Have you ever noticed a bizarre corporate paradox? We hire brilliant, capable adults who manage mortgages, raise families, and navigate complex lives, but the moment they step into the office, we treat them like children.
We set up rigid permission structures. We solve their problems for them. We default to a classic “parent-child” dynamic. It feels safe, but it is exhausting for everyone involved and terrible for growth.
Xavier has spent over 40 years in leadership and is now doing something radical. Through the impact fund, Krisos, he buys traditional, command-and-control companies and transforms them into self-managing, purpose-driven “Teal” organizations.
His core thesis is sharp: We have to stop parenting our teams. To transition to a self-managed organization, we must bring something deeply uncomfortable into the corporate world: Love.
The Reframe: The Signal in Your Need for Control
When a team member brings you a problem and you immediately solve it, it feels like good leadership. You’re being helpful, right?
Wrong.
The urge to step in and play the “fixer” isn’t a signal of your team’s incompetence. It’s an emotional signal of your own fear and ego. We use command-and-control because it makes us feel essential. It numbs our anxiety about the unknown. Xavier points out that an organization’s evolution is ultimately limited by the consciousness of its leadership. When a crisis hits, our ego’s first instinct is to regress to old, autocratic habits.
The alternative is love. Not the HR-violating romantic kind, but love as a structural standard: deep listening, radical transparency, and an unwavering confidence in the potential of your people. Fear hoards power. Love distributes it.
Leadership Application: The Adult-Adult Organization
Transitioning to a self-managed organization doesn’t mean a descent into chaos. It means replacing the parent-child hierarchy with structural equality. This requires hard, tangible changes:
Radical Transparency: You open the books. Adults cannot make good decisions if you hide the financial realities from them.
Rewarding EQ: In Costa’s model, emotional intelligence and teamwork are rewarded just as highly as technical abilities. Brilliant jerks don’t survive in a system built on trust.
The Leader as a Lighthouse: A lighthouse doesn’t jump into the water to swim a ship to shore. It stands firm, provides clarity, and trusts the captain (the team) to navigate the rocks.
Granular Roles Over Rigid Titles: In a self-managed system, the monolithic job description is replaced by highly specific, granular roles. This means one person can organically hold multiple roles, decoupling their identity from a static corporate title and allowing them to deploy their talents exactly where they are needed most. This also allows for highly efficient delegation (potentially to an AI agent, as roles are very clearly defined; we will have another installment of the newsletter focused on the roles).
Capping the Wealth Gap: To build true trust, you cannot have executives earning 50 times what frontline workers earn. The salaries are capped at a strict 2.5x multiple between the lowest- and highest-paid. It instantly dissolves hierarchical resentment.
True Profit Sharing: If you want people to act like owners, pay them like owners. The model mandates a 30% profit-sharing pool distributed among all employees.
Distributed Governance: The traditional management is dismantled. Work is organized into cross-functional teams. To coordinate, these teams elect representatives to sit on three core committees: Strategic (for long-term vision), Operational (for day-to-day execution), and People/Care (for compensation, hiring, and culture). Power flows from the bottom up, not the top down.
The Takeaway
You cannot scale trust in a parent-child dynamic. To build a highly effective, self-managed team, you must park your ego, structurally share the wealth, and distribute the power.
The Coaching Prompt
Grab a journal or open a blank document, and ask yourself (and your leadership team) these questions this week:
The Ego Check: Where am I currently playing “parent” to my team by solving problems they are entirely capable of solving themselves?
The Trust Limit: If I were to open our financial books and implement a strict salary cap tomorrow, what is my biggest fear?
The Power Shift: What is one decision I currently make on my own that I could hand over to a cross-functional team this week?
“For many years or centuries, we have been treated at the workplace in a relationship of father, child. I got a problem, I ask to my parent… The parent has to solve the problem. Now we are all responsible for that… it’s not the boss who is telling me what to do.” — Xavier Costa
In this episode of Le Podcast on Emerging Leadership, I am joined by Xavier Costa, a leader with over 40 years of experience who has dedicated his career to a radical proposition: buying traditional, command-and-control companies and transforming them into self-managing, purpose-driven “Teal” organizations.
Through his work with Full Circle Team and the impact fund Krisos, Xavier doesn’t just advise companies—he acquires them. By transitioning businesses like traditional automotive die-casting plants in Spain into fully transparent, employee-empowered ecosystems, Xavier proves that human-centric leadership is not just a theory, but a highly effective operational model.
Here are the core insights from our conversation on dismantling fear-based hierarchies and building organizations rooted in trust.
Key Takeaways from This Episode
The Evolution to Teal: Organizations have historically evolved from tribes (Red) to strict hierarchies (Amber), to innovation and profit-driven machines (Orange), to community-focused models (Green). The “Teal” paradigm combines the best of these, balancing a higher purpose, self-managed teams, and the holistic development of every individual.
Adult-to-Adult Relationships: Traditional workplaces often foster a parent-child dynamic where employees pass problems up the chain. Self-management requires shifting to an adult-to-adult dynamic, which demands deeper listening, sharing responsibility, and confronting hidden conflicts transparently.
The Power of Radical Transparency: When Krisos acquired the Alumipress factory, they opened the financial books to everyone. Teaching factory floor workers about profit margins transformed the culture. Within 12 months, employees were proactively fixing inefficiencies because they understood the business—and shared in 30% of the year-end profits.
Redefining Compensation: Xavier introduces a compensation model that balances “masculine” productive energy (speed, technical knowledge) with “feminine” reproductive energy (teamwork, attitude, emotional intelligence). Salaries are transparent, capped at a 2.5x ratio between the lowest and highest paid, and based on clear, collectively agreed-upon criteria.
The Leader as a Lighthouse
One of the most striking moments of the interview was Xavier’s reflection on the true role of leadership during an organizational transformation. When a company removes management in favor of elected representatives and steering committees, what happens to the former leaders?
According to Xavier, an organization’s evolution is ultimately limited by the consciousness of its leadership. When crises hit, the easiest path is to regress to old, autocratic habits. To prevent this, a leader must park their ego. They are no longer the “Superman” solving every problem; instead, they become a lighthouse providing direction. Their job is to hold space for conflict, facilitate growth, and remain steady in the hurricane.
Ultimately, as Xavier beautifully notes at the end of our conversation, the goal is to bring love into the organization—an energy capable of deep listening, clear communication, and unwavering confidence in the potential of the people.
Listen to the Full Conversation
Tune in to hear the full story of how Xavier Costa is proving that trust, transparency, and shared ownership can revitalize even the most traditional industries.
Available on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and wherever you get your podcasts.
Resources Mentioned:
Krisos: An impact fund dedicated to buying and transforming companies into self-management models.
Full Circle Team: Xavier’s consultancy supporting Teal transformations.
Frederic Laloux: Author of Reinventing Organizations, which popularized the color-coded paradigms of organizational evolution.
K2K: A Basque consultancy company supporting transformations to self-management.
Steward Ownership: Alternative corporate ownership models (like Bosch) designed to protect a company’s purpose over time.
Transcript:
Alexis: This is the podcast on emerging leadership. I’m your host, Alexis Monville. Today, I’m joined by Xavier Costa, co-founder of Krisos and co-founder of Full Circle Team. He brings hands-on experience in transforming traditional companies into self-managing, purpose-driven [00:01:00] organizations
Hey, Xavier. How do you introduce yourself to someone you just met?
Xavier Costa: I, am, a person that has been leading companies for the past 40 i-in different environments. And I had my own company as well, and I’ve been evolving, Always having a very intuitive connection. So I would say when I look back that everything I did, it was by intuition. And and, and I’m feeling really happy about what I’m doing now. Yeah. Because it is collecting all the learnings I had all of my life and bringing them to the, society
Alexis: Okay. Tell us a little bit about what you are doing [00:02:00] now
Xavier Costa: Am part of a small company called Full Circle Team, is a consultant company that we created three years ago. Fully dedicated to transform organizations into a teal paradigm. And at the same– and we are doing this mainly in Spain, although we are having some collaborations in South America, in North America. And as well, I am a found– co-founder of Krisos. And Krisos is a movement that we created about five years ago together with my two colleagues from K2K the, the Basque consultant company founded by Koldo Saratxaga and our friends from Corporate Rebels. So we created this fund. It’s an impact fund that is buying company and transforming them into the [00:03:00] self-management teal paradigm. And we did that because after several years of transforming as consultants the companies, we did realize that once we were leaving and maybe the founders of the company were going retreat et cetera, the company was being sold and when– was going back. So we said, “No, we have to prove that we can buy companies, transform them into this paradigm, make them sustainable along the time.” And if possible, we want that these companies become employee-ownership or cooperatives so that the, the employees are the owners of the company. Yeah
Alexis: Okay, so we have a lot to unpack here. But first of all, you said you will transition company from [00:04:00] traditional organization to teal organization, to teal structures. What does it mean exactly?
Xavier Costa: That question is deep, eh? You have time for it.
Alexis: Yeah
Xavier Costa: but basically the idea is that we have been leading companies for the past, uuuh, centuries in a way, uhhh, that needed to evolve, yeah? And in every different stage of e-evolution, as Frederic Laloux was naming and setting in colors, yeah, there has been a transition, yeah.
From the red to the amber, there was a transition. Then something which was like a, small tribe with one very powerful leader, yeah to a bigger organization with a [00:05:00] structure, with processes, et cetera. from that point, was the Industrial Revolution, and that has been created much more freedom for people to innovate, to create, to invent new things. And this was the, orange level, yeah, where innovation looking for individual success and setting goals, et cetera, that, that has been driving our companies for the last or for the past years, yeah? And the sixties, seventies, there was this movement of cooperatives.
Yeah. It was like I call it hippie m-movement if you want, eh? So that the important is the, journey and not the and we care [00:06:00] about ourselves. So it was a new level where people were f– the first one, yeah. And that was a big jump in the, i-in the evolution and if we take all of these levels together, the good things of each level, then there is the junction or the, of the teal consciousness level, yeah. These companies then they have a kind of leadership, boundaries. They have some structure, yeah. There is freedom, there is innovation, there is caring about the people, yeah.
Alexis: Mhm
Xavier Costa: and at the end, the good things of all of these levels is what has created the teal consciousness level, as we would say.
Here we talk about, A bigger purpose, not only focused on maximizing profitability, but
there is– [00:07:00] we expect a bigger purpose of every company. There is as well self-managed teams. There is not a rigid hierarchy, teams that manage themselves and they are connected. So there are processes, yeah and, ways how these teams are being connected, communicate themselves, how decisions are being taken, etc. There are boundaries as well, yeah. So we all agree somehow what is allowed in our company or not. Let’s say things, yeah. So but we need really to have some boundaries to set up our freedom, yeah.
So starting from legal side to human behavior, how we relate. We well having [00:08:00] this of individual innovation, individual ambition to progress, etc.,
within the team, yeah.
Alexis: Mhm
Xavier Costa: we have as well the caring. So we say people are first, and this would be the third leg of the teal organizations, which w-would be the wholeness, the plenitude, yeah, the wholeness of the people, yeah. So in a teal organizations, we work a lot as well on the development and in, in the development of everyone and its own potential.
We do believe truly in the potential of the people, and we trust everybody, so these three big legs that make these kind of or-organizations something which is, good for the people, yeah. Because people can be themselves authentically [00:09:00] good for the society, good for the planet somehow, yeah.
Because if we have a h-higher or a bigger purpose this purpose will not be we destroy the planet. Yeah.
Alexis: Yeah.
Xavier Costa: Yeah.
Alexis: So higher purpose good for the people. Self-management is a big part of that and and wellness. So individual self-development or development and true belief that in, basically in human potential, in everyone’s human potential, in everyone’s potential
Xavier Costa: But i-in, in this environment people would think– and I have a lot of people that are telling me but this is– these kind of cooperatives that everybody has general meetings and all the decisions are taken in an assembly.” no, this is a misunderstanding about it. We have, the, the internal processes.
Teams can [00:10:00] take their decisions, individuals can propose, take their decisions, et cetera. It’s not about And, this is one of the misunderstandings, eh, which would be the green level, if you want it, eh? That everything has to be decided all together. No, it’s not that, yeah
Alexis: Yeah. And it’s, a, very important one because I believe as soon as you start to elaborate on those different aspects misunderstanding will come. So what are the, the biggest psychological or cultural barrier organizations face when letting go of traditional hierarchy?
Xavier Costa: Found a lot of different things, eh? One is we are free, we can do whatever we want. And therefore I say, no, have [00:11:00] boundaries. Yeah? So in these boundaries is where we move. Yeah? But as well, with the freedom, we got the responsibility because this is our project. We are here in this company to develop the comp- company foundation, whatever, eh or public organization, et cetera.
We are working here and we have a common purpose. We have a common goal. Yeah? So we are here to– and working here to this organization another level, which is contributing to this purpose. Yeah? So then I have my responsibility. It’s not that I can do whatever I want and I don’t know. I, do not fulfill my commitments, and I’m sorry.
No. This is one of, this, Another psychological difficulty is that [00:12:00] we are all responsible. We are
all responsible. And for many years or centuries, we have been treated at the workplace in a, a relationship of father, child.
Yeah? I got a problem, I ask to my father to my parent. Yeah? And the parent, was the, the manager, the middle manager, the higher manager, the, the
yeah? Has to solve the problem, eh, somehouse. Somehow. Now we are all responsible for that. So we have to take and assume our responsibilities. There is that will solve our problems. Yeah? We have. So there is always somebody that knows better, has a good solution. Okay he brings it.
Yeah? But it’s not the boss who is telling me what to do. Huh? And, this [00:13:00] of the res- responsibility, in some cases is creating several psychological difficulties. Yeah? And as well for the former managers, because the former managers have been working all of our life in developing ourself, and we have been trained to lead, to manage.
