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Sven Brodmerkel got a PhD in political science, fell into a German ad agency by accident, worked his way from account management to copywriting, and has spent almost twenty years teaching advertising in Australia. This was his first podcast ever. We get into why ads get older people wrong, whether you can actually teach (or grade) creativity, what AI means for a school system that AI is built to ace, beginner's mind versus empathy, the one creative habit worth training, how to run a brainstorm that works, and why every leader needs someone who can tell them the truth without getting punished for it. His advice to CEOs: find a court jester.

Most career advice assumes a straight line. Paul Austin-Menear has never had one. He started a consulting business at 23, sold it, watched his next startup fail for being years too early, got laid off twice, and landed a decade-long job by mailing 200 letters. Paul Austin-Menear, founder of Six Catalysts, joins Dan Korus on The Kestryl Edge Podcast. After a decade in marketing, commerce and operations at a Toronto consumer tech startup, Paul now helps growing businesses ($5M to $100M) fix operations, marketing, HR and finance before they hit the potholes. He also co-hosts Roast the Post with Jennifer Houle. In this episode: Leaving small-town Ontario for opportunityWhy a history degree's soft skills matter more in the AI eraEngaging fairly with ideas you disagree withCoaching a parliamentary candidate at 23The QR code startup that was too early, and what failure does to a partnershipBuilding trust with business partners: expectations, reciprocity, and not screwing each otherWhy "self-censor and get along" is outdated advice for leading younger teams"Do what others aren't": the 200-letter job searchBurnout, and building a solo practice for small businessesAdvice for first-timers, new managers, and the C-suiteResources mentioned Mikhail Gorbachev, Perestroika: New Thinking for Our Country and the World (1987) Connect with Paul Six Catalysts: 6catalysts.ca The Journey, Paul's Substack: 6catalysts.substack.com Roast the Post: roastthepost.show and roastthepost.substack.com Co-host Jennifer Houle, Uncompliant: uncompliant.substack.com Connect with Dan and Kestryl Edge Join The Updraft and the weekly live leadership Q&A: dankorus.com/p/join Kestryl Edge leadership workshops: www.kestryledge.com/services Book a 20-minute fit call: www.kestryledge.com/contact Fact check Conversations run on memory, so here's a quick Dan-Fact-Check so folks know we value honesty in our media. We totally underestimated our Canadian driving distances. It's more like two-thirds of Canadians live within 100 km of the US border, not 90%. An Ontario three-year BA is a full bachelor's degree. The ease-of-starting-a-business ranking was the World Bank's (Canada 3rd, 2020), not the OECD's. Google Docs and Sheets launched in 2006. The credit crisis broke in August 2007; Lehman failed in September 2008. The ad figures fit cost per click, not CPM. Full sources to all claims are in the episode post on The Updraft. Music: "That Corner In Harlem" and "Orange Cap," licensed through Soundstripe. Code: FGA3KJINKZAAQVEV, E5DX6GR2OLQJXHKU #leadership #careerchange #entrepreneurship #smallbusiness #hiring #management #kestryledge

When people are scared, they stop thinking. Their brains shift into survival mode, and the prefrontal cortex you hired them for goes quiet. Patricio Cuesta, founder of Thinkquan2m, joins Dan Korus on The Kestryl Edge Podcast to break down the neuroscience of psychological safety and why fear is the most expensive thing a leader can bring to work. Patricio spent decades as a corporate executive across Latin America and the United States, often as the person sent in to turn things around. Today he coaches executives through a neuroscience lens and teaches post-graduate engineering students at the University of Central Florida. In this episode: "You're paying for their prefrontal cortex, not their body": why fear wastes the talent you pay forFinding out he's neurodivergent at 50, and the engineering mindset that carried himLeading a turnaround in Brazil by visiting every distributor in their own languageFrom windsurf instructor back to engineering schoolSteering a global consumer brand through the pandemicKilling initiatives that don't move the needle to protect your team's focusPsychological safety as an ecosystem for success, and what Google's Project Aristotle foundWriting an instruction manual for your own brainLearning from imperfect leadersAdvice for new hires, mid-career managers, and executivesResources mentioned Google re:Work, Project Aristotle and team effectiveness: https://rework.withgoogle.com/intl/en/guides/understand-team-effectiveness Liz Wiseman, Multipliers: How the Best Leaders Make Everyone Smarter (2010) John C. Maxwell, The 21 Irrefutable Laws of Leadership Connect with Patricio Thinkquan2m: https://thinkquan2m.com. Patricio also shares his work on LinkedIn and Substack. Connect with Dan and Kestryl Edge Join The Updraft and the weekly live leadership Q&A: https://dankorus.com/p/join Kestryl Edge leadership workshops: https://www.kestryledge.com/services Book a 20-minute fit call: https://www.kestryledge.com/contact Music: "That Corner In Harlem" and "Orange Cap," licensed through Soundstripe. Code: S0EIFCTI0HGDQRFC, WKHQIH2WECJ0SP9D #leadership #psychologicalsafety #neuroscience #neurodiversity #management #executiveleadership #teamperformance #kestryledge

