Othman's Leadership Podcast

Dr. Reda Othman

Most leaders have a plan. Fewer deliver on it. Dr. Reda Othman talks with senior leaders across industries about what actually separates the ones who execute from the ones who stay busy. Every conversation cuts past strategy into the real work — the behaviors, the alignment, the weekly decisions that move a goal forward or let it drift. If you lead a team with something important to deliver, this is where leaders talk about how it actually gets done. C0-author of Be. Lead. Innovate.

  1. 6 hr ago

    E67: Dr. Shiang-Kwei Wang on Creating Processes and Structured Resources — and Why People Still Use Them

    Dr. Reda Othman sat with Dr. Shiang-Kwei Wang, the first-ever Campus President of Gateway Community College in New Haven, to explore what it looks like to lead through process instead of personality — and what it means when former colleagues still reach out years later to say how much they miss the structures you built. Dr. Wang’s career has moved from Taiwan to New York to Chicago to New Haven, and at every institution she’s left behind something more durable than a title: processes that guide people to work more effectively, and grant funding that keeps going after her departure. Her first move at Gateway wasn’t to assert authority — it was to build a Transition Committee and pull her cabinet into the data together, because decisions should be “grounded in evidence, not just based on whoever talks the loudest.” She counts observations and hallway conversations as data just as seriously as spreadsheets — a researcher’s instinct she’s carried into every leadership role. And when asked what she’s most looking forward to, her answer pointed the same philosophy forward: building structured resources and clear pathways so that student completion — currently around 15 to 20 percent within three years — stops depending on individual luck and starts depending on a system built for real students. Working parents. First-gen graduates. People living complex lives, not ideal ones. Key Takeaways 1. The most lasting thing a leader can leave behind is a process, not a reputation. Dr. Wang has built structures at every institution she’s worked at — and former colleagues still reach out to tell her those processes are the thing they miss most. 2. Your first decision as a new leader tells everyone what kind of leader you’ll be. Dr. Wang’s first act as Gateway’s brand-new campus president was establishing a Transition Committee and requesting a deep dive into institutional data — before making a single unilateral call. 3. Observations and conversations are data too. Dr. Wang insists that qualitative evidence — sitting with people, watching campus life, listening to everyday realities — is just as real and important as numbers on a spreadsheet. 4. You can consolidate back offices, but you can’t consolidate decades of community trust with a stroke of a pen. In a statewide merger of 12 community colleges, Dr. Wang sees her role as championing Gateway’s local identity — not erasing it. 5. Higher education treats career readiness like a dessert you earn after five semesters. Dr. Wang wants to flip that — embedding employer-endorsed credentials, paid work experiences, and stackable certificates from day one so students leave with industry records on their resumes before they walk across the graduation stage. 6. Technology is an amplifier, not a magic fix. When it widens the gap instead of closing it, Dr. Wang says it’s almost always because it was designed for ideal students — not real ones with families, multiple jobs, and shared computers. 7. No one fits into just one demographic box. Dr. Wang doesn’t walk into a room as only one thing — she’s an immigrant, a first-gen college student, a teacher, a researcher, someone who worked at Burger King and played piano. Those perspectives are what help her build for real human beings living complex lives.

    E67: Dr. Shiang-Kwei Wang on Creating Processes and Structured Resources — and Why People Still Use Them

  2. 15 Oct

    E66: Ramonda Olaloye on Owning Your Impact: Words Carry Weight, Accountability Starts Within

    Dr. Reda Othman sat with Ramonda Olaloye, Assistant Superintendent of the Office of Enhancing Student Opportunities at the Oregon Department of Education, to explore how a leader holds people accountable and supports them at the same time. Ramonda leads special education for children from birth through age 21, and her approach started at a table in Texas, where she was an educational diagnostician sitting across from parents of three-year-olds. Her answer is shared accountability. If the state expects a district to fix something, the state first asks whether it made its expectations clear and gave real support. Two stories anchor the conversation. In the first, her daughter Remington, who is autistic, was compared to her older sister by a band director. What looked like defiance was hurt, and it changed how Ramonda reads behavior. In the second, she arrived in Oregon in 2024 and about two months in faced a federal review of the state’s general supervision system that she had no hand in preparing. She told her team no system is perfect and that they would work through whatever the review found together. Along the way she shares how she handles tight budgets, competing demands from families, districts, and legislators, and the teachers and coaches who changed her own path. Practical, personal, and steady, this episode is for superintendents, special education leaders, and anyone managing people who have to deliver. Key Takeaways Discover why Ramonda calls accountability “shared” and what it means to ask whether you gave clear expectations and support before naming a failure. Learn to ask what sits underneath a behavior, and what you may have contributed, before deciding what it means. Understand how “stabilize, standardize and sustain” gave a new team a clear direction in her first year. Apply her pre-decision questions: what does the data say, who haven’t we talked to, and what are the risks and consequences nobody has named? Rethink resources by reviewing your own spending first and being willing to stop work that isn’t producing results. See why her office takes professional learning to seven regions of Oregon instead of asking rural districts to travel. Return to one compass question when interests compete: is this what’s best for children?

