Episodes

Have you ever worked with someone who just didn't get you, not because they were difficult, but because you were wired completely differently? In this episode, Lori sits down with Enneagram expert Joey Schewee to unpack why understanding motivation, not just behavior, is what actually transforms how teams work together.

Joey has spent decades helping thousands of employees and hundreds of teams understand each other through the Enneagram, and her new book, When Working Together Doesn't Work, di...

Most people enter venture capital as a founder, an angel, an LP, a GP, or an ecosystem builder, usually without a roadmap. Lolita Taub has been all five. She calls the hidden cost of building without inherited networks the "access tax," and she says it shows up everywhere: in every country, for founders and investors and leaders alike, and most people never even name it.

What if everything you've been taught about managing performance was built for a workplace that no longer exists? Dr. Edie Goldberg returns to A World of Difference to unpack the research behind her new book, revealing why the system most companies use to drive performance is quietly working against them.

Topics Covered

Why “coercive control” — carrots, sticks, and fear-based motivation — is the hidden operating system behind most performance management, and why the research says it doesn't wo...

What if your AI transformation isn't stalling because of the technology, but because of the culture, trust, and leadership behaviors you've built (or failed to build) around it? Shaara Roman has spent years inside global enterprises watching AI initiatives launch with fanfare and quietly fall apart, not because the software failed, but because the people strategy was missing.

In this episode:

Why AI should be treated as a team member, not just a tool

The six pillars of AI change management: s...

From Cameroon to Berkeley: Marie-Ange Eyoum Tagne on Failing, Faith, and Finding Purpose in Silicon Valley

What does it cost to keep climbing when you're not sure the ladder is leaning against the right wall? Cynthia Lai spent two decades in multinational banking before a health warning sign forced her to ask that question, and to walk away from a role that looked successful from the outside.


In this conversation, Cynthia, a governance advisor, leadership educator, and ICF certified executive coach, joins Lori to talk about:



Why high achievers so often ignore the warning signs their bodies are...

What if the systems built to help people are quietly deciding who gets to heal and who feels safe enough to even ask? Janelle Miller Moravek has spent 26 years inside that system, and she's not just naming the problem. She's rebuilding it from the ground up.

Topic bullets:

Why the U.S. behavioral health workforce doesn't reflect the communities it serves, and how decades of low reimbursement rates created the gap

The difference between being fluent and being bilingual in therapy, and why cult...

The AI race is real. So is the hidden cost. Lori introduces the Speed Tax, the Culture Architecture Framework, and a free 5-question diagnostic for HR leaders. 6th anniversary solo episode.

Picture two fish swimming in a bowl. One asks the other, how's the water? The second fish replies, what's water? That's culture, says Maria Angela Calmet, and it's exactly why so many leaders never notice the assumptions shaping how their teams communicate, decide, and trust one another.

In this episode

Why cultural competence is now ranked among the World Economic Forum's top future-of-work skills

The tree analogy: why cultural conflict happens at the roots, not the visible leaves and flower...

What if the traits that get someone labeled difficult in one workplace are exactly what makes them extraordinary in another? Tara May, CEO of Aspiritech, a technology company where more than 90 percent of the team is autistic, joins us to talk about what she calls the ROI of kindness, and why building for neurodivergent talent makes every workplace better.

In this episode

Why Tara calls it “the ROI of kindness,” and what that means for the bottom line

The “spiky cognitive profile” reframe: wh...

Karen Tay built a peer-support program for women navigating workplace bullying and burnout, ran it through Princeton research, and found something a lot of managers don't expect: the problem usually isn't a lack of effort. It's a lack of support.

In this Leading Through Change encore, Karen and Lori unpack what Karen's Princeton-backed research found about workplace adversity, why women in the senior-manager to senior-director range are most likely to drop out of the workforce, and what actually helps.

AI is changing every part of how leaders communicate, and Allison Shapira has a warning worth hearing: don't outsource your voice to it. In this conversation, we get into her framework for using AI to amplify authentic leadership instead of replacing it, and why she insists the human isn't just in the loop, the human is the loop.

In this episode

Why “the human is the loop, not just in it” reframes how leaders should think about AI

The AI Authenticity Loop, Allison's framework for using AI wit...