The World Class Leaders Show: The CEO leadership podcast for leaders who solve big problems and build better futures.

Andrea Petrone
  • 5.0 (17)
  • Management
  • Weekly

If you’re a CEO or senior executive, your challenges don’t sound like “I need more leadership tips.” They sound more like: “Why am I still carrying this company on my shoulders?” “Why doesn’t my top team own the strategy the way I do?” “How do I challenge the board or investors without blowing up the relationship?” “How do we build a company that still matters in 10 years, not just hit this year’s numbers?” The World-Class Leaders Show is the CEO leadership podcast built for those questions. Hosted by Andrea Petrone – A Global Influencer, CEO Whisperer, WIley Author, Executive Coach and Speaker – the show goes deep into what it really takes to lead at the top: using power well, doing the identity work of leadership, and making the big decisions that shape the future of your company. Each episode brings real CEO stories and the best business thinkers in the world to the table. You’ll hear how sitting and former CEOs, chairs, and C-suite leaders tackle the biggest business problems of our time – growth, culture, strategy execution, transformation, technology, risk, and talent – and how they stay true to who they are while doing it. You’ll use this podcast to: Get your executive team truly aligned, so you stop re-fighting the same battles in every meeting. Turn strategy into a small set of clear priorities and behaviours your people actually execute. Hold your ground with boards, investors, regulators, and powerful internal stakeholders – and still move the agenda forward. Use your voice and position with more clarity and impact, so people know what you stand for and where the company is going. Find fresh inspiration and language to build a better future for your organization, your people, and the markets you serve – without losing yourself in the role. Featuring leaders from Fortune companies and some of the best thinkers in the world (like Amy Edmondson, Adam Bryant, James Keyes), the show is known for its richness, depth, and straight talk. Ranked in the top 5% of podcasts globally, it’s followed by thousands of CEOs and senior executives who want more than recycled ideas and surface-level conversations. If you care about solving real business problems, shaping the future, and doing the inner work required to lead at the very top, this podcast is for you. Subscribe to The World-Class Leaders Show and upgrade both your leadership – and the future you’re building. For ongoing CEO insights and behind-the-scenes context from each episode, follow Andrea Petrone on LinkedIn.

  1. 1d ago

    264 - 10 Blind Spots That Define How You Lead as a CEO (Part I)

    Nobody tells you this when you take the top job: what erodes you isn't the market, it's what's happening inside you. In this episode I share the first five of ten blind spots that trip up genuinely capable CEOs, taken from real conversations in coaching rooms and peer groups rather than any framework built in a university. If you've been working harder and wondering why it's yielding less, one of these five is why. I start with the hardest one: the strengths that earned you the seat are often the ones now holding the company back. Every CEO carries three identities, and most are still leading from the achieved identity long after the job has moved on. From there I cover what you broadcast to your team under pressure, why loneliness at the top isn't a symptom of doing anything wrong, why your board feels like an obstacle when you're performing for it rather than building a relationship with it, and the executive team decision you're not actually undecided about, you're just waiting for permission. Each blind spot comes with my perspective, a practical nudge you can try this week, and a reference to a past guest who lived it. Part II covers the remaining five, focused on your team and the organisation, in the next solo episode. Timestamps 0:00 The blind spots nobody will name for you 1:30 Why these come from real CEO conversations, not theory 3:00 Blind Spot 1: My strengths got me here, are they enough for what's next? 8:00 Blind Spot 2: Is the pressure I'm under affecting my team? 12:00 Blind Spot 3: I've never felt this alone, is that normal? 16:00 Blind Spot 4: My board is supposed to help me, so why do they feel in the way? 20:00 Blind Spot 5: When is the right time to change my executive team? 📘GET YOUR COPY NOW My new book 'Reinvention at the Top: The Playbook for CEOs to Lead Under Pressure' (Wiley) is out. Order your copy now: 👉reinventionatthetop.com 🚀 JOIN WCL21 WCL21 is a private community for CEOs leading mid-market companies, featuring confidential peer roundtables, masterclasses, and leadership conversations. 👉 https://andreapetrone.com/wcl21 📩 NEWSLETTER Join 200,000+ leaders receiving Andrea Petrone's weekly leadership insights. 👉 https://www.andreapetrone.com/newsletter/ Connect with Andrea Petrone LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/andreapetrone/ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/andreapetrone_x   Connect with Karlheinz Wex LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/karlheinz-wex-a223b2169/   🎙️ ABOUT THE SHOW The World Class Leader with Andrea Petrone features conversations with CEOs and top thinkers about leadership, performance and the future of work. 👍 If this episode was useful, like the video and subscribe for more conversations on leadership. #Leadership #FamilyBusiness #CEO

