The Leadership Project Podcast

You’ve probably had this moment: something small happens, and your reaction feels bigger than the situation. That gap between “what happened” and “what I told myself it meant” is where so much leadership, stress, and conflict is born. We sit down with Coach Monique DeMonaco, founder of EQ Wize and an emotional intelligence and change expert, to unpack why awareness is the first step to any sustainable change and why fixing behavior alone rarely works.

We get practical and personal, moving from childhood messages and limiting beliefs to the inner critic that talks to us in a voice we would never use on a friend. Monique breaks down the brain-based drivers that sit under so much human suffering: the belief of not being enough, fear of rejection, the need for connection, and the sense that what we want is not available to us. We also explore how memory and interpretation can shape present-day workplace culture, from tense feedback conversations to the way we read a manager’s tone.

You’ll hear actionable tools you can use in real time, including Monique’s “delete delete” pattern interrupt to stop spiraling thoughts and replace them with something true or at least neutral. We also talk confirmation bias and the reticular activating system, the brain’s filter that decides what you notice, and why that matters for communication, empathy, and better decision-making. We close by connecting emotional intelligence to the modern hiring landscape, including the skills employers keep asking for: EQ, business etiquette, and critical thinking.

If this sparked an insight, subscribe, share the episode with someone who would benefit, and leave a review so more people can find the show.
🌐 Connect with Monique:
• Website: https://www.coachmonique.com/
https://eqwize.com/
• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/moniquedemonaco/
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/thecoachmonique/
Send us Fan Mail
Support the show
✅ Follow The Leadership Project on your favourite podcast platform and listen to a new episode every week!

📝 Don’t forget to share your thoughts on the episode in the comments below.
 
🔔 Join us in our mission at The Leadership Project and learn more about our organisation here:  https://linktr.ee/mickspiers

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

If you would like a signed copy, please reach out to sei@mickspiers.com and we can arrange it for you too.
If you're thinking about starting a podcast or upgrading your hosting, Buzzsprout is a great option! This link will give both of us a $20 credit when you upgrade:
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Most leaders think they’re fixing a performance problem when they’re actually managing a clarity problem. Dusty Holcomb, CEO and founder of The Arcqus Group, joins me to break down a deceptively simple idea: remove ambiguity and performance follows. We get specific about what “clarity” really means in leadership and why it has nothing to do with barking orders or tightening control.

We talk through one of the hardest career transitions, moving from the person who gets results to the person who creates the conditions for other people to get results. That includes letting go of the spotlight, hiring people who are better than you, and shifting from “how to do it” instructions to clear outcomes that give your team agency. Along the way, Dusty shares a practical lens that instantly changes how you communicate: your question to statement ratio. The higher you go, the more questions you should ask and the better you must get at listening.

We also explore the hidden friction that comes from expectations trapped inside a leader’s head. Dusty explains how “rules of engagement” act like a decoder ring for your team: what you value, how you make decisions, how you prefer to communicate, how you give feedback, and what your non negotiables are. If you’ve ever felt frustrated that people “should just know,” this conversation gives you a better path, plus a simple two minute meeting prep framework you can use today.

If you found this useful, subscribe on your favorite podcast app, share the episode with a leader who needs it, and leave a review so more people can find the show.
🌐 Connect with Dusty:
• Website: https://arcqusgroup.com/
https://rulesofengagement.com/en/
• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/dustyholcomb/
Send us Fan Mail
Support the show
✅ Follow The Leadership Project on your favourite podcast platform and listen to a new episode every week!

📝 Don’t forget to share your thoughts on the episode in the comments below.
 
🔔 Join us in our mission at The Leadership Project and learn more about our organisation here:  https://linktr.ee/mickspiers

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

If you would like a signed copy, please reach out to sei@mickspiers.com and we can arrange it for you too.
If you're thinking about starting a podcast or upgrading your hosting, Buzzsprout is a great option! This link will give both of us a $20 credit when you upgrade:
👉 https://www.buzzsprout.com/?referrer_id=1701891
Create forms easily with Jotform! Sign up with my link: https://www.jotform.com/?referral=AkWimLxOBz
Get extra Dropbox space—sign up with my link: Dropbox Referral Link
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Most leadership advice assumes people are fixed and organizations are machines. We don’t buy that. People change, teams adapt, and every interaction leaves a trace, which is why we’re using a garden metaphor to tie together the biggest lessons from Antoniette Roze, Ron Friedman, and Frans Campher. When leadership is a living ecosystem, your job is not to “control the machine,” it’s to tend the conditions where trust, clarity, and good work can grow.

We start with communication as planting: the difference between having an idea and helping someone receive it. If you’ve ever explained something “clearly” and still met confusion or resistance, the problem may be soil, not seed. We dig into generative listening, how people interpret messages through history and emotion, and how real co-creation happens when input can actually shape outcomes.

Then we zoom out to team performance and team productivity. Individual optimization does not guarantee collective performance, especially when focus time becomes someone else’s bottleneck. We walk through what a high-performing team needs: shared goals people understand, role clarity that prevents waiting, and interdependence that matches how work really flows. Along the way, we bring in behavioral humility (with a nod to Robert Sapolsky) to replace snap character judgments with curiosity and smarter accountability.

Finally, we go inward. Leadership masks, persona, authenticity, and shadow show up in the room whether we admit it or not. You’ll leave with five questions to use before your next important conversation and a simple one-week experiment to run in a single team or meeting. Subscribe, share this with a leader who needs it, and leave a review so more people can find the show.
Send us Fan Mail
Support the show
✅ Follow The Leadership Project on your favourite podcast platform and listen to a new episode every week!

