Best of the Rest, Season 7: The Human Side of Achievement

What if the real shortcut to high performance is subtracting the noise, not stacking more on your plate? We close Season 7 by distilling nine conversations with leaders, coaches, and researchers into four practical trends that transform how we work: redefine success, build resilience for nonlinear growth, lead through connection, and lock it in with light, powerful systems.

We start by exposing busyness as an addiction and recentering on high‑value work. You’ll hear why “real power” is the capacity to produce intended constructive outcomes, how to replace heroic control with a clear “company way,” and why modeling imperfection boosts psychological safety and creativity. From there, we chart resilience as a skill, not a trait: dissect problems to root causes, strip out emotional fog, anchor in core values during chaos, and practice acclimatization—getting comfortable with discomfort while you learn.

Connection becomes the decisive edge. Trust compounds when leaders show up truthfully, ask for help, and invest in emotional intelligence. We share coaching practices that reveal blind spots, exercises that break jargon to unlock creativity, and small human moments that drive big engagement gains. Finally, we turn insight into infrastructure: EOS for transparency and right seats, SMART power to rethink leadership, and strategic speed to align vision, systems, and people. Add a 90‑day cadence to step back, recalibrate, and keep purpose at the center.

If you’re ready to trade hustle for purpose, control for connection, and perfection for play, this conversation gives you the tools and frameworks to start today. Listen, share with a colleague who needs it, and subscribe to get the first word on Season 8. Your leadership voice gets stronger from here—leave a review and tell us which trend you’ll apply first.

Chapters

• 0:00 Season Theme: Human High Performance
• 1:27 Introduction to The Human Side of High Achievement
• 1:46 Trend One is about intentionality
• 6:11 Trend Two: The Non-Linear Path of Growth and Resilience
• 12:03 Trend Three: Vulnerability, EI, and Connection
• 18:44 Trend Four: Structure, Accountability, and Preparation
• 22:16 The work of a modern leader

