What if the key to influence isn’t knowing—but admitting you don’t? Could the most powerful leaders be the ones most willing to learn and be changed by what they hear?
In this episode, former wartime interrogator Eric Maddox and business president David White reveal how empathetic listening proved equally effective in the hunt for Saddam Hussein and in rebuilding trust with a frustrated community. Together, they show that genuine influence begins when we let go of needing to know and instead listen with deep curiosity and care to the people closest to the problem.
Need help developing your leaders or organization? Schedule a complimentary strategy session.
Have a leadership challenge or question you’d like us to explore on the show? Submit it here!
What if the very pain we hide is what could heal us? And what if the people who trigger our pain are the ones we most need to connect with?
In this part two of this Summit 2022 session, Nate Mitchell and participants wrestle with what it means to “become part of we.” Through personal experiences and reflection, they reveal how connecting with others through our pain opens the door to the connection we crave.
Ideas we explore:
2:15 – Peace and pain can coexist.
5:20 – We remember who we are through friction.
7:10 – You are not enough—but we are.
13:00 – The antidote to loneliness.
19:50 – The courage to connect through pain.
28:45 – The gifts we need come to us through others.
To learn how you can apply these ideas within your team and organization, schedule a strategy session!
If connection is what makes us human, why do we keep pulling away? And at what point does hiding my pain become more painful than the pain itself?
In this episode, we take you inside one of our past Summits as Nate Mitchell explores the idea that humanity isn’t something we carry inside ourselves but exists in the space between us. Through stories and raw conversation, he reveals why isolation feels unbearable: because it’s not human. We only truly exist—as selves, as souls, as human beings—in connection.
Ideas we explore:
2:55 – Humanity lives in the space between us.
6:50 – Pain isn’t the problem—disconnection is.
9:50 – If we’re made for connection, why do we run from it?
21:45 – Fire needs friction and so do we.
27:30 – The two ways to get out of isolation.
To learn how you can apply these ideas within your team and organization, schedule a strategy session!
If influence is what makes leadership possible, what creates influence? And does how we influence change across settings or are the principles the same?
In this episode, Arbinger’s Brian Fulkerson takes outward mindset principles from the boardroom to the baseball field and discovers that the fundamentals of leadership are universal. Across age and context, positive influence grows from the same source: how we see and treat the people we lead.
Ideas we explore:
02:14 – What to do when you discover you’re the problem.
05:48 – How do you see kids?
10:42 – How to develop influence with challenging kids.
15:57 – Working through the classic parent-child power struggle.
19:14 – Community as a core component of meaningful influence.
27:12 – The decades-long impact positive influence can have.
Have a leadership challenge or question you’d like us to explore on the show? Submit it here!
Need help developing your leaders or organization? Schedule a complimentary strategy session.
How do you improve patient and client outcomes? Is it possible to prevent burnout in high-pressure fields?
In this episode, surgical oncologist Dr. Laura Lambert explores what leaders can learn from the operating room and what it truly means to have the privilege of caring for another human being, whether as a doctor or as a leader.
Ideas we explore:
03:47 – She never wanted to be a doctor...here’s what changed her mind.
06:55 – What surgeons teach new doctors and why it’s a problem.
09:47 – How an inward mindset shows up in patient care (and what it costs).
12:35 – The Anatomy of humanism and why all of us should be practicing it.
16:05 – How mindset impacts patient outcomes and physician well-being.
19:35 – Healing vs. fixing: the transformative power of who we are.
Need help developing your leaders or organization? Schedule a complimentary strategy session.
Take your learning further—download the complimentary study guide to explore this episode on your own or with your team!
What if the pressure to cut costs could actually unlock innovation?
In this episode, former Fortune 500 division president Louise Francesconi and Arbinger consultants Mike Merchant and Duane Boyce share how two organizations on opposite ends of the globe faced the impossible mandate of cutting $100 million. Instead of collapsing under pressure, their leaders discovered how an outward mindset transformed fear, resistance, and self-preservation into collaboration, creativity, and lasting results.
Ideas we explore:
02:14 – How to tackle any high-stakes challenge.
06:52 – Why the way you start determines whether you succeed.
09:47 – Why you need to shift from self-preservation to supporting others.
13:35 – What it takes to move a divided, resistant group into alignment.
