Growth Hacking Culture

Epizódy

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  How to Respond When You Get Interrupted in a Meeting | Andrea Wojnicki 14.09.2026 45min

  Getting interrupted in meetings, or talked over right before someone else repeats your idea and gets the credit, happens more than most people admit, and to some people a lot more than others. Dr. Andrea Wojnicki is a Harvard-trained executive communication and personal branding coach, host of the Talk About Talk podcast, and a Harvard Business Review contributor who has spent her career studying exactly why this happens in meetings, and what to say the moment it does. In this conversation, Ivan and Andrea break down the psychology of interruptions, the double standard between how men and women get judged for the same behavior, and the specific phrases and body language that shut an interruption down without sounding defensive. In this episode: How to respond when someone interrupts you in a meeting, the exact words and body language, without pausing or sounding defensive Why interrupting is about power, not manners, and who gets interrupted most as a result Assertive or aggressive: why the same behavior gets judged differently for men and women, and how to navigate it The impossible tightrope women face in leadership, with two real examples of controlling the narrative instead of fighting it Internal versus external self-awareness, the communication skill that separates average leaders from exceptional ones When to let an interruption go, and when it's actually a power play worth confronting How meeting leaders and allies can build a culture where interrupting isn't tolerated This one is for the woman who's tired of being talked over in meetings and wants a response that actually works, and for any leader who wants to fix this dynamic on their own team. Connect with Dr. Andrea Wojnicki:Website: talkabouttalk.comLinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/andreawojnickiHer book, Let Me Introduce Myself, on building your professional identity and personal brand, is out in 2027. If you've ever felt like your ideas get overlooked until someone else says them louder, that's the same territory I explore in my book, Expired? The Science of Staying Indispensable in a World Obsessed with New, out now at ivanpalomino.net/expired-book-ivan-palomino. If this episode was useful, a quick rating or review helps more people find these conversations. Growth Hacking Culture is a top 5% global podcast exploring the neuroscience, psychology, and behavioral science behind leadership and workplace culture. Hosted by Ivan Palomino.
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  Why 40% of Company Failures Are a Leadership Problem, Not a Product Problem | Dane Hudson 09.09.2026 42min

  Most leaders assume when a company stalls, the problem is the product, the market, or the team. It rarely is. After 25 years as a global CEO and mentoring over 150 of them, Dane Hudson keeps arriving at the same uncomfortable answer: the ceiling is usually the person running the company. Not their strategy. Not their product. Their leadership — and the gap between how fast it's growing and how fast the business is. The problem is that gap is invisible until the damage is already done. Dane Hudson is the founder of Impactful Leadership and author of Discipline Beats Vision a hands-on playbook for CEOs who need to grow as fast as their companies do. In this episode, Ivan and Dane unpack why leadership is the hidden variable behind most startup failures — and what disciplined leadership actually looks like in practice. In this episode: Why 40 to 55% of companies fail and Dane's hypothesis that 40% of those failures trace back to the leader, not the product The moment a CEO becomes the biggest risk to their own company Why the Optimism Trap is more dangerous than pessimism and how to catch yourself in it What "Monday ready" leadership looks like: meeting discipline as a signal of accountability culture The four people every CEO needs in their corner — and why the one they always forget matters most Why leaders who stop being relentless students fail before they realize it Newton's Third Law applied to leadership: every behavior produces a response — are you choosing yours? This one is for the CEO or senior leader who knows their company is growing but quietly suspects their leadership hasn't kept up. 🔗 Connect with Dane Hudson https://danehudson.com/  | https://impactfulleadership.com/ Book Discipline Beats Vision: https://amzn.asia/d/0aVgtDWY   📖 Ivan Palomino's book on staying indispensable in a world obsessed with new: Expired? is now available in English and French edition   Growth Hacking Culture is a top 5% global podcast exploring the neuroscience, psychology, and behavioral science behind leadership and workplace culture. Hosted by Ivan Palomino    
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  Sarah Rozenthuler: The Psychology of Purpose in the Age of AI 06.09.2026 47min

  Six extra hours a week. That's what AI has reportedly handed back to people using it well. The real question isn't the time, it's what they do with it. Chartered psychologist Sarah Rozenthuler has spent nearly two decades studying how humans talk to each other about what actually matters, and she's noticed something: more people are turning to AI to think out loud about their purpose, their leadership, their next move. Sarah is a leadership coach and the author of three books on purpose and dialogue, including Now We're Talking, shortlisted for the Business Book Awards, and Powered by Purpose, with a foreword by former Unilever CEO Paul Polman. Her clients include Standard Chartered Bank, BP, and Saïd Business School at Oxford. In this conversation, Ivan and Sarah test whether talking to a machine can genuinely help someone get clearer on their purpose, or whether it just becomes a comfortable way to avoid the real conversation. In this episode: Why AI can be a legitimate rehearsal room for a hard conversation, and the exact moment it turns into a hiding place instead The difference between AI as a clean reflective mirror and an echo chamber that just agrees with you Why 70% of managers avoid the difficult conversation, according to Sarah's own research, and whether AI makes that better or worse What "crucible moments" are, and why the clearest sense of purpose usually comes out of the hardest experiences, not a chatbot Why some leaders say AI is freeing up hours while others feel like they've lost time policing AI's mistakes This one is for the leader who's already talked to AI about a hard decision and isn't sure if that counts as cheating or just good preparation. Connect with Sarah Rozenthuler: Website: https://sarahrozenthuler.com/ LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/sarah-rozenthuler/ Books: Now We're Talking and Powered by Purpose   📅 Join Ivan on 10th September: a free live session, The 7 Fears: What Employees Actually Think About AI, decoding what 36,165 employees actually said about AI at work, across 5,000 companies. Limited to 40 senior HR leaders, recording sent to all registrants. Register: https://luma.com/x10qnpqq Growth Hacking Culture is a top 5% global podcast exploring the neuroscience, psychology, and behavioral science behind leadership and workplace culture. Hosted by Ivan Palomino  
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  Nicholas Janni & Amy Elizabeth Fox: What Comes After Human-Centric Leadership 30.08.2026 41min