How do you go from starting a nonprofit with no house, no office, and a meeting at Applebee's to leading an organization that has backed New Mexico small businesses for nearly four decades? Lindsey Kay, CEO of WESST, joins Dan Korus on The Kestryl Edge Podcast to talk nonprofit leadership, small business support, and what it really takes to lead with your team instead of in front of it. Lindsey spent 14 years building Paws and Stripes, a program pairing rescue dogs with veterans living with PTSD and brain injuries, before stepping in to lead WESST, a women's business center and community lender serving small businesses across New Mexico. She brings a social worker's lens to business advising, ethics, and leadership. In this episode: How a rescue dog named Sarge sparked a 14-year service dog program for veteransWhy you should always ask the question: QPR and suicide preventionVeterans are people first: there's always an "and"Building a nonprofit is building a business, and why your mistakes pave the waySmall business advice: start focused, test your idea, then stay agileEthics in business advising and why good advisors work with clients, not for themWhy women's business centers and small business support matter to New Mexico's economyPsychological safety: a team where you can't tell who the CEO isAdvice for your first day at work, for middle managers, and for senior leadersIf you or someone you know is struggling In the US, call or text 988 for the Suicide & Crisis Lifeline: https://988lifeline.org Veterans Crisis Line (dial 988, then press 1): https://www.veteranscrisisline.net The Trevor Project for LGBTQ+ young people: https://www.thetrevorproject.org Resources mentioned QPR Institute (Question, Persuade, Refer suicide prevention training): https://qprinstitute.com Assistance Dogs International, find an accredited member: https://assistancedogsinternational.org/main/looking-for-an-assistance-dog/ Paws and Stripes (service dogs for veterans in New Mexico): https://www.pawsandstripes.org SBA Women's Business Centers: https://www.sba.gov/local-assistance/resource-partners/womens-business-centers Connect with Lindsey and WESST WESST: https://www.wesst.org Connect with Dan and Kestryl Edge Join The Updraft and the weekly live leadership Q&A: https://dankorus.com/p/join Kestryl Edge leadership workshops: https://www.kestryledge.com/services Book a 20-minute fit call: https://www.kestryledge.com/contact #leadership #smallbusiness #nonprofitleadership #newmexico #womeninbusiness #veterans #suicideprevention #psychologicalsafety #kestrylsessions

Brent Bode has spent thirteen years in college admissions, now Senior Assistant Director at Western Washington University, and yes, he used to be my boss. We get into what actually happens on the other side of an application (a majority of four-year colleges admit most of who applies, despite what admissions-panic content tells you), where AI essay detectors get it wrong, and the winding path from a marine biology major to running a piece of a university admissions office. Find Brent: LinkedIn | WWU admissions page More conversations like this: dankorus.com/p/join Music licensed through Soundstripe. Code: F84LGMWLWZ1ME70K, QAZLCXG5OSKURPEX

Burnout is a relationship breaking down between a person and their job. Michael Leiter, Professor Emeritus at Acadia University and co-author (with Christina Maslach) of The Burnout Challenge, joins Dan to unpack the three-part definition researchers actually use to diagnose burnout, why the World Health Organization stops short of calling it a disease, and what separates burnout from simple disengagement. Michael shares the story of cold-calling Maslach in the 1980s after reading her first burnout paper, why surveying your team and doing nothing with the results makes things worse, and the "canary in the coal mine" framework he uses with executives. Along the way: gurneys parked in hospital hallways, the hidden "favor economy" holding broken processes together, and concrete advice for anyone from a first-day hire to a sitting CEO. Links: Michael's website: mpleiter.wordpress.comMichael on LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/leiterThe Burnout Challenge: Managing People's Relationships with Their Jobs (Maslach & Leiter, Harvard University Press, 2022): https://mitpressbookstore.mit.edu/book/9780674251014 Music: Music licensed through Soundstripe. Code: L2V44WNB52QO3LME, ZW1OIBCWL5A3GK9D

