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What happens when you choose long-term trust over short-term speed? Psychologist Susan David's powerful question launches us into a revealing exploration of how trust-building decisions fundamentally transform outcomes.

This episode contrasts two dramatically different approaches to organizational change. On one hand, a team that prioritizes rapid implementation, making unilateral decisions and forcing solutions on users can lead to active sabotage and project failure. Another that invests time upfront in building trust-filled relationships and understanding, creating psychological safety can enjoy dramatic success.

The surprising insight: Prioritizing trust building up front doesn't necessarily extend timelines. Strong trust foundations allow teams to move quickly when it matters most, while preventing the costly rework cycles that sink speed-focused strategies.

Listen to discover how trust conversations can transform your most important connections.

We want to thank the team that continues to support us in producing, editing and sharing our work. Jonah Smith for the heartfelt intro music you hear at the beginning of each podcast. We LOVE it. Hillary Rideout for writing descriptions, designing covers and helping us share our work on social media. Chad Penner for his superpower editing work to take our recordings from bumpy and glitchy to smooth and easy to listen to episodes for you to enjoy. From our hearts, we are so thankful for this team and the support they provide us.

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What if the secret to breakthrough results isn't working harder but making better promises? Bob Dunham, founder of the Institute for Generative Leadership, reveals the power of trustworthy commitments in creating extraordinary outcomes.

Dunham challenges the mechanistic approach dominating today's workplace, where employees are treated as production units rather than humans with creative potential. "We've left out being human; everything's being mechanized," he explains. He goes on to explain that this blindness to our human capacity restricts the value that can be created, and waking up to this opens up a whole new world.

At the heart of Dunham's Generative Leadership discipline lies a powerful distinction between responsibility and accountability that transforms how we approach work. While many use these terms interchangeably, Dunham clarifies and contrasts them, leading us to reject blame and excuses, and focus instead on what can be done despite inevitable challenges.

Dunham shares how he applied these principles to turn around a Silicon Valley software engineering department that hadn't delivered products in two and a half years. The key wasn't superhuman effort, but rather creating systems that supported responsibility at all levels.

For listeners struggling with accountability issues, unmotivated teams, or untrustworthy commitments, this conversation offers practical wisdom on building cultures where people consistently deliver superior results by reconnecting our humanity with our work.

We want to thank the team that continues to support us in producing, editing and sharing our work. Jonah Smith for the heartfelt intro music you hear at the beginning of each podcast. We LOVE it. Hillary Rideout for writing descriptions, designing covers and helping us share our work on social media. Chad Penner for his superpower editing work to take our recordings from bumpy and glitchy to smooth and easy to listen to episodes for you to enjoy. From our hearts, we are so thankful for this team and the support they provide us.

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"I shouldn't have to explain this." Sound familiar? A lot of leaders feel this way about making clear requests of people. It creates a destructive cycle: vague directions lead to poor results, which fuel resentment and reinforce the belief that explanation shouldn't be necessary.

The hidden cost is teams divided between mind-readers and the confused, while everyone wastes time "spinning," trying to guess what leaders actually want. What feels like giving creative freedom often creates anxiety and inefficiency instead.

We explore how cultural pressure to move fast reinforces communication shortcuts, yet spending time on clear requests upfront saves massive time fixing problems later. We'll challenge you to ask yourself: "Am I more committed to my belief that I shouldn't have to explain this, or to getting the result I want?"

Whether you're a frustrated leader or someone constantly guessing what your boss wants, this episode offers practical insights to break the cycle. Notice your own "shoulding" and consider whether it's serving you and your team.

We want to thank the team that continues to support us in producing, editing and sharing our work. Jonah Smith for the heartfelt intro music you hear at the beginning of each podcast. We LOVE it. Hillary Rideout for writing descriptions, designing covers and helping us share our work on social media. Chad Penner for his superpower editing work to take our recordings from bumpy and glitchy to smooth and easy to listen to episodes for you to enjoy. From our hearts, we are so thankful for this team and the support they provide us.

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What happens when we trust life enough to put down our armour and show up authentically? Poet Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer takes us on a journey through the transformative power of creative practice and how it builds the muscle of trust - in life, in ourselves - that we need in our most challenging moments.

Rosemerry opens our conversation with her powerful poem "Growing Trust," asking why we would ever "slip back into armour" when life itself is waiting to move through us. She shares how her commitment to writing poems daily completely shifted her relationship with creativity, moving from perfectionism to valuing truth and authenticity above all else. This daily practice became about cultivating a way of being present with whatever arises.

The parallels between creative practice and leadership emerge throughout our discussion; when leaders do their own inner work, others can sense it, creating psychological safety without effort. As one of Rosemerry's students expressed, "I trust you because I can tell you've done your work." This embodied authenticity allows leaders to create spaces where vulnerability and creativity can thrive.

Rosemerry's wisdom offers a powerful invitation to trust what emerges when we get out of our own way and open ourselves to the inherent creativity of life itself.