Eh? There were this business management, master in business administration or business management, et cetera. All of a sudden, what is my job? I don’t know what to do. How do I manage? How do … So there is as well an intense work that we have to do with individual with with people And to find out their position because people are here because they know a lot of things depending on the [00:14:00] business.
They know perfectly the market. They know technically perfectly, so they can bring it, yeah, without having to be or to put in the backpack all the weight of the responsibility of everything. Yeah. So then, we– they feel or we believe they feel much free, in order to bring it the company, into the organization.
Yeah. but this is– this requires a transition and it’s, like we need to release, let go a lot of things, yeah, and then embrace a new way of being, yeah, somehow. There, there are other things in a adult parent-child relationship. The way we speak the way we relate the, [00:15:00] the… So it i-it is– is not a, a deep listening. Yeah. It is just obeying or keep mandating. Yeah. So when you are in a adult-adult, we need to learn or relearn how to listen, to go deeper into the, listening levels and understand what’s going on below the– under the table, I say. Yeah.
So kind of things that are not being said but are still there. Yeah. So there is a learning process as well on, on that side. Yeah. So-
Alexis: Yeah. So yeah, moving from those vertical relationships of parents to a child in a way to adult horizontal relationships. And it’s there’s a transition, there’s some learning for people who were in both positions basically. Because you were you were either in the below [00:16:00] or above people in an organization, and you need to learn how to relate to peers in a way
Xavier Costa: Yes. And and once you start relating with peers, are things that have never been said. So you start working in teams, but there were a lot of conflicts or subjects that were hidden, that were under the carpet, yeah? And that was between you and the boss. But with the others, it k- it wasn’t being said, so all of a sudden, we are now here as a team transparently. we need to talk about everything, yeah? And there is a lot of work at the beginning to put the conflicts on the table. To put constantly, yeah? So here I smell or I sense that there is something that is not being said, and there is fear. fear to say that, huh? [00:17:00] And we put it on the table, and then holding it, opening the discussion, listening to the people, et cetera. Otherwise, these relationships, these teams are still working in a, scenic way. Yeah? And I, may say yes, but I’m doing this, yeah? So, we need to work and relearn how we have our relationships within the teams.
Yeah, so you, get me, huh?
Alexis: Yeah. And i-if we take if we take a concrete examples of when, Krysos buys a company, what happens?
Xavier Costa: For instance, now I am here at Alumipress. So we bought the first Alumipress the company in one year ago, May 2025. And [00:18:00] May two thou- 2026, we bought a second company doing the same aluminum die casting which was in bankruptcy. But the factory new, fantastic, et cetera. And the first one we bought, it was really old factory, et cetera, yeah. So we are now merging both companies, yeah. Instead of being 40, now we are f- 80 people, different cultures. happened? So when we bought the f- the first one, one year ago, we, created a new structure of teams. Yeah? And then we started we did open all the numbers. So transparency, so transparent. Yeah? And so monthly, we explained the numbers of the company. That was the first surprise because people were [00:19:00] believing, “Oh, here we are being paid so bad, but they are making a lot of money.” And so once you see the numbers, you see the margin, and we start talking about margin, and people are telling me, “Yeah, but somebody who’s working in a, in the workshop in front of a machine, doesn’t know anything about margin.” Maybe the first day. after 12 months, they know a lot about the margin, and they bring a lot of solutions because they know. They start looking at the margin of the products we are manufacturing and saying, “We have to change the process because here we are losing money.” And so all of a sudden, with this transparency, people start to get responsible of the output.
Yeah? Because we didn’t say that, but at the end of the year, we share 30% of the profit with all the, employees. Yeah?
So then [00:20:00] we have a common goal, we have a common reward, and then we are all responsible for it. teams, when they were created, it’s not automatic that I have this magic. It’s like, “Yeah, now it’s self-managed and everything works.” No, because they were former middle managers. In Spain we call encargados. Yeah which of a sudden we have to change the dynamics. Yeah? And say, “No.” being with the teams in their meetings, in their daily meetings, in the conversations, et cetera we are there to hold, a new dynamic. Not to say what to do, but to hold it. Yeah? And to, to say wait.
Listen, what is his, His face, he’s trying to say something, but he’s not saying it. So bring it on the table. Yeah. So one year, the– all the [00:21:00] dyna– people feel the trust because it’s not about anymore about you have to do that because I’m telling it to you. they are listening to me. Oh, okay. So there is trust.
Yeah. And then dynamic changed completely and the, the, the, the climate changed. Yeah. so this is some of the first things w-w-we did. we created what we call steering committee reps from every single team. So then the decisions, the strategic decisions, et cetera, are being taken there. Yeah. But, with the consent of every single team being represented by somebody. Yeah. So– And this information then is brought back to the teams. Yeah. So there is already a change of dynamics. It’s not perfect at the beginning but there is [00:22:00] a big evolution. And one year later I listened to them and there were a, a business school called IESE that has been following our case, and they came one year later, they did interviews to the people, and they said, “It’s amazing. amazing.” But I’m talking about very simple things that has to do with the dignity of the people as well, eh? So being tre-treated as human, only as machines or stupid somebody that is creating chaos. No And all of a sudden there was this dignity. There’s w– there was this, sense of this is our project.
This is really our project and we are learning, we are developing, et cetera. Of course, the numbers help it, yeah, because all of a sudden when you review the margins and the people start viewing th-the processes, changing them, the results are coming slightly, eh, but [00:23:00] they are coming. Yeah, there is as well, And now with the second company we bought, they were coming from a very autocratic leadership. There was one boss
and the rest, they were treated as Yeah? And, the middle managers, they were the teams the same way as they were being treated. Yeah? So at– when we came here, there was fear. There was– So we did a, a general meeting before buying. We do always a vote, a general meeting with all the people. We explain who we are, what we do, and we ask them to vote for it.
Yeah? So
Alexis: Mhm
Xavier Costa: in this general meeting, we already did realize that there was, like, fear and it’s like a-an animal, a dog that has been mistreated, that you touch or you try to touch him, and you Yeah? Okay. [00:24:00] So here the culture is different. is no trust. People are defending themselves, so we have to do it slowly.
And then this is about our leadership. This is the way approaching the people. what– when we did the diagnose, one sentence was very clear to us: They need to be listened. being listened changed completely the way. And then the two cultures started to merge. Yeah? And ones were saying, “Oh, these ones are always pl-protesting,” and yeah.
But three months later, because the numbers of the company, the second company we c- we acquired, they were very bad, so everybody needed to, “Okay let’s, improve it.” Yeah? And all of a sudden, both teams started to work together, and now last July it was incredible. The result was already positive. Yeah? But it [00:25:00] is about listening, about being there, about okay and again, Yeah? So I’m sorry it took too long, but it
Alexis: It’s, not too long. It’s very important. I’m curious about one thing. So when you change the structure, there’s no manager anymore because it’s self-managing teams. But for example, the representatives of the teams in the steering committees, are they the former managers or not at all?
Xavier Costa: It might be, but they are elected by their team. So in some cases I’m trying to remember. Yeah, in some cases, they were the former manager. In other cases, no, there was another one. No problem. And, as we create So I, talked about the steering committee, but there is a commitment committee which is more related. So the first [00:26:00] one I said is strategic, et cetera. It has to do with the thinking, yeah, more. The second the, commitment committee, as we call, it has to do with doing. It’s the daily, work, the weekly work, yeah? New orders, delivery times, et cetera. And we have created a third one, which is caring, has to do with k- culture with people, but I call it caring, yeah.
But every company can have a different name. here you got already every team has three different representatives, with different characteristics, features. Yeah, someone is more visionary or strategic thinking, the other one is more detail and pr- and the other one is caring about the people. then once we start working, say, okay, we need to do something about [00:27:00] how do we call improvement mejoras continuous improvement, yeah. We create another team, and then there are volunteers coming from different teams there. So again, you got other people that are acting as representatives of their team i- in in another commission or work team, yeah? So you are creating and giving and participation to the people, it’s n- the power is distributed. Slowly being distributed by many, people. Of course, there will be always people who say, “I don’t want.” Okay, matter. I can understand it.
Maybe next year or within two years, you will say, “Oh, this is my It’s where I want to participate,” et cetera. Yeah, so
Alexis: Yeah. Yeah, so [00:28:00] the– during the transition period, there are some people who are– who don’t want to, join that type of organization and who, prefer to leave, and there are some people who change roles. How do you handle the, the, the compensation differences, the salaries? Because usually there’s quite huge differences between management and other workers, especially in the industry
Xavier Costa: Coming so I’ve been working a few years with K2K, yeah, with the Basque K2K Erner. And there we had like a salary balance. So that was something that we used to do very early in every company. Yeah. So define the criterias, yeah, and then evaluating everybody and setting the salary level of every person.
Yeah. And we were saying [00:29:00] we want that between the ten percent of the lowest salaries and the ten percent of the highest salaries, difference Cannot be higher than two point five, two point six times. Yeah? So okay. And we were saying as well, nobody will have his salary lowered. Yeah? So we give psy-psychological security as well here. Yeah. And then we do this defin-definition of criterias. Yeah. First of all we work with a team with people from– volunteers from all over the, the organization, and we create these different criterias. Then we put weight of each criteria in the evaluation. Yeah. And the groups, the salary [00:30:00] groups.
Yeah. There, there could be– There are organization that they have only one group, and it is aligned like this. And there are other organizations, larger ones, that maybe you need a group of people in the workshop and people in, I don’t know, in the research or whatever, yeah. There, there are very clear open criteria, yeah, need to be voted in general meeting.
This is not voted in the steering committee. It’s in the general meeting by everybody. So explained and so everybody knows it. define each salary the salary levels are known by everybody. Transparent. Yeah. then we explain the criterias. Yeah. So at a certain moment, the evaluation has been done and I am at that level, [00:31:00] I know should I do to go to this level. Yeah. So because in my evaluation, in my group I don’t know, being a good teammate is very well evaluated, and I am not a good teammate. So if I am developing myself in being a better teammate, so probably I would get there. Yeah. The and that was a big change from my time at K2K. The criteria, we balance them between the productive And what I call the reproductive. So the masculine energy and the feminine energy, yeah? So there are criteria that have to do with my attitudes, do I behave? How do I treat the people? My confidence, et cetera. And the other ones who has to do with fast [00:32:00] work, for instance, yeah. That’s not a, a criteria, but it is yeah. Or the, the university title that I have, yeah, my knowledge. Yeah. So this– and there is this balance. I’m always saying that in a teal level, we are always in a balance. a balance between, masculine energy, feminine energy, yeah. Chaos, order, logic, intuition, rational. Yeah. And it’s like a dancing. We are always dancing within this but trying to be in at the end centered. Yeah. And that, that’s one of the most difficult parts of b- trying to go into the teal level. Because in [00:33:00] a die casting automotive industry like here everything would go quickly into the rational, productive, et cetera.
No, So let’s talk as well about good morning, how are you today? How do you feel? Yeah. This kind of things, yeah. So it’s– And it’s a dance. It’s nothing static. we need to, be able to dance within it
Alexis: So you, mentioned K2K and you have your experience now with Krisos and Full Circle team. Is there s-something special in Spain that makes it possible?
Xavier Costa: It’s a good question. And it came to me m- many times. So there are– first thing, there is something which has to do with the Spanish culture or the [00:34:00] Spanish political, but not political from today, yeah, political from centuries the Basque Country and Catalonia were in the bound- boundaries the power.
Yeah. The power was in the center, and then you had these two areas which were oriented to the sea, to the Atlantic or to the Mediterranean. Yeah. And there was, for instance, in Catalonia, there has been– the, the, Industrial Revolution in Spain came through Catalonia. Yeah. And this has created this culture of creating businesses and, small businesses, family businesses being innovative, et cetera.
Be– In the Basque Country and in Catalonia a lot. So this [00:35:00] capacity, capacity, et cetera, has been existing there. And there was as well at the beginning at the end of the nineteenth century, at be-beginning of the twentieth century, there was this movement of cooperatives. Yeah. So that there was as well a- and the anarchists. Yeah. So there was as well this movement that made or created a lot of cooperatives owned by the employees, by the– And was as well creating this philosophy of we work together as teams, as a cooperative, a community collective. and it is being said when, when when I’m reading some researches that this is one of the causes. But the other one is that we are in the boundaries. In the [00:36:00] boundaries, is where this kind of progressive yeah, creative movements have been taking place
Alexis: Okay. Yeah I, like that it gives me the willingness to investigate a little bit more that area. That’s that’s very interesting. You alluded to that earlier. What can prevent organizations who are going through that transition to teal structure, what could prevent them to s- from sliding back into more traditional hierarchies?
Because you alluded that sometimes it f- it did not last forever[00:37:00]
Xavier Costa: Oof, that’s a good question, eh? So let me start from the very– We always say that the of the consciousness of an or-organization the limit of the leader of the organization.
Alexis: Okay
Xavier Costa: Yeah? That’s why I am always saying to people who approach us, “I want to lead my– or transform my organization,” and as consultants we are doing it le– teal self-management, et cetera. We always say, “Yes. let’s go. will spend several months only with you.” Because we need to raise the consciousness level of the, leaders of the companies. If possible, of the owners, yeah? Because at the end in a, crisis moment, the easiest is to go back to the former [00:38:00] system, which is what we know, yeah, and what we lear-learned.
Yeah. So this is the first thing. The leadership of the organization will limit our e– evolution capacity. And then that this company has evolved, and it was owned by Krisos fantastic, et cetera. Then we sell it to private equity, which purpose is maximize profit. what’s gonna happen? No, I’m gonna put here cost because this is what we have learned. It’s not because these people are not I don’t know, human. This is what we learn. Yeah. So then it goes back. So what– To answer your question, what would prevent to go back, first of all, is to have in the company or [00:39:00] owners in that company that believe in it and that work to prevent it. Yeah. There is a movement that maybe you know called steward ownership. And in the Netherlands, in Germany, they are very strong. Which is– we have very old examples like Bosch. Bosch is a fo-foundation, eh, and they created the foundation in order to prevent that this was happening somehow.
