Leadership Chemistry

Danny Coleman
  • 5.0 (22)
  • Self-Improvement
  • Updated Weekly

This show is for managers and coaches to learn how leadership actually works — how people interact, influence, and transform. Learn to sharpen your communication, enhance your influence, and develop others. We make psychology practical, provide you tools you can use right away, and become someone worth following.

  1. 6d ago

    18. Becoming a Mentally Tough Leader

    Staying calm as a leader isn't about suppressing emotion, but about building real practices around it. I've often said that leaders "leak," meaning that our emotions and stress are contagious to the people around us—and if you don't believe me, check out the  research done on cortisol and mood contagion. And while it seems like a good idea, the trendy version of stoicism that pushes people to just suppress feelings and "have more discipline" usually backfires and leads to burnout. Instead, I have some more practical ideas: decide in advance who you want to be under pressure, investigate where your emotions are really coming from, reshape your physical environment, and keep practicing empathy. Your team doesn't need you to be a robot, they just need to trust that whatever you're feeling won't sink the ship.   Get Weekly Insights on Leadership: Sign up for weekly tools to communicate and behave in ways that actually change other's behavior Sign up free here: https://www.dannycoleman.co  Connect with Danny: Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/itsdannycoleman/  Substack: https://substack.com/@dannycoleman  LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/djcoley/

  2. Aug 7

    17. You Don't Need More Leadership Tools with Dr. Jade Teta

    In this episode, I sit down with my longtime mentor Dr. Jade Tita to unpack what actually makes someone both liked and respected as a leader. We dig into his rewrite-rewire-retrain model of change, arguing that most leadership advice fixates on habits while ignoring the deeper layers underneath: the stories we form as kids, the emotions that fuse to them, and the competing identities that hijack us the moment we get triggered at work. Jade walks through how to actually knock on the door of one of these identities, ask it what it needs, and use techniques like memory reconsolidation and written identity therapy to defuse the old story instead of just white-knuckling new behaviors. We close on the practical side of influence, where Jade breaks down how he moves people—releasing their psychological defenses by validating where they are, asking Columbo-style questions instead of pushing advice, and ultimately treating people according to their best possible selves rather than who they currently seem to be. It's a conversation that moves from big-picture leadership theory all the way down to the nervous system.   Get Weekly Insights on Leadership: Sign up for weekly tools to communicate and behave in ways that actually change other's behavior Sign up free here: https://www.dannycoleman.co  Connect with Danny: Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/itsdannycoleman/  Substack: https://substack.com/@dannycoleman  LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/djcoley/

  3. Jul 31

    16. The PTO Problem: Why Don't People Take It

    Why do so many leaders refuse to take PTO? What are the emotional and cultural barriers that keep managers chained to their inboxes even on vacation? Today, Head Coach Kaycee and I break down the PTO problem. According to Sabine Sonnentag and Charlotte Fritz's "stressor detachment model," there are four pillars of real recovery—psychological detachment, relaxation, mastery, and control. While we may have different ideas on how to get to that recovery, what we can agree on is this: hoarding PTO isn't a flex, and being "irreplaceable" often just means you've built a ceiling over your own career. Ask yourself whether your team could function without you for two weeks—and if the honest answer is no, then there's real work to start doing.   Get Weekly Insights on Leadership: Sign up for weekly tools to communicate and behave in ways that actually change other's behavior Sign up free here: https://www.dannycoleman.co  Connect with Danny: Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/itsdannycoleman/  Substack: https://substack.com/@dannycoleman  LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/djcoley/

  4. Jul 24

    15. The Human Side of Leadership with Meleah Rose

    The work of knowing yourself as a leader never really finishes, and that's actually the fun part. This week, I'm chatting with Meleah Rose—a somatic practitioner and leadership coach who works with high performers, executives, and founders. We talked about her path from training as a marriage and family therapist toward somatic leadership coaching, sparked by an illness that forced her to slow down mid-master's-degree and eventually walk away from licensure entirely. From there we got into what "performative leadership" actually means, and why showing up as a polished, always-composed leader tends to erode trust rather than build it.  We also got into people-pleasing, a pattern she said she's known intimately since childhood, and how she learned to filter her writing and decisions through one question: is this my truth, and can I stand on it? It's a conversation about vulnerability, nervous-system awareness, and what it really takes to lead without losing yourself in the process.     Connect with Meleah on Substack: https://meleahrose1.substack.com/   Get Weekly Insights on Leadership: Sign up for weekly tools to communicate and behave in ways that actually change other's behavior Sign up free here: https://www.dannycoleman.co  Connect with Danny: Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/itsdannycoleman/  Substack: https://substack.com/@dannycoleman  LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/djcoley/

