The Leadership Buzz | Work Hard. Tell the Truth.

Buzz Buzzell
  • 5.0 (7)
  • Management

The Leadership Buzz is a short, practical leadership development podcast for managers, executives, and anyone who wants to lead better. Hosted by retired Air Force Colonel and executive coach Lloyd “Buzz” Buzzell, ACC, it draws on 37 years of military leadership from enlisted Airman to colonel. Each episode explores one leadership concept, supported by an idea from a respected leadership book and a real story from Buzz’s experience. You’ll leave with practical takeaways and three coaching questions to help you build trust, develop people, make better decisions, and grow as a leader.

  1. 1d ago

    Purpose: Helping People See Why Their Work Matters | Drive, Part 3

    Send us Fan Mail Nothing is more draining than giving your best to work that feels invisible. In Part 3 of our Drive series, Buzz explores purpose at work and why leaders must help people see how their daily effort connects to a larger mission. Drawing on 37 years of Air Force leadership and nuclear operations, he reflects on a mission where long shifts, rigid procedures, and routine work often led to one measure of success: nothing happened. That was not failure. In strategic deterrence, readiness and credibility exist to prevent the worst outcome. Buzz shares how leaders can keep the mission visible, recognize people who carry the load on nights, weekends, and holidays, and connect behind-the-scenes work to the people it serves. Purpose is not a slogan, poster, or one-time speech. It is a leadership habit. You will also hear three coaching questions to help overlooked contributors feel seen, strengthen employee engagement, and tie daily work to the bigger mission. Subscribe to The Leadership Buzz for leadership lessons on autonomy, mastery, purpose, coaching, and values-based leadership. Work hard. Tell the truth. The Leadership Buzz is hosted by Lloyd “Buzz” Buzzell, an ICF-ACC executive coach, DISC practitioner, and retired U.S. Air Force officer with 37 years of leadership experience. Each episode focuses on one book, one idea, and one practical leadership concept to help you align your behavior with your values and lead with greater clarity, trust, and impact. If you’re a leader who wants to build stronger teams, improve communication, and create real ownership, subscribe and share this episode with someone on your team. Connect with Buzz on LinkedIn or visit workhardtellthetruth.com for coaching and leadership development resources. Work hard. Tell the truth.

  2. Sep 7

    Mastery: Ambition Isn’t Always a Promotion | Drive, Part 2

    Send us Fan Mail The most overlooked kind of ambition is the person who stops chasing the next title and starts chasing the next level of skill. We pick up part two of our Daniel Pink Drive series to talk about mastery, the desire to get better and better at something that matters, and why great leadership makes room for growth that does not look like a promotion. I share lessons from 37 years in the Air Force, including how blunt, specific feedback changed my trajectory and how debriefs create a culture of learning instead of a culture of guessing. We get practical about what mastery looks like day to day: asking for direct feedback that you can actually use, focusing on craft, and building confidence through disciplined improvement. If you lead people, you will also hear what to do when someone is struggling and how to set clear expectations without turning coaching into a performance of authority. We also zoom out to the organizational challenge: systems that reward climbing can miss the quiet go-to experts who make teams safer, faster, and better. We talk about how to recognize deep expertise, how to keep technical talent motivated, and why relying on a single “only one who knows” expert becomes a leadership risk. The win is helping experts teach, mentor, and multiply what they know so mastery spreads. Subscribe to The Leadership Buzz, share this with a leader who values craft, and leave a rating or review so more people can find these coaching questions. The Leadership Buzz is hosted by Lloyd “Buzz” Buzzell, an ICF-ACC executive coach, DISC practitioner, and retired U.S. Air Force officer with 37 years of leadership experience. Each episode focuses on one book, one idea, and one practical leadership concept to help you align your behavior with your values and lead with greater clarity, trust, and impact. If you’re a leader who wants to build stronger teams, improve communication, and create real ownership, subscribe and share this episode with someone on your team. Connect with Buzz on LinkedIn or visit workhardtellthetruth.com for coaching and leadership development resources. Work hard. Tell the truth.

