Global executive and board director Shannon Nutter shines a light on the disturbing trend of "quiet takedowns," the silent extraction of leaders (especially women leaders) from organizations. Often done subtly and quietly, this behavior is costing us tremendous talent and potential. Embracing leadership vulnerability creates a culture where leaders grow and thrive instead of disappearing. Shannon's early-in-career belief that leaders need to always have all the answers and lead with a "command and control" style has been replaced by something more powerful. "When I build teams, I focus on prioritizing a sense of psychological safety and trust. I build teams who actively debate each other and aren't afraid to tell me when I am wrong." Staying focused and authentic is key. "Don't be anyone else's version of a leader. And never, ever shrink yourself to make someone else comfortable."

Pi Partners llc Managing Partner Phillip Swan shares how now more than ever, tapping into your unique abilities is the key to impactful leadership. "Every single person on this planet has a superpower. They may not have discovered it yet. But they have one." AI isn't the enemy of human potential, it is an amplifier. Use AI to automate everything you are not passionate about so you can be laser-focused on what makes you irreplaceable. The business advice he follows consistently is avoid self-sabotage by always asking the uncomfortable question. "Always ask the question and let them say no." Partner strategically and build responsibly when it comes to AI implementation. C-suite leaders need to maintain close customer connection in an AI world, not relying on internal marketing decks to represent the voice of the customer. Get in the trenches and listen to customers firsthand. The future isn't about choosing between humans or machines. It's about humans and machines, each doing what they do best. This episode has been sponsored by Meter. Head to meter.com/marketimpact to learn more.

Fortune 500 executive and consultancy Founder Nyla Beth Gawel took an non-traditional path into technology, originally studying foreign service not computer science. In leading transformational initiatives at SAIC, Verizon and Booz Allen Hamilton that included steering $7B+ organizations through AI adoption and digital transformation, her secret was simple. She never planned any of it. "Career paths are rarely linear. It really wasn't about what degree did I have. it wasn't about certifications. It wasn't about things on paper that could correlate to the likelihood of success." What did matter was intellectual curiosity and the willingness to embrace complexity rather than run from it. Plus a big dose of really understanding customer needs. "The best technical solutions cam from a deep understanding of a need, not just the interest in what could happen technologically." Everything is ultimately about people, and your legacy as a leader is defined by how you inspire them.

Howard Behar, who as President took Starbucks from 28 stores to more than 15,000 across five continents. realized early on that impactful leadership is about accepting limitations. "I couldn't control everything. It was impossible." He literally flipped the script, embracing a simple, powerful servant leader approach focused on a constant curiosity and asking questions. "We weren't in the coffee business serving people. We were in the people business serving coffee." It was hard to get fired for missing your numbers. But mess with people? You were done. Empowerment in a growth environment is everything. "Let the person who sweeps the floor choose the broom." Be the servant leader who helps your people grow as humans, help them grow as professionals and help their achieve their personal goals in life.

Author, speaker and tech leader Terry Healey shares with Dan Albaum some core takeaways from his latest book "The Resilience Mindset: How Adversity Can Strengthen Individuals, Teams and Leaders." After experiencing life-threatening cancer in his early 20s that left a permanent facial difference and required more than 30 surgeries, Terry still calls it "a gift in disguise." There are three other gifts he has found in multiple decades of leading teams: Gratitude, Perspective and Empathy. His advice for leaders? "Reward initiative, not results. People will learn more from the mistakes they made than their wins oftentimes." Through it all, Terry remans focused on the fundamentals. "Stay humble, never assume you have all the answers and listen more. Two ears and on mouth, right?".

Lean Geeks CEO and Founder Kenya Oduor, PhD shares how being your best as a leader is all about context, resilience and empowering others. Stop taking feedback personally, embracing it as a gift that only strengthens your effectiveness. No doesn't always mean no, it may merely the beginning of more meaningful conversations. View AI as your teammate, not your replacement. Stop carrying the unnecessary weight of trying to always be the smartest person in the room. Create user experience breakthroughs by going beyond just focusing on the customer journey as you map the employee experience too. "When you line those two things up and you speak to ideas from that context...you can get so much more richness in terms of 'are we building the right thing and solving the right problem?'" Don't forget that "appropriate persistence" is everything, especially as an entrepreneur. "You're not the first thing on someone's mind when they wake up in most instances."