18:22 – How to uncover solutions no one sees.
22:40 – When strategy isn’t enough to deliver results.
Take your learning further—download the complimentary study guide to explore this episode on your own or with your team!
Need help developing your leaders or organization? Schedule a complimentary strategy session.
What if our strengths, values, and even our success are the blind spots that keep us stuck?
In this episode, Gill Campbell—seasoned executive coach and co-leader of Arbinger UK—shares her personal journey and how she helps senior leaders uncover what’s really blocking their growth. From the hidden fear of being exposed to the subtle ways we self-sabotage, Gill unpacks the surprising truths that coaching reveals and how leaders can finally move forward.
Ideas we explore:
02:14 – How strengths can turn into liabilities.
06:37 – The fear every leader works hardest to hide.
10:52 – How blame keeps leaders from seeing clearly.
15:08 – Why values can become dangerous blind spots.
24:46 – Redefining self-compassion and its role in real change.
Take your learning further—download the complimentary study guide to explore this episode on your own or with your team!
Need help developing your leaders or organization? Schedule a complimentary strategy session.
Are you overlooking the potential in “hard” people? What if the most difficult students or employees hold untapped greatness? And what happens when you help people see their progress when they feel stuck or broken?
We’re starting season 2 of Leading Outward by sitting down with Ivan Cornea, a beloved high school art teacher whose classroom became a place where struggling and rejected students grew into confident leaders, artists, and human beings. In one of his final interviews before his passing, Ivan shares remarkable stories of seeing “difficult” people as people and how those lessons apply to all of us whether we are a leader, parent, coach, friend, or teacher.
Ideas we explore:
00:57 – How to unlock potential in people others have written off.
03:12 – How to help people who feel stuck or broken see their progress.
08:49 – What to do when someone resists growth.
13:40 – How to balance patience with demanding the best.
18:15 – Is it possible to tailor your approach to every individual?
25:30 – What’s the most important shift leaders must make to truly see people as people?
Have a leadership challenge or question you’d like us to explore on the show? Submit it here!
Need help developing your leaders or organization? Schedule a complimentary strategy session.
Are you one of our new listeners? Welcome! We’re giving away a free Leading Outward sweatshirt to any U.S. listener who hasn’t yet left a written review. Just upload a screenshot at leadingoutward.com and we’ll send one your way!
In season 2, we'll be taking you into the exact moments leaders realize they’re the problem.
You’ll hear raw, unscripted coaching sessions with leaders navigating high-stakes decisions and the impact of hard childhoods. While you can find leadership theory everyone, we show you real change that happens in the raw, sometimes clunky moments of professional and personal leadership.
New episodes drop every Tuesday starting September 16.
When was the last time you vented about someone? And why didn’t you just talk to them instead?
In this season finale, we hear from three listeners whose lives shifted because of the show: a mom who saw her son differently, a leader who publicly owned his coaching experience, and a son who finally had an honest conversation with his parents. These are stories of ownership, agency, and the space where real change starts.
Topics we address:
01:05 — How we unintentionally take away people’s growth when we speak for them
07:20 — How vulnerability can make people see you as a more credible leader
10:30 — Why venting feels good but never solves the problem
13:50 — How to remove the difficulty out of hard conversations
18:00 — How old stories keep us from seeing who someone is now
Have a leadership challenge or question you’d like us to explore on the show? Submit it here!
Need help developing your leaders or organization? Schedule a complimentary strategy session.
What was it all for?
You've shared the vision, trained the team, and gave them everything they needed to succeed.
And they still aren't following through.
In part two of this raw coaching series, Daniel—a high school principal—continues to wrestle with this leadership challenge. What starts as a reflection on stalled execution becomes a deep reckoning with busyness, control, and the fear of leading in a way that might cost you your people.
If you’ve ever felt the weight of being ultimately responsible for the outcomes and still coming up short then this episode is for you.
Ideas we explore:
01:20 — Why your team might be slow to act
06:10 — What gets lost when you rush connection
10:40 — How busyness is shaping the way you lead
14:00 — The fear of being truly seen
18:00 — What it actually takes to change a leadership habit
Have a leadership challenge or question you’d like us to explore on the show? Submit it here!
Need help developing your leaders or organization? Schedule a complimentary strategy session.