Huh? I don’t know what is this in their case, but yeah. It is have to create something that prevents if there is a change in the leadership of the organization, this goes back.
Alexis: Yeah
Ex-excellent. I believe that gives us something of a interesting to look into. I will put more references [00:40:00] in the, companion blog post because there’s a, a lot to, to read that you mentioned. Tell me, Xavier, what is one question I should have asked you that I did not?
Xavier Costa: It would be about about the leader, about the leadership Yeah, because to follow a manual, to follow a, a methodology, it’s easy. It’s very easy. And when they ask me to change the structure of the company, it’s very easy. We create these teams. We have this steering committee. Do the voting.
We have the reps. Okay. Yes, fantastic. And what about the people? What happens if there is a conflict? How do you handle the conflict? How do you handle the people that we always will have because this is our society [00:41:00] that they are against the, change,
Alexis: Mhm
Xavier Costa: the easiest way is we fire them. No. I always say, “If we fire them, don’t worry, these boys will come again through another person.” So this capacity of holding, of listening, of giving the responsibility to the, people, but not that, it’s your problem. No, Holding it, facilitating it. This is the, leadership we need. well we were talking about a common purpose. The leader, like a lighthouse, needs to be able to say, “Hey, we are going that direction. This is the north.” Yeah? So at the same time, we have to be able to be with the people, listening, being within the conflicts, et cetera.
So it is a role [00:42:00] maybe not being the most expert in die casting. I don’t know anything about die casting. Being there, listening, holding when there is a crisis saying, “Okay, I am in the middle of the hurricane, and we are all together. We will make it possible trusting in the future.”
Trust is fundamental as if I am trusting and I am confident in the, organization, in the– fully in the people people follows. People gets this confidence, and then they are as well acting with trust. Yeah? So it is a change in the way we lead the organizations, yeah? And I am always saying ego, hey, this Xavi that says “Hey, you are wonderful Superman.”
No, that’s– is parked. Is [00:43:00] parked, eh? And I am at the of something bigger, I am repeating very often now that what we do at the end is to bring love into the organizations. Yeah? And with the, the word love, what is a kind of energy, is able to listen, able to communicate, to bring clarity, to accept that the things are not going properly, but being confident in the future.
Yeah? So is something that… And being with the people. Yeah? So this is something that we have to, bring into the organizations
Alexis: This is beautiful. That’s a s-lovely way to end. We will end on that note bringing love to the organization. I love it. And thank you very much, Xavier, for having joined the podcast today
Xavier Costa: Thank you for inviting me
Alexis: [00:44:00] Thank you for listening to this episode of Le Podcast on Emerging Leadership. You can find more references in the companion blog post at alexis.monville.com. See you later
Have you ever finished a fifty-hour week where you saved two projects from total collapse, dissuaded a colleague from doing something irreversible, and untangled a messy client handoff, only to realize you accomplished exactly zero of your official objectives?
You are not failing at time management. You are drowning in invisible work.
The work that isn’t written down is what actually keeps the company afloat. This vital labor includes emotional smoothing after tough conversations, informal mentoring and support, remembering birthdays or transitions, translating change decisions into human language, and holding team morale. Yet the people doing it are exhausted, while the folks who put on blinders and ignore the chaos get promoted.
The Source & Framework: From Feminist Scholarship to Glue Work
As a male leader, I have to be completely honest about my own blind spots here. It is incredibly easy for men in leadership to benefit from this hidden organizational labor without ever seeing it. Maybe because I am used to benefiting from this at home. Uncomfortable to admit it.
Before we call this a healthy team dynamic, we need to acknowledge where this concept truly comes from. These ideas are deeply rooted in feminist scholarship around reproductive labor, care work, and emotional labor. As highlighted in a recent webinar by the workplace mental health platform Plumm, women globally perform three times as much unpaid care work, which sets patterns for workplace invisible labor.
Thinkers like Joan C. Williams have long explored office housework, which is the crucial, non-promotable work disproportionately expected of women in organizations. Linda Babcock’s book The No Club explains why women take on this unrewarded work and how organizations fail to address it, while Emma’s comic The Mental Load brilliantly illustrates the invisible coordination and planning that drains energy.
The Reframe: It is Not a Boundary Issue; It is a System Issue
When people drown in this hidden work, standard productivity advice tells them to just set boundaries or say no.
But here is the truth. If everyone stops doing the invisible work, the team dies. The signal here isn’t that invisible work is a distraction. The signal is that our definition of valuable work is fundamentally broken.
Leadership Application: Put it in the Team Agreements
Let us be brutally honest about standard corporate HR practices. They are actively penalizing the people holding your culture together.
According to insights shared by Plumm, less than 25% of companies recognize this work in performance reviews. Look more closely, and the data is even worse: only 18% of companies formally recognize this work. The cost is a staggering 48% burnout rate when organizations do not commit to gender equality, compared to just 5% for those that do.
If you are a leader, you cannot wait for HR to fix their rubrics. You have to bypass the broken system today by making glue work an integral part of how your team operates:
Bake it into team agreements: Stop treating emotional and cultural labor as a volunteer side hustle. Explicitly write mentoring, onboarding, and team support into your foundational team charters and expectations.
Make it part of the visible flow of work: If it takes time and energy, it belongs on the board. Put emotional smoothing and internal team support right next to product deliverables in your sprint planning. Make the invisible entirely visible.
Redistribute and protect: Ask yourself what can be taken off, not just what can be added. Systematically rotate note-taking and culture tasks. Before dumping a new initiative on your cultural glue, ask, “Before adding this, what can we remove?”
A Practical Takeaway
Invisible work is the nervous system of your culture. If the organization relies on it to survive, you must integrate it into your team agreements and make it a formal, visible part of your workflow.
The Coaching Prompt
Grab a pen and ruthlessly evaluate your team dynamics by asking yourself these three questions:
Who is absorbing the extra emotional load?
Who mentors informally but isn’t recognized for it?
We’ve all had that moment. The deadline is tight, the pressure is on, and you feel the overwhelming urge to just say, “Because I’m the boss, do it.”
It feels efficient. It feels safe. But it’s actually a massive leadership failure.
Why do we default to authority? Because authority is a shield. It protects us from the messy, unpredictable reality of human emotions. But here is the counter-intuitive truth: the tighter you grip your authority, the less actual influence you have.
The Framework: The Death of the “Boss”
In the latest episode of the podcast, I sit down with leadership expert Marcel Schwantes to unpack this exact dynamic in: “From Boss to Leader: Human-Centered Leadership.”
Marcel is a master at dismantling old-school, fear-based management models. In this episode, we dig into why the industrial-era playbook of command-and-control is dead, and how the most effective leaders today are leveraging something that sounds soft but is actually fiercely strategic: care.
The Reframe: Friction is a Signal, Not a Threat
Let’s talk about the anxiety of giving up control. When you transition from being a “boss” (who dictates) to a “human-centered leader” (who facilitates), it can feel like you’re losing your edge. Your brain’s threat system fires up: “If I’m empathetic, they’ll walk all over me.”
Let’s reframe that fear. Empathy is not coddling. Empathy is an advanced data collection tool.
When your team is disengaged, procrastinating, or pushing back, they aren’t just being difficult. That friction is a signal. It is vital data telling you that the environment lacks psychological safety, clarity, or alignment.
The Boss ignores the signal and demands compliance.
The Leader reads the signal and removes the obstacle.
Leadership Application: Compliance vs. Commitment
What does human-centered leadership look like on a Tuesday morning? It means shifting your primary metric.
A boss relies on positional power. This gets you compliance: people doing the bare minimum to avoid getting in trouble. But compliance doesn’t scale, and it certainly doesn’t innovate.
A human-centered leader relies on relational power. They ask, “What do you need from me to make this happen?” This gets you commitment. It requires setting crystal clear boundaries and ruthlessly high expectations, but pairing them with deep, unshakeable support. You aren’t lowering the bar; you are actively helping your people clear it.
The Practical Takeaway
TL;DR: Authority gets you compliance. Connection gets you commitment. Stop trying to manage your people like line items and start leading them like complex humans.
The Mantra: “I am here to clear the path, not to control the steps.”
The Coaching Prompt
Theory is useless without action. Take 5 minutes ask yourself these four questions:
Where am I currently relying on my title (rather than my influence) to get things done?
Think of someone who is underperforming: What context, clarity, or support might they be missing from me?
What is the emotional signal behind the biggest point of friction on my team right now?
How can I prove to one person today that I care about their long-term growth, not just their immediate output?
Listen to the full episode with Marcel Schwantes, and let’s get to work.
In this episode of Le Podcast on Emerging Leadership, host Alexis Monville sits down with Marcel Schwantes, a renowned speaker, executive coach, and author. With over two decades of experience helping executives transform their cultures, Marcel breaks down why the traditional top-down “boss” mentality is fundamentally broken.
Together, Alexis and Marcel explore what it actually takes to become a human-centered leader, how to foster deep psychological safety, and why practicing “love in action” translates directly to exceptional business performance. Whether you are leading a remote team, navigating the integration of AI, or simply trying to influence change within a rigid corporate structure, this conversation provides a practical roadmap for leading with authenticity and courage.
Authenticity doesn’t mean that you have a license to just tick people off. Authenticity is being emotionally honest about things, about people, about what’s going on in the business.
What You Will Learn in This Episode:
The Paradigm Shift: The core differences between a traditional “boss” and a 21st-century “leader.”
Love in Action: What agape love looks like in a corporate setting and why it is a critical driver of employee engagement.
Removing the Mask: How to leverage vulnerability and emotional honesty as an untapped leadership strength.
Leading Through Change: Practical advice for maintaining human connection in remote/hybrid environments and during the rollout of AI.
Bottom-Up Influence: How emerging leaders can build human-centered micro-cultures that eventually transform the entire organization.
Listen & Subscribe: If you found value in today’s conversation, please take a moment to share this episode with a friend or colleague on their own leadership journey.
Keep learning, keep adapting, and keep leading!
Transcript
Alexis: This is Le Podcast on Emerging Leadership. I’m your host, Alexis Monville. Today, I am joined by Marcel Schwantes, a speaker, executive coach, and author who has spent over two decades helping managers evolve from being mere bosses to true servant leaders
Alexis: hey, Marcel how do you introduce yourself to someone you just met?
Marcel Schwantes: I would say it like this. I’m a leadership coach who teaches leaders to become more human. And if you’re a CEO of an organization, it’s to teach your management team or your executive team how to [00:01:00] become more human
Alexis: Human leadership is more about being human than title or rank. In your observation, what is the biggest barrier that stops leader from making that shift today?
Marcel Schwantes: Yeah, I think a couple of things. On on a, more, sh- on a more personal or personal interaction basis it’s, ego, We wanna be in control of our destiny, our outcome. And I think exter- externally is that we have so much pressure now to actually produce short-term results we are not thinking how to create an environment, whether it’s in, in your workplace in your [00:02:00] business, environment that actually is sustainable for human beings to do really good work. those… I think that’s the the, the, two reasons that I can think of. There are many, more, but those are the ones that really surface for me
Alexis: So this is this is very interesting because what would that mean for people to do their best work in a sustainable way? What do they need? What kind of environment they need?
Marcel Schwantes: I have tracked so much research, Alex, that that points to workplaces that are led by people that don’t put people first. So managers that don’t, value people as, as much as they should because the focus, the, the pressure to [00:03:00] please shareholders or other stakeholders who whatever business you’re in, if you’re government, education, private p- or, non-profit, you’re going to ha- you’re going to have pressures to to serve other people that may, write your check or pay your bills, right? And and so I, think that we lose sight of, We lose sight of what it means to lead in the 21st century. Leaders need to provide an environment where people are connecting with one another. I know this is a very, overused buzzword, but they have to create psychologically safe workplaces so that people are more open [00:04:00] and more open to collaborate and, more open to express uncertainty and and maybe even concerns about direction, and we’re not sure about this.
So in these environments, these human-centered environments it’s safe for people to, know, their humanity in that sense, and that they’re not going to be reprimanded by a boss who does not welcome opinions feedback. And so for me, that, that is that’s really flipping the script on a lot of these toxic workplaces where people have no voice, they have no say, they are not heard, are not seen. And and I point, the all the reasons this is happening right back up to the top so that [00:05:00] we have to understand that it starts with leadership, right? Everything relies on having a strong leadership team that has a vision for putting their people first. And when you that in place, then you can create the conditions necessary for people to do their best work
Alexis: And some people currently live in high-pressure environments with tough competition and all those things, and they, want high performance. Do you see that on the opp- opposite scale, or does high performance can coexist with all what you said before?
Marcel Schwantes: Yeah, I think high performance can definitely coexist with human-centered human-centered workplaces because you’re not… Y- you’re still holding people accountable. You’re still holding them accountable to excellence and to performing at a high [00:06:00] level, right? But you’re not, at the expense of leaving them to their own devices and no- with- that without support and without being heard, right?
So I think that there’s a really good balance of leadership, and I’m borrowing from servant leadership, where you have the servant part of leading, which is to take care of the people first, but not at the expense of making sure that they are still held accountable for results. Because at the end of the day, we still want results, But I think that when you invest enough in people and, grow and develop them and take care of them, going to translate right down to their performance. And to me, know, that’s not the reason why you do it, but that’s gonna naturally create some really good business outcomes, I think
Alexis: Ellen’s, [00:07:00] You have you also, you are also the host of a podcast. Can you tell us the name of the podcast and why you picked that name?
