The Compassionate Leader School Podcast

Debbie Lawrence
  • 5.0 (10)
  • Management
  • Updated Weekly

How do I attract and keep the best employees? How do I create a workplace where people want to be, to stay, and beg their friends to join them? And how do I balance being a compassionate, thoughtful and fair leader while getting stuff done and making money? These are just some of the questions business strategist and master teacher Debbie Lawrence will dive into on The Compassionate Leader School podcast. Along with episodes that feel like you're sitting right there with her in the boardroom, Debbie's practical "Take Action Challenges" and valuable freebie resources will have you embracing your compassionate leadership style while building an amazing team and running a smart, profitable business!

  1. 1d ago

    Your Lid Is Dictating Who Stays and Who Goes

    Your best people are leaving because of the ceiling. And in most cases, the ceiling has a name. It's the leadership capacity of the person above them. At some point, that person is you. In this episode, I go back to a phone call I received early in my career at IBM. A colleague named Ron, one of the most talented salespeople I'd ever known, told me he was leaving. He wasn't angry. He wasn't dramatic. He'd done the math, and the math told him there was no room to grow where he was standing. That conversation stayed with me for decades before I understood what it was really about. This episode names the pattern directly: your leadership capacity sets the ceiling for everything below it. Your team can't outperform your lid. Your results can't rise past it. And the people who carry the most potential are always the first to feel it, because they're the ones pressing hardest against the top. I talk about why this is so difficult to see from the inside. From where you're standing, things look stable. The systems are running and the team seems fine. What you can't see from that vantage point is the gap between where you currently are and what the people around you are capable of becoming. I also talk about Maxwell's companion law at the same foundational level: the Law of Progress. Raising the lid is a daily practice. It requires more than occasional leadership reading. I share the saying I grew up with: “you are who you do be with” and what it means to apply real discernment to your own development as a leader. In this episode: John Maxwell’s Law of the Lid and why the constraint is almost never the product, the market, or the teamThe two directions the lid shows up: the ceiling above you, and the ceiling you are for the people below youWhy talented people leave quietly, without drama, and why it’s rarely about the companyThe Law of Progress: what a daily practice of leadership development requires, and the discernment question most leaders skip“You are who you do be with” — what it means to be intentional about whose thinking you’re building your leadership onThis week’s permission: Your lid can grow but it won’t grow on its own. Ask yourself today: whose thinking am I in proximity to? Whose ideas am I building my leadership on? What rooms am I willing to walk into? You are who you do be with. Start there.

    18 min

  2. Jun 17

    Are You Being Collaborative or Waiting for Permission to Lead?

    She sat across from me in our coaching session, frustrated with her team. She’d been trying to get everyone aligned on a point-of-sale upgrade for weeks. Different people wanted different things. Nobody was moving with urgency. I asked her: “Do you know which platform you want?” She said yes. “So what’s keeping you from making the purchase?”  She paused for a long time. “Because I want it to be collaborative.” That answer is the whole episode. This week, I share the story of Trish, a retail business owner who arrived at her coaching session with a team problem. By the time we were done, she understood she didn’t have a team problem at all. She had a decision she hadn’t claimed. And underneath that: a fear so familiar, so thoroughly hers, that she couldn’t see it anymore. This episode names the pattern clearly: the difference between genuine collaboration — which needs the room, genuinely improves the outcome, and changes course based on what the team brings — and what I call accountability distribution, which looks identical from the outside but serves a completely different purpose. Both involve asking for input. Both produce meetings and conversations and feedback. The difference lives in one place: why you called the room. I talk about why this pattern always sounds like a virtue. “I value collaboration.” “I want my team to feel heard.” “If I just decide, they’ll feel dismissed.” Every one of these is real. Every one of them is also what the broken playbook built its entire case on because it knew that the safest rules to give women who lead are the ones that feel like values from the inside. In this episode: The difference between genuine collaboration and accountability distribution plus why they look identical from the outsideThe three phrases well-intentioned leaders use to justify keeping the decision open and what each one is actually protectingThe test question: “Do I need their information, or do I need their permission?”What the broken playbook taught women who lead about using authority directly and why the fear underneath became invisibleWhat happens when she makes the call and explains it clearly; and why it’s almost never what she expectedThis week’s permission: Make the call because the decision was always yours to make. Explain your reasoning with care. Let your team do what they’re there to do. You don’t have to announce that anything has changed. You just have to decide.

