Lead the People

Matt Poepsel, PhD
  • 5.0 (10)
  • Management
  • Updated Weekly

Lead The People is your guide to unlocking your true potential as an authentic leader. Hosted by Dr. Matt Poepsel—The Godfather of Talent Optimization—this podcast dives deep into the art and science of what it takes to lead at the next level. With insightful conversations and practical strategies, each episode equips executives, strategic HR pros, and aspiring leaders with the tools it takes to boost performance, inspire teams, and drive meaningful impact. Whether exploring the latest workplace trends or tackling real-world leadership challenges, Lead The People offers an enlightened approach to leadership. Embark on a rewarding journey to become the leader your people deserve—the leader you were meant to be.

  1. 3d ago

    Why Your Executive Team Is The Company's Bottleneck (feat. Adam Weber)

    Most executive teams don't fail because someone drops the ball. They fail quietly, over months, while every function runs fine on its own and nobody can name what's actually wrong. For Adam Weber, executive coach at Adam Weber Coaching and co-founder of Helm, that quiet failure has a name and a shape, and it's measurable. In this episode, Matt Poepsel sits down with Adam Weber, co-founder of Helm, to unpack why the real conversation on most executive teams happens in the hallway instead of the room, why an offsite's impact rarely survives past 90 days, and why work doesn't get lost inside functions; it gets lost in the margins between them. Adam introduces the five signals his team uses to diagnose executive team health: candor, agility, ownership, altitude, and cohesion, and makes the case that healthy teams aren't the ones who avoid hard problems, but the ones who face them together. Together, they explore what it actually takes to turn a team's unspoken tension into productive, ongoing conversation. In this episode, you'll learn: The Hallway Effect: When people stop saying the real thing in the room, the conversation doesn't disappear, it just moves to informal side conversations that never reach the CEO.The Five Signals of a Healthy Team: Candor, agility, ownership, altitude, and cohesion aren't individual traits; they're conditions the whole team creates together.Why Offsites Don't Stick: A great offsite can shift the room for a season, but without ongoing structure, teams snap back to old patterns fast.Where Work Actually Gets Lost: It's rarely inside a function; it's in the margins between functions, where nobody quite owns the problem. Highlights:(03:08) What it feels like inside a stuck executive team(05:51) Why offsites only work for about 90 days(07:43) The five signals of a healthy executive team(09:14) Candor means hearing hard things, not just saying them(11:20) Where work actually gets lost: the margins(12:40) Why balance across the five signals beats individual strength(14:35) How a CEO's altitude cascades through the whole org(16:03) Turning a low score into growth instead of grading(19:31) Turning taboo topics into safe conversations(23:09) Business is just a series of problems Resources:Follow Adam on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/meetadam/ Learn more about Helm: helmteams.co Follow Matt on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/mattpoepsel/Subscribe to The Predictive Index on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/c/ThePredictiveIndex Created in partnership with Share Your Genius: shareyourgenius.com

  2. Aug 27

    #186 Why Credibility Beats Charisma in Leadership (feat. Steve Farber)

    Steve Farber has been arguing that love is a legitimate business discipline for over two decades, and people still flinch at the word. Companies print "we love our customers" on buttons and banners without breaking a sweat. Backing it up with policy, budget, and follow-through is where most of them quietly give up. His new book, The Radical Promise, co-written with Jim Kouzes and Barry Posner, makes the case that the real gap in leadership isn't between people who talk about love and values and people who don't. It's between what any leader says and what they actually do. In this episode, Matt Poepsel sits down with Steve Farber, founder of the Extreme Leadership Institute and author of The Radical Promise, to dig into why "we love our customers" is easy to print and hard to practice, why credibility might be the one trait that actually predicts whether people follow you anywhere, and how a shipping company came back from bankruptcy by asking one uncomfortable question about every policy on the books. Steve breaks down the acronym behind his research, DWYSYWD, do what you say you will do, and argues the gap between the two is where trust quietly erodes, one small unnoticed commitment at a time. Together, they trace what closing that gap actually looks like on a Monday morning, from customer policy down to the lunch plans you forgot you made. In this episode, you'll learn: The Default Drift: Without deliberate practice, "we love our customers" turns into decoration instead of a standard anyone is held to.The DWYSYWD Test: Credibility comes down to a simple, uncomfortable measure: whether your actions match what you said you'd do.The Commitment You Didn't Know You Made: Leaders create credibility gaps without realizing it, and every small one compounds.Credibility Plus Vision: Forty years of research point to a two-part answer for why anyone chooses to follow a leader anywhere. Highlights:(00:00) Meet Steve Farber (01:50) Why love makes business people nervous (07:01) Love as a practice, not a sentiment (08:17) The Trailer Bridge turnaround (09:58) Raising the standard beyond satisfaction (11:30) The credibility formula behind DWYSYWD (13:38) The commitment you didn't know you made (17:01) Three strikes and your credibility is out (21:59) High tech, high touch (24:21) Credibility plus vision Resources:Follow Steve on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/stevefarber/Get Steve's new book, "The Radical Promise: Mastering the Art of Doing What You Say You Will Do": https://theradicalpromise.com/  Follow Matt on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/mattpoepsel/Subscribe to The Predictive Index on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/c/ThePredictiveIndex

