Thriving Leaders Podcast

Why do so many strategies sound compelling in the boardroom but struggle to shape what people actually do?
In this episode of the Thriving Leaders Podcast, I speak with Alicia McKay, an Aotearoa New Zealand-based writer, speaker and strategist who has spent 15 years advising leaders on strategy, change and leadership. She is also the author of From Strategy to Action, You Don’t Need an MBA and Local Legends.
In this direct and thought-provoking conversation, Alicia and I challenge familiar assumptions about strategy, leadership and collaboration. We also examine what may be lost when judgement and decision-making are increasingly handed to automated systems.
If you have ever watched a strong strategy lose momentum after the planning session, this conversation will give you a different way to understand why—and what you can do about it.
In this episode, we cover:
How strategy is different in local government and the public sector than in corporate organisations
Why strategy often loses momentum after the planning process
How strategic thinking shows up in everyday leadership
What leaders may misunderstand about people and change
The transition from subject-matter expert to strategic leader
What gets in the way of cross-functional collaboration
How organisational systems influence behaviour
The relationship between trust, agency and accountability
What automation could mean for human judgement

Watch the full episode to hear Alicia’s refreshingly direct perspective on what it really takes to turn strategy into action.
About Alicia McKay
Alicia McKay is a writer, speaker and strategist based in Aotearoa New Zealand. She works with executive and elected leaders to improve strategic thinking, decision-making and leadership in complex environments.
Alicia is the author of:
From Strategy to Action: A Guide to Getting Shit Done in the Public Sector
You Don’t Need an MBA: Leadership Lessons That Cut Through the Crap
Local Legends: How to Make a Difference in Local Government
Resources and links
Alicia McKay’s website
About Alicia McKay
Alicia McKay’s books
You Don’t Need an MBA
From Strategy to Action

Subscribe to the Thriving Leaders Podcast for practical conversations about leadership, team performance and creating thriving workplace cultures.

Why do capable people find it so difficult to ask for help?

Leo Bottary argues that strong teams treat asking for help as an act of resourcefulness—not an admission of weakness.

In this Best Of episode of the Thriving Leaders Podcast, Leo and I explore the connection between psychological safety, feedback and shared accountability. We discuss why team members can struggle to speak up, how a simple change in language can make asking for help feel more inviting, and what happens when feedback becomes everyone’s responsibility.

Leo also shares a memorable team exercise that demonstrates how difficult it is to improve when we are effectively working blind.

You’ll hear us explore:
– Why successful people view asking for help differently
– How to turn a request for help into an invitation
– Why teams need consistent feedback loops
– The role of trusted intent when giving and receiving feedback
– How preparation and shared expectations support teams under pressure

Leo Bottary is an author, speaker, facilitator and the founder and managing partner of Peernovation. His work explores how peers help one another learn, perform and achieve more together.

Watch the full conversation: https://youtu.be/DJa8pzThdjc

I’m Claire Gray, leadership and team facilitator, executive coach, keynote speaker and author of Thriving Leaders and Thriving Teams. Through the Thriving Leaders Podcast, I share practical ideas for building stronger leaders, healthier cultures and high-performing teams.

Learn more: https://thrivingculture.com.au

Subscribe for practical conversations about leadership, psychological safety, accountability and creating teams where people can do their best work.

#PsychologicalSafety #HighPerformingTeams #Leadership

Most meetings are designed around content. Someone presents, everyone else listens, and contribution is invited at the end with: “Any questions?”
By then, it may be too late.
Chad Littlefield believes connection is not the warm-up before the real work. It is part of the work — particularly when leaders need people to think together, speak honestly and collaborate beyond their usual teams.
Chad is the co-founder and Chief Experience Officer of We and Me, a TEDx speaker, and the co-author with his late partner, Will Wise, of Ask Powerful Questions and How to Make Virtual Engagement Easy. He also created the We! Connect Cards, which are used in more than 80 countries.
We explore how leaders can invite contribution earlier, create connection without resorting to awkward or unrelated icebreakers, and design meetings that feel more purposeful from the moment people arrive.
We also talk about a challenge I see frequently in organisations: leaders may have strong relationships within their own functions, yet struggle to build the horizontal connections needed to deliver strategy. Chad shares a practical idea for helping those relationships continue after an offsite or senior leader forum — rather than leaving everyone with good intentions that disappear once they return to work.

In this episode, we cover:
Why connection shapes the quality of the work that follows
What changes when leaders design for contribution rather than passive listening
How Chad’s Contribution Method rethinks the flow of a meeting
Why “connection before content” is different from an icebreaker
How a simple shift in format can change the energy in a room
Why teams need the right amount of connection — not necessarily more
How to extend cross-functional relationships beyond a one-off event
The question Chad believes can keep a team learning

If you lead meetings, bring large groups together or want stronger collaboration across boundaries, Chad offers a different way to think about the time people spend together.
And he leaves us with a question that is worth returning to — as leaders, as teams and as human beings.

Chapters
00:00 – Why connection is part of the work
03:00 – Chad Littlefield’s work and why connection matters
04:20 – Where Chad’s interest in connection began
09:00 – Positive social risks and Chad’s first speaking opportunity
12:00 – Why small groups are the units of transformation
16:00 – The five-part Contribution Method
20:00 – Connection before content
23:00 – Designing content for contribution
27:00 – How to close a meeting with energy
29:00 – Applying the method in everyday meetings
40:00 – The minimum effective dose of team connection
45:00 – Making cross-functional connection continue after an event
48:00 – The question that keeps a team learning
49:30 – AI, speed and the value of slowing down
51:00 – Being purposeful about time away from work

Links and Resources:
We and Me / Chad Littlefield
We! Connect Cards
Ask Powerful Questions by Will Wise and Chad Littlefield
How to Make Virtual Engagement Easy by Chad Littlefield
Explore more leadership resources from Thriving Culture

How can teams disagree without damaging trust or making the conversation personal? Claire Gray and Dr Kaye Monk-Morgan explore how leaders can create healthier conflict and make honest challenge less risky.