Transcript

Dr. Leah OH: 0:00

Welcome back to the Communicative Leader. I'm Dr. Leah O, and for the past nine weeks, we've been on a deep transformational journey with some of the world's most insightful leaders, coaches, and researchers. This season, season seven, was dedicated to cracking the code on high performance leadership, but not in that traditional management book kind of way. Our theme was the human side of high achievement. We asked, how do you lead with power and impact, but without sacrificing your well-being, your purpose, or your team's humanity? The answer we uncovered is that modern leadership demands a complete mindset shift, a move from that traditional, that rigid, transactional hustle culture to one that is a purpose-driven culture. Today we're synthesizing nine amazing conversations into four essential actionable trends you can use right now to make your work life what you want it to be. Let's dive in. Hello and welcome to the communicative leader, hosted by me, Dr. Leah O'Millian Hodges. My friends call me Dr. O. I'm a professor of communication and a leadership communication expert. On The Communicative Leader, we're working to make your work life what you want it to be. So in today's episode, Best of the Rest from season seven already, my friends, we are just pulling out four major trends that help us to make sense of kind of these questions that we've asked this season, the conversations that we've had. And to start, I kind of what we really saw come to the surface is the need to redefine what success actually means. So for too long, that default answer was busyness and your title. But as our experts showed us this season, that's a trap. That is not where we are anymore anymore. So first, Peggy Sullivan, she diagnosed the problem. Busyness is an addiction. She shared the shocking statistic that 94% of people who work are over the top busy and don't know how to escape. And what she told us is to escape, the first step is subtraction. Like a leader she worked with who cut email traffic by 72%, just by getting people to ask, does this email give value or get value? This move to high-value work leads to real power. Dr. Sylvia Rode Liebenau explained that old power is forced and transactional. But when we're thinking about real power, my friends, it's the ability to create intended constructive outcomes. Right. So that was the opposite of the stalled innovation she used to witness at the European Investment Bank. But we can't just, you know, hope that these new changes that we're making stick. We need to think about maintenance. And to maintain these outcomes, you need predictable structure. Chris Davenport, after his 1,000%, yes, you heard that right, 1,000% revenue surge, he realized he couldn't manage every problem himself. He had to replace his personal control, you know what he referred to as the Chris way. And I mean, we're all guilty of this, right? So we had to replace that old personal control with an organizational system. And for his current organization, if it's the three eye way. And this is the way that he found that he could ensure that company's growth was stable and continued to align with the mission while also not burning him out and not just protecting Chris, but also empowering his team, right? When you hire smart people, when you hire people, give them the space to shine, right? To grow and to innovate. And then finally, wrapping up this trend one, it's about leading with authenticity. Jimmy Cannon reminded us that an effective voice acts as a bridge. And Melissa Dinwiddy showed us how to make that bridge safe by urging leaders to model imperfection. You heard that right, friends. So for so long, it has been about being this perfect role model. Remember, perfect doesn't exist. Perfect is a myth. And when we model imperfection, when we can acknowledge that uh we are um susceptible to stumbles and fumbles just like anyone else, it increases psychological safety. Also increases uh your employees' ability to be creative, to own mistakes, and to uh um think outside of the box. So, Melissa, she is a trained artist, she was a performance or performance artist. Um, she confessed that she was stuck in this non-creative box for 15 years herself. But if you never showed your vulnerability, your team won't either. And then you stay stuck. You stay exactly where you are and you stagnate. So, trend one, this is about intentionality. We leave that hustle culture behind and we embrace subtraction, you know, which sounds kind of silly. We're not on a math podcast, but by subtracting out what is not adding value, we are able to free up time and space. This allows us to document and lean into a company way, right? And lead with authentic real power. So once you accept that growth isn't always comfortable, how do you handle that inevitable setbacks? That is what uh we're gonna talk about now, too, my friends, with trend two, that nonlinear path of growth and resilience. So the second major trend, when I look back across all of the episodes of season seven, I saw across the board is this idea that growth is not linear, and that's really hard. That is really hard for me. Um, you know, I love the idea that you're putting in the time, you're putting in the effort. So, of course, you keep going forward, but we recognize it doesn't happen like that. And it's actually quite messy, it's quite iterative, and it requires a lot of resilience. So, the key skill here, structured problem solving. And if you want to know more about this, go and listen to Chris Davenport's um episode. You know, he's known as the wolf by his competitors because he is so good at solving um problems. So he is actually sought out by competitors when they can't figure out what's going on, they will call in Chris. And Chris shared two principles that help him to be this expert problem solver. One, dissect the problem down to the most basic parts because the problem you see often is just the symptom, right? So we don't want to just put a band-aid on the symptom. We want to look at the root to figure out what is actually causing those symptoms. So, one, after we dissect that problem down to the most basic parts, two, we're gonna take the emotion out of it. So, Chris recounts going into dire situations where a team driven by fear couldn't see a solution right in front of them. And Chris was able to solve it because he came in with a fresh, unemotional set of eyes. And again, this is a lot easier said than done. But my friends, I want you to think about those two tips there. Dissect the problem to its most basic parts and take the emotion out of it. And it is really going to make it much, much easier to get at that root of the