  3. Aug 20

    #185 Why Executives Resist the Change They Approved (feat. Lata Hamilton)

    Most change management still assumes there's a gap between disruptions—a chance to catch your breath before the next transformation lands. Lata Hamilton's clients don't get that gap anymore. Change has stopped being an event and started being the weather. In this episode, Matt Poepsel sits down with Lata Hamilton, founder and CEO of Passion Pioneers, accredited change manager, NLP practitioner, and bestselling author of Pioneer Your Career Change. They dig into why change triggers a survival instinct even when the stakes seem small, and why executives sometimes resist the very transformations they signed off on. Lata also breaks down a technique called "chunking up" that gets people to stop arguing over details and reconnect with why the change matters at all. The natural break is right after her bio, so the intro sentence carries all the credentials and the second sentence starts the actual content. If you'd rather keep it tighter at two sentences, just fold that last line back in with an "and how" before "a technique called 'chunking up.'" Lata makes the case that change fatigue isn't a personal failing; it's a structural one, and that leaders who skip the emotional side of change are setting themselves up for roadblocks down the line. Together, they explore what it means to lead from the "magic in the middle" and why purpose, not process, is what actually gets people on board. In this episode, you'll learn: The Survival Instinct Behind Resistance: Even minor changes threaten people's sense of job security, which is why resistance is instinctive, not irrational.Executive Sabotage Is Real: Leaders sometimes approve transformations they don't personally believe in, and that lack of belief leaks through and stalls projects at the worst possible moment.Chunking Up Builds Agreement: The more specific and detailed a conversation gets, the more disagreement it creates. Moving people to a higher-level "why" builds consensus fast.Purpose Beats Process: People don't rally around a new system or a workflow. They rally around what that system means for their lives, their team, or their community. Highlights:(00:00) Meet Lata Hamilton(02:54) Why change is harder to pull off than ever(04:27) The hidden tax of constant change(07:00) The three positions you can hold in any change(12:03) How change triggers the survival instinct(14:45) When executives resist the change they approved(17:45) Finding the magic in the middle(21:12) The NLP technique called chunking up(23:44) Getting to the real purpose behind the change(26:21) Why storytelling is what makes change stick Resources:Follow Lata on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/latahamilton/Visit Lata's website and grab her free guide to change management: https://latahamilton.com/Get Lata's book, "Pioneer Your Career Change" Follow Matt on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/mattpoepsel/Subscribe to The Predictive Index on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/c/ThePredictiveIndex Created in partnership with Share Your Genius: shareyourgenius.com

    #185 Why Executives Resist the Change They Approved (feat. Lata Hamilton)

  4. Aug 13

    #184 The Real Reason 85% of Culture Change Fails (feat. Kevin Oakes)

