The Leader I Needed with James (Trig) Rosseau, Sr. | Emotional Intelligence, Imposter Syndrome, Mentoring, Servant Leader, Ne

James Rosseau, Sr.
  • 5.0 (142)
  • Management
  • Updated Biweekly

Are you a newly promoted manager who got the title, the office, and the responsibility, but nobody actually taught you how to lead people? Do you feel like you're spending your days babysitting, firefighting, and faking your way through meetings? Are you starting to wonder if imposter syndrome is just your gut telling you the truth? The Leader I Needed will help you become the people-first leader others actually want to follow. Each episode gives you real tools, honest conversations, and a repeatable system for leading people that produces results without burning you out or forcing you to fake it. I'm James Rosseau Sr. I spent 20-plus years in corporate leadership, including leading a team of 40 at JPMorgan Chase in New York City. When I stepped into that role, nobody handed me a playbook. My office was a closet nobody had cleaned out. I made the mistakes. I led from my desk when I should have been leading from the hallway. What changed everything was a simple shift: I stopped managing tasks and started investing in people. I learned that emotional intelligence wasn't a soft skill, it was THE skill. And I spent the next two decades refining that philosophy across leadership roles, consulting engagements, and mentoring the next generation of leaders. Now I'm building the show I needed back then, for the leader you're becoming right now. If you are ready to stop feeling like a fraud in your own role, start building real trust with your team, and finally lead with a system instead of survival mode, this is the podcast for you. Grab your coffee, close your office door, and let's get to work. #PurposeDrivenCareer #Careers #CareerAdvice #CareerGuidance #CareerManagement #Entrepreneurship #PurposeDrivenLeadership

  1. 2d ago

    229. How To Have The Hard Conversation You've Been Avoiding

    There is someone on your team you need to talk to. They've been showing up late. Dropping the ball. Bringing an attitude everyone can feel. You know the conversation needs to happen. And you've been putting it off for weeks. Here is the truth. Issues don't age well. They rot. And when you finally do have the conversation, if it comes out as "because I'm the boss, that's why," you just made it worse. In this episode, James Rosseau Sr. shares the working relationship that went sideways for over a year before he figured out what he was doing wrong. He walks you through the three-question filter you can use before you open your mouth, the four moves that let you be direct without being destructive, and the short list of do's and don'ts that can keep any hard conversation from going off the rails. James also shares the story of a head of strategy at Allstate who stopped him cold one day. He never once said the words "because I said so." But he was living in "because I said so" mode. And it was costing him exactly the expertise he had hired her for. You'll learn why most workplace blowups have nothing to do with the actual issue, why your office is the worst place to have a hard conversation, and why the sandwich method is quietly making your feedback forgettable. By the end of this episode, you'll have a script you can actually use for the conversation you've been avoiding. Feedback private. Celebration public. Never flip those two.

  2. Jul 21

    228. What New Leaders Get Wrong After Promotion

    You just got promoted. Or you just walked across the stage. Or you're staring at an offer that looks perfect on paper. The phone is blowing up. The congratulations are pouring in. And underneath all of it, the pressure to make the next move is already loud. You start wondering if you're falling behind. You start scanning for the next thing. You start telling yourself the clock is ticking, when honestly, the only clock is the one in your own head. That is the urgency trap. And it is where a lot of newly promoted leaders make decisions they end up regretting. In this episode, James Rosseau Sr. shares the C-suite offer he almost took. Big role. Real budget. A team he could point to. On paper, it was the obvious next move. What stopped him wasn't a better offer. It was getting still long enough to see what was really pulling him toward it. You'll learn why urgency clouds your judgment, why stillness after a big moment isn't laziness but strategic clarity work, and how to tell the difference between visible progress (what other people can see) and real progress (who you're becoming). James also walks through a 20-minute exercise you can do this week, three questions to answer honestly, and a two-column list that will show you where to actually move next. By the end of this episode, you'll have permission to slow down long enough to make the right call instead of the fast one. Your next move is not your last move. Choose progress over perfection.

  3. Jul 14

    227. How to Answer "How's the Project Going?" in One Sentence

    You got promoted, and now you're drowning in numbers. Dashboards. Scorecards with twenty-plus rows. Metrics flying at you from every direction. You're measuring everything, but you can't say in one sentence whether you're actually delivering. Then your manager stops by and asks, "How's the project going?" And you fumble. If that scene feels a little too familiar, this one is for you. In this episode, James Rosseau Sr. shares the moment a potential mentor stopped him cold with a single question he couldn't answer that day, that week, or honestly for a while after. That one question changed how he ran every project for the rest of his career. You'll learn the dead-simple three-part filter that tells you whether you're actually delivering, how to tell that story to your manager, your peers, and your team without burying anyone in data, and the difference between the numbers on your scorecard that matter and the ones that are just noise. James also walks through the scorecard he used to love, the one with twenty-plus rows that had quietly become a wall of numbers with no meaning, and how he learned to separate headline information from diagnostic data. By the end of this episode, you'll have a filter you can use in your next status update, your next executive meeting, and your next hallway drive-by with your manager. You don't need more numbers. You need to know if you're delivering. And you need to be able to say it simply.