  2. Oct 29

    263 - How a CEO Builds Trust in a Family Business | Karlheinz Wex

    He joined Plansee in 1991 and his first task was a consolidation project that had already failed twice. He finished it. 35 years later he leads the whole group as Chairman of the Executive Board, a role he has held since July 2023. He is not part of the owner family. He studied business administration and technical physics, worked his way from group consolidation through finance and accounting, and into the executive board. Today he leads a global company with 11,000 people, about €2.3 billion in annual revenue, and a leading market position in around 80% of its business, built on just two metals: tungsten and molybdenum. So what does he know about lasting that most leaders don’t? Key takeaways  → Why long-term, sustainable thinking keeps a company alive  → How three goals, unchanged for 20 years, give people an anchor  → The question to ask before any short-term decision: does it contradict our long-term goal?  → How a 20-year joint venture became full ownership  → Why big moves need a board that feels comfortable with the risk  → Why he wants to hand over a stronger company to the next generation Chapters  00:00 Introduction  01:31 Why 35 years at one company  03:57 From CFO to CEO  06:47 Leading a family business as a non-family CEO  13:33 The long game vs. short-term pressure  15:00 The 100-year thesis and three unchanged goals  18:06 A 20-year partnership becomes full ownership  24:16 Protecting long-term decisions under pressure  31:31 Building resilience  43:14 The legacy he wants to leave  45:09 Where to learn more   📘GET YOUR COPY NOW My new book 'Reinvention at the Top: The Playbook for CEOs to Lead Under Pressure' (Wiley) is out. Order your copy now: 👉reinventionatthetop.com   🚀 JOIN WCL21 WCL21 is a private community for CEOs leading mid-market companies, featuring confidential peer roundtables, masterclasses, and leadership conversations. 👉 https://andreapetrone.com/wcl21   📩 NEWSLETTER Join 200,000+ leaders receiving Andrea Petrone's weekly leadership insights. 👉 https://www.andreapetrone.com/newsletter/   Connect with Andrea Petrone LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/andreapetrone/ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/andreapetrone_x Connect with Karlheinz Wex LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/karlheinz-wex-a223b2169/    🎙️ ABOUT THE SHOW The World Class Leader with Andrea Petrone features conversations with CEOs and top thinkers about leadership, performance and the future of work. 👍 If this episode was useful, like the video and subscribe for more conversations on leadership. #Leadership #FamilyBusiness #CEO

  3. Oct 22

    262 - The Identity Gap. Why Strong CEOs Break Under Pressure

    Here’s the question I put to every CEO I work with, usually about an hour in, once the polished version of them runs out. Not what do you do. Who are you when the pressure’s on? I kept hearing the same sentence in those rooms, said quietly and off the record: “I should feel proud of what I’ve achieved, but I don’t feel clear on who I am anymore.” In this episode I name the gap nobody puts on a slide. We measure the skills gap, the talent gap, the strategy gap. The one that does real damage is the identity gap, the distance between who the role needs you to be in this chapter and who you still are from the last one. It doesn’t arrive as a crisis. You’re cautious when you want to be direct. You soften the edge. The job feels heavier, and even the wins land flat. I also share the architecture I built from watching hundreds of CEOs come apart under pressure, always in the same order. Identity goes first, then the message, then the presence. I call it the Throughline. The bottom line is that leadership at the top rarely breaks because you don’t know what to do. It breaks because pressure pulls you away from yourself. Timestamps 0:00 The question nobody is asking you 2:00 Why I wrote this book, and the part that’s personal 6:00 The identity gap, and how it actually feels 10:00 Your Achieved Identity, the winning self that takes the wheel 14:00 The Throughline: identity, message, presence 18:00 Closing thoughts and the question to sit with _________________________________________________________________ 📘GET YOUR COPY NOW My new book 'Reinvention at the Top: The Playbook for CEOs to Lead Under Pressure' (Wiley) is out. Order your copy now: 👉reinventionatthetop.com _________________________________________________________________ FREE GUIDE Want to establish authority and lead with confidence from Day One as a CEO? Grab your FREE copy of '10 Foolproof Ways New CEOs Establish Authority From Day One': 👉 Download - https://bit.ly/10-fool-proof-ceo-strategies  _________________________________________________________________ WCL21 WCL21 is a private, curated community of CEOs running mid-market companies. Monthly roundtables, masterclasses, and confidential conversations that don't happen anywhere else. We're in the founding member phase — a few seats remain. 👉 Request your invitation: https://andreapetrone.com/wcl21  _________________________________________________________________ 1:1 COACHING Want to work with me directly? I coach a small number of CEOs and senior leaders each year through exactly the challenges in this show. 👉 Apply for 1:1 coaching: https://calendly.com/andreapetrone/strategy-call-30 _________________________________________________________________ COACHING APP Want to grow as a leader on the go? My Executive coaching app helps Directors, VPs and C-suite leaders build world-class leadership habits, guided by the Throughline™ framework: Identity, Message, Presence. 👉 See the app: https://studio.com/apps/andreapetrone/executive _________________________________________________________________ NEWSLETTER Join 200,000+ leaders who read my weekly insights on leading at the top: 👉  https://www.andreapetrone.com/newsletter/ _________________________________________________________________ MORE FROM ANDREA Follow our Host Andrea Petrone on: LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/andreapetrone/   Website: https://www.andreapetrone.com Instagram: instagram.com/andreapetrone_x Follow The World Class Leaders Show: Apple: https://shorturl.at/JZAmQ Spotify: https://shorturl.at/DSHUl LinkedIn:   https://www.linkedin.com/company/the-world-class-leaders-show/ Website: https://www.andreapetrone.com/podcast/

