The Leadership That Shines Podcast

Natalie Davis
  • 4.9 (28)
  • Business
  • Updated Weekly

The Leadership That Shines Podcast exists for the leaders who are done waiting to feel ready. Every week, Natalie Davis delivers leadership training built around three core values: impact, influence, and growth. The leaders who change their organizations, their businesses, and their communities are the ones who commit to growing themselves first. From professionals managing complex teams to solopreneurs building something from the ground up, this is where clarity becomes action and action becomes legacy.

  1. 3d ago

    Why Traditional Leadership Models Fail in Today’s Corporate Culture

    A team culture is working when your people start describing it in words you never gave them, and real estate team leader Justin Nimergood has built his team around that idea. Justin joins host Natalie Davis on Leadership That Shines to talk through a career that began in Cisco’s sales associates program, the moment at a Cisco kickoff that showed him the kind of leader he did not want to be, and the high-performance team he is building today at the Epic brokerage.  Justin walks through his five-phase model, inspect, build, accelerate, optimize, and stratify, which he says he has used to help build two billion-dollar-plus organizations, and explains why building too fast is a bigger risk than building too slow. Natalie adds her own view on why entrepreneurs rush from inspection straight to acceleration, and why it is worth returning to the inspect phase when the market, and AI, keep changing.  In This Episode:  Why a unanimous yes from every current agent is the standard for adding someone to the team  The five phases of a build: inspect, build, accelerate, optimize, and stratify  The three Rs of the build phase: relationships, relevance, and revenue  Why a family culture has to come from the team and cannot be announced by the leader  How a one-hour Monday morning mastermind and weekly one-on-ones keep a team connected  Justin also shares the story of his grandfather, who built a business on a handshake, and why he is determined to lead differently. He talks about founding team members, the courage it takes to admit your model has defects, and how he includes a virtual team halfway across the world in the culture. He closes with how he wants to be remembered as a leader.  Listen and subscribe on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and YouTube. New episodes drop every Wednesday. Subscribe to the Flamingo Files newsletter on LinkedIn for a deeper dive into this conversation, published every Monday.  Contact: themagic@leadershipthatshines.com | leadershipthatshines.com  Guest: Justin Nimergood | Top Gun Team at Epic | Host of the Real Estate Rockstars Podcast (Apple Podcasts and Spotify)

    Why Traditional Leadership Models Fail in Today’s Corporate Culture

  2. Oct 14

    The Shift from Corporate to Coaching: Randi Roberts on Finding Fulfilment

    Growth begins when a leader stops trying to figure it out alone and starts building the support, the plan, and the mindset to match the life they want. Executive and career life coach Randi Roberts joins host Natalie Davis on Leadership That Shines to talk through her path from 30 plus years in pharmaceuticals, including a climb from sales rep to VP, to building a coaching business around her values, flexibility, and a clear sense of what she can live with.  Randi explains why she spent a couple of years building the net instead of leaping and hoping one would appear, how she plans her business each fall with a one-year P&L and quarterly check-ins, and why she thinks gratitude and curiosity are leadership skills. Natalie shares her own business planning detour, her case for work-life harmony over work-life balance, and the gratitude journal she created when she could not find the one she wanted.  In This Episode:  How to assess your risk tolerance and build a safety net before a career leap  Why the first months in a big new role can be the loneliest, and why not to do it the hard way  How a values assessment turns a hard decision into a clearer one  A simple business plan for solopreneurs: how you want the business to feel, a one-year P&L, and quarterly milestones  Why mindset is the glasses you wear, and how a simple morning gratitude habit shapes what you see all day  How curiosity brings your team along and builds trust, even when opinions differ  Randi also shares how she chooses to put her values on her website, why making more money lets her give more, and how she wants to be remembered as a leader: someone true to her word who lifted others up. This conversation lands at the start of Q4, the season when many leaders sit down to plan the year ahead.  Listen and subscribe on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and YouTube. New episodes drop every Wednesday. Subscribe to the Flamingo Files newsletter on LinkedIn for a deeper dive into this conversation, published every Monday.  About Randi Roberts https://www.corlinroberts.net