  Nicholas Janni and Amy Elizabeth Fox, authors of Leading in Chaos, explain why human-centric leadership has hit its ceiling, and what comes next. For fifteen years, leadership development meant one thing: build emotional intelligence, train empathy, create psychological safety. It worked, until it didn't. Some of the most self-aware, emotionally intelligent leaders on the planet are still freezing under pressure, still overcorrecting in a crisis, still making the wrong call. Not because they lack empathy. Because empathy was never the missing piece. Nicholas Janni has spent over 25 years advising CEOs and senior leadership teams worldwide and teaching at top business schools, including IMD. His book Leader as Healer won UK Business Book of the Year. Amy Elizabeth Fox is Co-founder and CEO of Mobius Executive Leadership, and has spent two decades running trauma-informed, transformational leadership programs for Fortune 500 executives and professional services firms. Together they wrote Leading in Chaos, their account of what leadership requires in a world stuck in permanent crisis. 📖 About the book Leading in Chaos: Portals to a New Future argues that today's polycrisis, institutional fragility, and sustained uncertainty demand more than better tools or best practice. Janni and Fox call it next practice: a shift from control to coherence, from speed to presence, and from purely cognitive leadership to a wider, embodied intelligence. Drawing on decades of work with senior teams, the book blends vertical development and trauma-informed practice into a practical case for how leaders can regulate themselves well enough to lead clearly through chaos. In this conversation, Ivan Palomino asks them to define what actually comes after human-centric leadership: a deeper form of consciousness built on vertical development, trauma-informed leadership, and nervous system regulation, not just more empathy training. In this episode: Why fifteen years of emotional intelligence training plateaued, and what CHROs got wrong measuring its impact The real difference between a leader who is calm because they are regulated, and one who is only suppressing panic Why the average person spends just 5 percent of their day in a state of flow, and what that reveals about modern workplace culture What vertical development and trauma-informed leadership actually look like in practice, without a single hour on a therapist's couch How hyperarousal and hypoarousal quietly hijack a team's best decisions under pressure Why boards are no longer willing to tolerate high-performing but harmful leaders, and what replaces that old model A simple two-minute practice that changes the quality of every meeting a leader runs This one is for the CHRO who invested heavily in emotional intelligence training and still isn't seeing the culture shift they were promised, and for any leader who suspects the old playbook has quietly stopped working. 🔗 Connect with Nicholas Janni and Amy Elizabeth Fox 📘 Book and Course, Leading in Chaos: https://leadinginchaosbook.com/ 🌐 Nicholas Janni: https://www.nicholasjanni.com/  | LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/nicholas-janni/ 🌐 Amy Elizabeth Fox / Mobius Executive Leadership: https://www.mobiusleadership.com/  | LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/amyelizabethfox/  🎙️ More from Growth Hacking Culture Podcast home: https://podcast.ivanpalomino.net  Newsletter: https://simplyhuman.substack.com    📘 If this episode resonated, you might enjoy Ivan's own book, Expired? The Science of Staying Indispensable in a World Obsessed with New, on why experience is still your biggest asset in a workplace obsessed with novelty: https://www.ivanpalomino.net/expired-book-ivan-palomino  Growth Hacking Culture is a top 5% global podcast exploring the neuroscience, psychology, and behavioral science behind leadership and workplace culture. Hosted by Ivan Palomino.
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  Why Hiring A-Players Doesn't Build Winning Teams with André Martin 23.08.2026 49min

  Every organization wants to hire the best. Stack the roster with top performers, invest in individual excellence, let talent density do the work. It sounds like a winning strategy. The research says otherwise. Dr. André Martin is an organizational psychologist, former Chief Talent Officer at Mars, and author of Collective Confidence: The Winning Formula Behind the World's Most Unbeatable Teams. He has spent decades studying hundreds of teams across radically different environments, from submarine crews to Olympic gymnasts to Silicon Valley startups, and his findings keep pointing to the same place: the teams that win are not the ones with the most talent. They are the ones that believe they can figure it out together. Ivan and André dig into why collective confidence outpredicts individual performance, what six principles every unbeatable team shares, and how the way we hire, onboard, and develop people is built around a model that stopped working years ago. In this episode: Why collective confidence is a stronger predictor of team performance than individual talent, backed by decades of research The three types of confidence (individual, contributory, collective) and why organizations invest in the wrong one Six principles shared by every unbeatable team André studied, from Navy crews to gymnasts to startup founders How a Burning Man camp leader's philosophy of "make everyone the boss of something" reveals what corporate hiring misses Why teams that learn together retain nearly 100% while solo learners lose 70% in three days (the Ebbinghaus curve hack) The trust formula with four variables where self-interest is the denominator that can destroy everything else What André would fix first as CHRO: not culture programs, but onboarding and the leadership team This one is for the leader who looks at a talented team and thinks: we should be performing better than this. For the HR professional who suspects that stacking resumes is not the same as building a real team. And for anyone who has been on a scrappy squad that somehow outperformed everyone's expectations and wondered why it worked. 🔗 Connect with André Martin LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/docmartinpdx Book: Collective Confidence (Amazon): https://www.amazon.com/Collective-Confidence-Winning-Formula-Worlds/dp/1966280084 First book: Wrong Fit, Right Fit Newsletter: More Than the Sum (on LinkedIn) ----  Growth Hacking Culture is a top 5% global podcast exploring the neuroscience, psychology, and behavioral science behind leadership and workplace culture. Hosted by Ivan Palomino   Ivan Palomino's new book Expired?: The Science of Staying Indispensable When Your Company Bets on Youth is now availble https://a.co/d/036NVnVe    
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  Dr. Audrey Tang: Detours, Dopamine, and the Science of a Life Not Scripted 16.08.2026 45min