  4. Oct 15

    261 - Why 50% of New CEOs Fail in the First 18 Months (and What to Do About it)

    Nobody tells you that the job you were promoted for is not the job you now have. You earned the corner office because you were excellent at something. Finance, operations, commercial, product. That excellence is real, and it is exactly what makes the next part so hard, because the instinct that got you here is to go back to it. When the pressure rises, you return to the function you know best, where you can still be the smartest person in the room and feel useful by lunchtime. It looks like diligence. It is actually avoidance. And it is why so many new CEOs come unstuck inside their first eighteen months, not for lack of capability, but because they are still occupying the role they left rather than the one they have taken. There is a space the job is asking you to step into, and most leaders never quite move into it. It is wider, less comfortable, and far less obvious about what good looks like on any given day. In this episode I break down three shifts that separate the CEOs who make that move from the ones who stay stuck: going from doing to deciding, from performing to architecting, and from holding authority yourself to distributing it across your leadership team. The hardest part is not learning anything new. It is giving up the thing you were best at. 📘GET YOUR COPY NOW My new book 'Reinvention at the Top: The Playbook for CEOs to Lead Under Pressure' (Wiley) is out. Order your copy now: 👉reinventionatthetop.com 🚀 JOIN WCL21 WCL21 is a private community for CEOs leading mid-market companies, featuring confidential peer roundtables, masterclasses, and leadership conversations. 👉 https://andreapetrone.com/wcl21 📩 NEWSLETTER Join 200,000+ leaders receiving Andrea Petrone's weekly leadership insights. 👉 https://www.andreapetrone.com/newsletter/ CONNECT WITH ANDREA PETRONE LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/andreapetrone/ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/andreapetrone_x Subscribe for weekly conversations with researchers and executives on leadership, teams, and organizational change.

