After spending most of her life denying she had feelings, Christy Pretzinger built a business based largely on helping others develop them. Now CEO of WG Content and founder of The Better Leader Project, she's on a mission to help Gen Z develop the human skills that will make them irreplaceable in an AI-driven world—while creating workplaces where Sunday scaries become extinct.

In this conversation, Christy reveals a crucial insight: while AI might excel at tasks, our survival depends on our humanity—except we're terrible at being human. We struggle with vulnerability, curiosity, and empathy—the very skills that make us irreplaceable. This paradox sits at the heart of the workplace crisis facing younger generations who crave authenticity but lack the tools to practice it professionally.

Christy shares her observations about Gen Z's relationship with work: they want genuine connection, refuse to leave their emotions at home, and are opting out of traditional management roles after watching their elders get "chewed up and spit out." But notably, they're not opting out of leadership—they just can't reconcile being themselves with the management models they've witnessed.

The conversation takes a personal turn when Christy discusses her COVID-era leadership challenges, including having to lay off a third of her company while navigating her own tendency to err too far on the empathy side. Her vulnerability about not being able to do any of the jobs in her company anymore, despite having done them all, offers a refreshing take on what authentic leadership really looks like.

We explore practical approaches to bringing appropriate emotion into professional settings, the difference between kindness and weakness, and why the leader's primary job is to remove barriers to their team's success. Christy's framework for helping people practice their humanity in small cohorts offers a tangible path forward for organizations struggling to bridge generational divides while maintaining professional standards.

For anyone wondering how to create environments where people can be both human and high-performing, or leaders trying to model authenticity without sacrificing effectiveness, this conversation provides both philosophical grounding and practical guidance.

• Your Cultural Balance Sheet by Christy Pretzinger
• The Better Leader Project - Movement to help Gen Z develop human skills for work
• ChristyPretzinger.com
• LinkedIn
• WGContent.com

After failing to become a professional basketball player in Australia, Chris March took a leap that would define the next 16 years of his life—and his entire leadership philosophy. What started as a rite of passage trip to London became a career spanning three continents, multiple industries, and a deep understanding of what middle managers really need to thrive in "the squeeze."

In this conversation, Chris shares his journey from Sydney to London to Vancouver to Toronto and finally back home, revealing how each bold move taught him that growth comes from putting yourself in slightly uncomfortable positions. Now an executive coach working with middle managers and seven- to nine-figure founders through The Entourage, Chris brings a unique perspective on navigating the challenging space between frontline work and senior leadership.

We explore the reality of being a middle manager—carrying the organization's vision and culture while managing up, down, and sideways with limited resources and often conflicting priorities. Chris introduces the concept of "the squeeze," where middle managers bear the weight of organizational expectations while trying to maintain their own sanity and career progression. His advice? Ask for feedback early and often, turning what most people fear into a powerful tool for growth and team building.

Chris shares his daily self-coaching routine using AI, including powerful reflection questions like "What will make today great?" and "What outcome today moved you closer to your overall goal?" He demonstrates how modern tools can democratize access to coaching insights, making professional development accessible even without a formal coach.

We also discuss why fear-based leadership is not just outdated but fundamentally counterproductive. Chris's message to middle managers is clear: You're doing important work, and with the right mindset and tools, you can navigate the squeeze while building toward your next career chapter.

Chris March on LinkedIn

chrismarchcoaching.com

The Entourage

Something fundamental is broken in how we approach leadership when only 19% of employees trust their company's leadership and engagement hovers around 20-30%. Sébastien Page, Chief Investment Officer at T. Rowe Price and author of The Psychology of Leadership, brings 25 years of money management experience and deep psychological research to explain why our narrow focus on goal achievement might actually be killing both performance and engagement.

Drawing from sports psychology, Sébastien introduces the critical distinction between ego mindset (focused on KPIs, rankings, and external validation) and mastery mindset (focused on improvement for its own sake). While organizations chase sales targets and quarterly metrics, they miss what actually drives engagement: the excitement of getting better at how we do things, whether that's improving research processes or simply running better meetings.

The conversation takes a powerful turn when Sébastien shares his personal encounter with goal-induced blindness. His own near-death experience serves as a stark warning about what happens when we pursue goals at any cost. He shares the example that Everest climbers have a 4% chance of dying—a statistic that should make us question our own "summit or die" mentality in business.

