Disconnected: The Hidden Leadership Crisis of 2025 | #23

In this Leadership Unscripted episode of Unleash Your Impact, Unlock Others, Rich and Dave unpack one of the most pressing challenges in leadership today: disconnection.

Drawing from Zentano’s Connected Leadership model and their own real-world experience, they explore five core disconnections that are undermining performance, resilience, and well-being:

1. Disconnection from Self – The erosion of reflection, emotional insight, and intuition.
2. Disconnection from Others – Overreliance on transactional leadership, the myth of the heroic leader, and the undervaluing of time spent building relationships.
3. Disconnection from Complexity – Treating organisations as machines, not ecosystems; wanting certainty and ignoring adaptive thinking.
4. Disconnection from Purpose – Losing sight of meaning in pursuit of efficiency, and an insufficient focus on values-led leadership.
5. Disconnection from Nature & Sustainability – Operating in extractive ways that ignore our embeddedness in larger systems.

From inner leadership to system thinking, they offer a fresh call to action: Reconnect to lead better.

🔑 Key Talking Points

• The neuroscience of intuitive decision-making (and when not to trust your gut).
• Why reflection and emotional processing are business-critical, not “soft and fluffy.”
• Leadership beyond charisma: strategic humility and connected teams.
• Systems thinking. Coping with complexity, ambiguity, and the imperative of leadership adaptability.
• Rebalancing short-term action with long-term purpose and impact.