    The Shift from Corporate to Coaching: Randi Roberts on Finding Fulfilment

  3. Oct 7

    Ted Kopecko on Mindset, Identity, and the Four Pillars of Joy

    Finding Your Purpose in Leadership Growth begins when a leader stops asking how to get through the day and starts asking where the days are going, and author and commercial real estate broker Ted Kopecko builds an entire book around that question. Ted joins host Natalie Davis on Leadership That Shines to talk through his path from running a 25-person architecture firm to selling it, finding his purpose in marketing, and writing Finding Joy: Journey of You, a guide for anyone who feels frustrated, stuck, and unsure of the next step. Ted breaks down the four pillars behind the book, mindset, identity, time, and direction, and explains why he believes most adults were trained by sixteen years of classrooms to wait for a boss to tell them what to do. Natalie adds her ownview on fixed mindset statements, the comfort of familiar circles, and why purpose has to sit underneath every business decision. In This Episode: ●      The difference between being life-led and job-led ●     Why a fixed mindset means believing your limiting beliefs more than yourself ●     A 15-minute daily practice built around one minute of gratitude and fourteen pages of reading ●     Why mentors, coaches, and accountability partners outside your circle speed up change ●     How to treat your time like a bank account and decide what your time store sells Ted also shares his "secret sauce of success," a four-part pattern he traces through every leader he studies: find a greater purpose, raise the value of your own time, raise the value of other people's time, and build abundant freedom. This conversation moves through burnout, branding, and the question of who you want to be in twenty years. Listen and subscribe on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and YouTube. New episodes drop every Wednesday. Subscribe to the Flamingo Files newsletter on LinkedIn for a deeperdive into this conversation, published every Monday. About Ted Kopecko findingjoy.us Book: Finding Joy: Journey of You (Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and findingjoy.us) Free 80-page Finding Joy workbook at findingjoy.us

    Ted Kopecko on Mindset, Identity, and the Four Pillars of Joy

  4. Sep 24

    Growth in Leadership: Why Growth Requires Change

    Growth requires change, and host Natalie Davis spends this solo episode of Leadership That Shines breaking down why that connection caught her off guard this year even after a decade of running her own business. Natalie walks listeners through the real-time story behind one of her three core values, growth, using her own business as the case study: a scrapped business plan, a hard coaching conversation with a longtime mentor, and a key team member who gave notice two weeks before this recording.  Natalie separates three concepts leaders tend to blend together: expansion, the visible increase in customers, revenue, or offerings; growth, the internal development in skill, leadership capacity, and systems needed to handle that increase; and change, what happens when expansion and growth actually reach the way people work, lead, and communicate. She uses her own nine-month journey building out backend systems and processes to show what happens when a business runs on one person's memory instead of a real system.  In This Episode:  The difference between expansion, growth, and change, and why leaders confuse them What happened when a longtime mentor told Natalie to throw out her entire business plan Why bringing on a team member exposed which "systems" only existed in her head How to respond when someone on your team tells you they're leaving for a new opportunity Why growing pains are real, not a sign that something is wrongNatalie also talks through the resistance that showed up as she prepares to bring a new team member on board, and why creating space for honest conversations on a team matters more than avoiding discomfort altogether. This episode offers a direct, unfiltered look at what growth actually costs, even when it's headed in the right direction.  Listen and subscribe on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and YouTube. New episodes drop every Wednesday. Subscribe to the Flamingo Files newsletter on LinkedIn for a deeper dive into this conversation, published every Monday.  Contact: themagic@leadershipthatshines.com | leadershipthatshines.com