  Most of us were handed a script before we were old enough to question it. A school told us what to study. A parent told us what success looks like. A career ladder told us which rung comes next. And somewhere along the way, we confused following the script with actually living. This conversation with Dr. Audrey Tang starts with a simple but unsettling question: what if the detour was never the problem? What if the belief in a straight line was? Dr. Audrey Tang is a Chartered Psychologist, leadership trainer, and award-winning author of The Leader's Guide to Resilience and The Leader's Guide to Wellbeing (winner, Business Book Awards 2024). For years she has worked with leaders and organisations on the psychology behind performance, confidence, and behaviour change. Her own life, which has crossed teaching, performing, writing, broadcasting, and building a charity, is anything but linear. Ivan and Audrey explore the neuroscience behind why we default to linear thinking, why the corporate habit of setting fixed goals makes us worse at life, and what it actually takes to build confidence in the face of the unexpected. In this episode: Why the brain fills in narrative gaps automatically, and how Gestalt psychology explains our obsession with sequences and conclusions The difference between happiness and relief, and why "I'll be happy when I achieve X" is one of the most common traps we fall into How parental scripts get installed early and how to start asking whose critical voice you are actually hearing The skills vs. strengths distinction: why getting promoted on things you are good at but that drain you is one of the quietest career crises there is How dopamine reinforces the wrong behaviours, keeping people climbing ladders that lead somewhere they never wanted to go Why "follow your passion" can tip into obsession, and the better question to ask: what problems do you want to solve? The stretch zone framework: how small daily discomforts build the resilience to handle real uncertainty without panic What to do when you are stuck in the mess right now, cannot see the point, and do not know where to start This one is for the experienced professional who suspects the path they are on was never quite theirs, and is ready to ask what comes next. 🔗 Connect with Dr. Audrey Tang Website: https://www.draudreyt.com/ Book - The Leader's Guide to Resilience: https://a.co/d/064klLMC  📘 Ivan's new book Expired? The Science of Staying Indispensable When Your Company Bets on Youth — for the 50+ professional navigating relevance, visibility, and what experience is actually worth. Launching September 2026: https://www.ivanpalomino.net/expired-book-ivan-palomino  Growth Hacking Culture is a top 5% global podcast exploring the neuroscience, psychology, and behavioral science behind leadership and workplace culture. Hosted by Ivan Palomino
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  John Nieuwenburg on Building Systems That Don't Need You in the Room 12.08.2026 39min

  Picture the busiest person you know. First to answer email, last to leave a meeting, always available. Now ask yourself: are they actually the best decision maker in the room? John Nieuwenburg has coached hundreds of leaders through exactly this contradiction, and his answer might surprise you. John spent decades working his way up in retail, eventually running a $3 billion operation as company president. That experience taught him the busiest executives are rarely the most effective ones. He's now spent 20+ years coaching leaders using the Socratic method, helping them ask themselves better questions instead of handing them answers. In this conversation, Ivan and John unpack what actually separates leaders who scale their impact from those who just scale their hours, and why the answer has almost nothing to do with working harder. In this episode: Why the captain of a rowboat, a yacht, and an aircraft carrier all need a completely different definition of "work" The difference between personal trust and structural trust, and why only one of them scales past ten people What "delegation debt" costs you when you keep saying "it's just faster if I do it myself" Why Jeff Bezos treats 5 good decisions a year as a successful year, and what that means for how you spend your time The real difference between being available and being accessible, and how to protect blocks of real, focused work How to run an executive update using BLUF (bottom line up front) instead of a 50-slide deck nobody reads Why culture is defined by what a leader tolerates, not what's written on a wall, and how to build one worth keeping This one is for the leader who's proud of how busy they are, and quietly wondering if that busyness is actually working against them. Connect with John Nieuwenburg Website: w5coaching.com   Coming Soon: The Culture Signal: a free online session for senior HR leaders on what your people actually fear about AI, and what to do about it Register on https://luma.com/x10qnpqq    Growth Hacking Culture is a top 5% global podcast exploring the neuroscience, psychology, and behavioral science behind leadership and workplace culture. Hosted by Ivan Palomino  
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  Julian Reeve: Unmistakable Identity, Burnout, and Why AI Recovery Is the Same Skill 09.08.2026 45min