  3. Aug 31

    Autonomy: When Leaders Give Up Control | Drive, Part 1

    Send us Fan Mail Autonomy can sound risky, especially when the stakes are high. But when the mission is clear and the boundaries are real, autonomy is not freedom from responsibility. It is a performance advantage. In Part 1 of our Drive series, Buzz explores Daniel Pink’s first key motivator: autonomy. Drawing on 37 years of Air Force leadership and nuclear operations, he shares a story from an inspection-heavy simulator evaluation. Rather than prescribe every detail, he stepped back and let young officers lead the preparation. They built training around what the crew actually needed—and the result was better than the plan he would have created himself. Buzz also examines the other side: what happens when leaders micromanage, require permission for every decision, or quietly signal that capable people cannot be trusted. The result is often compliance, not ownership. If you lead in business, government, healthcare, or another high-reliability environment, this episode offers practical ways to set clear expectations, establish boundaries, and give people room to use their judgment. Subscribe for Part 2: Mastery: Ambition Isn’t Always a Promotion. Work hard. Tell the truth. The Leadership Buzz is hosted by Lloyd “Buzz” Buzzell, an ICF-ACC executive coach, DISC practitioner, and retired U.S. Air Force officer with 37 years of leadership experience. Each episode focuses on one book, one idea, and one practical leadership concept to help you align your behavior with your values and lead with greater clarity, trust, and impact. If you’re a leader who wants to build stronger teams, improve communication, and create real ownership, subscribe and share this episode with someone on your team. Connect with Buzz on LinkedIn or visit workhardtellthetruth.com for coaching and leadership development resources. Work hard. Tell the truth.

  4. Aug 24

    What Is Your True North? | How Great Leaders Shape You

    Send us Fan Mail What is your True North, and will it guide you when leadership gets difficult? In this episode of The Leadership Buzz, I draw on Bill George’s True North and stories from my 37 years in the Air Force to explore how our values shape the way we lead. Titles may give us authority, but they cannot tell us who we are or how we should respond when the pressure rises. I share lessons from the leaders who helped shape me as a young airman: a supervisor who struggled under pressure, an instructor who taught me that character is revealed when no one is watching, a chief who made me and my family feel seen, and an NCO who prepared me for an opportunity I could not yet see for myself. In this episode: • Why authority and identity are not the same • How your life story helps shape your True North • What happens when leaders cannot manage themselves under pressure • Why character matters when no one is watching • What it means to feel truly seen by a leader • How great leaders uplift people through challenge, preparation, and high standards • Three coaching questions to help you explore your own True North If this episode helped you, please subscribe to The Leadership Buzz and leave a rating or review. It helps other leaders discover the show. If these leadership questions resonate with you and you would like to explore them more deeply, I would be glad to hear from you. The Leadership Buzz is hosted by Lloyd “Buzz” Buzzell, an ICF-ACC executive coach, DISC practitioner, and retired U.S. Air Force officer with 37 years of leadership experience. Each episode focuses on one book, one idea, and one practical leadership concept to help you align your behavior with your values and lead with greater clarity, trust, and impact. If you’re a leader who wants to build stronger teams, improve communication, and create real ownership, subscribe and share this episode with someone on your team. Connect with Buzz on LinkedIn or visit workhardtellthetruth.com for coaching and leadership development resources. Work hard. Tell the truth.

  5. Aug 17

    What Got You Here Won’t Get You There | How Leaders Grow at Every Level

    Send us Fan Mail Leadership growth requires more than hard work and technical expertise. In this episode of The Leadership Buzz Podcast, we explore Marshall Goldsmith’s bestselling leadership book, What Got You Here Won’t Get You There, and why the behaviors that created your success may eventually hold you back. Goldsmith calls this the “success delusion”—the belief that because a behavior helped us succeed, it must be the reason we succeeded. That assumption can create leadership blind spots as we move from individual contributor to supervisor and eventually begin leading through other leaders. Drawing on lessons from my own Air Force leadership journey, we examine several common habits of successful leaders: needing to win, jumping in with the “right” answer, and adding too much value to other people’s ideas. Even when a leader makes an idea slightly better, that intervention can unintentionally reduce ownership, confidence, and motivation. This episode offers practical leadership lessons on: Moving from individual contributor to leaderDelegating without losing accountabilityBuilding trust and ownership within a teamCoaching and developing future leadersLeading effectively through other leadersRecognizing behaviors that may be limiting your growthWe close with three coaching questions to help you identify a behavior that once contributed to your success but may no longer serve you. Leadership development is not always about adding another skill. Sometimes it means letting go of an old habit so you can become the leader your people need today. If you value practical leadership development, executive coaching insights, delegation strategies, and greater self-awareness, subscribe to The Leadership Buzz Podcast, share this episode with a leader you respect, and leave a rating or review. Work hard. Tell the truth. The Leadership Buzz is hosted by Lloyd “Buzz” Buzzell, an ICF-ACC executive coach, DISC practitioner, and retired U.S. Air Force officer with 37 years of leadership experience. Each episode focuses on one book, one idea, and one practical leadership concept to help you align your behavior with your values and lead with greater clarity, trust, and impact. If you’re a leader who wants to build stronger teams, improve communication, and create real ownership, subscribe and share this episode with someone on your team. Connect with Buzz on LinkedIn or visit workhardtellthetruth.com for coaching and leadership development resources. Work hard. Tell the truth.