Author and sales strategist Brent Adamson, Co-Founder of A to B Insight, shares with Dan Albaum some compelling takeaways from his latest book "The Framemaking Sale." B2B marketers and sellers have been solving for the wrong problem. For years they have obsessed over making customers confident in their products, expertise and value propositions. But research shows the real barrier is their confidence in themselves. Learn how decision complexity, information overload, misaligned objectives and outcome uncertainty are crushing customer confidence and shifting your mindset to using "the phrase that frames" in your outreach can make all the difference. Providing social proof and frameworks that help customers feel more confident in their own decision making is what it is all about. SHow up less as a salesperson and more as a human being. Stop trying to impress. Start trying to empower.

Metric Sherpa Head of Education and Enablement Nate Brown shares why even in an AI world, real customer interactions matter in creating lasting loyalty. Let AI handle the data, the context and the history, but then make a real customer connection. "It's not about the broken base, it's about making beautiful living spaces for moments that matter." Motivate your employees by showing them the impact they're making with customers by "putting the fish on the dish," sharing the raw truth of what customer think without manipulation or narrative building. At the end of the day, the right choice is to be a servant challenger who breaks the status quo and helps wake customers up from bad assumptions. But are you doing it in a kind, edifying way? "Be an architect of hope. When you can unlock hope inside of people and inside of your customers, you become a force to be reckoned with."

Techstars Vice President, Marketing Andrea Palten refused to play a role that wasn't true to her authentic self. Once she fully committed to bringing her home self to work, everything changed with happier teams, her best campaigns and most meaningful impact. Andrea continuously grows through three key insights: you're probably not that special (and that's okay), your first customers aren't customers (hint: they're everything) and kindness isn't soft, it's strategic. And in the world of startups, it's all about getting back to the basics. "You have to build the foundation before you scale. You cannot start building bricks without a foundation." Andrea sees AI leveling the playing field, enabling entrepreneurs with little budget to actually compete. And through it all, remember that "done beats perfect."

Gear Inc (https://gearinc.com/) Chief Commercial Officer Adam O'Connor shares how his perspective on global growth strategies were turned upside down by spending 12 years living in the Philippines. It's time to do an AI reality check, as it will not magically fix any current broken processes. Solidify your operating procedures first, then layer in technology. AI is a super-powered teammate, not your replacement. "AI will help people achieve more within their jobs." The simple and brutal truth is real leadership is about listening more than speaking. "You can't learn if you're talking." Servant leadership that focuses on empowerment is a path to improved performance. That's not soft, it's legacy building. "If you tread on people on the way up, there's no one there to catch you when you're falling back down." Success isn't about forcing your way of doing things onto every market. It's about staying curious, keeping the human element front and center while remembering the best leaders train people to replace them.

Pace Pricing CEO & Founder Bill Wilson shares the key drivers in delivering B2B pricing that attracts and retains quality customers. It begins with making long term investments to get better bottom line results. Execution matters. "Pricing isn't about what you charge. It's about how you charge." Transparency builds trust with the right buyers. "Your pricing page should do two things: attract the people you want and repel the people you don't." In the end, aligned strategies and collaboration across product and marketing teams is huge. "Pricing is product and product is pricing."

Base HQ Co-Founder/CEO Paige McPheely sees leadership as overcoming personal doubts in inspiring teams to see the next major mountain summit to climb, and being with them for every step. Paige has cracked the code of getting venture capital funding by focusing on relationships first in a world where women represent 42% of business owners but receive less than 3% of available funding. She's authentically herself, raising critical funds and growing a thriving business as a mom of three living in a small town with a "behind-the-scenes" personality...yet driving an EA productivity solutions business that has generated more than 500,000 hours of time savings.

Growing Your EQ Founder Alinnette Casiano knows culture is the life source for any successful and thriving organization. "Culture isn't a buzzword. It's oxygen. If the air is toxic, even the most talented people can't breathe." At the end of the day, precision is everything. Ali's rallying cry of "Clarity over Cleverness" is driven by empathy, which she says is the language of business. The choice is yours, to be a leader that manages tasks or an exceptional leader that transforms by using technology like AI to amplify people, not erase them.