  At 43, at the peak of his career as music director of Broadway's Hamilton, Julian Reeve had a stress related heart attack. The two things driving it, workaholism and perfectionism, are the same two things now deciding who thrives with AI and who burns out trying to outrun it. Julian Reeve is a keynote speaker, executive coach, and founder of Perfect Equilibrium. He spent years helping high achievers reclaim their health and their sense of self after getting trapped in what he calls the achievement machine, and he built his own AI assistant three years ago to help him do exactly that. In this conversation, Ivan and Julian reframe AI not as a threat but as a mirror, and unpack why burnout, perfectionism, and the fear of being replaced all trace back to the same root cause: confusing skill with identity. In this episode: Why Dr. Christina Maslach's six drivers of burnout reveal that overload was never the real problem for most people The difference between skill (what AI already does well) and capability (what only humans can do), explained through a plumber standing in your kitchen Julian's three pillars of "unmistakable identity," identity, creativity, and judgment, and why none of them can be trained the way skills are Why 95% of people believe they're self-aware while the real number is closer to 12%, according to Dr. Tasha Eurich's research Martin Covington's self-worth theory and why perfectionists are structurally the most vulnerable to burnout What "acceptance and permission" mean in practice, and why recovery is about doing less, not more Why Gen Z may need to know themselves at 20 the way Julian needed to know himself at 40, and what that means for the future of entry-level work This one is for anyone who has built two decades of career on being reliable, consistent, and hard to fault, and is now watching a machine do that part faster than they ever could. 🔗 Connect with Julian Reeve: julianreeve.com | Human Capability Indicator: free download Book: Captain Perfection and the Secret of Self Compassion https://amzn.eu/d/03J6jm4x TEDx: Julian Reeve perfectionism  https://youtu.be/mi-kD8_dyKw?si=HV6GbumnEKrHpS5B  --- 📘 Ivan Palomino's book Expired? is available now in English. The science of staying indispensable when the world keeps moving the goalposts. → ivanpalomino.net/expired-book-ivan-palomino   Growth Hacking Culture is a top 5% global podcast hosted by Ivan Palomino, exploring the neuroscience, psychology, and behavioral science behind leadership and workplace performance.
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  The Neuropsychology of Power: What Happens to Your Brain When You Lead 04.08.2026 53min

  Power changes everyone, especially leaders, whether they realize it or not. Discover the hidden neuroscience behind how authority rewires your brain, alters your behavior, and can transform you in ways you never expected. In this episode, Ivan Palomino speaks with leadership expert Nick Kinley, a former forensic psychotherapist whose work spans prisons, boardrooms, and decades of research into power. Together, they unpack what really happens in the brain when people gain authority: why power can boost confidence while also reducing empathy, distorting decision-making, and making even strong leaders more vulnerable to blind spots. You’ll learn:- Why power affects everyone, not just “bad” leaders- How authority changes brain structure, chemistry, and behavior- Why leaders often overestimate how open people are with them- The role culture and context play in amplifying power’s effects- What organizations can do to detect and reduce the negative side of power This conversation is especially relevant for founders, executives, managers, HR leaders, and anyone interested in leadership, psychology, and workplace culture. If you want to understand how power shapes behavior and how to lead without losing your values, this episode is for you. Nick Kinley is the author of The Power Trap, an evidence-based look at how leadership changes people and what to do about it. Listen now to explore the neuropsychology of power and what it means for the way you lead.   The latest book of Ivan Palomino on the psychology of the midlife is now available: Expired? https://a.co/d/0hV4tNnu    
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  How to Leave a Toxic Job Without Losing Yourself | Jeff Davis 27.07.2026 40min

  There is a version of you that walks into a job feeling capable, energized, and sure of who you are. And there is a version, months or years later, who can't remember when that confidence left. Nobody names the moment. There usually isn't one. Just a slow accumulation of small cuts that eventually add up to a person who doubts themselves. Jeff Davis has spent years collecting these stories. He's an award-winning author, TEDx speaker, and mental health advocate whose latest book, The Courage to Leave: Breaking Free from Toxic Workplaces, pulls back the curtain on toxic work cultures through raw storytelling and research-backed insight, including his own experience surviving and eventually transforming a toxic company from the inside. In this conversation, Ivan and Jeff go deep on why toxic workplaces are built to look normal, why smart people stay far longer than they should, and what it actually takes to get out without losing yourself in the process. In this episode: Why more than half of workplaces are experienced as toxic, and why almost nobody says it out loud The subtle leadership tactics that do more damage than a screaming boss: gaslighting, the "fake friend" trap, and constantly shifting goalposts Why the small daily put-downs are often more corrosive than one big blowup The real reasons capable professionals stay: fear, loyalty, financial security, and a job market that feels impossible What chronic workplace stress does to the body over months and years, not just the mind How to protect yourself while you're still inside: building allies, rebuilding self-esteem, and going minimalist to prepare a real exit Jeff's own story of being pushed out of a role a year ago, and how it led him somewhere far better This one is for the professional who has already asked themselves "is it me, or is this place actually toxic" more than once, and hasn't found a safe way to say it out loud. Connect with Jeff Davis: Website: jeffdspeaks.com Book: The Courage to Leave: Breaking Free from Toxic Workplaces Email: [email protected] LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/speakerjeffdavis/   If this conversation resonates, Ivan's own book, Expired?: The Science of Staying Indispensable When Your Company Bets on Youth, digs into why we're wired to undervalue what's already proven, ourselves included. The English edition is coming September 2026: https://www.ivanpalomino.net/expired-book-ivan-palomino  Growth Hacking Culture is a top 5% global podcast exploring the neuroscience, psychology, and behavioral science behind leadership and workplace culture. Hosted by Ivan Palomino.
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  Colette Molteni: Emotional Intelligence for People Who Think in Systems 20.07.2026 42min