Feel like you're just being thorough? Focused on quality? Clear about your expectations? You might call it leadership, but to your team, it might feel like control. So what happens when your high standards start getting in the way of growth?
In this raw coaching episode—part one of a two-part series—Daniel, a high school principal with deep experience across every level of school leadership, wrestles with that exact tension. With help from his Arbinger coach, Daniel uncovers how his desire for consistency and excellence is actually limiting his team’s growth and holding him back from the kind of leader he wants to be.
Ideas we explore:
01:35 — How to lead well when you’re stretched too thin
10:55 — When your efforts to help actually cause delays
14:30 — The difference between shielding your team and stealing their shot
21:05 — How control quietly strains relationships at work and at home
27:10 — What it means to delegate a task without delegating responsibility
Have a leadership challenge or question you’d like us to explore on the show? Submit it here!
Need help developing your leaders or organization? Schedule a complimentary strategy session.
Ever resented someone you were supposed to help? Or felt too exhausted to care, even when you knew you should?
Our guests have. Daren Forbes has dedicated his life to funeral service, and Dr. Steve Jackson serves people as a physician. They know what it’s like to feel called to meaningful, people-centered work—and still feel resentful, drained, or disconnected from the very people they’re trying to serve. They share their messy moments when their mindset became the deciding factor in their ability to show up effectively instead of shut down.
Ideas we explore:
01:20 — How to keep showing up when you’re completely worn out
05:45 — The shift that moves you from resentment back into service
10:30 — Unlocking creativity and care even when exhausted
13:50 — How an inward mindset clouds your judgment
18:05 — Why caring for coworkers reduces burnout and turnover
27:45 — How well-meaning policies can quietly set people up to fail
Have a leadership challenge or question you’d like us to explore on the show? Submit it here!
Need help developing your leaders or organization? Schedule a complimentary strategy session.
Can we let people—especially the ones we care about most—chart their own path? What about when we think they're making a mistake?
In this part 2 episode, Jeanette returns to examine how the same leadership patterns she’s untangling in her role at work are playing out at home—with her son, her daughter-in-law, and her husband. What starts as a family conflict becomes a raw reckoning with expectations, identity, and the cost of clinging to an ideal instead of truly seeing people.
Ideas we explore:
01:15 — When stepping in to help actually gets in the way
04:10 — How the ideal in your head is sabotaging your relationships
07:00 — It isn't love when it's about you
15:00 — Clinging to being right makes connection impossible
21:50 — Your mindset shapes every relationship you touch
28:00 — The courage it takes to truly see and acknowledge others
Have a leadership challenge or question you’d like us to explore on the show? Submit it here!
Need help developing your leaders or organization? Schedule a complimentary strategy session.
Are your efforts to be helpful actually helpful? And when you step in, is it because your team needs your help or because you need to feel needed? If you’ve ever used the word helpful to describe yourself, this episode is for you.
Because in this raw coaching session, Jeanette—a former teacher turned HR director—works with her Arbinger coach, Mitch Warner, to confront how her well-intended desire to support her principals is preventing them from owning their work. What starts as a conversation about time management becomes a deeper reckoning with control, avoidance, and the leadership cost of doing for others what you should be developing them to do on their own.
Ideas we explore:
01:15 — It’s not a time problem...it’s a “doing too much” problem.
03:40 — The most “helpful” leaders often create the biggest bottlenecks.
08:50 — Not giving tough feedback protects comfort but prevents growth.
13:20 — Stepping in communicates a lack of trust in your team.
17:40 — Fixing everything turns you into the only one who can fix anything.
26:00 — The need to feel helpful is quietly undermining your leadership.
Have a leadership challenge or question you’d like us to explore on the show? Submit it here!
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How do you build a team that doesn’t sit around waiting for instructions? What if your people knew exactly what to do, even when the plan changed and you weren’t in the room to explain it?
This episode explores the tension between roles that demand split-second precision and those where ambiguity is the norm. McKinlay Otterson talks with Carey Jones, former Flying Training Wing Vice Commander at Laughlin Air Force Base and retired fighter pilot, and Brad Harker, a senior sales leader, about what it really takes to drive clarity, alignment, and high performance even when the feedback loop is slow and the outcomes aren’t obvious.
Visit www.arbinger.com to schedule a complimentary strategy session about how we can equip you to transform your leaders and organization.