  5. Jul 17

    14. Frameworks to Be a Better Leader with Jill Lockwood

    This week, I brought on my sister, Jill (who you may know as JillFit) for a wide-ranging, off-the-cuff conversation about what it actually takes to lead yourself and others. We dig into self-leadership and how "public declaration" is Jill's secret weapon for following through as a solopreneur, then moved into how she learned to let go of perfectionism and trust her team enough to let them figure things out rather than hovering over every decision. We got into self-awareness too, and why admitting mistakes as a leader builds trust instead of eroding it. From there we talked productivity, and how her real edge isn't doing more, it's doing less: taking real downtime, outsourcing anything that doesn't matter, and working in focused, high-energy blocks instead of staying half-on all day. We closed things out with some bigger-picture life lessons—mainly that you can't make everything important, so you might as well get intentional about the handful of things that are.   Get Weekly Insights on Leadership: Sign up for weekly tools to communicate and behave in ways that actually change other's behavior Sign up free here: https://www.dannycoleman.co  Connect with Danny: Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/itsdannycoleman/  Substack: https://substack.com/@dannycoleman  LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/djcoley/

  6. Jul 10

    13. How to Master Your Emotions

    Emotions aren't the enemy of a good life—they're the path to one. The philosophers of yore argued that logic should rule over feeling, but why can't we have both? Losing access to our emotions doesn't increase cognitive function. In fact, we know what a life without emotions looks like, and it ain't good. (Ted Bundy, anyone?) Emotions drive our decision-making, self-control, service to others, and the pursuit of goals, so we have to be able to name and sit with our emotions, instead of trying to outrun them. So if the goal isn't to eliminate emotion, instead let it be to understand our feelings well enough to let them move you toward the life you actually want.     Get Weekly Insights on Leadership: Sign up for weekly tools to communicate and behave in ways that actually change other's behavior Sign up free here: https://www.dannycoleman.co  Connect with Danny: Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/itsdannycoleman/  Substack: https://substack.com/@dannycoleman  LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/djcoley/

  7. Jul 3

    12. The Trust Recession: The Voices We Listen to in Times of Uncertainty

    We're living through what researchers call a "trust recession"—a collective decline in confidence in businesses, institutions, media, and each other. Today, I dig into why that's happening and what it costs us economically, professionally, and personally. When uncertainty creeps in, our brains crave certainty so badly that we start trusting the loudest, most confident voice in the room, even though research shows those quick, confident answers are wrong more often than not. Meanwhile, low-trust environments make everything slower, costlier, and more exhausting. To get the opposite of that, we need to start building real trust, through integrity over time.   Get Weekly Insights on Leadership: Sign up for weekly tools to communicate and behave in ways that actually change other's behavior Sign up free here: https://www.dannycoleman.co  Connect with Danny: Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/itsdannycoleman/  Substack: https://substack.com/@dannycoleman  LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/djcoley/

  8. Jun 26

    11. Leadership Language: What to Say (and Not) to Move Others w/Kaycee Coleman

    The one and only Kaycee Coleman—head coach at the Leadership Collective, trained social worker, therapist, and, yes, lead singer of KC and the Moonshine Band—is back this week to help me dig into something we both geek out over: leadership language. We kicked things off talking about how the everyday words leaders use aren't just filler, but are actually doing two jobs at once. They reveal mindset, and they program it. Researcher James Pennebaker at UT Austin even built a computer program to prove it, finding that word choices predict everything from personality traits to shifts in mental and physical health. Kaycee and I then got into some of the specific phrases that make our skin crawl. Things like calling your team "entitled," saying "that won't work," or the classic "I'm a nice person!" We break down what those phrases actually signal about a leader's beliefs and how they quietly poison team culture. We also got into the fun stuff: the language shifts that actually move the needle, like swapping "I can't" for "I don't," "I should" for "I could," and "I'm nervous" for "I'm excited," plus some wild research on how just adding the word because to a request can boost compliance by 50%, and how asking someone if they're "a voter" rather than if they're "voting" increased turnout by 15%. The bottom line we kept coming back to is simple: your words are building something, whether you're paying attention to them or not, so you might as well be intentional about what you're constructing.   Get Weekly Insights on Leadership: Sign up for weekly tools to communicate and behave in ways that actually change other's behavior Sign up free here: https://www.dannycoleman.co  Connect with Danny: Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/itsdannycoleman/  Substack: https://substack.com/@dannycoleman  LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/djcoley/

See All (14)

5
out of 5
22 Ratings

About

This show is for managers and coaches to learn how leadership actually works — how people interact, influence, and transform. Learn to sharpen your communication, enhance your influence, and develop others. We make psychology practical, provide you tools you can use right away, and become someone worth following.

Information

  • Creator
    Danny Coleman
  • Years Active
    2021 - 2026
  • Episodes
    14
  • Rating
    Explicit
  • Copyright
    © 2026
  • Show Website
    Leadership Chemistry

You Might Also Like