Leadership isn’t about a position; it’s a lifelong practice.

This perspective highlights the strategic use of informal networks and collaboration to drive systemic change. For decades, we have had the narrative focused on “fixing women” to fit leadership moulds rather than addressing systemic biases and looking at how to fix the system.

In this conversation we explore how the very skills often dismissed as "soft"—context awareness, emotional agility, adaptive thinking, collaborative workload management—are exactly what drives systemic change. Research backs this up: women managers disproportionately champion DEI initiatives and build stronger teams. Yet these skills remain undervalued.

Why? Because we haven't disrupted the power dynamics that determine what "leadership" looks like.

Real change happens when we: Build cross-functional coalitions; Make implicit power structures more explicit; Consciously leverage privilege to create space for different approaches ;Use informal networks intentionally & strategically to create momentum

This isn't about adding more women to broken systems. It's about redesigning the systems themselves.

Jodi generously shares her research, insights and experience as weexplore how leadership, courage, and values converge—and how factors like caregiving, generational wisdom, and a career-long view can transform how we lead today.

The main insights you'll get from this episode are :

1. Leadership is about collaborating, creating better workplaces/community environments, and bringing together courage and values - caregiving, generational wisdom and a career-long view of impact can transform leadership.
2. It takes courage to transcend hierarchy - leadership is not a title or position, but a lifelong practice to overcome the fear of retribution; finding moments of clarity aligned with our values makes this easier to withstand.
3. Integrity and clarity bring courage and confidence; we always have agency, which can become leadership capital and have a lasting legacy – the need for women to constantly codeswitch between multiple identities brings many skills, e.g. communication, holding space, EQ, context intelligence, etc.
4. The skills to navigate complexity involve mental and emotional agility; we can use these skills to disrupt systems and biases to leverage strategic thinking and relationships - formal leadership provides a platform and greater sphere of influence (to bring about change).
5. It is important to seek allies in a network of champions and create our own spaces - being effective is an act of disruption and diplomacy, and positioning goals in the context of the mission and organisation appeals to people’s decency.
6. The informal nature of power dynamics makes values-driven leadership difficult to maintain against a backdrop of value clashes – a career journey will wax and wane in terms of value alignment, but courage comes from the collective, by building a diverse and cohesive team in an effective space for shared values.
7. Younger generations see leadership differently, and have more interest in racial justice, feminism, LGBTQ rights, etc. - different experiences give rise to new questions and subsequently new thinking.
8. Smart organisations will capitalise on the knowledge and ideas of young people and bring it to the leadership -...

Is complexity really complex of Productivity pretending to be complex ?

Simon and I discuss why this is often observed in organizations. What appears as insurmountable complexity is often rooted in inefficient processes and workflows. The key is distinguishing between inherent complexity and self-imposed inefficiency. Complexity often feels like the default in organizations, making simplicity seem impossible. Given the blurring of boundaries, the shifting paradigms and the need for constant change, we need to review our capacity to manage complexity.

Reinvention is key and all transformation shares the same human map – parenting can sharpen leadership skills given that a parent’s mission is not to succeed, but to help others succeed, just as leaders can sharpen their teams skill to develop themselves and each other, and constantly question each others' assumptions.

We explore how to frame complexity and how to create space enough to see things differently. For teams, especially in agile and DevOps models, it is so important to understand how teams fit together within the overarching organizational goal. Ideally, interdependencies between teams should be minimized to avoid slowdowns. If interdependencies exist, teams must synchronize their efforts by aligning with the same goal, which informs their prioritization.