  5. Oct 8

    260 - Why the Best CEOs Are the Quietest in the Room

    In This Episode We've all been sold the same story about influence. Communicate more. Be more visible. Bring more energy into the room. The louder you are, the more you lead. I think it's backwards. At the top, volume becomes noise, and noise is corrosive. It trains your people to watch you instead of owning the work. The best leaders I know look quieter than you'd expect. Not passive, not soft, but the opposite. Saying less and making it land. They hold a standard without raising their voice. Protecting the truth in a meeting when it would be far easier to protect the harmony. I call it the quiet mark, and it's a chapter of my new book.   Here's the physics of it. A loud leader creates motion: heat, speed, visible momentum. A quiet leader creates alignment, and alignment compounds in a way motion never does. Drucker spotted this decades ago. The most effective executives he studied shared almost nothing in personality. Some were warm, some cold, some magnetic, some near recluse. What they shared was discipline.   And loud leadership gets more expensive as you scale. When the company is small, your personality can be the operating system. At scale, it breaks. Senior people start managing you instead of running their part of the business, problems surface late, and the whole place runs on whatever mood you woke up in.   Because this is the thing. You are the strongest signal in the system, whether you mean to be or not. Your attention is a signal. What you tolerate, what you reward, what gets a rise out of you. People read all of it and tune themselves to match. Your calendar isn't your schedule; it's your strategy, broadcast to the company every week. Your people don't believe what you say your priorities are. They believe where your time goes. I share the handful of habits that build the quiet mark, none of them talent, and the test I'd leave you with: what happens when you're not in the room? If the work stalls and decisions pile up, your organisation is running on your presence, not your standard. That's fragile, however impressive it looks. If the work holds and people make the call you would have made, you've built something.   The louder path feels better in the moment. The quieter one is what people are still standing on long after you're gone. 📘GET YOUR COPY NOW My new book 'Reinvention at the Top: The Playbook for CEOs to Lead Under Pressure' (Wiley) is out. Order your copy now: 👉reinventionatthetop.com 🚀 JOIN WCL21 WCL21 is a private community for CEOs leading mid-market companies, featuring confidential peer roundtables, masterclasses, and leadership conversations. 👉 https://andreapetrone.com/wcl21 📩 NEWSLETTER Join 200,000+ leaders receiving Andrea Petrone's weekly leadership insights. 👉 https://www.andreapetrone.com/newsletter/ CONNECT WITH ANDREA PETRONE LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/andreapetrone/ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/andreapetrone_x Subscribe for weekly conversations with researchers and executives on leadership, teams, and organizational change.

  6. Oct 1

    259 - Most CEOs Don't Know What AI Really Is! Ft. Don Tapscott

    📘GET YOUR COPY NOW My new book 'Reinvention at the Top: The Playbook for CEOs to Lead Under Pressure' (Wiley) is out. Order your copy now: 👉reinventionatthetop.com   🚀 JOIN WCL21 WCL21 is a private community for CEOs leading mid-market companies, featuring confidential peer roundtables, masterclasses, and leadership conversations. 👉 https://andreapetrone.com/wcl21 📩 NEWSLETTER Join 200,000+ leaders receiving Andrea Petrone's weekly leadership insights. 👉 https://www.andreapetrone.com/newsletter/ Connect with Andrea Petrone LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/andreapetrone/ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/andreapetrone_x Connect with Don Tapscott LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/dontapscott/    💬 QUESTION FOR YOU Do you think your leadership team really understands what AI is? Tell us in the comments. #AI #DonTapscott #Leadership #AILeadership #ArtificialIntelligence #IdentityAI #AIAgents #FutureOfWork #CEO #DigitalTransformation #WorldClassLeaderShow

  7. Sep 24

    258 - How Great CEOs Lead Their Board Instead of Managing It

    Sunday night. A CEO I work with is still at his desk building the deck every chart, every question anticipated. By Monday he'll walk in armoured. And he told me he still dreads it. Every single time. So I said: that deck isn't managing your board. It's managing your fear. Your board is the one room where the power is inverted, and that single fact turns leaders into defendants. Covering every base feels like diligence. It's fear wearing a suit, and the board can smell it. The harder you work to look invulnerable, the less they trust you, a very large deck doesn't signal command, it signals anxiety. So they lean in, dig deeper. The thing you did to feel safe is the thing that makes them circle. Underneath it is one confusion: governance is not relationship. If the quarterly rhythm is the only time you engage your board, you haven't got a relationship. You've got a series of exams with the people who can end your career. The best CEOs have flipped it. Their board meetings are almost boring, because everything real happened outside the room. I share the two moves that get you there. Neither is a deck.   📘GET YOUR COPY NOW My new book 'Reinvention at the Top: The Playbook for CEOs to Lead Under Pressure' (Wiley) is out. Order your copy now: 👉reinventionatthetop.com   🚀 JOIN WCL21 WCL21 is a private community for CEOs leading mid-market companies, featuring confidential peer roundtables, masterclasses, and leadership conversations. 👉 https://andreapetrone.com/wcl21   📩 NEWSLETTER Join 192,000+ leaders receiving Andrea Petrone's weekly leadership insights. 👉 https://www.andreapetrone.com/newsletter/   CONNECT WITH ANDREA PETRONE LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/andreapetrone/ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/andreapetrone_x   Subscribe for weekly conversations with researchers and executives on leadership, teams, and organizational change.

  8. Sep 17

    257 - Confidence Kills CEOs Faster Than Bad Strategy!