Rocket Fuel Labs CMO/CEO/Founder Amanda Patterson reveals the brutal truths behind impactful marketing leadership in a startup environment. Having led the growth strategy for MindBody that scaled revenue from $20 million to $200 million, she knows it's all about a focus on the details. "There is usually not a silver bullet solution to a problem. It's a hundred little things that you're doing right." Vanity metrics mean little. If you can't trace it to revenue, you're just playing with pretty numbers. Leadership that lasts is much more about enabling than admiring and Amanda lives out the quote from Gandhi that "a sign of a good leader isn't how many followers you have, but how many leaders you create." Customer focus is key, and she has stopped trying to please everyone while instead obsessing over customers.

Techquity CEO and Founder Anthony Bay shares lessons learned driving high innovation team cultures at Apple, Microsoft and Amazon. It begins with an understanding that technology needs to be in service of a problem you're trying to solve for a customer. Start with customers first and work backwards, not the other way around, even with the transformational impact of the shiny object called AI. Understanding the "two door" framework is key, and meaningful innovation is paralyzed by treating "two-way" doors (reversible decisions) like "one-way" doors (irreversible decisions). Building winning, innovative teams is about both culture AND performance, where people are working on things they are genuinely proud of.

Go Big Strategies Chief Sustainability Officer Marilyn Johnson shares the real truth about corporate sustainability, which is all about behavioral change, the choices that we make and the values that drive our lives. Sustainability isn't a department, it's a lens through which everyone operates that helps unleash the potential of everyone in an organization. AI innovation is real, accelerating sustainability data analysis and problem-solving. But at the end of the day, it can't alone solve the people problem in getting to long-term solutions.

Very COO Jessica Begley shares her experience taking on Marketing responsibility for the first time and the power of delivering radical honesty to her new team. "You're the experts, not me." She understands her team can see the difference in leadership styles, just as faux plants differ from actual plants. Plant people know seasons can change, and you have to meet people where they are. Walking Central Park in New York City every day, Jessica has solidified a new leadership principle: "Leaders who show up when the cherry blossoms are out and the sun is shining, every leader can do that. Exceptional leaders show up whey it is icy or when it is blazing hot." She's ready to embrace AI, which is fundamentally changing the power dynamic between employers and employees. She isn't about to apologize for evolving. She will apologize for staying stagnant. "Disruption is not disloyalty."

MentalFit CEO and Co-Founder Derrick McElroy shares how long term business success happens when your employees are healthy in body and mind. With 68% of millenials and 81% of Gen Z reporting leaving jobs due to mental health concerns, this is more than "quiet quitting", it is a full exodus of talent. Using his very personal experience of pain and tragedy as inspiration, Derrick is helping organizations create "high trust environments" where people feel safe to be human. At the end of the day, it's about leaders choosing to be exceptional in creating cultures where their teams thrive. "Exceptional leaders do the inner work. They create a foundation of self-awareness, emotional intelligence, social intelligence and possess a high degree of integrity. Choose to be proactive.

Craft President/Founder Angelo Ponzi shows how the sales and marketing relationship is a critical driver of long term success for any business. Stop treating them like warring tribes. They are relay runners, not rivals. Internal data is your gold, but most companies are sitting on powerful insights they never know they have. Fixing your communication breakdowns is a great place to start. If your accounting team can't explain your value proposition, you've failed. "Be curious. Ask questions. Don't make assumptions." How many departments in your company could accurately describe what you actually do and why it matters? If the answer is "just a few," you're not building a business - you're managing expensive chaos.

Jeffey Klubeck, author of The Integrity Game, shows every leadership role is really the ultimate "inside job." Before you can elevate your team, you must elevate yourself. You can't inspire growth in others if you're not committed to your own personal development. "If as a leader you are unwilling to be vulnerable, you're only going to lead people so far." Leadership actions speak so much louder than words, and are being constantly watched. "Your team doesn't care about your good intentions—they experience your behaviors. Are your actions aligned with your leadership values?" Making the effort to deeply understand your team members' motivations is the ultimate difference maker. Can you tell me right now what everybody on your team wants for themselves? I know you can tell me what the company wants, but can you tell me what everybody on your team wants?"