    20 min

  3. Jun 10

    The Most Expensive Business Decision You'll Make Is Solving It Yourself

    "It's just easier to do it myself than to try to explain it to them right now." It sounds like efficiency. It sounds like a leader with high standards who knows how to keep things moving. It sounds like someone who cares enough to make sure the work gets done right. It's also the reason your plate keeps growing and your team keeps waiting. In this episode, I share two stories. The first is Monica, a client who ran a small manufacturing company from an office on the plant floor, who was so far behind on her own core work she couldn't get to it because she was too busy solving every problem her team brought through her door. The second is from my own experience, managing a provincial election campaign and watching a rookie volunteer coordinator walk out of a thirty-minute conversation owning a solution he built entirely himself. The tool that made the difference is something I call the PAR Principle. It's a process for walking someone through their own thinking: from naming the problem precisely, to surfacing every possible course of action, to landing on a recommendation they can own and execute. Once you use it, you'll use it every time. This episode also names what it costs you when you don't. The late nights. The resentment you feel and then feel guilty about. The team that never develops because the leader keeps doing the developing for them. In this episode: Why solving every problem your team brings you teaches them to bring you every problemThe three reasons it keeps happening, and why every one of them sounds like responsibilityThe PAR Principle: how to walk someone through their own thinking in thirty minutes or lessWhat changes when they own the recommendation instead of executing yoursThe question that has never once failed to crack a conversation openThis week's permission: Stop solving. Start asking. The next time someone walks in with a problem, pause before you answer. Ask them what they think. Then wait. You might be surprised how much thinking was already there, waiting for permission to show up.

    16 min

  4. Jun 3

    Vagueness is Mean

    "I've mentioned it. I've been consistent about this. Why isn't it landing?" It sounds like patience. It sounds like leadership that respects the other person's capability. It sounds like giving someone the space to correct course on their own. So why are you not getting the result you're expecting? In this episode, I share the story of a senior team member I'll call Lily and what I had to learn, through real trial and error, about what a coaching conversation requires. Not a single mention. Not a series of softened reminders. A loop that stays open until you can both clearly see it no longer needs to. This episode names the pattern clearly: why well-intentioned leaders deliver the same message three times with diminishing clarity and call it consistency. I talk about the playbook that got us here, the one that told women who lead to be flexible, approachable, not too demanding. I also talk about what happens when that playbook runs in the background during a performance conversation. Where the message gets softened. Then softened again until the person on the other side isn’t receiving feedback. They’re standing in fog. And fog is unkind. Vagueness is mean. In this episode: Why repeating yourself with diminishing clarity is a very organized way of hoping and what coaching for performance actually requiresThe four stories women who lead tell themselves to justify not going back inWhat the loop looks like from the inside including the formal check-ins, the informal ones, and why both matterWhy both people in the room usually want to have the real conversation and what happens when one of them finally creates the conditions for itWhat you’re allowed to do when the first conversation doesn’t landThis week’s permission: Go back in. Say what you came to say, clearly, without apologizing for it. The first conversation is the starting line. Staying in it is the work. And being clear enough that the other person actually knows where they stand? That’s the kindest thing you can do.

    18 min

  5. May 26

    A Meeting Without a Result Isn't a Meeting. It's an Interruption with a Calendar Invite.

    "We need to schedule a meeting about this."  It sounds like initiative. It sounds like collaboration. It sounds like a leader who keeps her team moving. Sometimes it's a very organized way of not moving at all. In this episode, I share two stories from my own experience — one from my late twenties, when I accidentally ran the best volunteer committee meeting of my life, and one from a project team I've been co-chairing for several years. Both taught me the same thing, thirty years apart. When you know what result you're after before you walk in, everything changes.  This episode names a pattern I see in leaders who are otherwise doing everything right: they call meetings without knowing what done looks like. They fill the hour because ending early feels like something went wrong. They invite the whole team to a decision that was always theirs to make, not because the group is needed, but because sharing the room feels safer than owning the outcome. I also talk about the version nobody names out loud. It's the meeting that exists not to get something done, but to avoid getting something done. It's the one that feels like work, looks like work, and keeps everyone just busy enough that nobody notices no one made the call. In this episode: Why a meeting without a clear result is an interruption with a calendar inviteThe three reasons leaders keep filling the time even when the work is doneWhat it costs your team every time they walk out of a room wondering why they were thereThe difference between genuine collaboration and calling a meeting to avoid making the callWhat you're allowed to do the moment the work is doneThis week's permission: End the meeting when the work is done. Not when the clock runs out. You don't owe the room a full hour. You owe your team a clear result. When you get there, let them go.