📝 Don’t forget to share your thoughts on the episode in the comments below.
 
🔔 Join us in our mission at The Leadership Project and learn more about our organisation here:  https://linktr.ee/mickspiers

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

If you would like a signed copy, please reach out to sei@mickspiers.com and we can arrange it for you too.
If you're thinking about starting a podcast or upgrading your hosting, Buzzsprout is a great option! This link will give both of us a $20 credit when you upgrade:
👉 https://www.buzzsprout.com/?referrer_id=1701891
Create forms easily with Jotform! Sign up with my link: https://www.jotform.com/?referral=AkWimLxOBz
Get extra Dropbox space—sign up with my link: Dropbox Referral Link
Wise Referral link: https://wise.com/invite/dic/michaels11434
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If you’ve ever felt pressure to “look like a leader” instead of actually leading, this conversation will land. I sit down with executive coach and author Frans Campher (Dynamic Leadership in a Disruptive World) to talk about the masks we inherit, the behaviors we copy, and the quiet cost of bending ourselves out of shape to fit an old leadership template.

We get practical fast. Frans shares his head, heart, and gut framework for decision-making and why ignoring intuition and emotion can push smart people into the wrong roles for the wrong reasons. We also challenge the way we talk about imposter syndrome, reframing it as imposter thoughts and exploring how authenticity grows through small, deliberate experiments rather than big performative leaps. Along the way, we unpack what it really means to “be yourself” at work without using authenticity as an excuse to be unfiltered or careless.

The deeper thread is identity. If you don’t know who you are, you’ll default to mimicry, technique, and performance. Frans lays out reflective practices like life story work, values inventories, and daily journaling to build self-awareness and a grounded leadership signature. We also talk about leading people dynamically as they evolve, meeting them fresh instead of relying on old mental files, and how presence and listening to understand can change the quality of trust in every conversation. Finally, Frans’ orchestra analogy makes the shift clear: leadership growth often means moving from expert to conductor, creating results through others.

Subscribe for more conversations on authentic leadership, leadership development, executive coaching, and leading through disruption, and if this sparks an insight, share it and leave a review so more leaders can find it.
🌐 Connect with Frans:
• Website: https://www.ildynamics.com/
• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/franscampher/

📚 You can purchase Frans' book on Amazon:
• Dynamic Leadership in a Disruptive World: https://www.amazon.com/dp/1068365803/
Send us Fan Mail
Support the show
✅ Follow The Leadership Project on your favourite podcast platform and listen to a new episode every week!

📝 Don’t forget to share your thoughts on the episode in the comments below.
 
🔔 Join us in our mission at The Leadership Project and learn more about our organisation here:  https://linktr.ee/mickspiers

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

If you would like a signed copy, please reach out to sei@mickspiers.com and we can arrange it for you too.
If you're thinking about starting a podcast or upgrading your hosting, Buzzsprout is a great option! This link will give both of us a $20 credit when you upgrade:
👉 https://www.buzzsprout.com/?referrer_id=1701891
Create forms easily with Jotform! Sign up with my link: https://www.jotform.com/?referral=AkWimLxOBz
Get extra Dropbox space—sign up with my link: Dropbox Referral Link
Wise Referral link: https://wise.com/invite/dic/michaels11434
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A team full of smart, capable people can still feel slow, stressed, and stuck and the reason usually isn’t effort. It’s the system. Dr. Ron Friedman, award-winning psychologist and author of Super Teams, joins me to challenge the way we think about high performance and to explain why “busy” often hides broken coordination, unclear roles, and incentives that pull people in different directions.

We get practical about what separates elite teams from the rest, starting with the basics of a real team mindset: a shared goal everyone is pushing toward, clear roles that prevent turf wars and dropped balls, and true interdependence where we genuinely need each other to win. From there, Ron shares the three strengths super teams build: managing time, energy, and attention; making each other better through peer accountability and credit sharing; and continuously improving through feedback seeking, experiments, and innovation.

We also tackle a modern workplace trap most leaders miss: individual productivity hacks can backfire at the team level. When one person batches email or disappears into deep work alone, they can become a bottleneck for everyone else. Ron explains how super teams fix this with collective focus blocks, meeting guidelines like “no decision, no meeting,” and trust behaviors rooted in competence, caring, and consistency. You’ll also hear a simple, future-focused approach to feedback that avoids defensiveness and actually improves performance.

If you want a calmer, faster, more resilient team culture, hit subscribe, share this with a leader or teammate, and leave a review so more people can find the show.
🌐 Connect with Ron:
• Website: https://superteamsinc.com/
• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ronfriedmanphd/
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/ronfriedmanphd/

📚 You can purchase Ron's books on Amazon:
• Superteams: https://www.amazon.com/dp/198218633X/
• The Best Place to Work: https://www.amazon.com/dp/0399165592/
Send us Fan Mail
Support the show
✅ Follow The Leadership Project on your favourite podcast platform and listen to a new episode every week!

📝 Don’t forget to share your thoughts on the episode in the comments below.
 
🔔 Join us in our mission at The Leadership Project and learn more about our organisation here:  https://linktr.ee/mickspiers

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

If you would like a signed copy, please reach out to sei@mickspiers.com and we can arrange it for you too.
If you're thinking about starting a podcast or upgrading your hosting, Buzzsprout is a great option! This link will give both of us a $20 credit when you upgrade:
👉 https://www.buzzsprout.com/?referrer_id=1701891
Create forms easily with Jotform! Sign up with my link: https://www.jotform.com/?referral=AkWimLxOBz
Get extra Dropbox space—sign up with my link: Dropbox Referral Link
Wise Referral link: https://wise.com/invite/dic/michaels11434
Strea...