Kathi Dalguntas spent a year as a fractional chief of staff, got offered too little for work nobody could measure, and quit in a way that was not at all planned. Now she runs Not Rising, a decentralized journalism magazine built to avoid the single biggest trap in media: capture. We go deep on the negative space of leadership, the work that keeps an organization alive without ever showing up as a line item. She explains why companies become living systems, not org charts, and why the C-suite's biggest job is getting over itself. Along the way: the principal who warned her parents journalism was dangerous, her Walter Mitty moment, the case for role modeling your own mistakes, and exactly where to find a Garrett. You can find Kathi on Substack as Chief Absurdist Officer, and the magazine at Not Rising. Music licensed through Soundstripe. License code: 2VMU9UUTJZQYMPII and XDUDLKBQBNSXYIMR.

Jennifer Houle Crosswinds Interview Jen's Substack Uncompliant Read and listen to more at www.dankorus.com Most emotional intelligence training hands out a framework and calls it done. Jennifer Houle, HR leader and Substack writer, argues the opposite: there's no script, no personality quiz, no four-box model that works until you actually know who's in front of you. In this episode, Dan Korus and Jennifer dig into what real emotional intelligence looks like inside a company: how middle managers get systemically set up to fail, why terminations need aftercare the same way any hard conversation does, and why the DISC/Enneagram-style personality frameworks so many workplaces lean on often do more harm than good. Jennifer draws on her path from Wendy's at 14, to running her own yoga studio, to two decades in HR, to make the case that leadership effectiveness isn't a template you apply, it's a practice of paying attention. Along the way: imposter syndrome and whether leaders actually want to know if people like them, the cult-like patterns inside toxic startups, how to give feedback without hollowing it out into nothing, and why "just be data-driven" doesn't fix a broken culture. If you lead people, manage people, or fire people for a living, this one's for you. #EmotionalIntelligence #EQ #Leadership #HR #WorkplaceCulture #MiddleManagement #ImposterSyndrome #LeadershipDevelopment #PeopleManagement #HRLeadership #AuthenticLeadership #LeadershipPodcast #KestrylSessions #EmployeeExperience #ToxicWorkplace References and resources available upon request :) Music licensed through Soundstripe. Codes: GVOMCKA9E1M5HQPZ, 9RWMGDPWVTQGBODM

Masks at work and the Case for Chief People Officers in the Corner Office (with Mark Putrus) Mark Putrus has spent his career moving through the full HR arc, from pharma sales rep to sales trainer to Chief People Officer, and he's not shy about calling out what he calls "1980s HR" along the way. In this conversation, Mark opens up about something rarely discussed on leadership podcasts: the exhausting work of wearing a mask at work, drawn from his own experience navigating the workplace as part of the LGBTQ+ community and as one half of a two-dad family. From there, the conversation moves into what it actually takes to build a workplace where people can show up without armor. We also dig into why HR should be treated like any other revenue-driving function instead of a cost center, Mark's build-buy-borrow framework for talent strategy, his case for why Chief People Officers are increasingly strong candidates for the CEO seat, and his sharp, contrarian take on the "AI is going to collapse the workforce" narrative dominating headlines right now. Mark closes with his philosophy on leading with clarity, the platinum rule versus the golden rule, and concrete advice for new hires, middle managers, and the C-suite alike. In this episode: What it costs to wear a mask at work, and how to build a workplace that needs less of itWhy HR should be run like marketing or sales, not treated as a cost centerBuild, buy, or borrow: a practical framework for closing talent gapsThe case for Chief People Officers as future CEOsWhy Mark is skeptical of "doom and gloom" predictions about AI and the workforceLeading with clarity, and why uncertainty is one of the worst ways to run a teamAdvice for first-day employees, middle managers, and senior executives Connect with Mark: LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/markputrus/ Substack (The Unspoken): https://substack.com/@markputrus Music licensed through Soundstripe. Code: PG2X0R93HSCP2RAD, 3BPA9ZH19X92BQXY

