The Leadership Project Podcast
Mick Spiers
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The Leadership Project Podcast with Mick Spiers explores inspirational leadership in the modern world, covering key issues and controversial topics. It helps young and aspiring leaders transition from individual contributors to inspirational leaders, and guides experienced leaders in adapting their styles for a digital world. The podcast also addresses the lack of diversity in leadership through confronting conversations with guest speakers.
Епизоде
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340. What You Don’t Know Runs the Show: The Power of Emotional Intelligence with Monique DeMonaco 16.09.2026 1ч 1минYou’ve probably had this moment: something small happens, and your reaction feels bigger than the situation. That gap between “what happened” and “what I told myself it meant” is where so much leadership, stress, and conflict is born. We sit down with Coach Monique DeMonaco, founder of EQ Wize and an emotional intelligence and change expert, to unpack why awareness is the first step to any sustainable change and why fixing behavior alone rarely works. We get practical and personal, moving fr... -
339. Ask More, Tell Less: How Curiosity Creates Leadership Clarity with Dusty Holcomb 09.09.2026 1ч 5минMost leaders think they’re fixing a performance problem when they’re actually managing a clarity problem. Dusty Holcomb, CEO and founder of The Arcqus Group, joins me to break down a deceptively simple idea: remove ambiguity and performance follows. We get specific about what “clarity” really means in leadership and why it has nothing to do with barking orders or tightening control. We talk through one of the hardest career transitions, moving from the person who gets results to the person w... -
338. The Leadership Ecosystem: Creating the Conditions for People to Grow with Mick Spiers 02.09.2026 30минMost leadership advice assumes people are fixed and organizations are machines. We don’t buy that. People change, teams adapt, and every interaction leaves a trace, which is why we’re using a garden metaphor to tie together the biggest lessons from Antoniette Roze, Ron Friedman, and Frans Campher. When leadership is a living ecosystem, your job is not to “control the machine,” it’s to tend the conditions where trust, clarity, and good work can grow. We start with communication as planting: t... -
337. Leading Without Losing Yourself: Authenticity in a Disruptive World with Frans Campher 26.08.2026 1ч 5минIf you’ve ever felt pressure to “look like a leader” instead of actually leading, this conversation will land. I sit down with executive coach and author Frans Campher (Dynamic Leadership in a Disruptive World) to talk about the masks we inherit, the behaviors we copy, and the quiet cost of bending ourselves out of shape to fit an old leadership template. We get practical fast. Frans shares his head, heart, and gut framework for decision-making and why ignoring intuition and emotion can push... -
336. The Science of Super Teams: What High-Performing Teams Do Differently with Dr. Ron Friedman 19.08.2026 1ч 3минA team full of smart, capable people can still feel slow, stressed, and stuck and the reason usually isn’t effort. It’s the system. Dr. Ron Friedman, award-winning psychologist and author of Super Teams, joins me to challenge the way we think about high performance and to explain why “busy” often hides broken coordination, unclear roles, and incentives that pull people in different directions. We get practical about what separates elite teams from the rest, starting with the basics of a real... -
335. The Best Ideas Don’t Always Win: Why Clarity and Connection Matter with Antoinette Roze 12.08.2026 1чThe clearest idea usually wins, even when it isn’t the smartest one and that reality quietly shapes careers, meetings, and entire strategies. I’m joined by Antoniette Roze, founder and CEO of WPC Speakers Global and host of the Speak Pact Podcast, to get practical about how leaders communicate complex ideas so people actually understand them, remember them, and act on them. We dig into why executive communication is not about delivering more information, but creating understanding. Antoniett... -
334. Leadership Begins Before You Enter the Room with Mick Spiers 05.08.2026 38минYou can have the right strategy and still walk into a room and lose it with one comment. You can mean well and still “fill the space” so completely that your team stops thinking out loud. That gap between intention and impact is where most leadership pain lives and it’s usually not a skill issue, it’s an autopilot issue. We pull together four big ideas from recent conversations with Susan Drumm, Brad Semmens, Dre Baldwin, and Robert Kennedy III, and we land on one shared thread: intentionali... -
333. The Power of Storytelling: Building Trust, Influence, and Leadership with Robert Kennedy III 29.07.2026 54минYou can have the right strategy, the right numbers, and the cleanest slide deck in the world and still fail to move anyone. That gap is not about intelligence or effort. It is about meaning. I sit down with Robert Kennedy III (RK3), keynote speaker and communication strategist, to talk about storytelling as a leadership skill that cuts through noise and turns information into understanding. We unpack one of the biggest myths holding people back: “I’m not a storyteller.” Robert explains why t... -
332. The Mental Game of High Performance: Turning Ambition into Execution with Dre Baldwin 22.07.2026 1ч 2минDay one is exciting. Day two still feels fresh. Day three is when the “new car smell” is gone and the work gets real, and that’s where most goals quietly die. We talk with Dre Baldwin (Dre All Day), former pro basketball player and founder of Work On Your Game, about how to push through that moment without waiting for motivation to magically return. We get practical about the difference between motivation and discipline, why you can’t build a career on feelings, and how to create execution r... -