  4. Jul 7

    226. Stop Doing These 2 Things Before Your Burnout

    You got promoted because you answered every email, attended every meeting, and solved every problem. Now you're a manager, you're trying to lead the same way, and you're running on fumes. Here's what no one told you. If you don't manage your energy, your team will shortly inherit your exhaustion. In this episode, James Rosseau Sr. walks through why your depletion isn't just yours, it's contagious. Your team doesn't just inherit your decisions. They inherit your state of being. When you walk in depleted, distracted, or already irritated by your inbox, they start managing around your mood instead of focusing on the work. James shares the morning routine change that quietly transformed how he showed up for his team, the calendar trick his old assistant Rose put in place without asking him, and the green-yellow-red system he developed to protect the time he needed to actually lead. You'll get a simple playbook: four habits to start and two habits to stop, beginning this week. Pick one of each. Don't try to overhaul your life. One and one. Seven days. Notice what shifts. By the end of this episode, you'll understand why taking care of yourself isn't selfish. As a leader, it's one of the most people-first things you can do. The leader who runs on empty doesn't lead. They react. And eventually, something breaks. Don't let that be you.

  5. Jun 30

    225. The Hidden Reason Your Projects Keep Stalling

    Your projects keep stalling and you've been blaming the wrong thing. It's not your team. It's not that they lack ownership. It's not that they don't care. The real reason is something most new managers don't see coming, and once you see it, you can fix it this week. Are you leaving meetings feeling aligned, only to come back a week later and realize nothing moved? Are you constantly refereeing decisions nobody seems willing to make? Are you carrying the anxiety of entire projects because no one knows what they actually own? In this episode, you'll learn why productive meetings don't create ownership, why decisions freeze when no one knows who has the authority to call it, and how to bring clarity to one stuck project before this week is out using a simple framework. Two sentences. That's all it takes to save yourself two weeks of spinning. I'm James Rosseau Sr. I've spent 20-plus years in corporate leadership leading large teams at JPMorgan Chase, Allstate, LegalShield, and beyond, and I've watched this one thing drain projects over and over. If you're tired of meetings that lead nowhere, frozen decisions, and carrying the weight of every project on your back, this episode is for you. Grab your coffee, close your office door, and let's get to work.

  6. Jun 23

    224. Treating Everyone the Same Is Failing Your Team

    You were told to treat everyone the same. Same feedback, same expectations, same approach. That's fairness, right? But what if that sameness is the thing quietly tanking your team? In this episode of The Leader I Need It, James Rosseau breaks down why identical leadership is lazy leadership — and introduces four roles every leader needs to move between: coach, cheerleader, confidant, and counselor. He shares the story of a single email from his CEO that activated his fight or flight and left him reading it over and over for weeks — then unpacks what that moment taught him about how we show up for people. If you've been leading with sameness and calling it fairness, this one is going to challenge everything you thought was working.

  7. Jun 16

    223. The Skills That Got You Promoted Are Now Working AGAINST You

    The skills that got you promoted may be the ones now working against you. If you were a great individual contributor, the game slowed down for you. You knew the systems, knew where the answers lived, knew how to score. Then you became a manager, and the game sped right back up. The rim moved. The court changed. And the instincts that made you dependable, the "I'll just do it myself" reflex, the urge to route around the difficult teammate, the pressure to have every answer, those instincts now create the very problems you're trying to fix. In this episode, James Rosseau Sr. unpacks the three shifts every new manager has to make to stop leading with old instinct and start leading with new awareness. You'll hear why your promotion was a reward for mastering a game you already understood, why leadership is not the next level of that game but a different game entirely, and why the new game is won through your people, not around them. James also shares the story of "Montel," a team member he almost wrote off at Card Services who became one of his strongest players the moment James stopped managing harder and started investing differently. By the end of this episode, you'll be able to spot exactly where you're leading from old habit and know what to do about it. Three weekly action steps included.

  8. Jun 9

    222. The Leadership Style Hurting Your Team

    You got promoted because you were good at your job. Nobody told you that the title doesn't put people beneath you — it puts you beneath them. In Part 2 of my conversation with Big Phil, we get into what real leadership authority actually looks like, why the way most new managers lead quietly damages their teams, and what changes when you finally flip the org chart. This one will make you rethink everything.

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Are you a newly promoted manager who got the title, the office, and the responsibility, but nobody actually taught you how to lead people? Do you feel like you're spending your days babysitting, firefighting, and faking your way through meetings? Are you starting to wonder if imposter syndrome is just your gut telling you the truth? The Leader I Needed will help you become the people-first leader others actually want to follow. Each episode gives you real tools, honest conversations, and a repeatable system for leading people that produces results without burning you out or forcing you to fake it. I'm James Rosseau Sr. I spent 20-plus years in corporate leadership, including leading a team of 40 at JPMorgan Chase in New York City. When I stepped into that role, nobody handed me a playbook. My office was a closet nobody had cleaned out. I made the mistakes. I led from my desk when I should have been leading from the hallway. What changed everything was a simple shift: I stopped managing tasks and started investing in people. I learned that emotional intelligence wasn't a soft skill, it was THE skill. And I spent the next two decades refining that philosophy across leadership roles, consulting engagements, and mentoring the next generation of leaders. Now I'm building the show I needed back then, for the leader you're becoming right now. If you are ready to stop feeling like a fraud in your own role, start building real trust with your team, and finally lead with a system instead of survival mode, this is the podcast for you. Grab your coffee, close your office door, and let's get to work. #PurposeDrivenCareer #Careers #CareerAdvice #CareerGuidance #CareerManagement #Entrepreneurship #PurposeDrivenLeadership

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