THE NEW WORK PLAYBOOK

Annett Burger
  • 5.0 (2)
  • Management

Most of what we consider to be leadership is about managing resources, not leading humans. AI is about to make that impossible to ignore. The leadership practices that would actually make work better for us are not new. They've just never been trained and practised well enough. Instead we focused on efficiency, control and output. That's management. Now that AI can handle all of that much better, what's left for us? I think this is the defining question of our time. Instead of asking if AI will replace leaders, we should ask whether we'll finally build the kind of leadership that deserves to stay. The New Work Playbook is a podcast for anyone who believes that work gets better because people matter. Main episodes explore why something matters for leadership in the age of AI. Reflection episodes give you actual practices to improve your leadership. Interviews and conversations with people who already shape the future of work will come in to inspire and shift perspectives. Hosted by Annett Burger, a practitioner with over twenty years of experience in executive search, leadership development, and consulting.

  1. 5d ago

    Purpose and Direction

    This reflection episode turns purpose and direction into two practices you can start this week. The first is about sensegiving and sensemaking. Three questions that build the line of sight between one person's job and who their work actually serves, and what to do with their answers once you have them. The second is direction. Five moves that give people guidance without you standing over them, from agreeing on what good looks like to protecting your team's focus from the noise around it. Both come with a way of working out where to start. One job and one conversation for the first. For the second, whichever symptom in your team is currently the loudest. Try them, then tell me what changes.

    Purpose and Direction

  2. Jul 28

    What on Earth is Purpose?

    Ask people what meaningful work is and you get very different answers, yet most of us would take a pay cut for work that has more of it. This episode is about that gap, why purpose stays so fuzzy, and why it matters more than ever. I look at two of the most influential management thinkers. Peter Drucker, whose ideas about good management got reduced to a numbers game and William Edwards Deming, who was ignored at home and listened to abroad, and what both reveal about why good management frameworks cannot fix bad leadership. This episode shows you why purpose and direction are one connected leadership practice, and why no framework can do that work for you. I also look at what this means for AI adoption, and why it becomes a stress test for what an organisation already believes about the value of human work. On Thursday, the reflection episode follows with practices to build the connection between purpose and direction in your own team.

    What on Earth is Purpose?

  3. Jul 16

    Listen to Understand

    What is the foundation to becoming a great listener? This is the reflection episode following The Talking Reflex. It's designed to be practised, not just listened to. You'll hear a difficult conversation twice. Once with a manager who performs all the right listening moves and misses everything that matters, and once with a manager who actually wants to understand. The difference between them is the intention the manager came with. From there we get into two practices you can start using this week. The intention check, which is about catching what you really want from a conversation before it runs away with you, and four moves for asking better questions.

    Listen to Understand

  4. Jul 14

    The Talking Reflex

    Most managers are sure they listen well while their people don't feel heard. This episode is about that gap, why it survives, and what us when we don't close it. I look at the research on how we really listen, why active listening so often becomes a performance without understanding. This episode shows you what the value of deep listening is. I also look at the influence of power and organisation structures and company culture, and how AI is making the problem worse. This is the main episode. On Thursday, the reflection episode follows with practices to improve the quality of your listening.

    The Talking Reflex

  5. Jul 9

    Would They Tell You?

    In the main episode I made the case that psychological safety is a key performance indicator, and that the way we handle AI adoption exposes and amplifies the leadership already in place. This reflection episode is about what you can actually do about it with your own team. I share two practices and one principle for building and protecting the environment where people feel safe to say where AI is helping and where it isn't. The first practice is the muscle underneath all the others. The second turns AI mistakes into collective learning and trains a team to protect their critical thinking. Underneath both sits the responsibility to make sure that the reality of work reaches the people who decide about it.

    Would They Tell You?

  6. Jul 7

    Psychological Safety

    Season 2 opens with the practice that everything else depends on. Most leaders treat psychological safety as a culture conversation. Google's own research proved it is a key performance indicator and Amy Edmondson has uncovered its value for over 25 years. So why has so little changed? In this episode I look at what happens when climates of fear meet the most consequential workplace decision organisations are currently making: AI adoption. The Nokia story shows what calibrated silence cost a company that should have survived. The Klarna reversal shows what happens when leadership confuses cost savings with value. And recent research reveals something uncomfortable about every AI adoption dashboard: High usage numbers can mean the opposite of what they look like. If you are leading inside an organisation making AI decisions right now, this episode shows you the risk of doing it without psychological safety. The reflection episode on Thursday gives you key practices to establish it.

    Psychological Safety

  7. Jun 23

    Authenticity Theatre

    Authentic leadership has been one of the biggest ideas in modern leadership development. More than twenty years of it, and we haven't ended up with more genuine leaders. In this closing episode of Season 1, I trace how modern authentic leadership movement focused the search for authenticity too much on self-awareness and self-discovery and missed that authenticity in leadership is built in relation with others. At the same time, the organisations leaders work in shape what shows up in the role through what they reward, allow, and tolerate. The two together are what we end up watching: a workplace performance most of us recognise far too well. I reframe authentic leadership as something we practise in tune with ourselves and the world around us. And I walk back through the six foundational topics of this season to show how each one helps a leader to stay in genuine connection with the people they lead. Season 2 starts June 30th with Psychological Safety.

    Authenticity Theatre

  8. May 14

    Practicing Care

    Care is not just good intention. It needs practice. Three tools to turn caring into practice. The main episode made the case for why empathy and care are different and why leaders need both. This reflection episode gives you three practices to make care part of how you lead. The first is the simplest and most powerful. Small acts of care propagate through your network in ways researchers have measured, which means you have more influence on the carelessness around you than you may have realised. The second is a short reflection on the four trust dimensions to consider before you walk into a difficult conversation. The third is a set of three checks that help you focus and act on what someone actually needs. Together these practices turn the caring question from a nice opening into something that actually helps.

    Practicing Care
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About

Most of what we consider to be leadership is about managing resources, not leading humans. AI is about to make that impossible to ignore. The leadership practices that would actually make work better for us are not new. They've just never been trained and practised well enough. Instead we focused on efficiency, control and output. That's management. Now that AI can handle all of that much better, what's left for us? I think this is the defining question of our time. Instead of asking if AI will replace leaders, we should ask whether we'll finally build the kind of leadership that deserves to stay. The New Work Playbook is a podcast for anyone who believes that work gets better because people matter. Main episodes explore why something matters for leadership in the age of AI. Reflection episodes give you actual practices to improve your leadership. Interviews and conversations with people who already shape the future of work will come in to inspire and shift perspectives. Hosted by Annett Burger, a practitioner with over twenty years of experience in executive search, leadership development, and consulting.

Information

  • Creator
    Annett Burger
  • Years Active
    2026
  • Episodes
    22
  • Rating
    Clean
  • Copyright
    © 2026 The New Work Playbook. All rights reserved. No part of this podcast may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form without prior written permission.
  • Show Website
    THE NEW WORK PLAYBOOK