Questions we answer:
02:52 – How do you drive performance when your role has no clear feedback loop?
07:13 – How can leaders productively leverage subjectivity and interpretation?
08:30 – How do you know if your team is actually having the impact you intend?
14:37 – What does it take to create clarity without micromanaging?
19:32 – What happens when strategy lacks clear measures of success?
23:00 – What does it look like to execute on commander’s intent in business?
We’ve all felt it: the tension between being real and being in charge. But as inner-city middle school teacher Carla and retired Air Force commander Naomi reveal, that’s a false choice. Connection isn’t a distraction from leadership—it’s the doorway into it.
This episode explores what happens when leaders stop hiding behind roles and start showing up as people. The result? Teams that listen, trust, and rise to meet the moment, not because they’re forced to, but because they want to.
Bottom line: The most credible leaders are the most human ones and trust is built at the intersection of expectation and empathy.
Launch week giveaway! Leave a written review, upload a screenshot here, and we’ll send you a free Leading Outward sweatshirt!
To claim your free Leading Outward sweatshirt, click here.
Have a burning question that you would like us to answer or a story you want to share? Click here to leave your suggestion!
Questions we answer:
02:00 – How do you build real connection with people you also have to hold accountable?
06:10 – What is it like to lead in a culture that prizes command over connection?
08:55 – How do you decide between personal crisis and professional responsibility?
12:05 – How can vulnerability help strengthen trust and culture in a high-stakes organization?
15:45 – What happens when leaders avoid accountability conversations to preserve relationships?
17:55 – Why does accountability without connection lead to failure—and how can we avoid that?
19:55 – How can embracing our own humanity unlock deeper engagement from others?
Have you ever started a new role only to feel like none of your past experience is recognized? Like no one sees the value you bring, no matter how much you’ve accomplished?
In this raw coaching episode, Jeremy—a senior leader in a construction and engineering company with 24 years of military experience—unpacks that exact challenge with his Arbinger coach, Chip Huth. Together, they dig into the mindset and behaviors that are keeping Jeremy stuck. And what begins as a story about being overlooked becomes something much deeper: a reckoning with self-doubt, avoidance, and the cost of trying to look competent instead of getting curious.
Launch week giveaway! Leave a written review, upload a screenshot here, and we’ll send you a free Leading Outward sweatshirt! To claim your free Leading Outward sweatshirt, click here.
Have a burning question that you would like us to answer or a story you want to share? Click here to leave your suggestion!
Questions we answer:
02:00 – How do you lead a team that dismisses your experience?
06:55 – What is causing your team to leave you out of key conversations?
18:45 – What is preventing you from getting as curious as you should be?
28:55 – How do you not let painful past experiences, continue to negatively impact you?
40:35 – How to use reg flags to stop unhelpful behaviors before they start?
43:50 – What’s the right way to recover when you've broken trust?
Are you holding meetings where no one speaks up? Dealing with employees who don’t take ownership?
This company was too until they flipped their fear-based culture into a high-trust, high-performance workplace. And in 5 years, they’ve grown revenue by 56%.
Come onsite with us as we take you inside OC Tanner—a global leader in lean manufacturing and workplace culture—where Executive Vice President Gary Peterson shares exactly how they made that shift.
Questions we answer:
00:57 – How do you build trust when employees are afraid to speak?
03:46 – Who should own improvement within organizations?
06:01 – How do you get your people to care about the bottom line?
11:52 – What shifts when managers become coaches?
18:33 – How do you make time for people when your to-do list is never ending?
26:07 – What's the best way to lead skeptics?
Have a leadership challenge or question you’d like us to explore on the show? Submit it here!
Need help developing your leaders or organization? Schedule a complimentary strategy session.
When was the last time a leader told you the truth—not the cleaned-up truth—the raw, chaotic, messy truth of their biggest leadership failures? Exactly. Most leadership podcasts stay safe.
Leading Outward by The Arbinger Institute is not that show. We coach leaders in real time to tackle their messiest issues—culture breakdowns, accountability failures, conflict and blame, and team dysfunction.
We also bring you behind the scenes with executives and leaders of all varieties to break down how they are solving the their most pressing challenges. If you're ready to stop managing symptoms and start solving root problems, this is your show. It's time to start leading outward!