To truly foster cooperation, and simplify processes, organizations must rethink individualistic incentives like performance reviews and bonuses, moving towards global optimization. Building intentional communities who align and swarm together can also help cut through the chaos of complexity, and become a blueprint for ho to navigate it more effectively;

Approaches like sociocracy and visual cause-and-effect diagrams to facilitate collective debugging and ensure that improvement efforts are focused on the right areas, building on the belief that people are good and that understanding complexity requires multiple perspectives and humble challenge

Whether it’s in your team, family, or community, knowing your goal and helps you prioritize, say no to distractions, and ultimately, make a significant impact. To move from “doing more” to “doing smarter,” leaders must define clear goals (the “one goal”), then establish the conditions necessary for their teams to achieve them. Just as a gardener provides water and light, a leader cultivates a safe environment, fosters learning, and ensures clear direction. For instance, if a team’s goal is to innovate, the condition might be dedicated “learning time” or a “speak-up” culture to surface roadblocks.

Whether it’s in your team, family, or community, knowing your goal and helps you prioritize, say no to distractions, and ultimately, make a significant impact. What is your one goal and how do you actively challenge assumptions within your leadership team to foster genuine improvement?.

The main insights you'll get from this episode are :

1. Having shared goals but different approaches rules out a collaborative approach to identify differences, ultimately impacting on decision-making and therefore productivity.
2. Reducing complexity can involve trimming it (by reducing process complexity, for example) or paying more attention to the signals that matter (with a clear goal) – focusing on progress towards a goal minimizes complexity to focus on the goal.
3. Leaders can use the thinking process (five focus steps) from the theory of constraints to decide what to simplify: clarity on a single goal; cause and effect diagram; step into action; filter reality based on the goal; work out the obstacles.
4. Innovation comes from constraints and...

Empathy is no longer a “soft skill”; it is a hard skill, a disciplined practice, and a foundational architecture for organizational success

Research shows that leaders effectively employing empathy boosted productivity by 87%, innovation by 86%, and profit by 84%. These aren’t just “soft skills”; they’re hard metrics that directly impact your bottom line.

Melissa and I talk about why leaders often underestimate empathy and how to move past that. If you’ve ever felt like you’re hitting a wall in your leadership, or that your team isn’t as connected as they could be, this may be part of the answer. This is a common leadership pitfall: expecting people to adapt without understanding their perspective.

Leaders who lack self-empathy often create roadblocks, forcing their teams to “go around” them to get work done. This isn’t just inefficient; it erodes trust and hinders progress.

I particularly loved Melissa's analogy of Stradivarius violins. They are beautiful instruments, but you only get their true value if you know how to play them. Without that skill, its potential remains untapped.Empathy is similar – it’s a powerful tool, but you need to know how to “make the strings sing” in your leadership. Our conversation made me reflect on how many leaders might intellectually understand empathy but struggle to connect and operationalize it daily.

We discuss how actionable empathy drives innovation, scales across teams, and why top organizations are placing it at their core. We explore the critical difference between empathy and self-empathy, and how a lack of self-awareness can derail even the best intentions.

How do you actively cultivate empathy & perspective-taking in your leadership approach?

Melissa shares her experiences, research and insights from working with leadesr and teams all over the globe.

The main insights you'll get from this episode are :

1. Making empathy actionable to help leaders operationalise empathy for themselves and their teams, using it to drive innovation and understand connection through perspective-taking.
2. Leaders don’t view empathy as a skill and are often not connected to their people, representing an immovable object that people have to circumnavigate; without actionable empathy for themselves, they cannot apply it to lead others.
3. Helpful to reframe empathy as strategic awareness rather than weakness – it takes courage to practice empathy whilst making difficult decisions; leading well requires the correct perspective.
4. Four steps to self-empathy: self-observation, which leads to self-reflection, which leads to self-awareness, which leads to self-compassion.
5. Judgement and empathy cannot exist in the same place: empathy in action is compassion, and a low-empathy culture ultimately produces weak leadership.
6. An empathic culture has a leader in touch with what’s going on, making everything more efficient - empathy is important for middle management because they lead both up and down, and touch the most people.
7. Practicing empathy takes discipline and energy and empathy fatigue can set in, especially with emotional empathy, which drains neurological reserves.
8. Scaling empathy within leadership is about building a culture, living the asserted values - leaders are often unaware how their actions affect their people, which is the very opposite...