    E66: Ramonda Olaloye on Owning Your Impact: Words Carry Weight, Accountability Starts Within

  3. 1 Oct

    E65: Joseph LeRoy on Building Culture Brick by Brick — and the Guiding Principle Behind It

    Dr. Reda Othman sat with Joseph LeRoy, Principal of South Windsor High School, to explore what it takes to step into an established school culture and turn it toward a shared vision — without demanding that people change who they are first. Joe shares how he framed his first year around a single word, "moments," and how two early moves — presence and promotion — signaled to students, staff, and community who his leadership team would be. He walks through how three words — communicate, consistent, and care — became the daily anchor for how he shows up, and why "dream, achieve, inspire" only works when it stops being a poster on the wall and starts living in day-to-day interactions. Along the way, Joe tells the story of a 1-and-15 soccer season early in his coaching career, and what it taught him about building belief brick by brick when the scoreboard offers nothing to celebrate. He also shares a formative lesson from a summer landscaping job — a story about weed whackers, 45-degree angles, and a boss who taught him never to ask anyone to do a job he wouldn't do himself. For principals, superintendents, assistant superintendents, and anyone stepping into a leadership role where the culture is already in place, this is a grounded, practical look at what consistency, care, and clarity actually look like in practice. Key Takeaways Discover how framing a first year around "moments" helped Joe build immediate connection with students, staff, and community at a school where he was the new principal. Learn why Joe's first strategic move — presence and promotion — brought a branding mindset into a school setting that typically avoids it, and why celebrating people on the walls shifts how they see themselves. Understand how a 1-and-15 soccer season early in Joe's career taught him to build belief "brick by brick" when wins weren't available to anchor the culture. Apply Joe's three-word leadership identity — communicate, consistent, care — as a daily authenticity check, not a slogan. Rethink how to unify a team of associate principals you didn't hire, using personality insight, shared leadership, and clear processes to turn individuals into a unit. Adopt Joe's guiding principle — "don't count the days, make the days count" — and his servant-leader rule of never asking a teammate to do a job he wouldn't do himself. Hear why a Portrait of a Graduate — engagement, empowerment, resilience, social consciousness — only matters when it shows up in daily practice, not in the strategic plan.

    E65: Joseph LeRoy on Building Culture Brick by Brick — and the Guiding Principle Behind It

  4. 16 Sept

    E64 Robert Swan: Kitchen Tables and Clean Data That Improve Student Attendance

    Dr. Reda Othman sat with Robert Swan, Director of Student Services at East Haven Public Schools, to explore why so many districts work hard on chronic absenteeism and still don't see the number move. Robert argues that attendance isn't mainly about motivation or parenting. It's about belonging. Kids show up when school feels meaningful, when someone notices they're gone, and when missing a day means missing something good. He explains why East Haven's first step wasn't an intervention at all. It was fixing attendance data that was being recorded differently from one classroom to the next. He also describes the biggest shift the district made: senior leaders and principals going to students' homes, sitting at kitchen tables with parents, and asking what's getting in the way. Robert also looks back on his decade as an assistant principal, when he met the buses and cars at 6:45 every morning. Those greetings turned into daily mini parent conferences that told him which students needed extra care that day. Drawing on his years in the trades, he shares a carpentry rule that applies to every initiative: measure twice, cut once. The conversation is practical and warm, and it's full of things you can use right away. It's a strong listen for superintendents, student services directors, principals, and anyone who has inherited an attendance problem and needs a place to start. 3. Key Takeaways Reframe chronic absenteeism as a belonging problem rather than a motivation or parenting problem. Audit your attendance data before designing interventions, because inconsistent recording hides the real picture. Bring coaches, shop instructors, band directors, and IT staff into the room. These are the adults students already "show up for at 7 a.m." Watch weekly micro-trends instead of waiting for quarterly or state reports that arrive "too late." Build a positive micro-feedback loop by calling parents when a struggling student shows up, not only when they don't. Start with the warmth of your culture, because no attendance policy can fix a school that doesn't feel welcoming. Apply "measure twice, cut once" to initiatives, since rushing without listening to staff wastes human potential.