    Culture isn't a slogan on a values slide; it's the daily discipline of listening to the people the org chart forgets. Most companies assume culture change means demolition, blow it up, start over, transform into something new. But Kevin Oakes, founder and chief strategy officer of i4cp and author of the Amazon bestseller Culture Renovation, has spent decades studying hundreds of companies and found the opposite: the ones who actually pull it off don't tear the house down. They renovate it. In this episode, Matt Poepsel sits down with Kevin Oakes, founder and chief strategy officer of i4cp and author of Culture Renovation, to dig into why only 15% of companies that try to change their culture actually succeed, why the "energizers" who actually shape culture are almost never the ones on the org chart, and why AI has turned into an unplanned stress test for every company's culture. Kevin makes the case that a strong culture isn't a nice-to-have sitting next to strategy, it's the thing that determines whether strategy survives contact with reality, especially now that AI is exposing every crack that was already there. Together, they explore what future readiness actually means when culture, skills, and AI readiness stop being three separate conversations and become one. In this episode, you'll learn: Renovate, Don't Demolish: The 15% of companies that successfully change culture keep what works and build on it, rather than starting from scratch.Find the Real Influencers: The people who actually shape culture, the "energizers", are usually buried in the org chart, not sitting at the top of it.AI as a Culture Mirror: How a team responds to AI reveals whether trust, safety, and experimentation already exist in the culture, or never did.One Integrated Agenda: Culture readiness, skills readiness, and AI readiness aren't separate initiatives, treating them that way is what causes organizations to stall.Highlights:(00:00) Meet Kevin Oakes(01:40) What separates the 15% who succeed(06:56) Finding your organization's energizers(08:59) Renovation, not transformation(10:49) Is business performance the only signal to change?(12:11) How AI has changed and confirmed the renovation thesis(19:41) Why culture, skills, and AI readiness can't be siloed(23:05) Is purpose making a comeback? Resources: Follow Kevin on LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/in/kevinoakes/ Learn more about Kevin and i4cp: i4cp.comGet Kevin's book, Culture Renovation Follow Matt on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/mattpoepsel/Subscribe to The Predictive Index on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/c/ThePredictiveIndex Created in partnership with Share Your Genius: shareyourgenius.com

    #184 The Real Reason 85% of Culture Change Fails (feat. Kevin Oakes)

  5. Aug 6

    #183 How to Hear the People Who Never Speak Up (feat. Jess Britt)

    Culture shows up in the small moments, and few moments are smaller, or more revealing, than a meeting. Most managers treat meetings as a scheduling problem to survive rather than a leadership opportunity to design. But for Jess Britt, leadership coach and meeting design expert, the real cost of a badly run meeting isn't wasted time; it's the leadership behavior you're modeling every time you fail to use the room well. In this episode, Matt Poepsel sits down with Jess Britt, leadership coach and author of the newsletter Set the Agenda, to dig into why every meeting is a test of leadership, why the opportunity cost of a bad meeting goes far beyond payroll, and how a simple four-part framework can turn any meeting into a chance to develop your team. Jess challenges the idea that meetings are just something to get through, making the case that how you run a meeting communicates exactly what you value: whose input counts, whether you've thought ahead, and what behavior gets tolerated. Together, they explore how to draw out quieter voices, run hybrid meetings without losing half the room, and use AI as a tool without letting it excuse bad meeting design. In this episode, you'll learn: The Opportunity Cost of a Bad Meeting: It's not just about the meeting itself; it's about what your team could have been doing instead, and what value gets left on the table when you don't make the most of the time you already have.The Four Building Blocks: Every effective meeting runs on housekeeping, warm-up, content, and close, and naming them makes it easier to run them with intention.Drawing Out Quiet Voices: Structuring engagement through pair-shares, written reflection, or simply asking who hasn't spoken yet gets you input you'd otherwise miss.Leading Hybrid Without Losing the Room: Starting with remote participants first, setting clear norms, and assigning an in-room advocate keeps hybrid meetings from splitting into two experiences. Highlights:(00:00) Meet Jess Britt(01:05) What drew Jess to meetings and fixing them(02:37) Meetings as a leadership skill set(04:42) The opportunity cost of a bad meeting(08:14) The four building blocks of a meeting(9:06) Why every meeting should have an agenda(11:36) What happens during the warm-up(14:02) What an actual intentional close looks like(17:32) The difference between a personal meeting objective vs an agenda item(20:45) Being a leader means developing other leaders(23:50) Drawing out the quieter voices in the room(26:25) Running hybrid meetings without losing half the room(28:00) Is AI making our meetings better? Resources:Follow Jess on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jessica-britt/ Subscribe to Jess's newsletter, Set the Agenda : https://settheagenda.com/Learn more about Jess's work: jessbritt.com Follow Matt on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/mattpoepsel/Subscribe to The Predictive Index on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/c/ThePredictiveIndex Created in partnership with Share Your Genius: shareyourgenius.com

    #183 How to Hear the People Who Never Speak Up (feat. Jess Britt)

  6. Jul 30

    #182 Why Pushing Through is Not Real Resilience (feat. Dr. Marline Duroseau)