  5. Sep 16

    Influence in Leadership: Amira Barger on Finding Your Nerve

    Influence starts with who sits at the table before a single message ever goes out, and equity-first communications leader Amira Barger has built her entire career around that idea. Amira returns to Leadership That Shines a year after her first appearance to talk with host Natalie Davis about her work at DNA Communications, her new book, The Price of Nice, and the leadership-of-self practices that keep her grounded while advising organizations on how to reach the communities too often treated as an afterthought.  Amira breaks down the difference between diversity as a checkbox and diversity as an intentional practice, the mindset, skill set, and tool set framework she uses with client teams, and why she believes every leader needs a "kitchen cabinet," a small group of trusted people who will celebrate a win and call out a blind spot with equal honesty. She also unpacks the idea behind her book's central concept, nerve, and why it goes further than simple kindness.  In This Episode:  Why the people closest to a challenge often have the best answers to it  The mindset, skill set, tool set framework for bringing outside perspective into a team  How to build a "kitchen cabinet" of people who will tell you the truth  The pause practice and the twenty-second lull, and why sitting in silence builds clarity  Why "nerve" goes further than kindness as the antidote to shrinking yourself  Amira also traces the personal story behind The Price of Nice, from the messages she absorbed growing up about staying quiet and playing small to the moment she decided not to pass those same messages down to her own daughter. This conversation moves through self-reflection, affinity bias, and what it actually takes to build a career on research and listening instead of assumption.  Listen and subscribe on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and YouTube. New episodes drop every Wednesday. Subscribe to the Flamingo Files newsletter on LinkedIn for a deeper dive into this conversation, published every Monday.  Contact: themagic@leadershipthatshines.com | leadershipthatshines.com Guest: Amira Barger, DNA Communications | Book: The Price of Nice | Instagram: Amira Barger

  6. Sep 9

    Listening to Understand vs. Reacting: A Leadership Lesson

    Most hard conversations do not fail because of what was said. They fail because one person was reacting instead of listening. In this episode of Leadership That Shines, host Natalie Davis talks with Dustin Shepherd, a nearly thirty-year military veteran turned leadership coach, about the difference between listening to understand and listening to react. Dustin explains why reacting carries an emotional charge while responding carries cognitive judgment, and why most communication breakdowns on a team start the moment a leader stops listening for the signal and starts waiting for their turn to talk. The conversation also covers what it means to shape an environment instead of controlling every decision, how to tell a real crisis apart from an everyday problem, and a personal story about a roadside breakdown that became a lasting lesson for Dustin's son. He closes with a reflection on moving from survival to recovery, and how he wants to be remembered as a leader. Listen if you lead a team, manage difficult conversations, or want practical language for the moment someone brings you a problem you were not expecting. In this episode: Why reacting and responding are not the same thing, and how to tell which one you are doingWhat gets missed when a leader is only waiting for someone to finish talkingHow shaping the environment around a decision beats making every decision yourselfA simple pressure test for telling a real crisis apart from an everyday problemWhy psychological safety is about willingness to be vulnerable, not the absence of discomfortThe story behind "fifteen extra steps" and what it taught Dustin's son about handling setbacks Guest: Dustin Shepherd CONNECT WITH DUSTIN SHEPHERD Polaris Leadership Academy:https://4pla.org/ If this conversation gives you language for a hard conversation you have been avoiding, share it with a leader who needs it, and follow Leadership That Shines so you do not miss the next episode. Join Natalie Live at the Reignite Live 2027 Event in Loveland, CO on January 22, 2027

    Listening to Understand vs. Reacting: A Leadership Lesson

  7. Sep 2

    Leadership Development: Chris Majer on Team Cohesion, Organizational Transformation, and Nearly 50 Years of Disruptive Leadership Training