We dive deep into the lessons in Sébastien’s book, including why leaders need to master being disagreeable about 10% of the time—picking battles that matter while avoiding both excessive agreeableness and tyrannical behavior. His "10% rule" offers a practical framework for leaders struggling to balance consensus-building with decisive action.

Sébastien and I discuss personality traits that predict leadership success, particularly openness to experience—using an interesting spectrum of Jim Morrison (maximum openness) to the Pope (maximum tradition). The key insight: effective leaders need both the innovation that comes from openness and the discipline that comes from structure.

Throughout, Sébastien challenges conventional wisdom, arguing that our KPI obsession creates ego-driven cultures where people optimize for metrics rather than mastery. His research-backed approach offers a path forward for leaders who want to build organizations where people are genuinely engaged, not just hitting numbers.

• The Psychology of Leadership by Sébastien Page
• NSFW - A good manager’s guide to better feeling work in a toxic culture by me
• Sébastien Page - business profile on LinkedIn
• Sébastien’s Instagram for his book

What if everything we've been taught about goal-setting is fundamentally wrong for the work we actually do today? In today’s episode, Radhika Dutt, author of Radical Product Thinking, makes the case that traditional goal-setting methodologies are solving a 1940s problem and aren’t helping organizations deliver their best work anymore - and haven’t been for decades.

What worked for repetitive assembly line tasks simply doesn't translate to today's creative problem-solving environment.

The research is clear: goal-setting excels when there's one right way to do something (like crunches at the gym), but fails spectacularly when applied to strategic puzzles with multiple possible solutions. Instead of targets that create what Radhika calls "soul-sucking" work environments, she proposes thinking in terms of puzzles and experiments—shifting from "Did we hit the number?" to "What did we learn and what will we try next?"

We explore Radhika’s proprietary framework which replaces the red/yellow/green status updates of traditional goal tracking with meaningful conversations about actual progress and learning. This approach emphasizes psychological safety, where teams can share both successes and failures without fear of retribution—because in puzzle-solving, failures are data, not deficiencies.

Radhika also introduces us to "product diseases"—the common ailments that plague organizations including Pivotitis, Obsessive Sales Disorder, and Hero Syndrome. These diseases often emerge from misaligned goal-setting practices that prioritize metrics over meaningful progress.

For managers caught in OKR-obsessed organizations, Radhika offers practical advice on introducing puzzle-thinking gradually, starting with your own team and slowly shifting organizational conversations from targets to learning. The key is creating psychological safety where messengers aren't shot for bringing bad news, and where "How well did it work?" becomes as important as "Did we achieve it?"

Radhika's Website

Her books: Radical Product Thinking: The New Mindset for Innovating Smarter and the upcoming book on Goals and OKRs

Radhika Dutt on LinkedIn - Share your OLA experiences for potential inclusion in her upcoming book

Download Radhika's free toolkit

What makes the difference between organizations that consistently execute their strategies and those that constantly struggle? According to Philipp Schett, it often comes down to how they set and manage their goals.

When Philipp Schett moved from Germany to Silicon Valley as an innovation scout for T-Mobile, he expected to find radically different ideas. Instead, he discovered something more powerful: the ideas were similar, but the execution was transformative. The key difference? How organizations set and manage their goals.

In today’s conversation, Philipp shares insights from implementing OKRs (Objectives and Key Results) at hundreds of organizations worldwide through his company Wave Nine. We explore why traditional top-down goal cascading often fails to create real engagement, and how involving employees in the goal-setting process can fundamentally change organizational dynamics.

Philipp breaks down the critical distinction between setting targets and changing behaviors. A revenue goal of $10 million tells you where to aim but nothing about how to get there. We get real about the challenges of goal-setting transformation, and why quarterly cycles are better than annual ones.

We also talk about a surprisingly common pitfall: organizations treating strategic transformation as a side project for junior staff, when it actually requires dedicated leadership attention. Philipp offers concrete advice for anyone looking to improve their organization's goal-setting, whether they're in the C-suite or just starting their career.