    Most leadership advice treats the person and the professional as two separate jobs. Dr. Marline C. Duroseau's career says otherwise. She started in payroll at twenty-one, worked her way up to CFO of a 1,500-person healthcare organization, then walked away from finance to lead HR and leadership development at Brandon Hall Group, all while carrying a fifteen-year infertility journey she didn't talk about at work until she wrote a book, then took the story to a TEDx stage. In this episode, Matt Poepsel sits down with Dr. Marline C. Duroseau, Managing Director of HR and Leadership Development at Brandon Hall Group and author of It'll Happen By 30, to trace how a payroll job taught her to see people inside every spreadsheet, why she left the CFO title to chase the root causes she kept finding in the numbers, and what it took to stand on a TEDx stage and name the "secret battle" so many high-achieving women carry alone. Dr. Mar makes the case that resilience isn't pushing through until you stop feeling anything. It's knowing when to pause, when to ask for help, and how to keep showing up without abandoning yourself. Together, they get into what it means to lead people while you're still figuring out how to lead yourself. In this episode, you'll learn: Numbers Tell You What, People Tell You Why: Financial discipline without the human side of the business creates disconnect. The strongest leaders read both.HR Earns Its Seat With Business Fluency, Not Just Policy: HR departments that stay in compliance mode get treated as reactive. The ones with a seat at the table connect data to the story behind it.Invisible Disruptions Are Universal: Infertility, divorce, caregiving, grief. The details differ, but the identity question underneath is the same: who am I now, and how do I keep leading from here?Resilience, Not Performance: Real resilience means adapting without pretending you're unaffected, and building systems that let the people around you recover too. Highlights:(00:00) Meet Dr. Marline C. Duroseau (01:52) Seeing the people behind every line item (04:25) Two buildings, same budget, different outcomes (09:53) Why she left the CFO seat for HR (14:10) How HR earns a seat at the table (19:16) The mentor who taught her to speak up (20:20) The $522,000 lesson in speaking up (22:29) Turning a 15-year infertility battle into a TEDx stage (26:10) Why every disruption feels different but the identity question is the same (28:11) Redefining resilience as not abandoning yourself Resources:Follow Dr. Marline on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/marline-c-duroseau/Get her book, "It'll Happen By 30" Follow Matt on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/mattpoepsel/Subscribe to The Predictive Index on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/c/ThePredictiveIndex

    #182 Why Pushing Through is Not Real Resilience (feat. Dr. Marline Duroseau)

  7. Jul 23

    #181 The 90% Forgetting Problem No One Talks About (feat. Mamie Kanfer Stewart)

    Most leadership development follows the same logic: bring people together, fill them with good content, and trust that something will stick. It doesn't. Within two weeks, research shows we've forgotten 90% of what we learned, not because the content was wrong, but because the format was never built for the way adults actually work. Mamie Kanfer Stewart figured this out the hard way. As the founder of Meeteor and host of the Modern Manager podcast, she spent years running workshops that left people energized and changed almost nothing. So she walked away from that model, went deep on adult learning science and behavior design, and built something different: the micro-workshop approach, a format designed for distributed, time-strapped teams that can't afford to disappear for a day, and can't afford to keep training that doesn't move the needle. In this episode, Matt Poepsel sits down with Mamie Kanfer Stewart, founder of Meeteor and author of Momentum: Creating Effective, Engaging, and Enjoyable Meetings, to challenge the assumptions most organizations hold about how people learn at work. They dig into why knowledge and behavior change are not the same thing, why the format of training, not the content, is what usually fails, and how short, recorded, action-anchored sessions can do what three-hour offsites can't.  In this episode, you'll learn: The Knowledge-Skill-Behavior Gap: Having information is step one. Knowing how to use it is step two. Actually doing it under pressure is where most training falls completely apart.Why the Format Is the Problem: Organizations keep blaming the facilitator or the topic when the real issue is a delivery model that was never designed to produce lasting change.The APPLY Framework: Mamie's learning design approach anchors every session to real work, builds in practice time, draws on group experience, and sends everyone out with one shared next action, not a personalized list no one follows.Living Assets Over One-Time Events: When sessions are short and recorded, they stop being moments and start being infrastructure, for catch-up, for reinforcement, and for onboarding every new hire who comes after. Highlights:(00:00) Meet Mamie Kanfer Stewart(01:30) The gap between saying you value learning and actually doing it(04:50) The three components of learning, and where training breaks down(10:42) Why we lose 90% of what we learn within two weeks(11:57) What led Mamie to walk away from the traditional workshop model(13:07) Diving into adult learning science and BJ Fogg's behavior design(17:19) The APPLY framework, broken down(22:58) Training that lives beyond the event(27:00) What AI changes, and what it can't replace, in team learning Resources:Follow Mamie on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/mamiekanferstewart/ Visit Mamie's website: mamieks.comListen to the Modern Manager podcast: themodernmanager.com Follow Matt on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/mattpoepsel/Subscribe to The Predictive Index on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/c/ThePredictiveIndex Created in partnership with Share Your Genius: shareyourgenius.com