331. Leading from the Center: Mastering the Five Stances of Leadership with Brad Semmens 15.07.2026 1ч 4минThe fastest way to derail a team is to lead on autopilot. Walk into a meeting, speak first, “set direction,” and watch everyone quietly align to your opinion, even when they see a better answer. Step back too far, though, and the same team can feel abandoned, unclear, or unsupported. That tension is exactly where Brad Semmens lives. Brad is the founder of Objective Consulting and Employee Yield, and he brings a rare mix of real-world leadership experience and organizational psychology to a fr... -
330. The Leader's Playlist: Using Music and Neuroscience to Transform Leadership with Susan Drumm 08.07.2026 52минThat thought you can’t stop replaying isn’t just annoying. It quietly shapes how you walk into meetings, how you speak under pressure, and how safe other people feel around you. Susan Drumm, bestselling author of The Leader’s Playlist and founder of Meritage Leadership, joins me to unpack a powerful idea: every leader has a playlist. Some of it is literal music that shifts your energy fast. Some of it is the internal soundtrack of beliefs, doubts, old wounds, and reflex reactions that can end... -
329. Leadership is Sense-Making: Helping People Adapt, Care, and Connect with Mick Spiers 01.07.2026 28минTwo people can face the same change and walk away with totally different stories: one feels opportunity, the other feels threat. That gap is where leadership lives. We step back and synthesize three conversations into a simple but demanding framework for modern leadership: Adapt, Care, Connect and the deeper idea underneath it all that leadership is helping people make sense of their world. We talk about adaptive leadership as your context shifts: startup to scale up, stability to disr... -
328. Leading Through Change with Huw Thomas 24.06.2026 1ч 5минMost change initiatives don’t fail because the plan is flawed. They fail because leaders confuse communication with conversation and then wonder why people feel anxious, resistant, or checked out. We sit down with returning guest Huw Thomas, author of Change Anything, to move beyond individual psychology and get practical about organizational change management that actually sticks. We dig into why “overcommunicate” often backfires, how one-way announcements create confusion, and what it look... -
327. Great Leaders Care: Developing Safe, Resilient and Successful Teams with Graeme Cowan 17.06.2026 1ч 1минWhat if the leadership skill your team needs most is not sharper strategy or faster execution, but a leader who genuinely cares and knows what to do when things get hard? I sit down with Graeme Cowan, a leading voice on workplace mental health, resilience, and leadership, and a founding director of R U OK Day. Graeme also shares his own lived experience of depression and the long road back, plus the purpose that came from turning struggle into service. We dig into why caring leadership... -
326: Leadership Shifts: Embracing Change in Business with Mike Krupit 10.06.2026 51минThe leadership style that got you promoted can quietly become the thing that holds you back. When you move from building great work to leading people, the rules change fast, especially for technical founders and high-performing individual contributors who suddenly wake up running a business instead of writing code. We sit down with Mike Krupit, a serial entrepreneur and executive coach who has lived the journey from software engineer to CTO, COO, and CEO across eight startups. Together, we b... -
325. Leadership Is Cultivation: Creating the Conditions for Greatness with Mick Spiers 03.06.2026 12минWhat if the real job of a leader isn’t to get people to do what you want, but to create the conditions where people can do their best work? I’m reflecting on the biggest leadership lessons from this month’s conversations and pulling the common thread that ties them together: stop chasing control and start designing an environment where clarity, trust, and ownership can actually grow. We start with communication and culture, because every culture begins with what people hear, understand, and ... -
324. Brave Together: Leading Through Curiosity and Co-Creation with Chris Deaver 27.05.2026 1ч 9минIf your leadership strategy still depends on being the smartest person in the room, AI is about to make that a painful game to play. We sit down with Chris Deaver, culture shaper, leadership coach, former HR leader with experience at Apple, Disney, and Pixar, and co-founder of Brave Core, to talk about what actually scales now: bravery, co-creation, and the skill of leading with questions. We unpack why fear is normal in a fast-changing world and how the “loss equation” fuels resistanc... -
323. Neurodiversity at Work: Unlocking Hidden Strengths with Wainwright Yu 20.05.2026 50минWhat if the person you’re frustrated with at work isn’t lazy, careless, or “not leadership material,” but simply stuck in an environment that works against how their brain operates? That question sits at the center of my conversation with Wainwright Yu, a senior technology executive and leadership coach who specializes in neurodiversity and cognitive diversity. We get personal quickly, starting with the moment an employee disclosed ADHD during a performance conversation, and the gut-punch of ... -
322. Communication as a Verb: Building Trust and Culture with Alejandra Ramirez 13.05.2026 48минIf you have ever walked out of a town hall thinking “we were crystal clear” only to hear your team say “we still don’t get it,” you’re not dealing with a motivation problem. You’re dealing with a communication and trust problem. Mick Spiers sits down with Alejandra Ramirez, internal communication strategist and founder of Ready Cultures, to show why leadership communication shapes organizational culture, and why culture is not a noun you describe but a verb you practice. We dig into what mak... -
321. Beyond Strategy: Why Leadership Is A Human Challenge with Mick Spiers 06.05.2026 15минThe hardest leadership problems rarely announce themselves as “leadership problems.” They show up as weight you carry in silence, conversations you keep postponing, success that still feels empty, and a loud inner voice that says you’re not ready. I step back and connect the biggest lessons from this month of The Leadership Project into one practical thread: leadership is human before it is tactical. We talk about the pressure that builds quietly over time and how strength is not carrying ev...
