Lead the Team (Top 2% of Podcasts)

That first all-hands. Patrick Dennis , CEO of Avaya , walked in expecting nerves and optimism. Instead, one question he was asked changed the room. It wasn’t dramatic or confrontational. But it was revealing. It showed to him that the organization wasn’t aligned on reality. And misalignment at that level doesn’t stay neutral. It compounds. I’ve seen this pattern more times than I can count. Leader...

The Hard Season Matt Zilli, CEO of Planview, told me the hardest years of leading a company through billion-dollar growth (including restructures, tough people decisions, and uncertainty) became the most valuable leadership training of his career. That really resonated for me. Some of the most uncomfortable stretches building my podcasts and business were the exact moments I wondered if I should p...

Is obsession with "The Win" actually preventing it? John Leach CEO of FLS Transportation shared with me that fixating on the win is the fastest way to lose control. He breaks down what happens when he walked away from "personality-first" leadership to build a system where success isn’t a roll of the dice. It made me reflect on some of my own team's results where we delivered short term but they we...

Missed Opportunity. Greg Smith, Founder of Thinkific, shared with me how most leaders are sitting on their most undervalued asset: their own expertise. And I’ve been guilty of this too. For years, I thought growth meant building something new (a new product, new offering, new initiative). BUT some of the biggest growth I’ve seen (in my own business and with companies I work with) came from teachin...

High performance deceives. Alain Dias, CEO of Nortal Americas, knows a thing or two about building at scale..after all his team helped build the world’s very first "digital nation." When a leader with his kind of track record speaks about growth, I'm in! His interview is a gut-check for most organizations: If your expansion depends on a "Hero," you aren't ready to scale. In many cultures, we celeb...

Scale deceives. Barry Mainz, CEO of Forescout Technologies Inc., reveals how leaders unknowingly become responsible for massive risks they never personally approved. As your organization grows, leadership doesn’t just get harder, the real issues become harder to see. More effort stops producing better outcomes. And more hustle just starts masking risk. Barry’s work shows something unsettling: even...

Vikram Savkar, CEO of VitalEdge Technologies, shares how a demanding moment pushed him to rethink how he was operating... AND why choosing to reset earlier than most leaders do changed how he showed up as a leader, at work, and at home. The business here wasn’t the problem. But time at home was shrinking. And the way work followed him everywhere wasn’t something he wanted to normalize. Instead of...

Pressure doesn't change the game...it reveals the leader. Mitch Stevison, President & CEO of Frontgrade Technologies, recently shared how a high-stakes missile test forced a decision no textbook could prepare him for. In this conversation, we break down the one skill he leaned on when the eyes of two nations—and a Senior Admiral—were watching. If you've ever had to make a high-stakes call unde...

Questioning unlocks elite performance. Pete Harris, President of Pipedrive, was at the pinnacle of his previous profession (one that he’d spent his entire career pursuing). Everything was on track... the prestige and the rank. But while many founders and leaders might push uncomfortable thoughts aside, Pete did something different. He used a specific type of curiosity to ask himself a question tha...

Your office is deciding results. Anna Squires Levine, President of Industrious, leads a company that has spent more than a decade observing how office space impacts human behavior (across hundreds of locations and millions of workdays). Many leaders assume the office is just a place where work happens. But it's far more than that! She explains that the office space is quietly influencing things le...

This mistake taught leadership. Marcus Perez, President of Altera Digital Health, shares a moment that unfolded in a helicopter at low altitude (where mistakes don’t get a second chance) and still shapes how he leads today. A rule had been broken the day before. The next day, his commander took the controls. He didn't get lectured. He got something far more... Intense. Deliberate. Unforgettable. S...

Leadership tests you. Jason Liu, CEO of Wood Mackenzie, felt that test immediately when he stepped into the role right after a major merger. New team. New culture. Everyone watching how he’d show up. Instead of trying to project confidence the traditional way, he made a choice that could’ve easily gone wrong. It didn’t. What surprised me wasn’t the move itself... ...it was what it revealed about f...

Pressure felt like leadership (until it wasn’t) Josh Epstein, President & Chief Business Officer at Coder, learned this the hard way. I’ve seen urgency do two very different things to teams. Sometimes it sharpens focus and everything moves faster. Other times, it creates stress, confusion, and quiet burnout—while leaders think they’re “pushing for results.” Josh shared how early in his career,...