We want to thank the team that continues to support us in producing, editing and sharing our work. Jonah Smith for the heartfelt intro music you hear at the beginning of each podcast. We LOVE it. Hillary Rideout for writing descriptions, designing covers and helping us share our work on social media. Chad Penner for his superpower editing work to take our recordings from bumpy and glitchy to smooth and easy to listen to episodes for you to enjoy. From our hearts, we are so thankful for this team and the support they provide us.

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What truly makes a good leader? We dive into this question by challenging ourselves to identify the qualities that matter most – and then getting real about how we're actually doing.

We share some of our own leadership strengths and blind spots, but the conversation quickly evolves into something more interesting: How do you even know if you're leading well? Turns out, your body might have more answers than you think.

We wrestle with some of the trickier aspects of leadership – like how to balance your time and energy across your team, when to make tough calls about people, and why the idea of the all-knowing leader is pretty much a myth.

Leadership isn't something you figure out once or on in solitude. It's an ongoing practice that requires honest self-reflection, building the right support network, and a willingness to call for support when needed. And trust? It's woven into everything; trust in ourselves, in thought partners, in sources of feedback and in the feedback they offer, in our bodies, and our emotions.

We wrap up with a challenge, actually a "Double Dog Dare," that might sound simple but could change how you think about your leadership. Ready to take it on? We'd love to hear what you discover.

We want to thank the team that continues to support us in producing, editing and sharing our work. Jonah Smith for the heartfelt intro music you hear at the beginning of each podcast. We LOVE it. Hillary Rideout for writing descriptions, designing covers and helping us share our work on social media. Chad Penner for his superpower editing work to take our recordings from bumpy and glitchy to smooth and easy to listen to episodes for you to enjoy. From our hearts, we are so thankful for this team and the support they provide us.

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Have you ever felt that weighty silence in a team meeting when dissatisfaction hangs in the air but remains unspoken? That silence might be eroding trust beneath the surface of your relationships and organizations.

In this conversation, we explore how dissatisfaction manifests across different contexts - from personal relationships to large organizations, with special focus on team dynamics when remaining quiet creates invisible barriers.

We discuss how leaders can recognize the signs of team dissatisfaction before it undermines culture and introduce ideas for addressing it productively. The conversation also touches on our challenging relationship with self-disappointment and why we often avoid confronting uncomfortable emotions.

Join us as we unpack this universal experience that affects every relationship but rarely gets the attention it deserves and discover how properly addressing dissatisfaction can be the catalyst for rebuilding trust and connection in your most important relationships.

We want to thank the team that continues to support us in producing, editing and sharing our work. Jonah Smith for the heartfelt intro music you hear at the beginning of each podcast. We LOVE it. Hillary Rideout for writing descriptions, designing covers and helping us share our work on social media. Chad Penner for his superpower editing work to take our recordings from bumpy and glitchy to smooth and easy to listen to episodes for you to enjoy. From our hearts, we are so thankful for this team and the support they provide us.

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Could love be the key to workplace innovation, productivity, and social change? Amy Elizabeth Fox, CEO of Mobius Consulting, thinks so. We have a fascinating conversation with her in which she advocates integrating healing practices and psycho-spiritual transformation into organizations, challenging the idea that caring connection and high performance are mutually exclusive.

Amy believes our current reality (which she describes as brittle, anxious, nonlinear, and incomprehensible) requires stronger emotional connections within organizations, yet most workplaces remain stuck in outdated models that view emotions and vulnerability as weaknesses.

Tune in to hear how embracing love in business and recognizing others' inherent dignity, organizations can become powerful catalysts for broader social change.

We want to thank the team that continues to support us in producing, editing and sharing our work. Jonah Smith for the heartfelt intro music you hear at the beginning of each podcast. We LOVE it. Hillary Rideout for writing descriptions, designing covers and helping us share our work on social media. Chad Penner for his superpower editing work to take our recordings from bumpy and glitchy to smooth and easy to listen to episodes for you to enjoy. From our hearts, we are so thankful for this team and the support they provide us.

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Psychologist Dr. Jody Carrington joins us to discuss the paradoxical nature of being human: we are biologically wired for connection, yet struggle to truly see each other. Drawing from her work with first responders and children, she explains how emotional regulation builds trust and why distrust often stems from trauma rather than choice.

We explore how digital connectivity, sleep deprivation, and fractured attention hijack our nervous systems, undermining our capacity for trust and empathy. Dr. Carrington offers simple yet transformative practices that serve as neurobiological interventions and suggests that humanity's purpose may be helping each other navigate life with greater calm and compassion.

Listen to discover how practicing emotional regulation might be the revolution our disconnected world needs most.

We want to thank the team that continues to support us in producing, editing and sharing our work. Jonah Smith for the heartfelt intro music you hear at the beginning of each podcast. We LOVE it. Hillary Rideout for writing descriptions, designing covers and helping us share our work on social media. Chad Penner for his superpower editing work to take our recordings from bumpy and glitchy to smooth and easy to listen to episodes for you to enjoy. From our hearts, we are so thankful for this team and the support they provide us.