Marcel Schwantes: Yeah. And by the way there is a, a There is some news here because I just changed the name. So let me tell you the name used to be. So between 2019 and just literally a month ago, I hosted the Love Action podcast. So how do I get that name? Number three on the show was Ken Blanchard, who’s written a gazillion books on management and leadership and and, I asked Ken, he’s a big servant leadership guy, right? And I said, “Ken how, would you describe servant leadership?” [00:08:00] And I’ll never for- forget the line. He says, “Marcel, servant leadership is love in action.” That really stuck with me. And so I borrowed from Ken, I, I give him full attribution the name of the, the title of my, previous podcast. So I took Love in Action. And love in this sense for those of us that might, be misinterpreting what does that mean there’s no place for love in, the business world. Love here is borrowed from agape love, in the Greek sense of the word. It’s backed by action. It’s not a squishy feeling or emotion. It’s not love for maybe your partner, or your children or your dog or your favorite sports team, right? It is love that is backed by action. And so that I know I’m jumping forward a little bit here, but that’s the… that’s how I created the framework [00:09:00] for my book. Yes. So last month decided to rebrand the podcast, so now it’s just called The Marcel Podcast. But we still bring thought leaders, authors, scholars, and leadership experts to talk about love principles.
Alexis: Okay. Okay I didn’t pay attention to that, my bad. But I wanted to touch on love because for a long time I was trying to help people see that if they are reacting from fear, they are in survival mode they are missing those connection between people. They are defensive. They, want to prove their point.
They cannot build together. They are alone, basically. And what, I was looking at is, okay, the opposite of that, what [00:10:00] it is. And in my head it was always, “Okay, that’s love.” That’s, what, wants to happen through you. And and when you are there, then you can be curious, then you can ask questions, learn about other people, learn about other perspectives, build shared results, and so on.
But I was always afraid to use love in a business setting, so I was trying to go around that saying, “Ah, we speak about appreciation, appreciate what is here, and being curious.” and I was always a little bit shy about it. With some people they told me, “Oh, that’s love.” And I said, “Oh, cool.” With some people it does not work as well, so I was very curious how you get there.
So that’s … Thank you for
Marcel Schwantes: yeah. And, by the way if you look at Amazon book titles there are close to now 50 books by business authors that about love as, love in, [00:11:00] business, love in leadership. So th- I think the topic is starting to enter the business lexicon, where people are less afraid to use the word love, and I think that’s great.
That’s why we need to start, keep creating conversations like this to kinda also dispel fact from fiction. There’s a lot of mis- misconceptions and misinformation around leading with love, right? People jump to all kinds of different wrong conclusions and bring religion and, things that really aren’t applicable to the day-to-day environment in our workplaces,
Alexis: and so if we, are a few kilometers apart, a few miles apart, if you prefer in on two different continents how does it work for teams who are also remote or hybrid [00:12:00] when there’s no physical proximity? How they build that connection you mentioned before?
Marcel Schwantes: In a remote sense, I don’t think the, I don’t think the I don’t think the the requirements for leading with love or becoming a more human-centered leadership changes because you’re working remotely. it just means that you may have to work a little extra hard to make sure the, conditions that you would to get high engagement and to make people feel valued in a face-to-face environment, you need to figure out how to bring that into a remote setting. But the point is to, of the distance and because we’re so dispersed geographically and things are so digital these days, n- never to [00:13:00] forget that human beings still need to be valued, seen, heard.
They need to feel like they belong. They need to feel connected. Okay? know I’m giving you cliches, but it’s true. It’s true. We are wired, I believe, at the core of our humanity, to be around other people, to connect with others. So in a remote sense, how are you gonna make that happen, right? What kind of rituals and norms do you wanna start, practicing and implementing as as a culture to make yourselves unique when people are… I don’t know about France, but here in America, we have a really big loneliness problem, and here we are connected to our devices more than ever before, and yet we still feel lonely. We still have a mental health crisis. [00:14:00] And and so we need to reimagine what does it look like in a remote setting to actually not forsake humanity, but to bring humanity closer together when the only means to do it is over a computer screen
Alexis: Yeah. And I– maybe that’s also when you’re already distributed or remote, maybe you need to acknowledge that we will need time together in a physical setting.
Marcel Schwantes: Oh, yeah.
Alexis: that’s true. That’s one, one of those ways.
Marcel Schwantes: They do get together. Absolutely. And they’ll have they’ll have their offsites three or four times a year. And that should be a requirement of the job for people to make sure th- that they know that you’re not gonna be hiding behind your screen all the time, right?
Alexis: One part of your work is, was trying to help people to go from boss to leader. Can you tell us a little bit more about that?
Marcel Schwantes: [00:15:00] Yeah. So many of us are Boy, now I’m really gonna speak the truth here. There is, there’s a shortage in leaders rising to, know, rising to the top and moving up corporate ranks. Younger generations before me now are, we’re talking about the the Gen Z-ers and maybe young Millennials are less and less inclined to wanna be leaders. we’re gonna, in, in another 10, 15 years, we’re gonna be in trouble. So we need to start identifying leaders and developing leaders early on, not just we’re talking about developing leaders to understand what it takes to … What are the metrics of great leadership, right? You … We have the, [00:16:00] the business metrics that every leader is responsible for, right?
You got top line, bottom line, customer retention, or whatever your metrics is that, for your business, your KPIs, that’s im- still important. But where we fall short is we are promoting individual contributors to leadership roles who don’t have the mindset or the typology even, to lead other human beings. And so you’ll, you might get an, a great individual contributor, a rock star promoted to a management role, and and then people systems start to break down, morale starts to go down, downhill, engagement goes downhill, right? And so I and that again, and so we have to look at, okay, who are we not only identifying, but what’s the [00:17:00] criteria that gets people to get promoted these days, right?
So we need to flip the script from boss to leader, because boss is no longer relevant or it’s, no longer sustainable in, today’s human-centered workplaces. Because bosses, if you look at bosses historically, they’ve been all about themselves, right? Do as I say. They’ve, been command and control.
They’ve been micro-managers. They have been only thinking about the, the shareholders if, you’re in one of those companies, and at the expense of people. And so I think from boss to leader is really, revising your inner script of what you feel leadership is and what it [00:18:00] takes to be a good leader. Okay. So it’s a good balance. You still need management principles to succeed as a leader in the business world, but too many people have maybe the, the intellect, the drive or the charisma to and maybe that’s why they’re promoted to the job, to the role of a leader or a manager. then they, start to show their true colors and, that’s when you see sys- systems break down and the lack of engagement, et cetera, is the people side of the business suffers. And so we, need to develop the people side of the business in others to truly understand human performance, human development. I think that’s my very long answer to from boss to leader. We need to create less bosses and more leaders
Alexis: Yeah. And I [00:19:00] love that means looking at other things that, that simplification of what a business is, that is returning value to shareholders because it’s a simplification. It’s fairly new and it’s not what a business is about. A business is to create value to their clients or their customers and and probably to do that you need the people to be able to do their best work and to love what they are doing.
And, then the, the rest is a byproduct in a way.
Marcel Schwantes: It’s… And wouldn’t you agree, it seems like common sense, right? You wanna do y- you want your, business to do well financially and, have greater customer loyalty. Why wouldn’t you take care of the, your [00:20:00] people first who are doing the work that’s going to create more value for your customers and for your brand reputation, right?
Take care of the people inside first, because, And by the way, here’s a correlation, a l- research. You probably know this, that it’s a known fact that when you take care of employees doing the work, that’s gonna create more impact on the, customer retention side. So the experience is gonna be that much more, more positive, and that’s evidence-based.
The, the better the employee experience, the better your customer experience is gonna be. It’s dir- directly linked
Alexis: So basically we are in a lot of organization doing things in the opposite direction, and we are basically– we want to get the best return. We want to get the best customer [00:21:00] experience at the expense of the employees. And, it’s basically taking the things completely backward
Marcel Schwantes: Right. And then leaders wonder why is our turnover so high? Start with first who do you have as immediate managers and how are they treating their employees? And and sometimes it’s not the middle manager’s fault, right? Because they are being told what they’re getting their orders from above. So the whole reason why people systems and break down m- may be because of who’s sitting in the C-suite
Alexis: But when you enter a place where the– this is not there, we are still with bosses and we [00:22:00] don’t have that kind of thinking how would you enter that space trying to
Influence? I don’t know. I don’t know what is the right word, towards a more human leadership
Marcel Schwantes: yeah yeah. If you are oriented to, to be more of a human-centered leader and you happen to be in a, business environment where the people at the top don’t welcome that, you can start with your own team. If you have a team of three or five or 10, and you want to and, you wanna influence up, start being a human-centered leader within your own sphere of influence, right?
Your own team. And here’s what I found, is that it… I’ll just share with you one client organization that I coached. It was [00:23:00] exactly that scenario. Let’s say that I had that one manager that totally was bought in, belief was there that human-centered leadership or servant leadership was the way to go But nobody else bought into it because you had the wrong people at the top who were constantly fighting and pulling in different directions and only, thinking profit, not people. And and so I said, “Okay don’t wait for anybody. Go ahead and start being a human-centered leader.” So he did. And the r- results were very noticeable because his engagement scores went up, his retention went up. There was less absenteeism because people absenteeism is basically “I don’t wanna go to work today ’cause I hate my job and I hate my boss,” right?
“So I call in sick.” there was less of that because people wanted to be there and because they were, they appreciated [00:24:00] the environment they’re in, and there was synergy, engagement, right? And that’s because the boss, that one started the chain. And guess who took notice of his, numbers? When his retention went up and w- in his department were performing people in the executive team started to take notice, and they wanted to find out, why is this manager’s numbers so much different than o- other managers, right?
The and so they began to question and and then that created new conversations about, “Oh, what, what’s happening in that person’s department?” he does things a little differently.” And so senior leaders took notice. And and so talk about influence, right? Yeah, you influence the people around you, but about influencing people up? And and so that created more [00:25:00] opportunities for other departments to jump on board as well and welcome a human-centered approach. That’s because that one person that was courageous enough to start on his own without waiting for approval from the top.
Alexis: This is inspiring. I, I love it, and I, have to admit it’s it’s inspiring, and it’s very important because as you said you spoke about loneliness, you spoke about mental health. You mentioned psychological safety earlier. Yeah, it’s probably can start with your– the, the people who are close to you in the organization.
How do you approach those topics in the, in in, the organization you’re working with?
Marcel Schwantes: How I approach it? Usually they come to me first. And, then so [00:26:00] have to be open to the idea of putting people first order to create value and results. And, so it becomes easier when the, the leader, manager, or CEO is already a champion for human-centered leadership. Because what you don’t want is having to convince somebody that is comp- oriented completely the opposite direction. Having to convince that person is to adopt a human-centered approach when perhaps they have been a boss of a top-down autocratic boss for so long, it’s a tough transition. Really tough transition. And I don’t, Know, I pick my clients carefully to make sure that they are– they have an understanding of what they’re getting into when they [00:27:00] talk about, “We wanna create a culture that is more human-centered.”
Okay what does that mean to you?
Alexis: 嗯。
Marcel Schwantes: And ’cause I wanna be able to listen to to make sure that they really know what it’s gonna take so that this thing doesn’t blow up, right? they if, they have a misconception of what that is, right? Because a lot of times, know, you read about it in the media, and you listen to a podcast, you watch a, a TEDx Talk, and you’re like, “Hey, this is cool.
I’m… We need to bring this to our organization.” And yet inner orientation your natural tendencies is still to squash people, right? So it’s it’s like I wanna make sure that it’s not surface-level ideology
Impressions that they’re having that competitor is a human-centered workplace, therefore we need to be as well. It takes [00:28:00] belief first, right? Why do you want to be a human-centered leader or organization? That’s the first question I always ask, and I really tune in to make sure that they that that they have the right priorities
In place.
Alexis: It’s it’s, fascinating because the- then we have that idea of they need to believe, and they will probably need to change the way they behave. So as you mentioned before, it’s it’s not only about managing others it’s about, about managing oneself.
So do you feel it’s it happens often that they realize that it start with them, or at least they are part of the picture, it’s not only the other people?
Marcel Schwantes: Yeah, I think that once, once they realize that, [00:29:00] okay, what has worked in the past no longer sustainable. What I picked up from previous bosses no longer work in this this age of connection, belonging, and o- once they kinda get past that I, think it’s a, it’s an easier transition. These leaders point back to their values, their value system. And so many of ’em realize that all the, their outer success, of the output no longer congruent with who they are internally, their inner, self, their values basically. And so that’s a real shift, and I’ve seen it. It’s it’s a big aha moment for a lot of leaders to realize, I’m no longer living or, working or leading [00:30:00] through my core beliefs and values.” And so they… That there is that disconnect. And so they begin to reinvent themselves through self-leadership.
What does it look like for me to live through more honesty, more integrity? What does it mean to to work in places where I may have to be the bad guy because I’m speaking the truth to power, right? And it, may not be… I may not be the most popular person when I speak my truth, right?
And, that’s very human-centered, right? You like, you don’t beat around the bush, and I’m using all these American cliches by the way. You just have to your truth and people know where you stand, and this is where we’re headed even though it’s uncertain times, but I’m gonna be there with you every step of the way.
We’re gonna figure this out together, right? These are all things that, that I think [00:31:00] brings you back to your own humanity. And and, so operating from your value system is really key to make that shift others. To to start leading yourself first, right? By your values in order to then make an impact on o- on others,
Alexis: so in a way some people realize that for some time, maybe years they were wearing the mask of the boss or the… And at some point they realize if they really want to shift the whole organization, they need to remove the mask and be themselves. That’s what you’re saying?
Marcel Schwantes: Yeah, and it’s funny that you use that removing the mask I I use that a lot in my courses as well, because one of the, one of [00:32:00] the things I teach is authenticity. How do we become more as leaders? Talk about being human-centered. First you need to remove your mask, so it’s s- so many of us walk into a, a, a work- workplace, and we check our real selves at the door and put on the mask to portray somebody that may not be who we truly are. And and and authenticity doesn’t mean that you’re, you have now license to just tick people off and say whatever is on your mind and… No, that’s not authenticity. That’s being a jerk. Authenticity being emotionally honest about things, about people, about what’s going on in the business. So you communicate emotionally honest about good things that are happening so that [00:33:00] you celebrate as a team, also the uncertainties, the things that may bring people fear.