Matt Heyn spent over two decades as a hospital chaplain and in ministry before he ever touched a marketing campaign. On this episode of The Kestryl Edge, he explains why the two jobs are more alike than anyone expects. Host Dan Korus talks with Matt Heyn (Strategy Signal, VyB Marketing) about what a century of chaplaincy training can teach leaders and marketers about emotional intelligence. Matt breaks down the "verbatim," a clinical pastoral education tool chaplains use to reflect on high-stakes conversations, and the layered model of presence (geographical, psychological, affective) that separates leaders people follow from leaders people merely obey. The conversation covers the real difference between sympathy, empathy, and compassion in a management context, why "living human documents" is a better mental model for reading people than trying to extract information from them, and concrete advice for building trust in a new role, team, or leadership seat. In this episode: What a hospital chaplaincy verbatim is and how to run one on yourselfThe three (or five) layers of presence, and why most leadership advice only covers the first oneSympathy vs. empathy vs. compassion: picking the right tool for the momentWhy the jump from individual contributor to manager is a relational shift, not a skills shiftPractical advice for people starting, mid-career, and at the top of their leadership pathFind Matt Heyn on Substack at Strategy Signal. Lead with the best at www.kestryledge.com.

Tanu Tiwari: Why Your Team's Disengagement Is a Leadership Design Problem Global employee engagement just hit its lowest point since 2020, the first two consecutive years of decline ever recorded. Manager engagement collapsed from 31% to 22% since 2022. Ten trillion dollars in lost productivity. No region on earth saw an increase. Tanu Tiwari spent 18 years inside global tech and Fortune 500 companies in marketing, data analytics, and leadership. She's now an ICF certified leadership coach, founder of The Conscious Leader Company, and author of the forthcoming book Disengaged: Turning Passive Teams into Proactive Microcultures. In this conversation, Tanu breaks down: Why every leader is building a "microculture" whether they realize it or not, and the nine conditions in her PROACTIVE framework that determine whether it's healthyThe difference between a "shit umbrella" leader and a "shit funnel" leader, with real examples of what each looks like in a Tuesday afternoon meetingWhy she thinks most "AI layoffs" are companies using AI as cover for business models that were already failingThe three things people need from a leader to stay engaged: to feel seen, significant, and safeHer own story of working through labor and flying to a trade show five months postpartum, and what it taught her about identity and burnoutTanu also built a free AI tool that scores your team's culture stack against her nine conditions. Connect with Tanu: Substack, Invisible Lessons: https://invisiblelessons.substack.com LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/bytanutiwari/ Instagram/TikTok: @theconsciousleaderco Website: theconsciousleaderco.com Referenced in this episode: Simon Sinek's conversation with Bob Chapman, CEO of Barry-Wehmiller, on A Bit of Optimism: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O6766oydXpw

Rich Reynolds is a licensed marriage and family therapist turned leadership coach, and he opens with a claim that reframes the whole episode: the reason a leader struggles in a boardroom is the same reason a husband struggles in a marriage or an addict struggles to quit. Same emotional wiring, different room. We get into his "stage one, stage two" model of development (the adaptive strategies that get you through childhood eventually become the ceiling on your leadership), what real versus performative empathy actually feels like in the body, and why most boundary-setting advice fails because it's all script and no nervous system. Then I bring him a live case: less than 24 hours after teaching a workshop module on performative empathy, my own 360 review came back with a comment saying I do exactly that. Rich coaches me through it in real time, including a moment where I get visibly heated talking about a peer manager who lied to my face. We use it to walk through what healthy anger actually looks like at work, as opposed to the two failure modes most of us default to: blowing up or going silent. Also covered: managing up, advice for first-day employees vs. middle managers vs. C-suite, and why Kaladin from The Stormlight Archive is a near-perfect case study in leadership burnout. Find Rich at his newsletter, The Self Reflective Leader, on Substack.

