A meeting ends and your calendar moves on, but your brain doesn’t. We’ve all had that moment where we replay a comment, hear a different “tone” in an email, or walk into the next conversation with part of our attention still stuck in the last one. That lingering mental noise is more than stress, it’s a leadership and team performance problem.

I’m joined by organizational psychologist and author Dr. Liane Davey to unpack her idea of thought load: the invisible tax on performance created by rising cognitive demands, increasing emotional burdens, and declining energy reserves. We talk about why so many teams feel less than the sum of their parts, how unresolved moments turn into conflict debt, and why the biggest drain often isn’t the workload, it’s the human friction we don’t process.

Leanne shares a sticky metaphor and a practical playbook: when the dragon is breathing fire, it’s protecting treasure. Instead of grabbing a sword, a shield, or a bucket, we practice “opening the drawbridge” with curiosity using simple questions like “What’s at stake here?” and “What am I missing?” We also look inward at our own triggers, name what we’re protecting, and create zero-input space to metabolize conflict so it doesn’t follow us home.

If you want better workplace communication skills, healthier conflict, and less burnout, hit play, then subscribe, share the episode with one person, and leave a review with the most useful question you’re taking into your next tough conversation.

🌐 Connect with Liane:
• Website: http://www.lianedavey.com/
• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/lianedavey/

📚 You can purchase Liane's books on Amazon:
• Thoughtload: https://www.amazon.com/dp/1774586517/
• The Good Fight: https://www.amazon.com/dp/1774587408/
• You First: https://www.amazon.com/dp/1118636708/

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🔔 Join us in our mission at The Leadership Project and learn more about our organisation here: https://linktr.ee/mickspiers

📕 You can purchase a copy of the Mick Spiers bestselling book "You're a Leader, Now What?" as an eBook or paperback at Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B09ZBKK8XV

If you would like a signed copy, please reach out to sei@mickspiers.com and we can arrange it for you too.

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Your team does something that frustrates you and your brain fills in the blank fast: “They don’t care,” “They’re careless,” “They’re avoiding ownership.” I take a different angle in this monthly solo reflection, pulling together the most practical leadership lessons from four recent guests and turning them into a simple, usable lens: leadership is not about controlling behavior. Leadership is about creating conditions that make certain behaviors more likely than others.

We start with clarity, because unclear outcomes and unspoken expectations force people to guess, and guessing is where friction thrives. I unpack the difference between being clear about the result versus prescribing every activity, plus the leadership shift from telling to asking. When you raise your question to statement ratio, you stop becoming the bottleneck and start becoming the catalyst.

Then we move inward to self-awareness and the stories we build. “Do I actually know this to be true?” sounds small, but it can prevent weeks of tension built on a bad assumption. From there, we explore identity and relationships through the platinum rule, treating people the way they want to be treated by simply asking. We close with emergence, generative listening, and the question that keeps leaders adaptive without losing purpose: “What is true now?”

If you want better team culture, stronger accountability, and fewer avoidable conflicts, this is a sharp reset. Subscribe, share this with a leader on your team, and leave a review with the condition you plan to change this week.

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Support the show

✅ Follow The Leadership Project on your favourite podcast platform and listen to a new episode every week!

📝 Don’t forget to share your thoughts on the episode in the comments below.

🔔 Join us in our mission at The Leadership Project and learn more about our organisation here: https://linktr.ee/mickspiers

📕 You can purchase a copy of the Mick Spiers bestselling book "You're a Leader, Now What?" as an eBook or paperback at Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B09ZBKK8XV

If you would like a signed copy, please reach out to sei@mickspiers.com and we can arrange it for you too.

If you're thinking about starting a podcast or upgrading your hosting, Buzzsprout is a great option! This link will give both of us a $20 credit when you upgrade:

👉 https://www.buzzsprout.com/?referrer_id=1701891

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What if the most effective leadership move in a messy, fast-changing world is simply admitting, “I don’t know yet”? We sit down with executive coach and systems change practitioner Jeanine Becker to unpack emergence, complexity, and why certainty can quietly make leaders worse at the very problems they are trying to solve.

We talk about the difference between having purpose and pretending you can predict the future. Purpose can stay steady as a North Star, while strategy becomes more agile, iterative, and experimental. Janine shares how leaders can use a simple question, “What is true now?”, to update decisions based on reality rather than old assumptions. We also dig into how metrics are signals, not answers, and why teams stay aligned when the purpose feels lived instead of repeated like a tagline.

Then we get practical about the human side of change: why some people feel energized by uncertainty while others feel threatened, how to name what is known and frame what is open, and how to invite resistance with genuine curiosity. We draw a hard line between performative consultation and real co-creation, where leaders accept that what emerges may not match the answer they walked in with. Along the way we explore presence, listening, confirmation bias, and how leaders can create conditions for people to show up stronger over time.

If you want better leadership tools for complex times, subscribe, share this with one person who will use it, and leave a review so more thoughtful leaders can find the show.

🌐 Connect with Jeanine:
• Website: https://www.onpurposetogether.com/
• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/beckerjeanine/

Send us Fan Mail

Support the show

✅ Follow The Leadership Project on your favourite podcast platform and listen to a new episode every week!

📝 Don’t forget to share your thoughts on the episode in the comments below.

🔔 Join us in our mission at The Leadership Project and learn more about our organisation here: https://linktr.ee/mickspiers

📕 You can purchase a copy of the Mick Spiers bestselling book "You're a Leader, Now What?" as an eBook or paperback at Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B09ZBKK8XV

If you would like a signed copy, please reach out to sei@mickspiers.com and we can arrange it for you too.

If you're thinking about starting a podcast or upgrading your hosting, Buzzsprout is a great option! This link will give both of us a $20 credit when you upgrade:

👉 https://www.buzzsprout.com/?referrer_id=1701891

Create forms easily with Jotform! Sign up with my link: https://www.jotform.com/?referral=AkWimLxOBz

Get extra Dropbox space—sign up with my link: Dropbox Referral Link

Wise Referral link: https://wise.com/invite/dic/michaels11434

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