  If you think in systems, empathy probably never made sense as a soft skill. It felt vague, unquantifiable, impossible to debug. But what if it is not a personality trait at all, just a system you have not built yet. Colette Molteni spent 20 years working inside data analytics, sales operations, and engineering teams before founding Empathy Elevated. She does not ask technical people to become someone they are not. She gives them a framework: a repeatable, practiceable system for reading a room, managing a hard conversation, and building trust, the same way you would approach any other technical skill. In this episode, Ivan and Colette get into why brilliance alone stalls careers, why most corporate EQ training is forgotten by the following Monday, and the 4-step system she uses to turn empathy into something you can actually practice and measure. In this episode: Why being brilliant gets you hired but will not get you trusted or promoted Her 4-step system for pausing, asking, considering, and empathizing under pressure Why organizations often reward and produce emotionally unintelligent leaders without meaning to Why corporate EQ training fails once people are back at their desks How to read a room and adjust your communication without becoming someone you are not Whether AI coaching tools can genuinely build emotional intelligence, or only imitate it The one small, repeatable habit to start practicing tomorrow This one is for the engineer, data scientist, or product manager who has been told they are hard to work with and wants an actual system for fixing it, not another personality assessment. Connect with Colette Molteni Substack: https://empathyelevated.substack.com/ LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/colettemolteni/  Growth Hacking Culture is a top 5% global podcast exploring the neuroscience, psychology, and behavioral science behind leadership and workplace culture. Hosted by Ivan Palomino 
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  Wisdom Over Intelligence: A World Champion's Framework for Smarter Decisions | Andres Kuusk 15.07.2026 37min

  There is a version of you that works harder, thinks faster, and still ends up in the same place. Not because you lacked the ability — but because the process producing your decisions had a flaw you never examined. And the smarter you are, the longer it takes to notice. This conversation is about that flaw, and what it actually takes to correct it. Andres Kuusk is a seven-time World Pentamind Champion, the most successful all-around mental strategist in recorded history, a PhD economist, and C-suite executive. His book, Unlocking the Success Puzzle, draws on decades of high-stakes competition and corporate advisory work to map the hidden thinking errors that undermine even the most talented professionals. Ivan and Andres explore what separates people who keep improving from those who keep repeating — from the role of curiosity in sustained success, to the untested assumptions quietly sitting at the center of most corporate failures, to what it actually means to judge a decision well. In this episode: Why effort, talent, and motivation are necessary but not sufficient and what the missing variable actually is How to use curiosity as a filter for goals that are genuinely your own, including the one question Andres uses to tell the difference Why process-oriented goals consistently outperform outcome-oriented ones in competition and in leadership The difference between being effective and being efficient, and why mixing them up is so costly How intelligence enables sophisticated self-deception — and what self-awareness actually requires to be useful Why judging decisions by their outcomes alone leads to systematically wrong conclusions (the pocket aces example) What board games teach about deciding under uncertainty that most leadership programs never address How to identify the recurring pattern underneath your mistakes, not just the individual events This one is for the senior leader or high achiever who has the track record, the credentials, the capability — and still senses that something in how they think and decide could be fundamentally better. 🔗 Connect with Andres KuuskWebsite: https://andreskuusk.com/ Book: Unlocking the Success PuzzleLinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/andres-kuusk-1081b25b/  Growth Hacking Culture is a top 5% global podcast exploring the neuroscience, psychology, and behavioral science behind leadership and workplace culture. Hosted by Ivan Palomino 
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  From Bottleneck to Coach: Brad Sugars on the Leadership System Most Organizations Never Install 13.07.2026 46min

  Most senior leaders do not know they are the bottleneck. They think they are the standard. They are in every key decision, every escalation, every thread that matters. And they have quietly trained their teams to wait for them. It does not feel like a problem. It feels like leadership. Brad Sugars is the founder of ActionCoach, the world's largest business coaching firm operating in 1,000+ offices across 80 countries, and author of 18 books on business, leadership, and organizational performance. For 30 years he has worked with executives across 80 countries who built high-performing reputations and high-dependency teams at the same time. He also had to confront this in himself: at 26, he built an organization that could run without him, then spent two years sabotaging it because he was not emotionally ready to step back. In this episode, Ivan and Brad map the full leadership progression from indispensable technician to organizational coach. They get into the management infrastructure most companies quietly dismantled in the 2000s, the psychology of leaders who need to be needed, and what it actually takes to build a team that performs without you in the room. In this episode: - Why the behaviors that made you a high performer become the exact ceiling on your organization's growth, and how to recognize which leadership stage you are actually operating from- The two-word definition of management that disappeared from most organizations in the late 90s, why its absence creates chronic underperformance, and how to reinstall it systematically- How a simple competency and productivity scoring exercise reveals that a team's weak performance is almost never the team's score — it is the manager's- The LION meeting structure: a Monday group session and Thursday 1-on-1 that systematically eliminates the constant flow of decisions and questions escalating to you- Why senior leaders who need to be needed always have one thing in common: a goal that is not big enough to make the current role feel small- The five-stage success formula Brad deploys across global organizations: Dream, Goal, Learn, Plan, Action, and why skipping the learning phase guarantees plans that just repeat the past- What AI actually requires before it can improve organizational performance, why most companies are not ready for it yet, and why the leaders who digitize now will define the next decade This one is for the senior leader who has built a capable team on paper but cannot seem to step back without everything slowing down. 🔗 Connect with Brad SugarsWebsite: bradsugars.com | actioncoach.comInstagram: DM "playbook" to get 10 free business ebooks and audiobooks    Growth Hacking Culture is a top 5% global podcast exploring the neuroscience, psychology, and behavioral science behind leadership and workplace culture. Hosted by Ivan Palomino.
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  How to Diagnose Employee Disengagement Instead of Just Measuring It with Dustin Snyder 06.07.2026 38min

