emerging field of Psychedelicdelics and leadership as well as other aspects of my own journey to working with psychedelics. For the full episode, here is the links:   YouTube