    14 min

  6. May 20

    Hire for Results, Not Potential

    "She has so much potential. I just have a good feeling about her."  It sounds like leadership. It sounds like generosity. It isn't. In this episode, I share a client story about a leader who hired the most energetic person in the room and spent the next three months doing two jobs. And a story from my own early career, sitting on a hiring panel at a post-secondary institution, watching a room of intelligent people convince themselves that enthusiasm was enough to teach and that we could build the instinct this candidate didn't have. We were wrong. The people who paid the cost were the students who had no say in the decision. This episode names the pattern clearly: hiring for potential over demonstrated results is one of the most common mistakes I see. And most leaders don't know they're doing it until they're doing two jobs and wondering how they got there.  I name the four things leaders tell themselves when a hire isn't working, why each one feels logical in the moment, and what it costs when none of them turn out to be enough. I also share what hiring for results looks like, not as a concept, but as a set of concrete questions to ask before the job is posted and before anyone sits down across from you. In this episode: The 4 things leaders tell themselves when a hire isn't working and why none of them answer the only question that mattersWhy "quick learner" can be a warning sign, not a credentialThe question that tells you whether a struggling hire is a performance problem or a fit problemWhat hiring for results looks like before the job is posted, in the interview, and at 30, 60, and 90 daysThe difference between settled and comfortable plus why one of them tells you it's time to have the conversationThis week's permission: You are allowed to hire for what the role requires right now, not what you hope someone will grow into. Hiring for results isn't demanding. It's honest. And it's the kindest thing you can do for both of you.

    17 min

  7. May 13

    You Think You’re Being Understanding. Your Team Calls It Favouritism.

    You’ve heard it. You’ve probably said it. “I’m meeting people where they are.” It sounds like compassion. It sounds like the kind of leader you’re trying to be. In this episode, I share what happened with a client who runs a plumbing and heating business with her husband. He pulled her aside one Tuesday afternoon and told her the team thought she was playing favourites. She thought she was meeting people where they were. The four people in her back office had been guessing for two years. The fix was a ten-minute conversation. This episode names the pattern clearly: when standards live only in your head, your team can’t see them, and they reverse-engineer the rules from what they can see. What they see, when you push your strongest performer harder than the struggling one, is favouritism. Your intent doesn’t change what the patterns look like from where they’re sitting. The leaders who do this are trying to be responsive to who each person is. They’ve confused fairness, which means applying the same standards consistently, with personality-based adjustments of the standards themselves. The cost lands on the strongest performer who feels used, the struggling performer who never finds out he’s underperforming until it’s too late, and everyone else who quietly concludes that accountability follows the person, not the work. In this episode: • The story of how a leader learned her team was calling her management style favouritism • Why “meeting people where they are” can read as the opposite of fairness from where your team is sitting • The trade-off between firm standards and flexible support, and what gets broken when you flip them • The three-rung excuse ladder leaders climb when standards live only in their heads • The ten-minute meeting that resets a team that’s been guessing for years This week’s permission: You’re allowed to have standards that are clear and consistent. Ones that apply to everyone doing the same work. Naming them out loud, to everyone, at the same time, is finally being fair.

    14 min

  8. May 6

    Magical Thinking Is Expensive Comfort

    "I just need to give it more time." It sounds like patience. It sounds like fairness. It sounds like the kind of measured leadership you're supposed to model. And yet it isn't. In this episode, I share the story of a community committee I stayed on four months longer than I should have while telling myself a different story every single month. It was a pattern I lived from the inside, until a very patient friend sat across from me and named it out loud. This episode names the pattern clearly: magical thinking in leadership is what happens when the story you're telling yourself feels more real than the evidence in front of you. It's the hope that the team member who promised to do better actually will — without a checkpoint, without a consequence, without any mechanism to ensure anything changes.  Well-intentioned leaders do this constantly. They call it patience or fairness. They call it giving people a chance. What they're actually doing is protecting themselves from a discomfort that exists only in the story while guaranteeing themselves an ongoing, compounding one. The hope strategy isn't a strategy. And the women I coach already know that. They just haven't said it out loud yet. In this episode: Why the story always feels more real than it is and what it's actually costing youThe difference between reasonable patience and the hope strategy disguised as leadershipHow to distinguish a story from a fact and the one question that separates themWhat circle conversations are, why they create temporary promises without real change, and how to stop having themThe permission to operate from what you already knowThis week's permission: You don't need more evidence. You don't need more time. You're allowed to operate from facts.

    11 min
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About

How do I attract and keep the best employees? How do I create a workplace where people want to be, to stay, and beg their friends to join them? And how do I balance being a compassionate, thoughtful and fair leader while getting stuff done and making money? These are just some of the questions business strategist and master teacher Debbie Lawrence will dive into on The Compassionate Leader School podcast. Along with episodes that feel like you're sitting right there with her in the boardroom, Debbie's practical "Take Action Challenges" and valuable freebie resources will have you embracing your compassionate leadership style while building an amazing team and running a smart, profitable business!

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