  Most organizations know something is wrong long before they run a survey. The sense that good people are pulling back, that processes are harder than they need to be, that the same conversations keep happening in the same conference rooms without anything changing. The survey confirms it. And then, usually, not much else happens. The problem is not the data. The problem is that most organizational listening tools were built to measure sentiment, not to trace its origins. They tell you where it hurts. They have no mechanism for telling you why. Dustin Snyder spent fifteen years in labor relations and several more as the president of a manufacturing company before he concluded that the standard diagnostic toolkit was missing something fundamental. His workforce was not performing the way he needed it to. He tried the conventional fixes. They did not hold. What he eventually discovered, and what he has since spent years proving across nearly every industry in the United States, is that employee behavior is not a character issue. It is a design issue. People respond rationally to the conditions around them. If those conditions make the wrong behavior the easiest path, that is the behavior you will get, consistently, regardless of who you hire. In this conversation, Dustin and Ivan explore what it actually looks like to move from measuring employee feelings to diagnosing the environmental forces that generate them, why that shift is harder than it sounds, and what changes when a leadership team finally sees the wiring diagram behind their engagement score. In this episode: Why engagement surveys can only return answers to questions leadership already thought to ask, and what that structurally excludes How employees answer surveys strategically when they have learned that honesty carries a risk, and why the gap between score and reality keeps widening What the SWIM methodology (Strategic Workforce Insight Mapping) traces that a score never can: the specific conditions, processes, and structural frictions driving the behavior keeping leaders up at night Why the employee who looks like the problem is almost always the place where system stress is surfacing, not its source The concept of organizational equilibrium and why well-designed change initiatives get quietly absorbed by the structure underneath them How a healthcare network scored low on communication for two consecutive years, added more communication channels, and scored even lower, until a diagnostic revealed the opposite problem The Hawthorne Effect, Schrodinger, and the psychodynamic interviewing techniques SWIM uses to get data that does not steer itself What a leader should do first, before touching anything, when they realize they have been treating symptoms for years This one is for the HR leader, CHRO, or senior executive who has run the survey, built the action plan, and watched the same number come back twelve months later, and who suspects the loop will not break until the questions themselves change. 🔗 Connect with Dustin Snyder  Website: https://wayforward.work/ Book: Sink or Swim https://a.co/d/0asu3lm5 LinkedIn: Dustin Snyder https://www.linkedin.com/in/snyderdustin/  Growth Hacking Culture is a top 5% global podcast exploring the neuroscience, psychology, and behavioral science behind leadership and workplace culture. Hosted by Ivan Palomino The Growth Hacking Culture is ranked on the 14 Best Growth Hacking Podcasts by FeedSpots Podcast  
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  Fix Work, Not People | Burnout, Job Design & What Good Work Actually Looks Like ft. Dr. Kat Page 28.06.2026 39min

  What if burnout isn’t a people problem — it’s a design problem? Organizational psychologist Dr. Kat Page has spent two decades studying why workers break down — and her answer challenges everything most organizations do about it. A poorly designed job, she argues, is worse for your mental health than unemployment. And every wellbeing program that treats the symptom is quietly giving the organization permission to ignore the cause. In this episode, Kat and host Ivan Palomino dismantle the resilience myth, expose the moral injury hiding inside everyday corporate dysfunction, and get practical about what leaders who actually design good work do differently — day by day, behavior by behavior. If you lead people, work in HR, or feel like the system is broken but can’t quite name why — this is the conversation that gives you the words and the tools.
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  The Shame Loop Keeping Smart People Stuck | Burnout, Executive Function & Breaking Free ft. Frankie Berkoben 21.06.2026 47min