    Every CEO thinks they're supposed to have the answers. Jim Brown used to think so too, until he sat in on a leadership meeting and noticed something strange. Every time a hard question came up, the whole room turned to look at the founder. Not because anyone asked them to. It had just become the pattern. She gave the answer, the meeting moved on, and nobody thought twice about it. Except Jim did. When he pointed it out to her afterward, she realized something uncomfortable. She wasn't really leading her team anymore. She'd become their bottleneck. That single moment is at the center of this conversation with Andrea Petrone. Jim spent years inside boardrooms watching smart, hardworking CEOs quietly sabotage their own companies, not through bad decisions, but through the exhausting pressure to look like they never make any. He calls it the hero trap, and once you see it, you start noticing it everywhere. In this episode: The founder who didn't realize her entire team was waiting on her for every answer A $1M mistake at a chemical plant, caused by a culture where nobody felt safe speaking up How a struggling Canadian factory went from the most expensive plant in its global network to the cheapest, in under a year The four hidden risks quietly shaping every company's future, and why most leaders never see them coming Why "the leader goes first" might be the hardest, most important habit any CEO can build If you've ever felt like you're supposed to have it all figured out, this conversation will change how you think about leadership, authenticity, and what's really driving your company's results. Timestamps: 00:00 Intro 00:42 Why CEOs feel more pressure today than ever before 03:15 The moment everyone turned to look at her for the answer 09:01 Why authenticity beats having all the answers 15:46 Why teams go quiet instead of speaking up 18:20 What organizational health actually means 23:28 The factory that cut costs by changing how its leaders worked 28:40 The $1M mistake nobody spoke up about 31:15 Why the leader has to go first 37:00 What got you promoted won't keep you at the top 40:08 Final thoughts and where to learn more 📘GET YOUR COPY NOW My new book 'Reinvention at the Top: The Playbook for CEOs to Lead Under Pressure' (Wiley) is out. Order your copy now: 👉reinventionatthetop.com   🚀 JOIN WCL21 WCL21 is a private community for CEOs leading mid-market companies, featuring confidential peer roundtables, masterclasses, and leadership conversations. 👉 https://andreapetrone.com/wcl21 📩 NEWSLETTER Join 200,000+ leaders receiving Andrea Petrone's weekly leadership insights. 👉 https://www.andreapetrone.com/newsletter/ Connect with Andrea Petrone LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/andreapetrone/ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/andreapetrone_x Connect with Jim Brown  LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/authorjimbrown/   Subscribe for weekly conversations with researchers and executives on leadership, teams, and organizational change.

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About

If you’re a CEO or senior executive, your challenges don’t sound like “I need more leadership tips.” They sound more like: “Why am I still carrying this company on my shoulders?” “Why doesn’t my top team own the strategy the way I do?” “How do I challenge the board or investors without blowing up the relationship?” “How do we build a company that still matters in 10 years, not just hit this year’s numbers?” The World-Class Leaders Show is the CEO leadership podcast built for those questions. Hosted by Andrea Petrone – A Global Influencer, CEO Whisperer, WIley Author, Executive Coach and Speaker – the show goes deep into what it really takes to lead at the top: using power well, doing the identity work of leadership, and making the big decisions that shape the future of your company. Each episode brings real CEO stories and the best business thinkers in the world to the table. You’ll hear how sitting and former CEOs, chairs, and C-suite leaders tackle the biggest business problems of our time – growth, culture, strategy execution, transformation, technology, risk, and talent – and how they stay true to who they are while doing it. You’ll use this podcast to: Get your executive team truly aligned, so you stop re-fighting the same battles in every meeting. Turn strategy into a small set of clear priorities and behaviours your people actually execute. Hold your ground with boards, investors, regulators, and powerful internal stakeholders – and still move the agenda forward. Use your voice and position with more clarity and impact, so people know what you stand for and where the company is going. Find fresh inspiration and language to build a better future for your organization, your people, and the markets you serve – without losing yourself in the role. Featuring leaders from Fortune companies and some of the best thinkers in the world (like Amy Edmondson, Adam Bryant, James Keyes), the show is known for its richness, depth, and straight talk. Ranked in the top 5% of podcasts globally, it’s followed by thousands of CEOs and senior executives who want more than recycled ideas and surface-level conversations. If you care about solving real business problems, shaping the future, and doing the inner work required to lead at the very top, this podcast is for you. Subscribe to The World-Class Leaders Show and upgrade both your leadership – and the future you’re building. For ongoing CEO insights and behind-the-scenes context from each episode, follow Andrea Petrone on LinkedIn.

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