    Leadership development does not happen through remedial programs, compliance checklists, or business school frameworks borrowed from people who have never led anyone into anything that actually mattered. In this episode of the Leadership That Shines Podcast, one of the top rated leadership business podcasts for professionals, entrepreneurs, and executives, host Natalie Davis sits down with Chris Majer, speaker, author of The Power to Transform, and nearly 50-year veteran of human performance, leadership training, and organizational development. Chris Majer coined the phrase team cohesion in 1982. He has applied his holistic leadership development framework with Olympic teams, the United States Army, AT&T, Nike, Microsoft, Cargill, and hundreds of organizations across industries. He has been on the Today Show, in Esquire, in People Magazine, and in boardrooms where he was the most disruptive presence in the room by design. Chris Majer's career began in rugby at the University of Washington, took a sharp turn through a copy of The Ultimate Athlete found in an airport bookstore at 30 years old, and has never followed a straight line since. That is the point. His leadership training philosophy is built on a single belief: the problems organizations think they have are almost always manifestations of one underlying breakdown, and the leaders who solve each symptom separately never fix the actual thing. The Leadership That Shines Podcast brings real leadership development conversations to professionals, founders, executives, and aspiring leaders every Wednesday. This episode is one of the most data-rich leadership training conversations the show has produced. In This Episode: Why the Army was trying to manage soldiers instead of lead them, and how Chris Majer told a room full of officers that their entire leadership approach was the problemThe team cohesion framework Chris Majer built in 1982 that produced a 20% production increase at a Boeing subcontractor statisticians said was already at maximum output, a direct application of leadership training principles to measurable business resultsHow a division of AT&T that was losing 200 million dollars generated a cumulative 3 billion dollars in profit over four years using Chris Majer's organizational transformation and leadership development methodologyWhy the holistic approach to leadership training outperforms symptom-by-symptom remedial programs every time, and what the woven cloth analogy means for every leader building culture and driving performanceHow Chris Majer rebuilt his entire leadership development delivery model after COVID eliminated live programming, and why the fundamental problem every organization faces right now comes down to coordination, not communication toolsChris Majer has been shaking up leadership training and organizational development for five decades. This episode is for every leader who has asked why do we do it that way, received the answer because that is how we always do it, and known immediately that answer was not going to be enough. About Chris Majer:Chris Majer is not just a speaker; he is a catalyst for transformation, a disruptor of conventional thinking, and a guide to unlocking the extraordinary potential within individuals and organizations. As an Amazon best-selling author and founder of the Human Potential Project (HP2), Chris brings a wealth of experience and a proven track record of success.The Power to Transform https://humanpotentialproject.com/ Join Natalie live at the ⁠Reignite Live 2027: Redefine Success. Plan Your Whole Year. Event in Loveland, CO on January 22, 2027

    Leadership Development: Chris Majer on Team Cohesion, Organizational Transformation, and Nearly 50 Years of Disruptive Leadership Training

  8. Aug 20

    Leading Self in Leadership with Parker Gates

    Leading self comes before leading anyone else, and executive coach Parker Gates spends this episode of Leadership That Shines proving exactly how. Parker walks host Natalie Davis through a leadership journey that started by accident, running a deli kitchen at nineteen, moved through two decades in corporate IT, and landed in a coaching practice built around three daily practices: journaling, meditation, and movement. Parker traces the moment that changed everything, a week at Stanford's design school where he encountered a level of psychological safety and belonging he had never experienced in corporate America. That week led him to quit his job, build a company around design thinking, and eventually start teaching senior leadership teams why smart people in a room don't automatically make a good team. In This Episode: ● Why personal development and professional development are the same work ● How psychological safety became the missing ingredient on every team Parker built ● The three daily practices Parker uses with C-suite clients: journaling, meditation, movement ● How a recovery concept called "taking inventory" became a leadership tool ● Why "never skip day two" matters more than any single day of discipline Parker also opens up about twenty-four years of recovery, the friend he lost to cancer that led to his first real meditation practice, and the repair work he now teaches leaders to do when they fall short with their teams. This conversation moves through self-awareness, humility, and the practical steps behind showing up as a better leader every day. Listen and subscribe on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and YouTube. New episodes drop every Wednesday. Subscribe to the Flamingo Files newsletter on LinkedIn for a deeper dive into this conversation, published every Monday. Contact: themagic@leadershipthatshines.com | leadershipthatshines.com Guest: Parker Gates, executive coach | parkergates.com | Free practices video: parkergates.com/watch

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4.9
out of 5
28 Ratings

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The Leadership That Shines Podcast exists for the leaders who are done waiting to feel ready. Every week, Natalie Davis delivers leadership training built around three core values: impact, influence, and growth. The leaders who change their organizations, their businesses, and their communities are the ones who commit to growing themselves first. From professionals managing complex teams to solopreneurs building something from the ground up, this is where clarity becomes action and action becomes legacy.

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