  Burnout isn't a motivation problem. It's not a willpower problem. And if you're one of the smartest people in the room — it might be happening to you precisely because of how good you are. Executive coach Frankie Berkoben has spent years inside Google, Airbnb, and the most demanding startup environments in Silicon Valley. She works with engineers, founders, and product leaders who are genuinely brilliant — and burning out faster than anyone around them. In this episode of the Growth Hacking Culture Podcast, Frankie and host Ivan Palomino unpack the hidden loop that traps high performers: the shame cycle that shuts down executive function, destroys focus, and makes everything harder the more you try to fix it. This isn't a conversation about meditation apps or morning routines. It's about understanding why your brain works the way it does — and designing your life around that reality instead of fighting it. What you'll learn: The gap between your potential and your output doesn't mean something is wrong with you. It means there's a mismatch between your responsibilities and your capacity — and shame is making it worse. When high-potential people feel that gap, shame kicks in. And shame doesn't push you to perform better: it suppresses executive function, the exact cognitive system you need for planning, focus, follow-through, and emotional regulation. The harder you push, the more capacity you lose. Frankie introduces her framework of 7 types of bandwidth — creative, emotional, mental, physical, sensory, social, and values — and explains how to stop running on empty by going where your energy actually is, not where you think it should be. She also breaks down why nonlinear thinkers (roughly 25% of the workforce) are disproportionately at risk, and why interest-based motivation — often dismissed as laziness — is neurological, not a character flaw. Ivan brings his own experience as a late-stage founder who hit burnout twice, once in corporate and once raising capital, and the conversation goes deep on what actually changes when you stop trying to fit a broken system and start designing for how you're wired. Key topics covered: — Is overwhelm the real problem, or a symptom of something deeper? — The capacity-responsibility gap and why it compounds over time — How shame physically suppresses executive function (the neuroscience) — Hustle culture, Elon Musk, and who's really picking up the slack — Why peak performance is statistically impossible to maintain — and why expecting it makes things worse — Tony Hsieh, intrinsic motivation, and the danger of building without a personal "why" — The 7 types of bandwidth and how to use them daily — Three things you can do when a situation feels like a complete mismatch — Why design thinking applied to yourself is more powerful than any productivity system — What to do TODAY if you're sitting at your desk feeling overwhelmed and stuck About Frankie Berkoben: Frankie Berkoben is a San Francisco-based executive coach specializing in gifted, ADHD, and nonlinear-thinking professionals in tech. She coaches engineers, product leaders, and founders at companies including Google and Airbnb, helping them close the gap between potential and sustainable high performance. She is known for combining design thinking with deep self-knowledge to help clients build systems that work for their actual brain — not an idealized version of it. Connect with Frankie: LinkedIn: Frankie Berkoben Website: frankieberkoben.com About Growth Hacking Culture: The Growth Hacking Culture Podcast explores the human side of high performance — the mindset, habits, and systems behind founders and leaders who build at the highest level without destroying themselves in the process. The GHC Podcast has been selected by FeedSpot as one of the Top 100 Thought-Provoking Podcasts https://podcast.feedspot.com/thought_provoking_podcasts/?feed_id=8181374&_src=f2_featured_email#h8181374   Hosted by Ivan Palomino.
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  How to Become a High-Impact CHRO: Mindset, Habits & Career Moves That Actually Work | Tom Emery 15.06.2026 43min

  Most HR leaders never make it to Chief People Officer — and those who do often struggle to create real impact once they get there. The difference isn't technical expertise. It's mindset, habits, and knowing exactly which career moves accelerate your path to the top. In this episode of Growth Hacking Culture, Ivan Palomino sits down with Tom Emery, founder of Hex and author of People People: Reach Your Potential as a Chief People Officer. Tom spent over 20 years in HR leadership across financial services and wealth management before building a coaching practice dedicated to helping HR leaders and Chief People Officers lead with genuine impact. Whether you're an HR business partner aiming for the C-suite, a first-time CPO finding your footing, or a seasoned CHRO looking to sharpen your edge — this conversation is packed with honest, practical insight you won't find in a textbook. In this episode, you'll learn: Why your functional HR expertise might be holding you back from the C-suite The daily habits and mindset routines of truly impactful CHROs and Chief People Officers How to get your CEO to listen to you — and earn a real seat at the table The "observation + question" mirror technique for influencing without triggering defensiveness How to manage your emotional triggers before they manage you Why the best HR leaders embrace discomfort — and how to start practicing this today The career moves and experiences that separate future CHROs from those who plateau Tom's one piece of advice for every ambitious HR leader: stop taking it so seriously About Tom Emery Tom Emery is the founder of Hex, an executive coaching and leadership development consultancy, and the author of People People, a practical guide for current and aspiring Chief People Officers. With over two decades in HR leadership — including as CPO at a City of London wealth management firm — Tom now works with HR leaders and executive teams to build the mindset and skills that drive real organizational change. 🔗 Free copy of People People (UK only): https://www.hex-development.com/book-request/ 🔗 Connect with Tom on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/tom-emery-b8809818/ 📘 Buy People People on Amazon: https://www.amazon.co.uk/People-Reach-potential-Chief-Officer/dp/1788607414   About Growth Hacking Culture Growth Hacking Culture is the podcast for HR leaders, people professionals, and executives who believe culture is the ultimate competitive advantage. Every episode brings you honest conversations with practitioners and thinkers who are changing how organizations treat their people — and what that means for business results. 🔔 Subscribe on your favorite podcast platform and never miss an episode. 📘 Ivan Palomino's new book (French version) is now available: Périmé?: La science de rester indispensable quand le marché préfère le neuf →  https://www.ivanpalomino.net/perime-livre-ivan-palomino  
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  How HR Leaders Can Actually Use AI to Kill Admin Work (2026) with John Sansoucie 08.06.2026 35min