    #181 The 90% Forgetting Problem No One Talks About (feat. Mamie Kanfer Stewart)

  8. Jul 16

    #180 The Culture That Punishes the Questions It Claims to Want (feat. Charles Lee)

    Your biggest leadership challenge may not be your workload, your team, or the pace of change. It may be that somewhere along the way, you stopped asking questions.  Charles Lee, Founder and CEO of Ideation and author of Design Your Good Life: The Framework for Discovering Your Purpose, Actualizing Your Vision, and Amplifying Your Impact, has spent nearly two decades helping leaders turn ideas into action. Through that work, he's uncovered a surprising truth: the greatest obstacle to innovation isn't a lack of ideas, it's the environments, assumptions, and habits that prevent people from exploring them. In this episode, Matt Poepsel sits down with Charles to explore why purpose and curiosity are essential leadership tools in an era increasingly defined by automation. They examine how organizations unintentionally discourage questioning, why successful leaders often find themselves unfulfilled despite achieving their goals, and how middle managers can create meaningful cultures even when they don't control the entire organization. Charles's message is both timely and provocative: the future belongs to leaders who move beyond busyness and build lives rooted in purpose, curiosity, and impact. In this episode, you'll learn: Where Curiosity Dies: Curiosity often fades as careers advance, replaced by conformity that feels safer and more rewarded in most organizations.Purpose Over Output: High performance without meaning leads to burnout, while lasting impact comes from connecting work to deeper purpose.AI as Space, Not Work: Technology’s real value isn’t speed or scale—it’s freeing leaders to focus on thinking, coaching, and human development.Leadership as Stewardship: Influence grows when leaders prioritize trust, growth, and care for people over status or short-term results. Highlights:  (00:00) Meet Charles Lee (01:00) Why great ideas fail in the culture, not the concept (04:00) Success without purpose is just efficient busyness (07:00) The overlooked leadership power of middle managers (10:00) Why curiosity fades as careers move forward (14:00) The leadership habit that unlocks innovation (17:00) What AI can never replace in great leaders (20:00) Use AI to create space, not just more productivity (22:00) Be the best for the world, not just the best in it (26:00) A framework for leading at work and at home Resources: Follow Charles Lee on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/charlestlee/ Charles Lee's website: https://www.charlestlee.com/about Get a copy of: Design Your Good Life: The Framework for Discovering Your Purpose, Actualizing Your Vision, and Amplifying Your Impact: https://www.charlestlee.com/design-your-good-life-book-landing-page Follow Matt on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/mattpoepsel/  Subscribe to The Predictive Index on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/c/ThePredictiveIndex Created in partnership with Share Your Genius: shareyourgenius.com

    #180 The Culture That Punishes the Questions It Claims to Want (feat. Charles Lee)
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About

Lead The People is your guide to unlocking your true potential as an authentic leader. Hosted by Dr. Matt Poepsel—The Godfather of Talent Optimization—this podcast dives deep into the art and science of what it takes to lead at the next level. With insightful conversations and practical strategies, each episode equips executives, strategic HR pros, and aspiring leaders with the tools it takes to boost performance, inspire teams, and drive meaningful impact. Whether exploring the latest workplace trends or tackling real-world leadership challenges, Lead The People offers an enlightened approach to leadership. Embark on a rewarding journey to become the leader your people deserve—the leader you were meant to be.

Information

  • Creator
    Matt Poepsel, PhD
  • Years Active
    2021 - 2026
  • Episodes
    190
  • Rating
    Clean
  • Copyright
    © 2025 Lead the People
  • Show Website
    Lead the People

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