problem, not just being stuck in that symptom that you're seeing or experiencing. So when we're thinking about growth and we're thinking about growth that is nonlinear, we also have to talk about personal resilience. And Melissa Dinwiddy, she gave us a golden formula. She said, self-awareness plus self-compassion equals the key to everything good. I love that. Let's look at that again. Self-awareness plus self-compassion equals the key to everything good, right? So, what Melissa is telling us is that when we are aware, right, we're taking the time, we're celebrating our strengths, but we're also kind of checking in on those areas that we need to grow and we need to improve on. We're being patient with ourselves, we're being kind with ourselves, we're giving ourselves grace, right? That self-compassion. We've got the keys to the kingdom, my friends, the keys to everything good. And then I also want to raise up Stephanie Craig. So when we're bringing in, when we're thinking about just practical chaos, Stephanie Craig advised implementing drills and preparation, right? So Stephanie does all of this amazing work in crisis communication, um helping organizations and individuals. And so she talks about you, you know, she does this disaster training for major airports where teams train to move from panic to action when chaos inevitably hits. Well, what does this mean for you, right? So you're not, you know, listeners, you might not be sitting there running a major airport, but whether it is the chaos you manage at home or at work or even the chaos in your own head, right? We've all been there. What Stephanie stresses is that by kind of anchoring in your core values, that becomes your touchstone to guide you. And so when emergencies hit, when there are major stressors, major setbacks, go back to those core values. Is it integrity? Is it patience? Is it dignity? Is it your leadership? Return to those, let those be kind of that safe space, that stepping stone that you return to when you're choosing your words, when you're choosing in your actions, when you are making the commitment to be calm so that you're able to handle that practical, practical chaos rather than succumbing to it. And finally, we have an ultimate example from our friend Jen Drummond, the first woman to climb the second highest peaks on all seven continents. She shared that she had to find her own acclimatization, the acceptance that the goal is never to be comfortable, but to be okay with the uncomfortable process of learning a new skill. For Jen, I mean, this is literally to be okay with the uncomfortable feeling of freezing, of building an a literal makeshift igloo on top of a summit uh for shelter before you climb the next day and after climbing uh for days on end. But this idea it applies to all of us, right? There are moments when we're learning, when we're um trying new things. I've recently taken on uh a new leadership position at work, me personally, and it's really uncomfortable to not know, to not even know who to ask questions to, um, but to recognize that's part of the process, right? So that's trend two. Resilience is built by moving from fear to facts. You dissect the problem, you embrace self-compassion, and understand that discomfort is simply your acclimatization process. That is how we socialize, right? That is how we grow. So now that we know how to handle ourselves in the storm, how do we handle our teams? That leads us to trend three: vulnerability, emotional intelligence or EI, and connection. The third trend is the most human and frankly the most counterintuitive to old school management. Leadership is built on connection, not on control. I love that statement, right? We're gonna say this again. Leadership is built on connection, not on control. I don't want anyone who learned how to lead through control to feel shame. That is how things were done, and that is how they were done for a very long time, and that is how someone demonstrated successful leadership. We recognize that things are shifting today, and that's not the way. So we want you to think about leaning into connection. And that's where emotional intelligence and vulnerability come in, because they are two of your um your best tools in today's workplace in order to foster that connection. So I think back to a conversation I've really enjoyed with Dr. Sylvia Rode Liebenau. And she she named it. She said, trust is a superpower, and the only way to generate that power is by showing up more truthfully and with greater vulnerability. And that's how Sylvia ended up rethinking this idea of power and bringing it into contemporary organizations and uses. And we're gonna get to that in greater detail in a moment. I'm really excited. But before we can get there, we need to remember all of the internal work that leaders need to do. So Chris Davenport, he told us that you have to boil down every company. You're not managing, you're managing people, not products. And that's a huge shift, too, right? So he stressed that a leader must master emotional intelligence, noting that he himself has worked with a coach or therapist for 10 years to stay ahead of his own blind spots. This is a crucial act of leadership accountability. He said a good coach will enter the danger by calling out when a mentee isn't being honest with themselves. Right. So ensuring that you, that everyone has someone who they trust enough and um have an established relationship with enough where they can say, Hey, is that really how it happened? Is that really what we would call that? Right? Someone who can be there to help you ensure that we're we're not letting ourselves off the hook and helping us to see blind spots that, again, we might not even be aware of. And the impact of connection is profound. And I think back to my conversation with Peggy Sullivan, she shared this really powerful anecdote about an executive named Randy who, instead of forcing his exhausted team to work late, he chose to spend the night bonding and connecting just as humans, as people. And that one night eventually ended up catapulting employee engagement by 26%. And Melissa Dinwiddy, she explained why this does work. Communication is a container for creativity. She used the time traveler activity asking a technical team to explain a cell phone to a person from 500 years ago, and it forces them to find simple shared language and overcome the expertise-induced blindness. Right? We all, I'm definitely guilty of this as an academic. I think we're among the worst. We get stuck using our own jargon. It's a language that we think in, it's a language that we write in, it's a language that we use to connect with others in our field. But we have