    E64 Robert Swan: Kitchen Tables and Clean Data That Improve Student Attendance

  5. 1 Sept

    E63: Georgina Rivera on Turning One Student's Story Into a Building-Wide Why

    Dr. Reda Othman sat with Georgina Rivera, Principal of Charter Oak International Academy in West Hartford, Connecticut, to explore what actually breaks an initiative — and what it takes to hold one together long enough to see it through. Georgina has led change at the classroom, district, and national level, and in this conversation she lays out the five elements she checks every time she launches something new: vision, skills and knowledge, motivation, resources, and a plan. Miss any one of them, she says, and you get a predictable failure mode — confusion, anxiety, resistance, or a team that just spins its wheels. Two moments stand out. Georgina describes tracking a single struggling reader through her building's old tiered-intervention system and discovering the student had lost forty school days a year to interventions that weren't even working — a story she paired with her own vulnerable admission of once being that student herself, and used to move her staff to rebuild the entire system. She also shares how putting students in the room to redesign a school climate plan surfaced a fix no adult had considered: dim, unsettling bathroom lighting. This is a conversation for principals and superintendents wrestling with initiative fatigue, team alignment, and the gap between a plan that looks good on paper and one that actually holds up in practice. Key Takeaways Discover the five elements Georgina checks before launching any initiative — vision, skills/knowledge, motivation, resources, and a plan — and which failure mode shows up when each one is missing. Learn how a single student's data story ("forty school days" lost to intervention) can create more urgency than any presentation of aggregate numbers. Understand why Georgina deliberately includes her "biggest naysayers" and newest staff on planning teams instead of building a room of yes-people. Apply her test for real team alignment: not the paperwork, but whether people are "comfortable looking at data together" without it feeling judgmental. Recognize the early signs of initiative drift — fading practice, complaints, data trending the wrong way — and why she says to intervene "early" rather than wait for it to pass. Rethink the pace of change using her own analogy: leading yourself is rowing a small boat; leading a school is steering a cruise ship — slow, deliberate, everyone on board before you move.

    E63: Georgina Rivera on Turning One Student's Story Into a Building-Wide Why

  6. 17 Aug

    Ep62: Dr. Amy Roque: From a Simple Idea to a 200-Person Movement

    Dr. Reda Othman sat with Dr. Amy Roque, Academic Director of Early Childhood Education at Holyoke Public Schools, to explore what it really takes to build something that outlasts your direct involvement. Amy shares how her early belief that leaders have all the answers gave way to a deeper understanding — that great leadership lives in collaboration, in asking the right questions, and in knowing who to bring into the conversation. The discussion moves through how leaders underestimate buy-in, how to influence people you don't have authority over, and what to examine first when an initiative starts losing steam. Two moments stand out. Amy describes how an offhand comment during a small consortium meeting of seven preschool directors sparked a pre-K conference that grew to nearly 200 attendees, drawing educators from across Massachusetts and running for years before COVID intervened. She also shares the story of noticing a team member's sad emoji during a routine Zoom check-in — and immediately driving to the building to be present. The next day, that person told her she had no idea how much it meant. This is a conversation for school leaders, district administrators, and anyone who believes that staying connected to the people doing the work is the foundation everything else is built on. Key Takeaways Recognize that leadership is not about having all the answers — it's about knowing how to bring out the best thinking in others through collaboration and trust. Understand that the most underestimated element when launching a new initiative is genuine buy-in — people need to see their voice reflected in the process, not just the outcome. Apply the practice of finding shared purpose with people outside your authority by learning what they do, acknowledging its importance, and building trust before you ever need to ask for anything. Learn how a small, authentic idea — spoken aloud in the right room — can grow far beyond what you imagined, as Amy's simple conference suggestion became a multi-year, 200-person professional development event. Examine the people closest to the work first when an initiative loses momentum — ask what barriers have changed, whether the data still reflects the population's needs, and whether the message remains clear and purposeful. Practice staying present by doing the small things that signal genuine care — noticing a sad emoji and showing up in person is a leadership move that transforms trust and performance. Embrace the mindset that learning never ends — even after earning a doctorate, the next step is strengthening what needs strengthening and building new partnerships wherever the work leads.

