Navigating Leadership Pressures

Power and pressure can bring out your best or quietly push you into habits that damage trust, communication, and confidence. In this conversation, Lisa sits down with Sabina Nawaz, best-selling author of You’re the Boss, global executive coach, and former senior leader at Microsoft, who has spent her career helping leaders at the highest levels navigate these forces with clarity and humanity. Sabina shares proven strategies and simple tools anyone can use to lead (and be led) better.

You’ll learn:

• Why pressure, not power, corrupts and how to keep it from squeezing out your humanity
• Four common leadership mistakes (and the counterintuitive fixes that actually work)
• Simple, actionable tools to close the power gap, hear the truth, and grow from feedback

No matter your role, walk away ready to handle pressure and lead in a way that inspires.

⁠Buy Sabina's Best-Selling Book⁠

00:00 Intro

01:39 Meet Sabina Nawaz

05:13 Rethinking the Leadership Playbook

09:37 Pressure, Power, and Permission

11:47 Four Myths of Leadership

12:40 Authenticity is Not Singular

17:34 Values in Action

19:26 “Yeah, But” and Confirmation Bias

23:51 Business Is Personal

26:03 Sabina's Tips on Changing How You Lead

26:45 Step One: Shut Up

28:31 Step Two: Use Numbers

31:21 Step Three: Do Nothing

35:31 The Wake-Up Call: Simple and Specific Feedback

39:25 Lisa’s Leadership Lesson

42:56 Hidden Power Dynamics

50:26 Final Thoughts

53:21 Outro

54:15 Disclaimer