Y- you wanna be there to calm the waters and not, Don’t w- don’t, give all of these ambiguous speeches and messages. Tell people what’s really going on, right? That’s being authentic. They’re going to earn your trust, or you’re gonna earn their trust, I should say, much more when you just tell them what’s really going on instead of don’t know, f- for whatever reason, because you wanna save your reputation, or maybe you fear your boss that, ” Hey, if we tell our people what’s really gonna going on, it makes us look weak.”
No. The vulnerability is a leadership strength that is untapped, [00:34:00] and if we can figure out, if more leaders can figure out how to exercise this authentic vulnerability, especially in times of change, transition, uncertainty, God forbid we have another COVID, but that’s when it happens, That’s when we need to rise up and become more authentic. And and even today there’s a lot of struggles going on, challenges going on, know?
Alexis: I have one for you. I have definitely one for you. You will love it. Or I already know that. I will drop just two letters because you spoke about fear high expectations, AI. What does it mean for leaders, human-centered leaders? What does it mean?
Marcel Schwantes: Yeah. We have to learn to embrace and adopt AI. [00:35:00] Absolutely, we need it. It’s here to stay. But we also have to empower the people with the technology. And so as we have more AI initiatives w- leaders have to understand that the people need to also… W- We need to take care of… If we’re, if we want them to use AI, you need to set the right expectations for why they’re doing it, and remove the fear that, oh gosh, my company’s bringing AI, there goes my job And i- if that’s your ulterior motive for bringing AI this is the wrong podcast to l- to listen to, okay?
So you’ve very Already made up your mind that you’re going to, you’re going to get, let go of 30% of your workforce because of [00:36:00] AI? Yeah. The human-centered conversation is worthless here. But if you’re going to bring AI, you’re going to have to help the people adapt to it, know how to use it and build this, idea that you’re not going anywhere.
We just wanna make you more effective, make you m- make you more productive, and make you a better human being with the use of AI. gonna teach you everything that you need to know. We’re gonna upskill We’re gonna and even give you the freedom to create, experiment with prompts and and r- redesigning your own work if it makes business sense, and then tell us, teach us leaders, how do we do it?
How do we become more effective, right? So that that’s, creating, think, more value [00:37:00] and bringing humanity together with technology
Alexis: And, we still have a lot of problem to tackle as, as human beings on the planet. There’s not a shortage of problems to solve, so maybe that, that’s a good thing. Okay, we are– That was my AI question. I’m not going back to it. What is one question I should have asked you that I did not?
Marcel Schwantes: Yeah. I would say, boy, if I wanted to start a… If I wanted to build a human-centered and I’m a firm believer that this is gonna work, I wanna be a champion this, what’s my first step? That’s the question because a lot of leaders, and I’ll answer that in a minute, a [00:38:00] lot of leaders don’t fully know what we, get so caught up in strategy, big picture stuff we forget about what’s going on in the trenches.
Are people experiencing? So the first step is to gather the data that you need to first understand your current reality. are people experiencing? Go ask them. your managers ask them. Bring in a consultant if you have to, one of us, right? And to, first understand here, okay, what are we dealing with? What are our barriers, our obstacles? Because you’re gonna find them. As soon as you start poking around, you’re going to get themes rising to the surface, and that’s your starting point [00:39:00] right there. ‘Cause now you can go from, “Oh, okay, yeah, here’s problems A, B, C, one, two, three. Now here’s how we create a human-centered culture to address those problems.”
Alexis: I love it. Thank you for that really good question.
Marcel Schwantes: You’re welcome
Alexis: And of course thank you Marcel for having joined the podcast today. I really appreciate it
Marcel Schwantes: been a pleasure and I was looking forward to it.
Alexis: Thank you for listening to this episode of Le Podcast on Emerging Leadership. I hope you found today’s conversation as insightful and inspiring as I did. If you want to dive deeper into the topics we discussed today, you can find the full episode transcript and all the references by visiting alexis.monville.com.
Leadership is a [00:40:00] continuous journey, and it is one best shared with others. So if you took away something valuable from today’s episode, please take a moment to share it with a friend or two who might also benefit from these insights. This is really appreciated. Until next time, keep learning, keep adapting, and keep leading.
I’m Alexis Monville, and this has been Le Podcast on Emerging Leadership.
Most of us are addicted to over-delivering. We think adding more features, more slides, more planning, and more process makes our projects safer and our leadership more effective. We were taught in school that doing more gets you the A+.
But what if your obsession with doing “more” is actually the exact thing holding your team back?
The Source: Jon Kern on Le Podcast on Emerging Leadership
In the latest episode of our podcast, I sat down with Jon Kern, an aerospace engineer turned software architect and one of the original co-authors of the Agile Manifesto.
Jon didn’t help create Agile because he loved corporate frameworks. He helped create it as a pragmatic, lightweight defense mechanism against bureaucratic lunacy. Early in his career testing jet engines for the Defense Department, he realized that rigid, heavyweight processes (like trying to predict a year of R&D in advance) were worse than useless: they were actively destructive.
The Reframe: The Strategic Value of “Laziness”
We typically view laziness as apathy or a lack of drive. But Jon advocates for a different kind of laziness: Strategic Laziness.
In development and leadership, being “lazy” means finding the smartest, smallest possible thing to build (or do) to get immediate feedback. It is a rebellion against doing too much work, too far in advance.
When we over-prepare, we usually do it out of anxiety. We build massive plans to soothe our fear of the unknown. The signal hidden inside the urge to over-engineer is that we are afraid to test our assumptions against reality. Strategic laziness forces you to stop hiding behind bloated plans and start treating your requirements as hypotheses.
The Leadership Application: Purpose vs. Process
You cannot ask your team to be “lazy” and agile if they don’t know what they are actually trying to achieve.
If a team doesn’t understand their core business purpose, they become mere order-takers. And order-takers will just blindly build every feature, tick every box, and follow every process, no matter how bloated it gets.
Jon’s rule is simple: Start with a clear, 25-word purpose.
When your team has a razor-sharp flag in the distance, they are empowered to exercise micro-judgments. They can look at a massive project requirement and say, “To achieve our purpose, we don’t actually need to build all of this yet. Let’s just do this tiny piece and see what the customer thinks.”
Even in the modern frontier of AI and “Vibe Coding”, which Jon actively uses to automate rigorous testing and compliance, this discipline holds true. You can use AI to do the heavy lifting, but you still must “coerce” the tools into following sound engineering fundamentals. Agility requires a clear purpose and relentless consistency.
The Practical Takeaway
Mantra: “I can out-small anyone.”
Whenever you are faced with a massive, ambiguous project, do not ask, “How do we get all of this done?” Ask, “What is the smallest, embarrassingly tiny piece of value we can deliver right now to get real-world feedback?”
The Coaching Prompt
Grab a notebook or bring these to your next 1:1. Answer honestly:
The 25-Word Test: Can you clearly articulate your team or project’s core purpose in 25 words or less?
The Bloat Audit: Where are you currently doing too much work, to too great a depth, too far in advance of actual feedback?
The Next Small Step: What is the tiniest, smartest thing you could test or build this week to prove (or disprove) a major assumption?
In this episode of Le Podcast on Emerging Leadership, I sat down with Jon Kern, aerospace engineer turned software architect and co-author of the Agile Manifesto.
Jon shares his fascinating journey from testing jet engines for the Defense Department to pushing back against heavyweight, bureaucratic software processes.
We explore the original intent behind the Agile Manifesto, the misconceptions that led to overly rigid frameworks, and how leaders can embrace the concept of “being lazy” to deliver true business value.
Finally, Jon dives into the frontier of “Vibe Coding,” sharing how he uses AI to automate rigorous testing, compliance, and architecture without losing the foundational discipline of software engineering.
🔑 Key Takeaways:
The Origins of Agile: Jon’s contribution to the Agile Manifesto stemmed from a deep frustration with one-size-fits-all, heavyweight processes (like MIL-STD-2167) that hindered research and development. The manifesto was born out of a desire for a pragmatic, lightweight defense mechanism against bureaucratic lunacy.
The Biggest Agile Misconception: Agile is not a recipe or a simple step-by-step framework. Jon warns against the industry’s reliance on rigid frameworks, emphasizing that true agility must be experienced and tailored to a team’s specific context, rather than simply memorized for a certification.
The Power of “Being Lazy”: In software development, being “lazy” means finding the smartest, smallest possible thing to build to get immediate feedback. It is a rebellion against doing too much work, too far in advance, and instead treating requirements as hypotheses to be tested with actual customers.
Purpose is Paramount: If a team doesn’t understand their core business purpose, they become mere order-takers. Starting with a clear, 25-word purpose allows everyone on the team to exercise micro-judgments, empowering them to propose smaller, faster, and cheaper ways to deliver value.
Leading in the Age of AI (Vibe Coding): AI is a game-changer for software development, but it requires strict engineering discipline. Jon shares how he uses AI platforms like Replit to build applications, but notes that developers must learn to “coerce” AI into following best practices like Behavior-Driven Development (BDD) rather than letting it write unchecked code.
Agile is Necessary, But Not Sufficient: To build great products, an agile mindset must be paired with solid engineering fundamentals: a clear purpose, a shared domain language, sound architecture, and relentless consistency.
Alexis: This is Le Podcast on Emerging Leadership. I’m your host, Alexis Monville. Today, I’m joined by Jon Kern, an aerospace engineer turned software architect and a co-author of the Agile Manifesto. Jon is currently an agile consultant at The Adaptavist Group How do you introduce yourself to someone you just met?
Jon Kern (Adaptavist): Like in a, let’s say formal busi- like a business setting or at a party at a friend’s house?
Alexis: Let’s say, let’s say in a business setting
Jon Kern (Adaptavist): Okay. Typically, like I was just in Nuremberg at the Business Agility Conference last week, could probably ask people there. I generally [00:01:00] Introduce myself probably as just a guy, just a developer, software engineer. Love to help build awesome products, help teams build awesome products. So probably mostly as a, just a guy, an engineer. I try… I will only reluctantly mention that I’m a co-author of the manifesto. If there’s a, some sort of pressing, I don’t have time to be in my humble, I have to, like I have to im- which is pretty ra- rare that I have to impress, impress somebody.
Yeah I, tend to be just, I, ’cause I really am just another, person the good fights, [00:02:00] working, trying to help people. all
Alexis: I, love that. And yeah, I, agree. I’m I, met, I met you a few years back at the Agile conference in in Dallas, I believe. And yeah, it felt like a, a normal interaction then. And I, I know a lot of people knew who you were, but that, that felt completely completely normal and completely cool.
And and I felt you were very curious about what other people had in their, had in their mind. So that was very interesting to me. So you mentioned the Agile Manifesto. W- can you tell us what led to your contribution to the Agile Manifesto?
Jon Kern (Adaptavist): I think my experiences [00:03:00] having a really a blessed career starting with Defense Department jet engine testing, working in, a job that some wonderful mentors. I still get together with Rich Thaler and every, pretty much every year. One of my first mentors, I would say. And also some really interesting, what you might call signposts of… I’m early 20s, right? So, you know, somebody in their 40s I’m, I remember thinking, “Yeah, don’t wanna be like this person that far into my career,” not liking my… So I had these great, wonderful opportunities to, see mentored and to see things I didn’t wanna [00:04:00] do, to be able to grow from there as an engineer. So I, four or five years of jet engine, cruise missile engine testing and, discovering a- the awesomeness of software to help do a job a three-hour job down to a few minutes I was bitten by the bug early on. And then went with another one of my former bosses, moved to a Defense Department contractor comp- company, and then I started a whole another that was about a 10-year career there with flight simulation and, again, heavyweight MIL- Standard-2167. So I started to get brush up against these heavyweight processes that made no sense with the kind of work we were doing. They might make sense for other types of work, but it was a one-size-fits-all big heavyweight process. So that led me down the path of [00:05:00] my personality is the kind where If it’s stupid, I don’t wanna do it. I think many times I probably should have been fired from some companies, including being a dishwasher and a pot washer and doing some things that I shouldn’t have. But somehow I learned better to forgiveness than ask permission. I was creating a lighter weight method, trying to…
I’m a taxpayer too. Why should I just do this stupid process for a process sake? So it was an interesting journey that kinda led me to creating my own, what I would call, like a lightweight process to combat the lunacy of pretending you could estimate a year-long project for a research and development that was purposefully going to wander and learn, and that’s the whole point. a lot of things led me to be [00:06:00] very let’s say, vocal at the, at Snowbird about experience with heavyweight process. I also was working My a good… Yeah I, created my own company. My… I started working with Peter Coad. He was an o- became an object-oriented mentor, and then basically hired me away from my own company to help found another company, Togethersoft, together in the, late ’90s, early 2000s. We had a way of working there, feature-driven development, and a mantra, frequent tangible working results.
So you could really looking back, ’cause the event itself was just, hey, it was fun. It was like drinking beer, you
Alexis: Spectacular.
Jon Kern (Adaptavist): And, writing a few things down and meeting people that I only read in books and magazines. Like, I was the, a younger person there. [00:07:00] maybe Adi and, I might have been the young the two youngsters. So, know, looking back it’s, easy to see why, know, people, process, and tools, which is kinda like the first value, it was something we… was a mantra we used at And then how I built my own lightweight defense mechanism process against the world that I was in for the government contracting. You can see the last the, three bullets. I learned contracts don’t help you. Better to get a good rapport with the customer. I learned a- as, as, good as you might be with a project plan, ’cause that’s… Back then as an engineer, I used Microsoft Project until I realized that was foolish on soft.
So all those things l- you know, speaking of what led me to to the manifesto and the ideas that came out, it certainly feels like it was [00:08:00] tailor-made a, as a way to at least a lot of the learning that I had in my… I would say I was, like, halfway through my career, so to speak. So yeah, it was a amazing opportunity to somehow get all that, kind of a resonant frequency with others in the room, that these things, y- were across many of the other folks were the co-authors.
