Leadership is a Verb

Mike Mock

5.0 (4)
Self-Improvement

This podcast is about what leadership looks like when the pressure is real, the stakes are high, and people are counting on you. Through honest stories, practical lessons, and evidence-based ideas, each episode will give you tools you can use immediately. Leadership is not a title. It is what you do next.

Sep 26

S1 E10 - Still Becoming

Connect with me Welcome to Episode 10 of Fix Your Face Leadership. This season began with a kid who was running away; from home, from hardship, and sometimes from himself. Somewhere along the way, the fire service gave me a place to belong, leadership gave me a purpose, and life gave me plenty of opportunities to get it wrong. And that may be the most honest lesson of this entire season: becoming a better leader is never finished. There is no final promotion, perfect title, or magical point where you suddenly have it all figured out. If there is, I definitely missed that meeting. I am bringing the season full circle to talk about what it means to keep learning, keep serving, and keep becoming.
Sep 12

S1 E9 - Trust Me

Connect with me Trust is the foundation of effective leadership, but it can disappear in a moment. In this episode, we explore Harvard professor Frances Frei’s Trust Triangle and how authenticity, logic, and empathy shape whether people choose to trust us. Because when leadership gets hard, trust isn’t something you claim. It’s something your people experience.
Sep 6

S1 E8 -Under Pressure

Connect with me In Episode 8 of Leadership is a verb, a fix your face leadership podcast, we explore what pressure is and how to lead through it. Using lessons from the fire service and high-stakes environments, i'll share practical ways leaders can create clarity, build trust, and make effective decisions when conditions change and the answers aren’t obvious.
Aug 29

S1 E7 - Psychological Safety

Connect with me Episode 7 explores psychological safety, What it really takes to create a team where people can speak up, ask questions, admit mistakes, and challenge ideas without fear. We’ll look at why strong leadership isn’t about making people comfortable; it’s about building enough trust for people to be honest, accountable, and willing to grow.
Aug 15

S1 E6 - Leadership is not a position

Connect with me Episode 6 challenges the idea that leadership comes with rank or title. It’s about influence, service, and the everyday choices that show people who you are, because leadership isn’t a position. It’s a verb.
Aug 3

S1 E5 - Chasing Rank

Connect with me Chasing Rank What happens when ambition starts shaping how we measure our worth? In this episode, I reflect on my pursuit of promotion, the lessons I learned along the way, and the uncomfortable truth that gaining rank does not automatically make someone a leader. We explore identity, ego, purpose, and what it means to keep growing without losing yourself in the chase.
Jul 24

S1 E4 - Fixing My Face in the Fire Service

Connect with me In Episode 4 of Leadership Is a Verb, I share how finding the fire service gave me more than a career, it gave me structure, belonging, purpose, and a future I had not yet imagined. I reflect on the people who challenged me, believed in me, and helped me become someone others could count on. This episode explores how the right environment can give our effort direction and how leadership often begins long before we ever hold a title. Sometimes finding where we belong is also where we begin to discover who we can become.
Jul 17

Leadership is a Verb: The Trailer

Connect with me This podcast is about what leadership looks like when the pressure is real, the stakes are high, and people are counting on you. Through honest stories, practical lessons, and evidence-based ideas, each episode will give you tools you can use immediately. Leadership is not a title. It is what you do next.
Jul 17

S1 E3 - Fix Your Face with Resilience

Connect with me Do hard times really make us stronger? Sometimes they do. Sometimes they leave people angry, exhausted, isolated, or carrying invisible injuries for years. Adversity does not automatically build character, and pain does not arrive with a lesson plan. In this episode of Leadership Is a Verb, I challenge some of the slogans surrounding toughness and resilience. Through honest reflections on addiction, homelessness, failure, shame, and leadership under pressure, I explore why growth comes not simply from what happens to us, but from the meaning, relationships, responsibility, and repeated choices that follow. I also introduce the three elements of psychological hardiness: commitment, control, and challenge (Maddi & Kobasa, 1984) and explains how leaders can support recovery without rushing people toward a clean, inspirational comeback story. In this episode, you will learn how to: • Replace “Why me?” with the more useful question, “What now?” • Focus on what remains within your influence • Turn something you learned the hard way into service for others The fire does not have to become good. But it may illuminate what matters, what must change, and who you are being called to serve. Pain becomes purpose when it changes how we lead. Kobasa, S. C., & Maddi, S. R. (1985). Developing hardiness: Exercises for growth and health. Brooks/Cole Publishing Company
Jul 17

S1 E2 Environments That Shape Us

Connect with me What happens when an unhealthy environment begins to feel normal? For part of my teenage life, my bedroom was a shed. At another point, it was a walk-in closet. Eventually, instability stopped feeling unusual and that may be one of the most powerful things an environment can do. In this episode of Leadership Is a Verb, I'll explores how our homes, workplaces, teams, and cultures quietly teach us what to expect, what to tolerate, and what we believe we deserve. The most dangerous moment in an unhealthy environment may not be the first day. It may be the day we stop noticing. Drawing from some of my personal experiences and research on self-efficacy, belonging, and learned behavior, I'll examines the difference between circumstance and identity, and how repeated actions can provide new evidence about who we are capable of becoming. In this episode, you will learn how to: • Identify something unhealthy you may have normalized • Challenge an old belief through deliberate action • Improve the environment within your influence Every leader creates weather. The question is whether people brace when you enter the room or become steadier, clearer, and more willing to contribute. Your environment influences your story, but it does not get the final vote.
Jul 17

S1 E1 Running Away

Connect with me What are you still running from and what could happen if you finally turned toward it? In this opening episode of Leadership Is a Verb, I share a deeply personal story of running away as a teenager, hitchhiking at fourteen, struggling with addiction, and searching for a place to belong. But this is not simply a story about hardship. It is a conversation about the survival strategies we develop, the beliefs we carry into adulthood, and the moment those old patterns begin controlling how we lead. We will explore how avoidance, isolation, distrust, and self-protection can follow us into our careers, relationships, and leadership roles long after the original danger has passed. I also examine why belonging matters, how leaders create it through everyday actions, and why your past can explain your behavior without controlling your future. In this episode, you will learn how to: • Recognize what you run from under pressure • Evaluate whether your environment is helping you grow • Take one honest action toward the person you want to become You do not need a complete roadmap. Leadership often begins with the next responsible step. Because your story is not over, and neither is mine.

11 Episodes

5

out of 5

4 Ratings

This podcast is about what leadership looks like when the pressure is real, the stakes are high, and people are counting on you. Through honest stories, practical lessons, and evidence-based ideas, each episode will give you tools you can use immediately. Leadership is not a title. It is what you do next.

Creator

Mike Mock
Years Active

2026
Episodes

11
Rating

Clean
Copyright

© 2026 Leadership is a Verb
Show Website

Leadership is a Verb