to remember that that's not always the most helpful, and that is almost always not a shared language across other groups. And another point I want to raise up that I've been thinking about, that I've been using, is some advice from John Gallagher. And he summed it up by confessing one of the hardest things he had to learn was how to say the three most important words a leader can utter. I need help. Simple words, right? There's nothing tricky about them. But for a long time, society as a whole, we've been taught that you need to figure it out on your own, that you demonstrate strength by kind of muscling through. And what we're recognizing now, what our conversations are about now, is about collaboration, is about collection, about that emotional intelligence and well-being, right? And my friends, I can tell you this is something I haven't said much in the past, but in this new role, when I'm not sure, when I've exhausted the, you know, kind of the resources I have, I've said I need help more in the last few months than I have in the last decade, I imagine, right? And it's been really helpful. It hasn't been met with ridicule. Um, no one has chastised me. No one has rolled their eyes at me. They've they've just helped, right? And it's made my life in this new role so much easier. I'm able to do what I want to do and more quickly, right? When I have the answers that I need, I'm able to kind of move from that place of feeling stuck and just trying to piece things together to where I'm in a position to actually start to think about innovating. So that was trend three. Connection is the new currency. To earn it, you must invest in your own emotional intelligence. I want you to show up a vulnerability and prioritize bonding to build the psychological safety that is essential for innovation. But all of this has to be sustainable. So, how do we put these human concepts into a functional accountable system? Now that is trend four: structure, accountability, and preparation. We're wrapping up with the question: how do we put all these human creative concepts into a functional, accountable structure? The answer is to use smart frameworks that manage complexity and they help you prioritize meaningful, high-value work. Chris Davenport dramatically proved that structure reduces stress and it enhances productivity. He saw this most vividly when his company found their CFO was embezzling a large sum of money, a discovery made possible only after he had implemented a systematic accountable structure of the entrepreneurial operating system, EOS. He stressed that accountability is about transparency of numbers, but also putting the right person in the right seat. We saw a few other really incredible frameworks this season that I want to uh draw your attention to. I want you to go back and check out these episodes if you haven't. So the busy busting framework is Peggy Sullivan's framework. It proved that happiness drives performance. She advised making mojo making a daily ritual and shared that implementing just two short cubicle dance parties. It didn't have to be just dance parties, my friends. Uh, but something that broke up the day. But when they did this at United Healthcare, it resulted in a 33% increase in first call resolution. That means that stakeholders aren't calling back two, three, four, five times. And guess what? Every time we have to call back, we get more upset, we get more frustrated. So this is a huge win for an organization. Another framework, the SMART Power acronym, Dr. Sylvia Rode Libenau again gave us a new definition of leadership. So SMART is our acronym here: systemic, merging, authentic, personal, relational, and transformational. And the key here is merging, the courage to give up some control, to combine your influence with others. I love this new way of looking at power. I really encourage you to check out Sylvia's book if you haven't already. And the final framework I want to raise up is the strategic speed formula. And this is what Stephanie Craig gave us, among many other really helpful, tangible, insightful tools. And Stephanie told us we need to define our vision, align our systems, and mobilize our people. And when we have that, again, that that chaos, it gets quiet, right? That that stress, where we have everything in place in order to be able to tackle it in a rational, successful way. To achieve sustainable success, Dr. Marjan Modera reinforced Chris Davenport's concept. The leadership team must adopt a 90-day cadence to regularly step back and work on the business instead of always being consumed in the day-to-day thick of it. And that is trend four. Structure is freedom. You gain productivity and reduce stress by being maniacally focused. I love that word, maniacally focused on the rate framework, maintaining transparency with your team and taking those quarterly airplane view meetings to ensure your work stays aligned with your purpose. It is really easy to get lost and to get sidestepped or uh and to get sidetracked rather and to feel like that season of busyness is never going to end. But again, this fourth trend really helps to give you the guardrails to stay in track. So our core lesson from all nine episodes of season seven is really, really simple. To lead better, you must communicate better, and to communicate better, you must be a better human. I mean, it doesn't get easier than that, does it, my friend? So the work of a modern leader is to replace hustle with purpose, control with connection, perfection with play. Right? So again, I want you to really think about this and embrace this. Get rid of hustle, replace it with purpose, get rid of control, replace of that connection, get rid of perfection. Again, that is a myth. It doesn't exist. It's like a unicorn and replace that with play. I encourage you to revisit the episodes that spoke to you most, use that busy busting framework, embrace the idea of real power, go out there and lead with intention, my friends. So thank you so much for joining us on the communicative leader. I want to take a moment to sincerely thank you, our listeners, for supporting us through this incredible season. We're already hard at work putting together season eight, so stay tuned for more news soon. Um, I'll also, this is really exciting for me. I'll be sharing excerpts for my upcoming book, Amplifying Your Leadership Voice from Silent to Speaking Up. And the whole goal of the book? To give you tools to make your work life a whole lot easier. All right, my friends, that wraps up our conversation today. Until next time, communicate with intention and lead with purpose. I'm looking forward to chatting with you again soon on the Communicative Leader.