Alexis: Yeah. Excellent. So now we are roughly 25 years later what are some of the mi- misconceptions about Agile you encountered over time?
Jon Kern (Adaptavist): Yeah, I think the, blessing and the curse of the manifesto looking back is [00:09:00] It’s an extremely, what I might now call po- a post-conventional way to make your meaning about how to do software development. And, I say that because one of my good friends Daniel Markham, at one point said, “Imagine being a fresh out from college, being like on a software team, being told to go read the manifesto.” Especially the, first just the values page. The principles might get a little simpler in some… yeah, what do what are, you supposed to do with that? Wh- where do I start? Oh, good question, right? That’s that’s definitely a blessing and a curse that it’s, super powerful if you it and understand it, but super [00:10:00] ambiguous and unclear if you don’t. Which was a, pretty good eye-opener for me that, because I didn’t have to memorize it. I, lived it. I do… And that’s, the experience you have, so to speak if you work with me on a team, I like to think you get to experience Agile. ‘Cause y- I say you almost have to experience Agile.
It’s not a recipe. It’s not a it’s not a st- a step-by-step process, and I think that’s the biggest… I don’t know if it’s a misconception or just human nature to want an easier way. Okay, that’s really hard. What’s an easier way? Things like frameworks- Scrum, or God forbid, SAFe or something like that, which reminds me of back in the day, things we were fighting called Rational Unified Process. but I think [00:11:00] what happened over time, ’cause I literally checked out near… checked out of the Agile community as I saw the- The penchant for trying to simplify and assume you can just learn this framework and get a, certification in a couple of days and somehow be agile. I was like, nah, not interested in this. Goodbye. I’m just gonna go work with teams and have fun and help help explain through action and involvement how, what I think agility is.”
And I still do that at, Adaptivists we, happily work with teams to help experience what agility might be. And so yeah, I think that’s [00:12:00] the biggest misconception is people fell for… I don’t know, I’m not gonna say it’s snake oil. In the right hands, any almost any process will work and, especially if you make sure you tailor it to your world. But making it seem like you just have to follow these five steps and you’re good I think sold a lot of management and executives and businesses down a river of that it’s… No it’s really that simple. Even though, Agile, you can kinda consider it to be simple if you get it, doesn’t mean it’s easy. So I, think probably the biggest misconception that led to a bit of a backlash. And ano- another thing happened while I was away from, the [00:13:00] community. I kinda got brought, back in to the Agile Alliance maybe one, one gathering before the Dallas one or, a couple.
I went to a few ’cause they invited me. but I remember one of the first ones I went back to, I was like, “What happened? What- why is there nothing technical in this conference?”
Alexis: Ooh.
Jon Kern (Adaptavist): whatever happened to, don’t know, testing, visit or the whole XP. I said I’m, an engineer by training, so all of a sudden it was all about coaches and all this. Yeah, you need to care about the soft skills, and you need to care about that, sort of thing, but it was suddenly what happened to the real- the main thing? The ma- the main thing is trying to produce value and put smiles on customers’ face in exchange for helping to pay my salary, and that all seemed to go away.
I was kinda like, “How come there’s no technical sessions? Why?” But or at least [00:14:00] very f- few
Alexis: Yeah. Yeah, and it, I, I feel that the first sentence of, of the manifesto was the very important one about we are uncovering better ways of developing software by doing it and helping others do it. I, I have the feeling that that one was very important. It could be only that one even.
Jon Kern (Adaptavist): Yeah, I, it’s funny when I look back because nobody knew this was gonna take off. It’s we’re just just passed the 250th anniversary of the founding of our country and Declaration of Independence and the f- the, amazing thing that happened when a relatively few number of people farmers and lawyers and doctors came together and created a document in hindsight is amazing. And in a very, [00:15:00] extremely humble way I, feel the same thing happened there. It was this magical cauldron that produced a pretty small set of words when you, get right down to it. And so now when I take that first page, the values page as we come, I’ve come to call it, I point out the preamble, and I point out, look at the humility in there. To your point it’s active voice ’cause I still– I’m still trying to figure out, like with the advent of AI I’m a, wholly addicted to vibe coding and I just did a pretty fun workshop in Nuremberg. It’s, a whole game changer, but you better have a good solid understanding of not only engineering practices and principles, but also what does it mean what does agility mean?
What does it… but that preamble [00:16:00] is so true that we’re still uncovering. And how do we do it? Not by reading about it, by doing it and experiencing it, having enough humility and ability to have… I think part of it is the it, depending on how you make your meaning as a human the, kind of vertical development of the side of the brain, not the skills horizontal.
But you may or may not be able to absorb even experiencing it, to have the perspectives, be able to step back to see what are we learning, what’s going on. I’m following the process. Why is it different? I guess we need to predict better or plan more, right? When the whole aspect of that simple, humble phrase is you’re right a really important one.
And I would say the f- the very first value, the [00:17:00] people people and process over tools, but it’s individuals and interactions over process and tools. So that also, you could say, just that in and of itself is almost sufficient. ‘Cause the other three it’s details, so to speak. But if you had, the first one individuals and collaboration over a contract or you, could make over a project Gantt chart. You you could, also make the case there that the preamble, like we’re still doing it, you’re never done. Sorry it’s it’s it’s the hardest Way to practice because you’re constantly have to be on the vigil. A little bit like lean, where two-second lean. I wonder if I can get this process just two seconds faster, right? It’s that same kind of never– seemingly never-ending quest for the ability to, [00:18:00] improve and get better and do it more effectively. So yeah, it’s, I’ll also say the other thing that the, I don’t know what you call the thing at the bottom, the postamble, preamble, the values, and then the the whole bit about the left over the versus the right. That’s also a big dose of humility ’cause
Alexis: Yeah
Jon Kern (Adaptavist): Doesn’t say… I’m a documentation nut.
I love I I’m, always forcing people to take their knowledge that they post in Slack or on WhatsApp or on a Google Doc, and, “Nope, let’s get it into our knowledge base in Confluence or something like that.” I’m always forcing because what we do is a lot more complex than, I think people understand. So yeah it’s important to notice those two things, I think to your point
Alexis: Yeah. Yeah, I have [00:19:00] the feeling that those are polarities. And at the time it was written, the, the pendulum was really tilting towards one side. And and the goal was not necessarily to pull the pendulum completely on the other side, but to say, “Hey, hey, let’s find let’s find the right balance,
Between those things.”
That’s,
Jon Kern (Adaptavist): a great way that’s a great way to visualize it cause it’s the right balance for your context and it’s gonna change and that’s the point is you have to intentionally the i the of the things that the manifesto can do is bring attention to different things you may or may not think about All of those values are attention to these things And then to your point about where do we dial it for this project for this customer for this Even down to the feature so that’s a great way to visualize it is it’s really is like sliders And super highly regulated environment I might [00:20:00] bake in ways to actually capture more documentation and screenshot Who knows Because y it’s gonna be a more effective way to deal with something that’s super heavyweight but it just has to be All right how can I make it cost less and suck less it’s kinda One of my other mantras is be lazy
Alexis: That’s, that’s an interesting one. G- give me an example of being lazy that is effective
Jon Kern (Adaptavist): Yeah even what I was just making up in my mind right there about I I remember way back in the day 95 to 98 cutting my teeth and architecting IBM’s manufacturing execution system as an outside consultant in a company that we got the contract to do it was discrete manufacturing and one of my buddies from the I left my DoD company that time and formed my own company and did [00:21:00] this big IBM project my other buddies had left my the DoD company and was working in pharma and similarly manuf manufacturing but that wasn’t discrete It wasn’t making computers it was the more challenging aspect of making medicines and drugs and things that had batches almost like hamburgers right You got a batch of meat you have to be able to All kinds of weird stuff And he said even have to track exactly did the screen look like how was it designed when something was being manufactured versioning out the wazoo So being lazy to me is what’s maybe a clever use of technology to make that suck less to put it bluntly like how do you do that like we’re gonna have the quality assurance people take [00:22:00] screenshots and document Ah screw that Now let me build a was actually just doing that just this weekend with a crazy thing that produced different images and I was like really to cut those out you know being lazy is I get a faster more effective cheaper way to do something that I would consider as mundane and tedious And it’s that sort of an attitude Also lazy is don’t so much work ahead of time Don’t most offensive offenses that teams make is doing far too much work to too great a depth of detail too far in advance of the need I’m talking about like re big requirements or ex excessive UX design or crazy stuff like you need to do just enough to get the frame [00:23:00] So that’s another aspect of no be lazy but the problem is that fights against everything we’ve been taught since children in school doing more is better And you know how I got five 100s in a row on the quizzes in algebra Woo I’m really good that is such disservice to an agile way of working you have to fight it And I often say I can outsmall anybody that has to do with what’s the tiniest thing that you can think of to build you might call it lazy no I don’t wanna build all that A cause I don’t believe it I don’t We don’t know as much as we think Let’s treat it as a hypothesis get some feedback sooner right All kinds of great things to that in my mind make perfect sense of why I’m being lazy so yeah I often try to tell people think of the smallest possible thing you could [00:24:00] to get feedback and then make it slightly smaller until you’re uncomfortable your level of uncomfortableness won’t be mine I I’m okay being embarrassed delivering something embarrassingly small Anyway it’s the point is to get skilled at getting less and less because it’s quite simply the truth that you can always add more if it was If you missed the mark You can never take back time you spent and energy you spent and you’ll never know if it was too much So that’s a to me the lazy But it’s also being smart But it’s a bit of a joke but not really It’s you hire somebody to do a specific very narrow job guess what you’re gonna get eight hours a day Eight hours of UX or eight hours I learned this in the DoD days Eight hours and what does a specification writer do Super tedious like mindnumbing words about how [00:25:00] is this ram air turbine supposed to be work just the spec writers were notoriously tedious and slow but anyway yeah that’s my
Alexis: And it’s hard. I, I, can feel how
hard it is, But the number of examples I had in mind when you,
you talked about it, it’s wow. You, you mentioned business value because it was all about it, putting a smile on, on your users. How do you help teams to stay focused on that
Jon Kern (Adaptavist): another great question So it’s a such an important topic that whenever working with teams [00:26:00] Especially trying to center it along something they’re trying to achieve Whether it was four groups that we were working with one of my good buddies at Adaptavist he’s on his own now but Jon Turley and I and another friend Tony Camacho we went to Florida last September run a multiday workshop with the Special Operations Command special ops Nothing secret just some software teams like four teams And each But after we did what I would call like a toy project to warm up to my very opinionated way of delivering software we did project that they brought So the In both cases you have to have a really good understanding of what are we trying to do And in Nuremberg in my AI two twohour AI workshop [00:27:00] Vibe Coding now that particular product that we wanted to build was an agile buzzword bingo game but in all those cases or if I’m working with a team delivering a benefits package for employee healthcare in the US case what’s the very first after we say hi and learn about each other but the first actual meaningful exercise is in 25 words or less what is your business purpose or your system purpose However you wanna think And teams we coach internally in Adaptavist what why are you here It’s a the funny movie Office Space the the Bob and Bob efficiency experts right what is it that you do here It’s humorous but it’s also so critical cause if and I’ll explain why Number one if you don’t know why you’re here what are we trying to do [00:28:00] a recursive I love learning a few things that apply whether it’s the full product idea that we have like buzzword agile buzzword bingo or a feature or an epic anything The point is understanding what we’re after what the outcome is what the I can’t say it raison d’être or whatever the reason for existence without that You might just be an order taker and you And anything will do A list of requirements will be huge You So the whole point is how do I get my entire team cause we all have brains many times the brains are better than mine I want everybody to participate in the being humble and being lazy because we have a flag in the distance We know what we’re trying to do again whether it’s a feature [00:29:00] set or the whole product that you can exercise micro judgments I got smart people I don’t wanna have to think it all up myself I said I wanna just put out there this is what we’re trying to do and be surprised and elated when an engineer might come and or a UX person and anybody can now come and offer up the smallest possible thing to get the most value Maybe I can’t do it all but maybe all isn’t necessary right Isn’t that what you say Jon That we shouldn’t We should treat the requirements as hypotheses that someone might want this So it’s this weird really holistic way of learning how to do just enough And I think sim You can see how much your little tiny question that’s the whole point is that little tiny what is the purpose fans into the whole thing that we’re doing I won’t need to architect that yet I don’t [00:30:00] need to build this yet I don’t need the UX I don’t need the f driven scenarios yet for those things that we might not So it’s all about giving us the chance to deliver more sooner and for less cost and get feedback right So it’s a strange selfreinforcing loop that without that you’re an order taker You don’t have nearly the chance You might have to invent it in your head and wonder why they’re asking for this I don’t know I’m just a coder you will be replaced by me and Replit I will replace you if I can’t if you’re not gonna use your brain andor you’re not allowed then you need to replace the process cause you need to ask that question right from the start in everything you do So that’s a brilliant question
Alexis: Just enough to get feedback to deliver some value
In[00:31:00]
Jon Kern (Adaptavist): And as much as possible have customers in the room when you get some something to validate with them even if it’s early look over their shoulder I might have a little I’m not sure the UI feels right come look All of that is just shortening the Often say mind the gap in time between doing something and getting feedback So yeah it’s all it’s really s in my mind really simple It just appears to be really hard for a lot of teams to get there or think it can really be that simple Or it is harder to try to get customers to talk to but the simplistic secret Is yeah involve your customers
Alexis: Yeah. So you mentioned AI twice, so I, I need to ask about it. How should leaders consider AI
in their organization?[00:32:00]
Jon Kern (Adaptavist): I’ll just narrow it down to the way that I’m thinking about in the context of building software there are I’ve seen There was a cool exercise I w I spoke in in Belgrade Serbia at a Agile conference maybe two years ago and there was a pretty cool little workshop that he ran with kind of AI at the front end and requirements And I’m a behaviordriven development I will write my Jira issue I’ll put in there Gherkin given when then Cause it’s a super awesome fast and concise way to write a requirement To say what are the preconditions What’s the person doing What do they expect Cool Versus big paragraphs and So couple that with some maybe some domain models as necessary depending on where you’re at and some U UI [00:33:00] designs maybe I saw how rapidly that w I forget the tools that he he had us work in some teams and probably download something on our phone or the computer I don’t remember But some kind of a you know bot the AI thing that produced driven BDD It seemed a little excessive That was my takeaway was okay I’m thinking in my head Is that good It’s a lot of volume I wonder how much editing I have to do versus what if I just do it like I do now do it myself So that was my first experience with kind of a front end part of the process recently I’m working with a team actually just a [00:34:00] guy and it was funny He wanted something that he obviously asked AI to produce the requirements and it was a fairly interesting technical aspect around solidifying how can you produce something like a certification that’s unique and protected and u uniquely identifiable nobody can copy it and cheat and pretend Like he It’s oh that’s pretty cool But I could he used some AI tool and built out and then he dumped it into Jira epics and issues oh my g now you’re really getting on my nerves right And s and so this is another interesting facet was Part of the process of taking an idea that you need to build out is working with [00:35:00] it So just cause I can get a tool to spit all this stuff out including BDD including the specs including use this API or whatever this I felt that was taking learning opportunity for me to dive into that So I basically didn’t r didn’t overreact just pushed it aside took the real requirement which is just what a customer might ask and then as an engineer figured it out And sure largely the AI is not wrong in terms of things to do it completely missed the whole part of the learning process if you just took it face value care what it said or didn’t understand it So that was another interesting factor of I’m not so sure that’s I know that’s not that good Another funny [00:36:00] I was speaking in Poland in Gdansk with Anita from Network Perspective who does deve you know developer experience surveys and what was funny is we were preparing one of her slides cause when you do a DevX survey you can get anonymous you get anonymous feedback you get comments and she tau taught me long ago cause we used the DevX stuff at Adaptivist taught me long ago that comments are gold when people are like Err Okay I got something to say
Alexis: Hmm.