  AI use in HR climbed to 43% in 2026, yet most HR leaders still spend the majority of their day on spreadsheets, manual reconciliations, and transactional work that adds zero strategic value. In this episode of the Growth Hacking Culture Podcast, John Sansoucie, CEO of Cognet, shares a practical roadmap for HR leaders who want to implement AI in HR, eliminate admin overload, and finally operate as a strategic function inside their organization. If you are searching for real HR technology strategy advice that goes beyond vendor demos and buzzwords, this conversation delivers exactly that. John has spent years helping small and mid-market organizations build AI-powered HR functions that reduce costs, improve hiring quality, and free up time for culture and people development.   What you will learn in this episode: Why HR is lagging behind finance and other functions in AI adoption in 2026 and what to do about it. How to use AI automation tools to eliminate transactional HR tasks like benefits reconciliation, payroll checks, and compliance tracking. What predictive hiring with AI actually looks like and how to use it to reduce costly unwanted turnover. The biggest risks of implementing AI in HR including data security, overpromising vendors, and failed rollouts. How to evaluate AI tools for HR professionals without technical expertise. Practical first steps for HR leaders with no background in technology who want to start today. John Sansoucie is the CEO of Cognet, an HR outsourcing and AI solutions company helping organizations turn AI into measurable business results. He brings 35 years of experience across HR outsourcing, finance, and operations. 🔗 Connect with John: https://www.linkedin.com/in/john-sansoucie-033b20/ 🌐 Cognet: https://www.cognethro.com/    Subscribe to the Growth Hacking Culture Podcast for weekly conversations on AI in the workplace, HR leadership, and the future of work. #AIinHR #HRAutomation #HRLeadership #HRTechnology #FutureOfWork #HumanResourcesStrategy #AItools #HRtech #PeopleAnalytics #HRDigitalTransformation
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  HR Leaders Will Soon Manage Humans and Agents. Most Aren't Ready. | Tami Rosen 02.06.2026 39min

  The job description for HR leader just changed. Again. Not the version that added culture after COVID. Not the version that added AI literacy after ChatGPT. The version that nobody has written yet — the one where you are responsible for a workforce that is part human, part agent, and entirely your problem to lead effectively. Most HR leaders are not ready for this. Not because they lack intelligence or intention. Because the function has spent decades being handed other people's problems and called a support function for it. And you cannot build the commercial acumen, the technical fluency, and the strategic credibility required to lead in a human-machine era if you are still running nine-month performance review cycles and buying SAP modules to solve problems that didn't need a SAP module. Tami Rosen has led HR at Apple, Goldman Sachs, Atlassian, Luminar Technologies and Pagaya. She is writing a book called Superhuman Companies. Her argument is not gentle: people strategy is business strategy. And the organizations — and the HR leaders — who haven't internalized that are already behind. In this conversation with Ivan Palomino, Tami gets direct about what actually separates strategic HR from administrative HR, why the apprenticeship model is the only thing that genuinely works for AI skill development, how the Continuous Learning Cycle replaced performance reviews at Pagaya and got 100% employee participation, and what it means to lead a blended workforce before the industry has figured out the playbook. In this episode: Why COVID was the moment HR stepped into the spotlight — and what it has to do now to stay there The four pillars of a superhuman company that stands the test of any crisis Why the apprenticeship model beats every AI training program ever built How to replace the performance review with something that actually develops people The first thing every HR leader should kill to become more strategic immediately Why every business problem eventually becomes a people problem at scale How to think about building vs buying in an HR tech ecosystem full of shiny objects This one is for the HR leader who knows the function needs to change and wants to understand exactly what that change looks like in practice — from someone who has already done it at some of the world's most demanding companies. Connect with Tami Rosen: LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/tamirosen/Book: Superhuman Companies — coming soon 📘 Ivan Palomino's new book (French version) is now available: Périmé?: La science de rester indispensable quand le marché préfère le neuf → https://amzn.eu/d/08VSK1OA    Growth Hacking Culture is a top 5% global podcast hosted by Ivan Palomino, exploring the neuroscience, psychology, and behavioral science behind leadership and workplace performance.
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  Stop Measuring Culture. Start Changing It. How AI Makes the Difference | Omar Shbaro 27.05.2026 34min

  Most HR leaders already know the survey isn't working. They know because they've seen the same deck three years in a row. They know because the workshops got scheduled and nothing changed. They know because the employees who participated last year are participating again this year with slightly less enthusiasm and exactly the same frustrations. And yet the survey gets launched again. Because it's what you do. Because the contract renews. Because nobody has been given a credible alternative. Omar Shbaro has spent years building that alternative. As CTO of VAI Solutions and creator of CultureSim, he starts from a premise that most of the industry quietly avoids: measuring culture and changing culture are two completely different jobs. And until organizations treat them that way, the cycle doesn't break. In this conversation with Ivan Palomino, Omar breaks down why traditional surveys produce culture noise instead of readable signals, how AI can finally do what no consultant or dashboard has managed to do — listen to what people actually say and translate it into specific action at three different levels of the organization — and why the most powerful shift an HR leader can make right now has nothing to do with buying better data. In this episode: Why culture is a behavioral problem not a reporting problem — and what that changes How AI removes the human bias that distorts most culture diagnostics The difference between culture noise and readable signals — and why it matters for action How CultureSim works at individual, manager and organizational level simultaneously Why there is always a human in the loop — AI advises, it never decides The one question every HR leader should be asking instead of launching another survey Why imperfect action taken today beats perfect data collected next quarter This one is for the HR leader who has sat in enough culture debriefs to know something is broken — and is ready to hear what actually works instead. Connect with Omar Shbaro: LinkedIn: https://linkedin.com/in/omarshbaro  Email: [email protected]  Website: https://vaisolutions.ai   📘 Ivan Palomino is launching his new book in french: Expired? The Science of Staying Indispensable in a World Obsessed with New → https://www.ivanpalomino.net/perime-livre-ivan-palomino Growth Hacking Culture is a top 5% global podcast hosted by Ivan Palomino, exploring the neuroscience, psychology, and behavioral science behind leadership and workplace performance.