Ashley Gibson spent over a decade running marketing for touring Broadway shows (Hamilton included, back before anyone knew what they had) while quietly burning out the whole time. Then she went back to school, became a trauma therapist, and realized she was diagnosing the exact same thing in her clients that she'd already lived through at the VP level. Now she's building a framework for treating burnout as a relational systems problem instead of a personal one. We get into a lot: co-regulation and why your nervous system reads a room before your brain catches up, why "authenticity" has become a hall pass for people to just be assholes at work, what a 94-year-old existential psychiatrist has to do with leadership training, and where AI is actually useful for pattern recognition versus where it just feeds the loop you're already stuck in. Also covered: why you should skip every meeting without an agenda, what to actually do on your first day at a new job, and the time a bathroom flooded directly onto Ashley's desk mid-career. It's a real story. It comes up. Find Ashley's free Intent-Impact Diagnostic and her upcoming white paper at meaninginpractice.com, and follow her on Substack. https://ashleycgibson.substack.com/ #Burnout #EmotionalIntelligence #Leadership #WorkplaceCulture #MentalHealthAtWork #EQ #TraumaInformed #OrganizationalPsychology #LeadershipDevelopment #Coregulation

Annabelle's Substack - https://annabellebotea.substack.com/?utm_campaign=profile_chips She was advising Parliament and working UN global health policy. Then burnout made her stop and rebuild from scratch. Annabelle Botea studied political science and law at Sciences Po, advised in the Romanian Parliament, and worked global health policy for an NGO at the UN level. On paper, it looked perfect. Underneath it, she was running on four coffees a day and popping medicine like candy just to keep going. Then burnout forced the stop she couldn’t give herself. In this conversation, Dan and Annabelle get into: The exact moment burnout stopped being abstract and became physicalWhy she treats intuition and emotional intelligence as a competitive advantage, not a soft skill“Brenda”: the name she gave her inner critic, and how she sends her for a walkWhy she doesn’t allow “party poopers” in her Substack comments, and the boundary behind that ruleBuilding Pitaya and rejecting the “10k a month in three months” myth of online businessWhat she wants to give future employees that she never had: emotional safety Annabelle now writes Outside the System on Substack and is building Pitaya, helping first-time founders simplify selling digital products and services online. Outside the System - https://annabellebotea.substack.com/?utm_campaign=profile_chips If you’ve ever mistaken burnout for a personality trait, this one’s for you.

Is AI actually intelligent, or just a very good mirror of us? Jennifer Hong, fractional CMO and writer behind the Substack Natural Intelligence, joins Dan Korus for a conversation that moves fast: why image generators keep failing to render real human faces (she calls it "the centroid problem"), why she switched from OpenAI to Anthropic and compares the two to Tesla and Volvo, and why she picked a public fight with Substack's leadership over its handling of death threats and deepfakes on the platform. They also get into: Why "AI fluent" describes less than 1% of users, and what that number actually meansThe 95/10 to 15 self-awareness gap and what it means for leaders specificallyThe difference between a jerk and an a*****e at work, and why only one is a dealbreakerHow two life crises rebuilt Jennifer's relationship with control, trust, and delegationWhy personal branding is a prenup you're already signing whether you write it down or notThe plan to buy back Letterboxd for its community instead of selling to private equity A conversation about self-awareness, trust, and what's left for humans once machines get good at mimicking the average. Timestamps 0:00 Intro 0:38 Does "intelligence is no longer ours alone" still hold a year later 2:53 If not intelligence, what would you call it: the "centroid" problem 9:47 Why she switched from OpenAI to Anthropic: Tesla vs. Volvo 13:57 Growing up in Los Altos, getting kicked out of Berkeley 20:37 The rules she breaks: buying back Letterboxd from private equity 25:12 Substack's Nazi problem, the open letter, and getting threatened for it 29:38 "Low-key Buddhism" and letting go of control 35:05 Trust and delegation as a leader 36:09 The health crisis that became her line of demarcation 48:31 Personal branding is a prenup you're already signing 58:12 The 95/10-15 self-awareness gap and EQ diagnostics 1:03:39 Lightning round: good leadership, first-day advice, advice for execs 1:15:09 Where to find Jennifer Hong Follow Jennifer Hong Substack (Natural Intelligence): https://hongjennifer.substack.com LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jennifer-hong-100/ More from Kestryl Edge Website: www.kestryledge.com The Updraft (Substack): https://dankorus.substack.com/ Music licensed through Soundstripe. Code: 8LLXF3LII43RNMGR, PHHDXWMN1BLMJ5NP Hashtags #EmotionalIntelligence #Leadership #ArtificialIntelligence #SelfAwareness #Substack #PsychologicalSafety #PersonalBranding #AIEthics #Podcast #KestrylEdge