  6. Aug 10

    How to Know a Person | Leadership, Listening, and Seeing People in Busy Times

    Send us Fan Mail How to Know a Person: Leadership, Listening, and Seeing People in Busy Times The fastest way to lose a team is not always a bad plan. It is treating people like tasks while chasing the next deadline. Recording from a New York City hotel room during a packed stretch of travel, graduate-school work, and deliverables, Buzz reflects on a leadership question that would not let go: Do the people around us feel genuinely seen—or simply managed? Drawing on David Brooks’s How to Know a Person: The Art of Seeing Others Deeply and Being Deeply Seen, this episode explores why attention, curiosity, active listening, and emotional intelligence are practical leadership skills—not “soft” extras. Buzz shares two lessons from his Air Force career: one involving an Airman whose apparent disengagement masked a medical concern, and another in which a junior officer noticed stress that Buzz himself had not recognized. The point is not to lower standards or avoid hard conversations. It is to get curious before getting certain. Using Brooks’s “illuminator versus diminisher” lens, this episode offers a simple leadership check: After a conversation with you, do people feel clearer, more capable, and more seen—or smaller, rushed, and unheard? You will also leave with three coaching questions to help you slow down, stay present, and lead people—not just manage tasks. Subscribe to The Leadership Buzz for practical leadership reflection, executive-coaching insights, and conversations that help leaders work hard, tell the truth, and lead with greater intention. The Leadership Buzz is hosted by Lloyd “Buzz” Buzzell, an ICF-ACC executive coach, DISC practitioner, and retired U.S. Air Force officer with 37 years of leadership experience. Each episode focuses on one book, one idea, and one practical leadership concept to help you align your behavior with your values and lead with greater clarity, trust, and impact. If you’re a leader who wants to build stronger teams, improve communication, and create real ownership, subscribe and share this episode with someone on your team. Connect with Buzz on LinkedIn or visit workhardtellthetruth.com for coaching and leadership development resources. Work hard. Tell the truth.