In this Best Of episode of the Thriving Leaders Podcast, Kaye explains why people sometimes need explicit permission to disagree, why challenging an idea is different from challenging authority, and how shared language can help teams work through difficult conversations.

You will hear practical insights on:
– Inviting healthy challenge within a team
– Separating an idea from the person who raised it
– Avoiding groupthink without creating unnecessary conflict
– Using curiosity and shared language to depersonalise disagreement
– Creating courageous spaces for honest feedback

Dr Kaye Monk-Morgan is President and CEO of the Kansas Leadership Center. Claire Gray is a leadership and team facilitator, executive coach, speaker and author of Thriving Leaders and Thriving Teams.

Explore leadership programs, team development, coaching and more: https://www.thrivingculture.com.au

Subscribe for practical conversations about leadership, high-performing teams, psychological safety, accountability and workplace culture.

#HealthyConflict #PsychologicalSafety #Leadership

Do leaders need to know who is neurodivergent before they can lead more inclusively?
I’m joined by Mariane Power, a behavioural scientist and former clinical psychologist whose work sits at the intersection of neurodiversity and leadership. Mariane works with neurodivergent founders and executives, workplace and government teams, and elite sport. She is also the creator of Master Your Magic and host of the Jagged Brilliance series.
Many leaders want to create a more neuroinclusive workplace, but are unsure where to begin. They may be worried about using the wrong language, making assumptions or asking people to disclose something they would rather keep private.
Mariane brings a thoughtful and practical perspective to those questions. We look at what leaders can do without knowing anyone’s diagnosis, why the day-to-day experience of work matters as much as policy, and how to make space for different ways of thinking and working.
We also get into one of the harder tensions in this space: how leaders can offer flexibility and support while still having honest conversations about expectations, feedback and accountability.
In this episode, we cover:
What neuroinclusive leadership means beyond labels and formal accommodations
Why some people choose not to disclose their neurodivergence at work
What leaders can ask instead of making assumptions about what someone needs
How psychological safety shapes people’s experience of inclusion
What universal design can teach us about creating better workplaces
The opportunities and challenges facing neurodivergent leaders
How flexibility, feedback and accountability can sit alongside one another

I wanted to ask Mariane some of the questions leaders may be thinking but feel nervous to ask. What if someone does not want to disclose? What if a leader gets the language wrong? And what happens when a request for flexibility begins to affect the role, the team or the work? Mariane does not reduce these questions to easy answers. She gives leaders a more useful place to start.
If you are thinking about neurodiversity in your team, or wondering whether your workplace genuinely works for different minds, listen to the full episode and share it with someone who is part of that conversation.
00:00 – Why neurodiversity is becoming a leadership conversation
01:00 – Mariane Power’s path from clinical psychology to neuroinclusive leadership
02:40 – Moving beyond a deficit-based view of neurodivergence
07:00 – Why leaders find neurodiversity conversations difficult
12:00 – What workplaces can learn from inclusive education
17:00 – Disclosure, stigma and psychological safety
24:00 – Difference, masking and the double empathy problem
31:00 – Why teams should not diagnose one another
34:00 – Visibility, belonging and justice
40:00 – Universal design in practice
43:00 – Practical habits of a neuroinclusive leader
46:00 – Sustainable performance for neurodivergent leaders
50:00 – Neurodivergence, feedback and accountability
54:00 – Mariane’s message for thriving teams

Resources
Mariane Power website: https://www.marianepower.com.au/
Mariane Power on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/marianepower/
Master Your Magic: https://www.marianepower.com.au/masteryourmagic
Jagged Brilliance: https://www.marianepower.com.au/jaggedbrilliance
Jagged Brilliance YouTube series: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLdkWnsCuGuyLa9Kh-65uJYW1q-2j-uxvg
Neurodiversity in Business and Birkbeck, University of London, Research Report 2023 (McDowall & Doyle, 2023): https://www.neurodiversityinbusiness.org/research/neurodiversity-in-business-research-report-2023
Neurodiversity in Business and Birkbeck, Research Report 2026 (McDowall & Srinivasan, 2026): https://neurodiversity.org/wp-content/uploads/2026/07/Neurodiversity_in_Business_Birbeck_Research_Report_2026.pdf
Six-takeaways summary by Dr Nancy Doyle (Forbes): https://www.forbes.com/sites/drnancydoyle/2026/07/29/neurodiversity-in-business-report-2026-six-key-takeaways/
The three climates for psychological safety (Bruyère & Colella, 2022): https://library.oapen.org/bitstream/id/d77b6b1d-9111-4004-a35d-b2f3257139a9/9781003023616_1043249781003023616-2.pdf
The double empathy problem (Milton, 2012): https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/09687599.2012.710008
Autistic peer-to-peer information transfer is highly effective (Crompton, Ropar, Evans-Williams, Flynn & Fletcher-Watson, 2020, Autism): https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/1362361320919286
The 7 Principles of Universal Design (Center for Universal Design, North Carolina State University, 1997): https://universaldesign.ie/about-universal-design/the-7-principles-of-universal-design/


Subscribe to the Thriving Leaders Podcast for practical conversations about leadership, team performance, psychological safety and building cultures where people can thrive.
#NeurodiversityAtWork #InclusiveLeadership #ThrivingLeaders