Jon Kern (Adaptavist): And this guy w- was hilarious. He was complaining about just what I told you about yeah, we get the the architecture team s- weighs in on something, and then dumps this giant thing on top of us, and they don’t have to do it.
They’re just sitting in a corner and pontificating.” he was basically expressing the same kind of frustration that I had receiving that. [00:37:00] In answering your question so far the, things that I’ve seen on the front, eh- I’m on the fence about because it’s, I think, more important that more about where the lines need to be drawn in terms of what are you trying to do to elicit requirements from, users, to express them, how far sh-should you go into the sort of what I would consider the, details of writing some specs, so to speak BDD. And then certainly the architecture, how deep should you go into producing that? ‘Cause the team’s basically the ones responsible and that’s l- maybe work with them, let… Anyway, that, there’s that. So now to the vibe coding part. Yeah. This is the most wild thing. learned about it [00:38:00] when I was flying to Special Operations Command in September My normal mode was I have a Git repo, download this little toy project, get yourself set up. That’s basically a BDD, TDD kind of an environment. But still, was like, “Ah it’s 2025. There’s ways to do development in the web without having to download anything.” So I’m like, ah, I know I bookmarked some things, ’cause I always bookmark more than I ever seem to find time to read. but I’m like, oh, I know, what was it? And I stumbled on Replit replit.com. and lo and behold, just maybe two weeks prior to that, they had released Agent 3. So I’m like… I watched a couple videos that were on an older agent. I was like, “Eh,” and then I thought, “I’ll try it.” Sure enough, there’s an environment that’s in the web it’s in your browser, and you can ask it to build stuff. [00:39:00] So by the time I landed I’d already built a little app that it’s basically Conway’s Game of Life, so it’s a funny cellular automata game. But I I’d learned that I could build that and this tool was gonna work, that it took away all the, they have to install things. Now I just needed to coerce it, ’cause it’s a little…
This, is something I’ve learned over the, ensuing months, that it will happily go f- speaking of do the tiniest thing that you can or maybe slightly less, that it’s not how, not how it operates. It’s “Whoa, Nelly, what are you doing?” It’s ah. I had to learn how to actually coerce it to do BDD.
It was pretty funny. I don’t I don’t know how much time your podcast has. We’re probably turning this into two podcasts. But it was really funny to learn [00:40:00] how hard it was to get it to stop to write a failing test. And I’ve, I’m now able to do that pretty successfully, it was not easy because it’s just too eager, so I’ve learned also how to get it to be curious and how to get it to s- maybe supply some options. But you can drive it, like what I did with the Vibe Coding workshop in Nuremberg, was be very BDD. Write a failing test, write a BDD. They, I took them through the normal Jon Kern opinionated way to to from a fuzzy idea to something out the door, and we actually produced something and you can run it, and it’s funny. But yeah the, idea is that the calculations about things that I can now do because of Vibe Coding has completely changed my approach in terms of I will create amazing [00:41:00] things that I never would do if I had to write them hand. I for many years, I’ve had a, for almost probably two decades, for fighter- firefighters and emergency whether it’s for y- small rural departments or our biggest one is Arlington, Texas, which is 17 stations, so it’s pretty huge. or big pharma companies and universities, stuff like that. So it’s a it’s a no joke way to try to protect lives and property. And so I’m, I used it to migrate from up- update the Rails app from the current production to the new version using Replit. And I learned I [00:42:00] could do things like web penetration testing security audits, GDPR compliance, SOC 2, name it. was able to, i- instead of just doing it off to the side, I actually built essentially security audit control panel with a Kanban board and the findings. And then over time started knocking down the findings as I was making the staging before we got to production. never have done that ’cause it was al- when I’ve done it in the past, it’s been manual. might have a spreadsheet, you might record it and do some things. And anyway, I could automate the penetration testing. I could automate much of this, could even have Replit refer to, “Hey, all right, let’s tackle finding number 13.” Or “Tell me about your infrastructure in the context of these, compliance regulations.” So that kind [00:43:00] of thing is wild. I have code quality built in with RuboCop the ability to also show the quality metrics for super admins. Don’t get to see it, but the super admins do. And I, often expose the end-to-end testing, the BDD, to super admins as well, so you can actually see the test results gr- it’s all green or not. I’ve built synthetic testing to run every so often and to holler if something’s… all kinds of insane things that have long built up in my repertoire.
Some of these things I did with teams in, the past ’cause I could. But so it’s, an amazing world that in the context of what you might need in your product teams, can do an amazing amount of rigor [00:44:00] if you need to, and automate it. So again, that’s the being lazy. don’t wanna have to do this by hand.
So I don’t know. That’s a lot of answer to a s- pretty simple question, but I think this is a brave new world. It’s unbelievable what you can do you, need to know. blessed with having a long career and knowing the hard way to do things. So I know what architecture looks…
I know the things that I should worry about. With other, teams you can, now take some of those non-functional requirements and turn them into things that maybe we can bake into the product to satisfy some of those needs. And at, the touch of a button, if a new client, like a major ele-elevator company that’s hosted in Europe wants to use this firefighting app, and they want to do a a [00:45:00] security audit type thing, “Oh check this out.”
Alexis: And it’s-
it, it’s funny because I hear also things you said before about quality by design and solid architecture in your answer
about how to use AI in, in an effective way.
So it’s it’s very interesting
Jon Kern (Adaptavist): Yeah. It’s it’s a brave new world. It’s exciting.
Alexis: Excellent. What is one question I should have asked you that I did not?
Jon Kern (Adaptavist): Oh. No th-those are fascinating, really good questions. And I I think it it allowed me to touch on quite a bit. One of the, [00:46:00] one of the details that maybe you could’ve asked was is the manifesto, you know the, phrase about n- necessary but not sufficient? I would say that’s a good way to put it ’cause it’s, In the age of AI, I think it’s so important to really understand what it means to act with agility and have that that, different way of thinking. and it’s not sufficient, Scrum’s not sufficient or safe or anything. My engineering background can’t help but have constantly bled through my my whole career in that, my holistic approach is a lot about six fundamental aspects that you gotta have going on. [00:47:00] touch on some the, purpose and just enough requirements and what I would consider the domain.
What is the language of the world that is the problem we’re trying to solve? Let’s, not invent it, let’s use it and make that another… It’s another lazy approach even though it looks like I’m doing excess. Man, why are you drawing some of these funny squares with names? Because I want everybody to use the right terminology and to more quickly speed up our ability to make sure the thought bubble’s above our head when the customer says something, or the architect, or the database person or the UX. It’s the same, it’s the same concept, right? That’s lazy, but also being effective. And then the, what architecture we’re gonna use, what sort of patterns, and then doing it in a very consistent freq- fre- I’d rather you be consistently poor ’cause you can fix that, right? I… [00:48:00] Like my BlazeMAR version two, so to speak, done in MongoDB and Rails 4.2, cons- really consistent, covered with tests, and it makes it easy to move it into the more modern Rails 8 and the more mo- I, switched to PostgreSQL, but the, consistency is a savior because it’s not like it looks like three different teams built it.
I’ve worked on systems like that. Oh, they’re… Why are these same looking things done differently? Oh, man, it’s a long story. So that, and then plus run it with an agile mindset. So I think, is also often missing the, art of engineering behind the systems you’re building in an agile way. So there, now I’ve said it.
Alexis: Excellent. Thank you. Thank you very much for joining the podcast.
Jon Kern (Adaptavist): Oh, my pleasure.
Alexis Monville-2: Thank you for listening this episode of Le [00:49:00] Podcast on Emerging Leadership. I hope you found today’s conversation as insightful and inspiring as I did. If you want to dive deeper into the topics we discussed today, you can find the full episode transcript and all the references we mentioned by visiting alexis.monville.com.
Leadership is a continuous journey and is one best shared with others. If you took away something valuable from today’s episode, please take a moment to share it with a friend or two who might also benefit from these insights as they navigate their own leadership path. Until next time, keep learning, keep adapting, and keep leading. I’m Alexis Monville, and this has been Le Podcast on Emerging Leadership.
I was on stage in Lyon last week at the Tech’Work conference, talking about a concept that radically shifts how we build teams.
We were discussing the “Above the Line / Below the Line” framework. When we are below the line, we are in survival mode: defensive, closed, and committed to being right. This is biology, not a character flaw. It’s normal. But when we pause, breathe, and step above the line, we choose a conscious response: open, curious, and committed to learning.
The audience was highly engaged, mapping out the behaviors of both states. But during the interactive session, two brutally honest comments from the audience hit the floor like lead weights:
“Too much empathy is bad because you just end up doing all the work in place of other people.”
“Some people just don’t want to take responsibility.”
You can practically hear the exhaustion and resentment dripping from those statements. If you’ve ever led a team, you’ve probably felt both. We are told to be “empathetic” and “empowering,” but the reality often feels like we are just babysitting.
So, what is the signal hidden in this frustration?
The Source: The Drama Triangle and Unconscious Commitments
To unpack this, we need to look at two heavy-hitting psychological models.
First is the Karpman Drama Triangle. When we drop below the line, we often fall into three roles: the Victim (powerless), the Persecutor (blaming), or the Rescuer (saving the day).
Second is the concept of Unconscious Commitments from the Conscious Leadership Group. Often, the outcomes we complain about the most are the exact outcomes our hidden behaviors are perfectly designed to create.
The Reframe: Friction as a Signal
When we complain about empathy and responsibility, we are misdiagnosing the problem. Here is the reframe:
The Empathy Trap is actually a Boundary Problem. When the leader in Lyon said, “Too much empathy means I do all the work,” they were describing the Rescuer role, not empathy. Empathy is understanding someone’s struggle. Rescuing is doing their work for them to alleviate your own discomfort with their struggle. Over-functioning for your team isn’t a surplus of caring; it is a deficit of boundaries.
The Responsibility Myth is actually a Mirror. When we declare, “Some people just don’t want to take responsibility,” we have slipped into the Victim role. We are blaming their character rather than looking at the system. The hard, transformative truth is recognizing our own unconscious commitment to the dynamic. If your team isn’t stepping up, what is the payoff for you? Often, it’s the ego-boost of being the “indispensable fixer.”
Leadership Application: Evolving the System
Leadership is a property of the system, not a personality trait. If people aren’t exhibiting leadership, the system is actively preventing it.
To create the conditions for leadership to emerge, you have to stop playing the Rescuer. Yes, some individuals, bruised by previous micromanagers or toxic cultures, will need time to trust that taking a risk won’t get them fired. They need proof.
But you cannot provide that proof if you keep doing their work. You have to step back, establish firm boundaries, and allow them to feel the natural friction of their role. You must accept that an old version of your leadership, the one that swooped in to save the day, is no longer useful. It got you here, but it is actively sabotaging your team’s growth for the future.
A Practical Takeaway
Empathy without boundaries is just enabling. You cannot rescue someone into taking responsibility.
The Coaching Prompt
Grab a notebook or open a blank document, and ask yourself these questions about your current team dynamics:
Where am I confusing empathy with doing the work for someone else?
If I am complaining that my team won’t take ownership, what is my unconscious commitment to being the “fixer”?
What is the “payoff” I get from a team that constantly needs my help?
What is one clear boundary I can set today to shift the system from enabling to empowering?
“If they don’t like the new direction, they know where the door is.”
How many times have you heard these phrases tossed around during a corporate restructuring, a messy pivot, or a sudden round of layoffs? We’ve been conditioned to believe that driving organizational change requires a kind of executive shock-and-awe. We issue top-down mandates, weaponize performance metrics, and use the unspoken anxiety of the next economic downturn to force compliance.
We call it “driving alignment.” Let’s call it what it actually is: corporate coercion.
We use these heavy-handed tactics because we assume force is the most efficient way to get results. But modern history, human psychology, and data tell a completely different story.
