FranklinCovey On Leadership

Chris Voss, former FBI lead kidnapping negotiator, bestselling author of Never Split the Difference, and Black Swan Group founder, explores leading through uncertainty. He discusses tactical empathy, why understanding matters more than agreement, and how accusations audits can lower resistance. The conversation also covers agency, predictable communication, early collaboration, small steps, and policies that make change stick.

Neil Hoyne, Google’s Chief Strategist and author of Converted, explores the human side of data and AI. He discusses finding real customer stories behind metrics, replacing data-driven selling with disciplined experimentation, and matching rigor to decision speed. He also examines why business strategy must lead AI strategy, how customer lifetime value shapes lasting relationships, and why developing future talent matters in an AI-powered workplace.

Kat Cole, CEO of AG1 and former Cinnabon president, rose from restaurant hostess to lead major consumer brands. She recounts steering businesses through the Great Recession and COVID. She discusses being clear-eyed about problems, taking unpopular but necessary actions, aligning teams with data, building remote culture and values, and daily habits like listening, feedback, and bold action.

What does effective leadership look like when every decision can affect a patient’s life? In this episode, Erica DeBoer, Chief Nursing Officer at Sanford Health, joins Jennifer Colosimo to share how she leads 11,000 nurses and 55,000 team members across one of the nation’s largest rural health systems. Erica describes her philosophy of stewardship, why leadership is less about having all the answers and more about creating the conditions for great decisions, and how she keeps “brilliance at the bedside” at the center of every choice. She explains why clarity matters more than certainty, how Sanford’s high-reliability journey and SAFE (Sanford Accountability for Excellence) framework guide communication, and practical ways she equips frontline teams to speak up, solve problems, and focus on what matters most. Along the way, she highlights simple practices—like huddles, repeated messaging, and visible presence—that build trust, strengthen engagement, and improve both the employee and patient experience. Rethinking the High-Turnover Hospital: https://resources.franklincovey.com/c/tlg-rethinking-the-high-turnover-hospital?x=j4G37p&lb-mode=overlay As a global leadership and organizational performance partner, we give strategy the human edge™. For 40 years, FranklinCovey has helped tens of thousands of leaders, teams, and organizations around the world achieve breakthrough results and transform how they execute strategy at scale.To learn more, email us at [email protected], visit franklincovey.com, or call us at: 1-888-868-1776

Elizabeth Svoboda, award-winning science journalist and author of The Art of Pacing, translates neuroscience into practical tools for lasting performance. She challenges grind culture and its hidden costs. She explains how leaders can model recovery, spot overload signals, align work with energy peaks, and use lulls for low-effort tasks to sustain high performance.

Shawn Vanderhoven, partner at The Wiseman Group and co-author of Pause, shares research on why leaders and teams get stuck in overcommitment. He talks about tapping the brakes to create space for deep work. Short practices covered include exposing hidden tasks, escaping email noise, and tuning in before delegating to boost focus and impact.

Ryannon Frederick, Chief Nursing Officer at Mayo Clinic who leads thousands of nurses, discusses human-centered leadership in healthcare. She talks about pushing beyond incremental change, borrowing ideas from outside the field, and using “imagine a world where…” prompts. She explains Mayo’s for-nurses-by-nurses innovation model, pairing clinicians with nonclinical experts, and daily behaviors that build trust and psychological safety.

Phil Le-Brun, former McDonald’s executive and AWS executive in residence, shares frameworks from The Octopus Organization. He contrasts rigid, 19th-century management with adaptive, learning organizations. He explains distributed decision-making, the pillars of clarity, ownership, and curiosity, and practical ways to run fast experiments and scale continuous, humane change.

What if the biggest barrier to your goals lives inside your own head? In this episode, Dr. Henry Cloud—renowned clinical psychologist, executive coach, bestselling author, and co-founder of a large healthcare organization—joins Jennifer Colosimo to unpack the ideas behind his new book, Your Desired Future: The 5 Essential Steps That Take You Where You Want to Go. Drawing on neuroscience, psychology, and years working in the “war rooms” with CEOs and executive teams, Henry explains why effort alone rarely closes the gap between vision and execution. He introduces a simple but powerful model, inspired by how the human body moves from “here” to “there,” to help leaders clarify the future they want, recruit the right talent, and design strategies that actually work. Along the way, he explores how self-doubt, unexamined assumptions, and missing structural elements quietly stall progress—and what you can do to consistently create the results you intend.   FranklinCovey’s world-class learning solutions—delivered Live-Online, On Demand, or Live In-Person—are designed to build exceptional leadership skills and enrich your culture at every level of your organization.   To learn more, email us at [email protected], visit franklincovey.com, or call us at: 1-888-868-1776

Andy Norman, philosopher and cognitive immunology researcher focused on mental immunity. He explains why pausing before reacting helps leaders, how doubts act like mental antibodies, and why listening to disliked perspectives strengthens thinking. He also shows how calming emotion and modeling persuadability builds better collective decision-making.