The Ready Set Podcast

Good ideas die in organizations constantly. Not because they’re bad ideas. Because they arrive in the wrong language for the environment that has to receive them. In this episode we look at that problem through the story of Frederick Douglass — and what he figured out over decades of operating in completely different systems about how to deliver the same message in whatever language the room was a...

This is the launch of Signal Forward — a series built for the individual contributor the leadership industry forgot. Same publication as The Ready Set. Different altitude. Where The Ready Set focuses on the behaviors that make leaders effective, Signal Forward focuses on the behavioral patterns that determine whether your contribution gets seen, valued, and rewarded — regardless of whether you man...

In this episode, we close out the five-part New Leadership Model series with the most fundamental choice any leader makes — usually without realizing they’re making it. The choice between compliance and engagement. Told through the story of Herb Brooks and the eighteen months that built one of the most genuinely invested teams in sports history. What we cover: * The difference between compliance a...

In this episode, we look at the shift from managing to developing through the story of John Wooden — the UCLA basketball coach who won ten NCAA championships in twelve years by investing in who his players were becoming rather than managing what they were producing. And what his players said about him thirty years after they left tells you everything about what developing leadership actually build...

In this episode, we look at the shift from controlling to facilitating through the story of Benjamin Franklin at the Constitutional Convention — and what four months of deliberate restraint from the most accomplished man in the room reveals about where collective intelligence actually comes from and what it takes to create it. What we cover: Why control narrows thinking and facilitation expands it...

In this episode, we look at what a recent Fast Company investigation into the lives of a hundred senior-level mothers reveals about leadership — and connect it to the story of Frances Perkins, the woman who witnessed the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire in 1911 and spent the next forty years building the structural requirements that forced leaders to close the gap between what they said they value...

In this episode, we look at the shift from directing to enabling through the story of Bill Walsh — the coach who took a San Francisco 49ers team that won two games and built one of the most dominant dynasties in NFL history, not by being the smartest person in every room, but by building rooms full of people who could think for themselves. What we cover: Why directing breaks down at scale — and th...

In this episode, we look at the shift from planning to inspiring through the story of Martin Luther King Jr. — and what leading one of the most complex, dangerous, and unpredictable movements in American history almost entirely through the power of a destination that never moved reveals about what leadership actually requires when conditions keep changing. What we cover: The difference between a p...

In this episode, we look at the leadership model shift — from planning, directing, controlling, and managing to inspiring, enabling, facilitating, and developing — through the story of Alan Mulally, the outsider who walked into a collapsing Ford Motor Company in 2006 and changed everything by responding to one honest moment in one meeting in a way nobody expected. What we cover: Why Ford's weekly...

She Never Crossed the Line Alone The Ready Set Podcast | Episode 10 — Series Finale In the final episode of The Ready Set podcast series, we close out ten behaviors with the one that makes all the others matter — Shared Success — told through the story of Harriet Tubman. A woman who reached the finish line, felt nothing, and went back nineteen times. What we cover: Why a significant win that leave...

In this episode, we look at Adaptive Thinking through the story of Abraham Lincoln — and what four years of leading through conditions no one could have predicted reveals about the difference between consistency as a virtue and consistency as a cage. What we cover: Why the most dangerous leadership frustration isn't failing — it's doing everything right and watching it slowly stop working The cabi...

The Ice Doesn't Care About Your Plan The Ready Set Podcast | Episode 009 In this episode, we go deep into one of the most extraordinary survival stories in history — Ernest Shackleton's Imperial Trans-Antarctic Expedition — and what two years stranded on the ice reveals about what Resilience actually looks like when the pressure is sustained, the finish line keeps moving, and 27 people are watchin...

In this episode, we look at Values-Based Integrity and Authenticity through the lens of one of the most quietly remarkable leaders of the twentieth century, Fred Rogers, and what his decades-long consistency between public and private behavior can teach us about the trust that actually holds teams together. What we cover: * Why reputation gets built or destroyed in the moments when doing the right...

Show Notes The General Who Never Wasted a Move The Ready Set Podcast | Episode 007 In this episode, we look at Critical Path Thinking through the lens of one of history's most underrated leaders — Dwight D. Eisenhower — and what his approach to planning the most complex military operation in history can teach us about leading with focus and intention today. What we cover: Why most teams aren't fai...

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The Ready Set Podcast - Episode 001 - Behaviors are the Foundation In this episode we discuss how behaviors are the foundation to being or becoming a successful leader. It's not about strategy or skills, it's how you show up. Get full access to The Ready Set at thereadyset.substack.com/subscribe