Educational Resources

• Measure What Matters by John Doerr - Foundation text on OKRs with inspiring case studies
• Wave Nine OKR Crash Course - Free comprehensive guide with 100+ pages of implementation strategies
• Wavenine.com - Resources and frameworks for OKR implementation

Organizations & Leaders

• Philipp Schett on LinkedIn - Regular insights on modern goal-setting and organizational effectiveness
• WorkBoard - OKR platform company that pioneered software-supported goal management
• Deidre Paknad - WorkBoard founder and thought leader in strategic execution

On October 28, 2025, 14,000 Amazon employees discovered they'd lost their jobs via text message. CEO Andy Jassy claimed it wasn't about money or AI—it was about "culture." His 2024 compensation? Over $40 million.

In this episode we’re looking at the truth behind Amazon's massive layoffs, revealing how they’re using culture and innovation as an excuse. How can you claim to care about culture when your actions repeatedly tank your company's morale? And how can you claim “innovation” when you’re following the 40-year old playbook of Jack Welch - the CEO with the now-questionable legacy who made “downsizing” a household word.

To get to the truth, we look closely at the post-layoff words from Amazon execs themselves, as well as recent news articles about the devastating job eliminations, and we reconcile it all against facts about the tech industry and AI, middle managers, and startups - what they are, and what they’re not. Spoiler: Amazon isn’t even close to being a startup. Not even the “world’s largest” one.

And of course, we talk about what this means for employees of Corporate America - especially the ones who care about the people who actually do the work.

• The Man Who Broke Capitalism by David Gelles -The definitive account of Jack Welch's destructive legacy at GE
• NSFW - A good manager’s guide to better feeling work in a toxic culture (by me)

• Amazon's Official Layoff Announcement
• Forbes: "AI Didn't Layoff 14,000 People, Amazon Did"
• CNN: David Solomon on AI and Jobs
• Fortune: Amazon Layoffs and Middle Management
• Amazon Employee Subreddit

Featuring an Episode of Embrace Your Value - with Jen Anderson and Kristin Burris. Embrace Your Value combines the wisdom of therapy with the empowerment of coaching to help you unlock your worth and take control of your life.

In this episode of Embrace Your Value, Jen and Kristen sit down with Tosca Fasso, a former Fortune 100 executive turned author, podcaster, and entrepreneur. Tosca shares her journey from climbing the corporate ladder as an admin assistant to becoming a Wall Street executive, and her ultimate decision to leave corporate America. She discusses the challenges and transformations she experienced, the importance of community, and how she now helps women start their own businesses. Tune in to hear empowering insights, practical advice, and inspiring stories of resilience and growth.

Like this episode? Get more Embrace Your Value on Apple and Spotify

In this episode C-Suite Advisor, Jonathan Bennett, shares his approach to working with executive leaders, starting with the question "what feels heavy?" to get past surface-level issues. We explore the story of a leader who thought she had a leadership problem when she actually had a business model problem, and discuss why asking "what have you already tried?" prevents you from solving the wrong problem.

Jonathan breaks down the differences between coaching, consulting, and mentoring (something I honestly had never thought about previously) explains the three levels of accountability that exist in healthy organizations, and reveals why the best workplaces have psychological safety AND accountability at every level. We also discuss the origins of strong organizational cultures, the risks of bringing your whole self to work, and why clarity about boundaries creates the healthiest workplace relationships.

Key quotes:

• "What feels heavy right now?" - Jonathan's opening question to get past surface issues
• "What have you already tried?" - The get-out-of-jail-free card question
• "The first presenting problem is probably not the right one"
• "The healthiest organizations - that third level of accountability happens everywhere, all down the organization"
• "You haven't just had to let somebody go. You've taken a part of them away from themselves" - on the risks of employees over-identifying with their workplace

The three levels of accountability:

1. Accountability to yourself - doing what you say you'll do, holding yourself to fair standards
2. Accountability to your team - following through with colleagues, maintaining equity
3. Accountability to the organization - fiduciary duty, caring for the long-term health of the entity

Connect with Jonathan:

• LinkedIn - he responds to DMs!
• Website
• Private Podcast Series: Six coaching sessions you can listen to

Additional note: Jonathan is also a published author of literary fiction and poetry, writing about his childhood in Australia, modern family dynamics, and reflections on fatherhood and life.