AI failure rates shock me. Erin Gajdalo, CEO of Pluralsight, joined me and what she revealed about why AI projects collapse disturbed me even more.. I expected to talk about tools, frameworks, and roadmaps. Instead, Erin asked me question I wasn’t ready for: “Is your team actually ready for this? How can you even tell?" Um... Because most leaders — myself included — push for AI adoption without sl...

Winning gold didn’t end the pressure. It intensified it. A truth Phil Andrews, CEO of USA Fencing, came to understand through experience. That’s the incredible story behind Team USA’s recent historic gold… …and the leadership turnaround that made it possible. When I sat down with Phil, I wasn’t expecting what came next. He walked into a sport in crisis. Broken culture.
 Divided membership.
 Declin...

Dan Michelson, CEO of RLDatix North America , shared the feedback that reshaped how he leads. When things go well , it can actually blind yo u to areas where he needed to improve. ...and this is why so many successful leaders often fail. Most top performers don’t realize they’re slipping until someone has the courage to tell them something they didn’t want to hear. Dan shared that his initial reac...

Winning alone is losing. Dennis Levene, CEO of Hometown, bet the business on his customers’ success… and it’s paying off. Most CEOs obsess over market share and margins. Dennis obsessed over a broken system robbing schools of money. And he asked the question that changed everything: “Why should $25 of my $100 school donation go to a fundraising company?” That wasn’t frustration — it was a blueprin...

Hugues Meyrath, CEO of Quantum, came back to lead the same company that built his career decades ago — a 45-year-old tech brand powering Hollywood, Space, and even the AI revolution. But when he returned, something was off. The spark was gone. The ownership was gone. And instead of hiding behind strategy decks or consultants, he did something far harder... ...he rebuilt the culture on truth. “If t...

Ever made a call at work that backfired — big time? Rob Hahn, now COO at Pattern , knows exactly what that feels like. Early in his career as a young leader at Amazon, he faced a decision no leader ever forgets. At just 26 and leading thousands of people, a severe weather warning hit. He made the call to shut everything down. The storm never came. And the decision cost the company millions. But in...

Jed Berger, Kenneth Cole Global President and CEO, is building something rare in business today — a brand that grows because it stands for something bigger. In his third appearance on Lead the Team , Jed reveals the hidden advantage behind Kenneth Cole’s continued success… and how purpose became their ultimate performance driver. “Purpose can’t just be a campaign. It has to live in every part of t...

It started with a freezer then and became a billion-dollar lesson. Dan Fachner, CEO of J&J Snack Foods — the company behind ICEE, Slush Puppie, and Dippin’ Dots — posted a video on LinkedIn that immediately caught my attention... ...he gets emotional while expressing gratitude to his team for their hard work and dedication. You can see how much he truly cares about his people, and I knew right...

Bezos' Law - Chai Atreya, Chief Product Officer at ActiveCampaign, once helped build Amazon Alexa under Jeff Bezos. During one internal review, Bezos made a single comment — short, specific, and completely unexpected — that changed everything. He looked at the team and said: “I want Alexa to respond in under five seconds.” That one sentence forced every engineer to rethink what “great” really mean...

He didn’t say he was ready. He proved it quietly. When I sat down with Dan Faulkner, CEO of SmartBear , he told me he was once passed over for a leadership role because he “hadn’t done it before.” The cruelest ceiling isn’t glass — it’s being boxed in by your own expertise. Being great at something… and never trusted with more. Instead of waiting for permission, Dan built his own readiness. He stu...

Leadership Under Fire He Led Troops in Combat — Now He Leads Billion-Dollar Companies I first met Lance Olmsted, now President of IFS Copperleaf, expecting a story about discipline and precision. What I didn’t expect was how deeply human it would be. Lance served as a U.S. Marine. He learned to lead in the most uncertain environments imaginable — where hesitation could cost lives AND empathy wasn’...

Leaders Miss This Matthew Fitzpatrick, CEO of Invisible Technologies—the #2 fastest-growing AI company in America—leads with a principle many overlook: AI may power the future, but people give it purpose. What makes Matt’s leadership stand out isn’t the speed of growth—it’s the intentionality behind it. He reminds us that real progress doesn’t come from louder voices or faster code. It comes from...