The Source: 100 Years of Uprisings
On a recent episode of the Hidden Brain podcast, political scientist Erica Chenoweth dropped a data-backed bomb on our collective assumptions about power. Chenoweth studied over a century of global revolutions and insurrections to determine what actually forces a system to change.
Her research revealed two staggering facts:
Non-violent movements are twice as likely to succeed as violent ones.
The 3.5% Rule: No government or regime in her data set failed to change once 3.5% of the population became actively, visibly engaged in the movement.
Chenoweth also uncovered a dark tactical truth. Authoritarian regimes intentionally use violence and intimidation not just to hurt their active opponents, but to terrify the “neutral middle” of the population. The goal is to make joining the movement look so dangerous that the average citizen decides to stay home and stay quiet.
When we use coercive language, tight ultimatums, and fear-based pressure in business, we are running the exact same autocratic playbook. And it backfires beautifully.
The Reframe: The “Neutral Middle” is Your Bedrock
When a new initiative drops, leaders tend to divide the company into two camps: the enthusiastic early adopters and the “resisters.” Anyone who doesn’t immediately drink the Kool-Aid is viewed as passive, checked out, or a barrier to progress.
That is a short-sighted leadership blind spot.
Let’s reframe the emotional signal of the “neutral middle.” These employees aren’t lazy, and they don’t hate growth. They are corporate survivors.
They have deep institutional memory. They’ve watched three different “transformations” come and go under different leaders. Their neutrality isn’t a lack of commitment. It is a healthy mechanism of self-protection. They are trying to shield their energy, their focus, and their daily output from a chaotic management wave so they can actually do the work.
The neutral middle has good intentions. They are the essential bedrock holding the business together while executives play with new frameworks. If you treat their caution as a threat, you will push them directly into active resistance.
Leadership Application: How to Activate Your 3.5%
If you want real, sustainable evolution in your organization, you have to stop trying to force 100% compliance through fear. Instead, you need to attract a critical mass.
Ditch the Coercive Language: Eliminate phrases that imply people are disposable if they don’t instantly fall in line. Fear produces superficial compliance, but it utterly destroys the psychological safety required for actual innovation.
Build a Cross-Functional 3.5% Coalition: Your critical mass shouldn’t just be the executive team or a specialized squad of “change champions” who look like corporate cheerleaders. Your 3.5% must be a micro-coalition across all levels and roles. Find the informal culture carriers: the quiet senior engineers, the respected front-line managers, the operations experts. If they buy in, the system shifts organically.
Lower the Cost of Entry: Dictators hate humor and flexibility because it strips away their power. In organizations, instead of high-stakes mandates, use what Chenoweth calls “dilemma actions”—lightweight, low-friction experiments. Invite teams to try a new process for just two weeks as a trial. Keep it conversational, flexible, and iterative.
When you make the change safe, low-risk, and genuinely collaborative, the neutral middle will naturally lean in. You don’t need to drag them onto the bus. They will walk over to see why it’s worth riding.
A Practical Takeaway
Mantra for the week:
“Compliance can be forced; commitment must be attracted. Stop hunting for resisters, and start building your 3.5%.”
The Coaching Prompt
Ask yourself or your leadership team these questions this week:
Look at your current top-priority initiative. What coercive language or fear-based pressure (implicit or explicit) are you using to drive it forward?
Who are the informal, trusted influencers in your organization, outside of the executive team, who need to be part of your critical 3.5%?
How can you reframe the skepticism of your neutral team members? What valuable thing are they currently trying to protect?
It happens in almost every meeting. You are sitting there, minding your own business, when a colleague or executive throws a conversational hand grenade your way.
Suddenly, the spotlight is on you. Your heart rate spikes. Your brain frantically scrolls through every piece of data you’ve ever acquired, trying to find the “perfect” thing to say. And when you finally open your mouth, what comes out feels less like a strategic insight and more like a word salad.
We look at people who are effortlessly articulate in these moments and assume they possess a rare, genetic gift. We tell ourselves, “I’m just not good on my feet.” But that panic isn’t a sign of incompetence. It’s a structural failure.
The Source: Why Your Brain Freezes
In his book Think Faster, Talk Smarter, Stanford communication expert Matt Abrahams highlights the real culprit behind our impromptu speaking anxiety: Cognitive Load.
When you are put on the spot, your brain is suddenly forced to do two incredibly difficult things at the exact same time:
Listing: Generating the raw content (the facts, the ideas, the data).
Sequencing: Deciding the order in which to say them.
It’s the mental equivalent of trying to bake a cake while simultaneously writing the recipe from scratch. Your mental RAM maxes out, your internal system crashes, and you resort to “umms,” “ahhs,” and rambling.
The Reframe: Structure is Freedom
Here is the shift: Stop trying to think of what to say, and start choosing how to say it.
That sudden spike of adrenaline you feel when put on the spot isn’t a bug; it’s a feature. It is raw energy looking for a container. If you don’t give that energy a boundary, it turns into anxiety. But if you give it a framework, it turns into focus.
As Abrahams notes, structure sets you free. When you choose a structural map before you start speaking, you automate the sequencing part of your brain. This frees up 50% of your cognitive capacity to focus entirely on your message. You don’t need a silver tongue; you just need a track to run on.
The Leadership Playbook: 3 Frameworks to Lean On
The next time you are caught off guard, do not just start talking. Take a breath, silently pick one of these three structural blueprints, and fill in the blanks:
1. The Everyday Anchor: What? So What? Now What?
This is the undisputed heavyweight champion of impromptu speaking. It works for project updates, giving feedback, or answering a sudden question from a client.
What: State the cold, hard facts or the current situation.
So What: Explain why this matters. What is the impact on the team, the budget, or the timeline?
Now What: Define the immediate next step or call to action.
2. The High-Stakes Pivot: Challenge – Opportunity – Resolution
When things go wrong and everyone looks to you for answers, use this to reframe a crisis into a strategic moment.
Challenge: Acknowledge the problem or obstacle directly without sugarcoating it.
Opportunity: Pivot to what can be learned, or what new door this challenge opens.
Resolution: Propose the definitive action step to move forward.
3. The Vision Builder: Past – Present – Future
Perfect for milestones, kicking off unexpected initiatives, or when you need to align a team that has lost its bearings.
Past: Where did we start? What is the context?
Present: Where are we standing right now? What is the immediate reality?
Future: Where are we going? What does success look like?
The Practical Takeaway
The One-Second Blueprint: The moment you are put on the spot, pause for one full second. In that silence, whisper a mantra to yourself: “I am doing a ‘What, So What, Now What’.” Deciding the structure before you open your mouth is the difference between wandering aimlessly and leading with authority.
The Coaching Prompt
Bring these questions to your next reflection session, or use them to coach a team member who struggles with visibility in meetings:
Where do I ramble most? In which specific scenarios (e.g., upward management, peer debates, client pushback) do I feel my cognitive load redlining?
What is my default defense mechanism when caught off guard? Do I over-explain with data, shut down and say too little, or pass the mic to someone else?
How can we build a “structure-first” culture on our team? How can we use frameworks like What? So What? Now What? in our async updates or daily standups to save everyone’s mental RAM?
Let’s talk about the lie we tell ourselves when we’re stressed:
“If I just think about this problem for another three hours, I’ll finally solve it.”
We replay past conversations like we’re a director trying to edit a bad movie, or we project into the future, convinced that worrying is just “proactive preparation.” We convince ourselves that this mental gymnastics is useful.
Spoiler alert: It’s not. It’s a maze. And the deeper you run into it, the harder it is to find the exit.
The Source: Thoughts are Weather, Not the Sky
In her book Just a Thought, Dr. Amy Johnson introduces a liberating paradigm shift about how our brains actually function.
As human beings, we are evolutionary marvels wired for survival. Your thinking mind isn’t trying to torture you when it loops on a mistake you made in a meeting last Tuesday; it’s simply trying to keep you safe.
The problem is that your brain doesn’t know the difference between a physical predator and a difficult client email. It treats both as existential threats, flooding your system with thoughts designed to “fix” the danger.
The Reframe: The Suggestion Box
Here is the twist: Rumination isn’t a sign that you are broken; it’s a sign that your survival brain is working perfectly. The loop of worry is just an emotional signal. It’s your brain saying, “Hey, I care about this outcome, and I feel unsafe right now.” But just because your mind hands you a thought doesn’t mean you have to buy into it. Your brain is a suggestion box, not a dictator. Thoughts are not solid objects; they are transient energy. They only become a maze when we grab onto them, unpack our bags, and decide to live there.
Nothing external can lift you out of that maze. No new strategy, no extra data, and no amount of reassurance. The exit is entirely internal: it’s realizing that a thought is just a thought, and you have the power to let it pass.
Leadership Application: Stop Time-Traveling
In leadership, staying stuck in the maze is a quiet productivity killer. When we ruminate, we aren’t leading; we are time-traveling.
We are either in the past, trying to manage a reality that has already occurred.
Or we are in the future, trying to control a reality that doesn’t exist yet.
When you are trapped in the past or the future, you are completely unavailable to the people you are leading in the present.
Letting go of the thought loop and returning to the room takes practice. It feels counter-intuitive because your brain tells you that dropping the worry means you’re being irresponsible. But true human-centric leadership requires the discipline to say, “Thank you, mind, for trying to protect me. But I am choosing to be right here, right now.”
A Practical Takeaway
The Leader’s Mantra: “It’s just a thought. It doesn’t need a meeting.”
The tl;dr: You cannot stop your brain from producing thoughts any more than you can stop the sky from producing clouds. But you can stop mistaking the clouds for the sky. Drop the debate with your own mind and anchor back into the present moment.
The Coaching Prompt
Ask yourself, or your team, during your next 1-on-1, these four questions to break the cycle of rumination:
What is the actual data here, and what is just the “survival story” my mind is spinning about it?
Am I actually preparing for the future right now, or am I just using worry to feel like I’m doing something?
If I chose not to believe this specific thought today, what action would I take right now?
What does my team need from me in this exact moment that I am currently missing?
Anxiety is creeping into leadership circles. A late-2025 study by The Conference Board suggests that AI can now handle up to 90% of routine career coaching tasks.
I’ll be honest: the knee-jerk fear of obsolescence was exactly my response recently. A client told me she was looking into AI to scale coaching across her organization. In her company, coaching has historically been locked behind a velvet rope, available only to those who reach a certain hierarchical level. She wanted to democratize it.
I was skeptical, but I investigated. And frankly, I was blown away. I found a platform that is incredibly effective if you want your people to practice soft skills, like navigating a difficult conversation with a colleague, or nailing a sales pitch, rather than practicing on actual prospects and customers.
My initial fear quickly gave way to a counterintuitive observation: AI isn’t here to kill human coaching or leadership; it’s here to save us from our own transactional mediocrity. The algorithm is forcing a brutal but necessary question: If a machine can do my job, was I operating like a machine?
The Framework
The Integral Institute offers a brilliant framework for navigating this shift. They divide our development needs into two distinct lanes:
Top-of-Funnel (How do I think about this problem?): The realm of performative, cognitive coaching.
Bottom-of-Funnel (Who am I becoming as a leader?): The realm of existential, transformational coaching.
Researcher Tatiana Bachkirova (HEC Paris) draws the absolute dividing line at “embodied empathy.” AI possesses flawless syntactic empathy: It knows exactly what words to string together to validate an emotion. But it has never lived through anything. It doesn’t know risk, loss, or mortality.
The Reframe: The Signal Behind the Threat
The fear of being replaced isn’t a bug; it’s a signal. It tells us we’ve spent way too much time in the “performative” zone: optimizing skills, running role-plays, and offering cognitive behavioral tweaks. AI excels here. It treats symptoms, optimizes metrics, and operates 24/7 without burning out.
The positive side of this “threat” is liberation. By offloading habit tracking and cognitive prep to an algorithm, human leaders and coaches are forced to step up and do their actual jobs: navigating the messy reality of human identity. An AI can give you ten perfectly structured frameworks for delegating tasks, but it cannot help you when your nervous system is terrified of losing control.
Leadership Application: The Hybrid Model
In organizational life, this demands a shift in how we build and support our teams. The future belongs to a tiered, hybrid model:
Phase 1: AI as the Pre-Coach (Performative). The tool is used for onboarding, baseline skill assessments, and goal-tracking. It handles the “presenting problem.”
Phase 2: The Human as the Alchemist (Transformational). This is where you step in. You use the AI’s data as a baseline, but focus entirely on the human. You read the shifting energy in a room, spot systemic power dynamics that an algorithm is blind to, and possess the courage to sit in the discomfort of silence to force a real breakthrough.
Phase 3: AI as the Accountability Partner (Continuous). Post-breakthrough, the AI steps back in to provide the daily nudges and micro-learning needed to turn a transformational epiphany into a sustained habit.
The Takeaway (TL;DR)
If coaching and leadership are just about giving advice and tracking KPIs, the algorithm wins. If they are interpretive, embodied, relational practices meant to reinvent how a human operates in the world, you are irreplaceable.
Leave the tasks to the bots; keep the identity for the humans.
The Coaching Prompt: The Impact Audit
Take five minutes before your next 1:1 or team meeting and ask yourself:
Looking at my meetings last week, which ones were just information transfer or checklist tracking (things an AI could easily do)?
When a team member struggles, do I rush to hand them a “solution framework” (bot mode), or am I capable of sitting in the discomfort and listening for the “unsaid”?
Am I trying to optimize this person’s symptoms, or am I trying to help them transform their professional identity?
P.S. If you are curious about the AI simulation tool I mentioned earlier—the one that blew me away for safe, scalable soft-skill practice—just reply to this email. I will gladly introduce you to the people behind the solution. Ironically enough, they are fantastic and very human.
P.P.S. Speaking of doing the deep, human work: if you haven’t yet taken the Emerging Leadership Navigator from last week’s newsletter for a spin, consider this your gentle nudge. It’s designed specifically to help you map out your own leadership bottlenecks and identity shifts: exactly the kind of “bottom-of-funnel” inner work an algorithm can’t do for you.
