The Secret Ingredient of Great Leadership? Emotional Courage with Peter Bregman & Charles Good | TGLP #238

Jul 28, 2025

40:16

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Today, we are joined by Peter Bregman.

Peter helps successful people become exceptional leaders and stellar human beings. He blends his deep expertise in business, leadership and people, to deliver quantifiable results such as Turnarounds, Revenue/Stock Growth, Executive Team Development, and Personal Development.

Peter is recognized as the #1 executive coach in the world by Leading Global Coaches. He coaches C-Level executives in many of the world’s premier organizations, including Allianz, Twilio, Electronic Arts, CBS, Mars, Pearson, Citi, Charity Navigator, United Media, FEI, and many others.

Peter is ranked as a Top 30 thought leader by Thinkers 50 Radar and selected as one of the Top 8 thought leaders in leadership. He is ranked by Global Guru’s as one of the top 30 best Coaches in the world and one of the top 30 best leadership speakers/trainers in the world. He is the award-winning, best selling author and contributor of 18 books, including most recently, You CAN Change Other People: The Four Steps to Help Your Colleagues, Employees—Even Family—Up Their Game. He also wrote Leading with Emotional Courage: How to Have Hard Conversations, Create Accountability, and Inspire Action on Your Most Important Work. His book, 18 Minutes: Find Your Focus, Master Distraction, and Get the Right Things Done, was a Wall Street Journal bestseller, winner of the Gold medal from the Axiom Business Book awards, named the best business book of the year by NPR, and selected by Publisher’s Weekly and the New York Post as a top ten business book. He is also the author of Four Seconds: All the Time You Need to Replace Counter-Productive Habits with Ones That Really Work, a New York Post “Top Pick for Your Career” in 2015, and Point B: A Short Guide to Leading a Big Change.

In this powerful conversation, we explore what emotional courage really means and why it's the secret sauce of effective leadership. Peter reveals how most of our leadership challenges stem not from lack of knowledge, skills, time, or opportunity, but from our unwillingness to feel the emotions that certain actions might trigger.

Key topics include:

Why emotional courage is the willingness to feel
The four essential traits of powerful leadership
How self-compassion serves as the foundation for authentic confidence
The importance of owning your shadow side rather than projecting it onto others
Learning to practice irrelevancy without losing influence or impact
The metaphor of "holding the baby" when you feel powerless in challenging situations
How to bring devotion to your work
The critical difference between expressing emotions and containing them

Whether you're avoiding difficult conversations, struggling with vulnerability in leadership, or looking to deepen your emotional intelligence, Peter's insights provide a roadmap for building the emotional courage that transforms both leaders and organizations.

Peter Bregman's Book: https://www.amazon.com/Leading-Emotional-Courage-Conversations-Accountability/dp/1119505690

Bregman Partners Website: https://bregmanpartners.com/

Website and live online programs: http://ims-online.com

Blog: https://blog.ims-online.com/

Podcast: https://ims-online.com/podcasts/

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/charlesgood/

Twitter: https://twitter.com/charlesgood99

Chapters:

(00:00) Introduction

(01:25) Tool: Defining Emotional Courage as Willingness to Feel

(05:40) Technique: Building Emotional Courage Through Daily Practice

(09:05) Tip: The Four Essential Leadership Traits Framework