  7. Aug 3

    From Expert to Coach: A Client-Led Executive Coaching Field Guide

    Send us Fan Mail Where does faith belong in executive coaching—if anywhere?  In this special edition of the Leadership Buzz, retired Air Force Colonel and ICF-credentialed coach Buzz Buzzell presents his NYU Executive Coaching Capstone Futures Project: a faith-informed, values-based, and client-led approach to executive coaching.  Most leaders are trained to diagnose quickly, decide quickly, and fix quickly. That instinct can be a leadership strength—but it can also short-circuit growth when someone needs space to think, develop awareness, and discover an answer of their own.  Buzz explains how faith can shape a coach’s preparation, humility, compassion, and service without introducing a religious agenda, assuming shared beliefs, or using faith language unless the client chooses to include it.  He also explores the influence of Marcia Reynolds’ book, Coach the Person, Not the Problem, and how reflective inquiry moves coaching beyond a series of “smart questions.” It requires deeper listening for emotions, values, assumptions, identity, metaphors, and subtle shifts that may reveal what matters most to the client.  This episode introduces a practical coaching framework for executive coaching, leadership development, and workplace conversations:  TIME establishes the topic, importance, measure, and exploration.  ALIGN supports the flexible middle of discovery.  LAND closes the conversation while protecting client ownership.  Buzz also shares practical coaching tools, including WAIT, metaphor, silence, scaling, perspective shifting, Backbone and Heart, and a Values Lens.  Finally, discover how an Air Force-inspired coaching debrief can turn every session into professional learning—and how AI could help identify developmental patterns while the coach retains responsibility for professional judgment.  If you are an executive coach, leadership coach, senior leader, or emerging coach seeking a more reflective, ethical, and human approach, this conversation is for you.  BOOK FEATURED IN THIS EPISODE  Coach the Person, Not the Problem: A Guide to Using Reflective Inquiry by Marcia Reynolds  Reynolds explains how coaches can move beyond searching for the perfect question and use reflective inquiry to help clients examine their emotions, assumptions, beliefs, and patterns from a new perspective.  Subscribe to the Leadership Buzz, share this episode with a leader who may be solving too quickly, and leave a rating or review to help others discover the show.  The Leadership Buzz is hosted by Lloyd “Buzz” Buzzell, an ICF-ACC executive coach, DISC practitioner, and retired U.S. Air Force officer with 37 years of leadership experience. Each episode focuses on one book, one idea, and one practical leadership concept to help you align your behavior with your values and lead with greater clarity, trust, and impact.  If you’re a leader who wants to build stronger teams, improve communication, and create real ownership, subscribe and share this episode with someone on your team.  Connect with Buzz on LinkedIn or visit workhardtellthetruth.com for coaching and leadership development resources.  Work hard. Tell the truth.    The Leadership Buzz is hosted by Lloyd “Buzz” Buzzell, an ICF-ACC executive coach, DISC practitioner, and retired U.S. Air Force officer with 37 years of leadership experience. Each episode focuses on one book, one idea, and one practical leadership concept to help you align your behavior with your values and lead with greater clarity, trust, and impact. If you’re a leader who wants to build stronger teams, improve communication, and create real ownership, subscribe and share this episode with someone on your team. Connect with Buzz on LinkedIn or visit workhardtellthetruth.com for coaching and leadership development resources. Work hard. Tell the truth.

  8. Jul 27

    The Advice Trap: Why the Hardest Person to Coach Is Yourself

    Send us Fan Mail When should a leader provide the answer—and when does that answer prevent someone else from learning how to think? In this episode of The Leadership Buzz, Buzz Buzzell explores The Advice Trap by Michael Bungay Stanier through the lens of nearly 40 years of military leadership, nuclear operations, and command-center decision-making. Some situations require decisive direction. Safety, compliance, and mission-critical standards are not optional. But not every problem needs the leader to step in and take over. Buzz examines how the “advice reflex” becomes wired into experienced leaders, why it can be difficult to recognize in ourselves, and how quickly helping can turn into taking ownership of someone else’s problem. He also shares what military leadership and executive coaching have taught him about the difference between providing necessary direction and creating space for someone else to think. You’ll leave with three practical coaching tools: Notice the urge to immediately solve the problem.Use WAIT—“Why Am I Talking?”—to slow yourself down.Ask one more question before offering advice.The episode also explores why silence can be a powerful leadership skill and how listening helps people feel seen, heard, and understood. Finally, Buzz offers three coaching questions to help leaders practice curiosity, develop better judgment in others, and create ownership instead of dependence. Subscribe to The Leadership Buzz, share this episode with a leader who always feels responsible for fixing things, and leave a rating or review so more leaders can discover the show. Work hard. Tell the truth. The Leadership Buzz is hosted by Lloyd “Buzz” Buzzell, an ICF-ACC executive coach, DISC practitioner, and retired U.S. Air Force officer with 37 years of leadership experience. Each episode focuses on one book, one idea, and one practical leadership concept to help you align your behavior with your values and lead with greater clarity, trust, and impact. If you’re a leader who wants to build stronger teams, improve communication, and create real ownership, subscribe and share this episode with someone on your team. Connect with Buzz on LinkedIn or visit workhardtellthetruth.com for coaching and leadership development resources. Work hard. Tell the truth.

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The Leadership Buzz is a short, practical leadership development podcast for managers, executives, and anyone who wants to lead better. Hosted by retired Air Force Colonel and executive coach Lloyd “Buzz” Buzzell, ACC, it draws on 37 years of military leadership from enlisted Airman to colonel. Each episode explores one leadership concept, supported by an idea from a respected leadership book and a real story from Buzz’s experience. You’ll leave with practical takeaways and three coaching questions to help you build trust, develop people, make better decisions, and grow as a leader.

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