    Ep62: Dr. Amy Roque: From a Simple Idea to a 200-Person Movement

  7. 2 Aug

    E61 Aaron Cruikshank: How Leaders Build Strategy on Market Intelligence

    Dr. Reda Othman sat with Aaron Cruikshank, President of CTRS Market Intelligence in Vancouver, to explore why so many high-impact initiatives fail before execution begins and what leaders can do to build strategy on evidence instead of assumptions. With more than 1,000 projects across 25 years, Aaron brings a rare vantage point on what separates plans that hold from plans that collapse. He breaks down the difference between backward-looking internal data and forward-looking market intelligence, explains why single ownership beats collective responsibility, and shares why the most dangerous thing in any organization is an institutional "fact" that no one has verified. Aaron walks through two striking examples: a Canadian company that discovered its market share numbers had been wrong for years because leadership never accounted for a significant import market, and a nuclear energy company that used market intelligence to validate a $100 million reactor upgrade now producing life-saving cancer drugs. Whether you lead a team of five or an enterprise of thousands, this episode will challenge you to ask what your strategy is actually built on and whether the evidence supports the plan you are about to execute. Key Takeaways Recognize that internal data tells you what already happened, not where things are going. Supplement it with external market intelligence before making forward-looking plans. Assign a single named owner to every strategic action, because "when everybody owns the plan, technically nobody owns the plan." Distinguish between institutional beliefs and verified facts. Build the courage to challenge long-held assumptions when evidence contradicts them. Use in-depth customer interviews, not just frontline reports, to surface the truth about how your market actually experiences your product or service. Model outcomes with data before committing resources. The opportunity cost of a poorly considered plan includes every hour your team spends executing the wrong thing. Look beyond your own industry and geography for evidence of what works, including organizations operating on 5-to-10-year horizons rather than quarter-to-quarter cycles.

    E61 Aaron Cruikshank: How Leaders Build Strategy on Market Intelligence

  8. 30 Apr

    E60: Michael Segovia on Why Your Differences Are Your Greatest Leadership Superpower

    Dr. Reda Othman sat with Michael Segovia, Principal Consultant at the Myers-Briggs Company and a 38-year practitioner of personality type science, to explore how leaders can use the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator to understand themselves more deeply, communicate across difference, and build teams where people don't just coexist — they thrive. Michael brings a rare combination of personal vulnerability and research-backed insight, making this conversation as practical as it is memorable. Michael opens with a childhood moment of feeling profoundly different — and how that early experience became the lens through which he now helps organizations recognize and celebrate the very people they're at risk of sidelining. He also walks through a striking real-world example: a high-performing INTj leadership team that consistently left their own meetings having each reached a completely different decision — not because of dysfunction, but because their shared preference for introverted intuition meant they were each processing internally rather than collectively. The result was confusion that looked like conflict but was actually a type dynamic hiding in plain sight. This episode is essential for school leaders, executive teams, and anyone responsible for building alignment across a diverse leadership cabinet. Key Takeaways Discover why "feeling different" in a leadership context is not a weakness to manage but a superpower to deploy — and how great organizations are built by leaders who learn to celebrate what they don't immediately understand. Learn how the MBTI Step Two report moves beyond four letters to reveal why two people with the same type can communicate and lead in completely different ways — and why that matters for team cohesion. Understand how stress doesn't reveal character flaws — it exaggerates personality preferences, and knowing your type gives you a roadmap for what happens to your leadership when pressure hits. Apply the practice of "flexing" — adapting your style not by abandoning who you are, but by stretching intentionally toward what the person in front of you actually needs. Recognize the "mini-me" trap: how organizations unconsciously promote leaders who resemble the leaders already in power, and what that costs in innovation, inclusion, and team effectiveness. Learn to ask your team the simplest question most directive leaders never ask: "What do you need from me — and am I giving it to you?

    E60: Michael Segovia on Why Your Differences Are Your Greatest Leadership Superpower
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About

Most leaders have a plan. Fewer deliver on it. Dr. Reda Othman talks with senior leaders across industries about what actually separates the ones who execute from the ones who stay busy. Every conversation cuts past strategy into the real work — the behaviors, the alignment, the weekly decisions that move a goal forward or let it drift. If you lead a team with something important to deliver, this is where leaders talk about how it actually gets done. C0-author of Be. Lead. Innovate.

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