Explore every episode of the podcast Leading in Change
| Title | Pub. Date | Duration | |
|---|---|---|---|
| The 6-Step Model That Makes Delegation Actually Stick | 08 Jun 2026 | 00:50:05 | |
You already know you should delegate more. The problem is actually doing it. In this episode, Gloria McConnell and Adrian Owen Jones get honest about why delegation is so hard and why the reasons you think you can't delegate are the very reasons you should. In this episode, we walk through what good delegation actually looks like in practice: from how to describe a task clearly enough that someone else can actually do it, to how to build checkpoints that protect both you and the person you're delegating to, to the critical difference between someone who can't do something and someone who won't. They also cover the six-step delegation model used inside Success Labs' Essentials Lab program, the micromanagement distinction that changes everything, and what to do when you've tried to delegate and ended up doing it yourself anyway. This is one of the most common challenges Gloria sees in coaching across industries, levels, and organizations. And while it never fully goes away, it does get easier when you treat delegation like the learned skill it actually is. If you liked this episode, please leave us a review to help our episodes reach more listeners! Register for our next Essentials Lab on July 15-16th in Baton Rouge, LA using the link below. 🗳️ Register for our next Essentials Leadership Lab. 📺 Watch & Subscribe on Youtube at https://www.youtube.com/@successlabshq 📲 Follow us LinkedIn, Instagram, and Facebook 📬 Subscribe to our monthly newsletter, Notes from the Lab | |||
| The First Pancake: Why Getting Started Is the Most Underrated Leadership Skill | 08 Jun 2026 | 00:32:48 | |
Most leaders know what they need to do. They just haven't started yet. In the very first episode of Leading in Change, Melissa Thompson and Adrian Owen Jones talk about the first pancake — and why it's one of the most important metaphors in leadership. The first pancake is always a little rough. The griddle isn't hot enough, the batter isn't quite right, the timing is off. But you have to make it to get to the good ones. The same is true for decisions, projects, initiatives, and change. You have to start somewhere — even when it's imperfect. In this conversation, Melissa and Adrian dig into why leaders stall, what's really underneath it, and practical tools for building a bias toward action on your team. They cover the 70% rule, the 48-hour decision rule, how to flip the question from "what are the risks of doing this wrong?" to "what's the cost of not starting?", and why psychological safety is the foundation every first pancake needs to land on. This one is practical, honest, and a fitting first episode for a podcast that's all about leadership in the messy middle. 📺 Watch & Subscribe on Youtube at https://www.youtube.com/@successlabshq 📲 Follow us LinkedIn, Instagram, and Facebook 📬 Subscribe to our monthly newsletter, Notes from the Lab | |||
| Welcome to Leading in Change | 07 Jun 2026 | 00:02:49 | |
Welcome to Leading in Change. There are a lot of leadership podcasts out there. Most of them talk about leadership at a comfortable altitude — the ideal version, where everything goes according to plan. This is not that podcast. Leading in Change is about leadership in the messy middle. When your best employee quits and you don't know why. When you've been promoted and the people you used to work alongside are now looking to you for answers. When the organization around you is shifting and you still have to make good decisions — about who to trust, what to delegate, and how to show up. In this first episode, host Adrian Owen Jones introduces who this podcast is for, why Success Labs decided to make it, and what you can expect from every conversation to come. Success Labs has spent more than 40 years working inside organizations across the country — in hospitals and plants, in banks and nonprofits, in boardrooms and on factory floors. And the through line across all of it is this: the challenges look different on the surface, but people are people. And the skills that make someone an effective leader are learnable. Every single one of them. If you're a first-time supervisor still figuring out what your job actually is, a mid-level manager trying to build something that lasts, an HR leader looking for frameworks that actually land, or a senior leader who knows that the organization you want starts with the leaders you develop — you're in the right place. Subscribe, tell a colleague, and we'll see you in Episode 1. 🗳️ Register for our next Essentials Leadership Lab. 📺 Watch & Subscribe on Youtube at https://www.youtube.com/@successlabshq 📲 Follow us LinkedIn, Instagram, and Facebook 📬 Subscribe to our monthly newsletter, Notes from the Lab | |||
| The Four Forces™ of Resilient Leadership: People & Problem Solving (Part 2) | 12 Aug 2026 | 00:30:30 | |
In this episode of Leading in Change, Adrian Owen Jones and Melissa Thompson close out the Four Forces™ of Resilient Leadership with People and Problem Solving — the two forces that determine whether a leader can actually execute in constant change. If your team doesn't trust you enough to tell you the truth, if you're making big decisions without the people closest to the work in the room, or if you keep implementing change and watching it stall because you didn't anticipate the ripple effects, this episode will give you the specific competencies that separate leaders who thrive in chaos from the ones who just survive it. They cover real-time transparency, the one 360 competency that predicts whether a leader is coachable, how to use AI to get feedback you'd never get from a person, operational foresight, inclusive problem solving, and why your best innovation ideas are probably already sitting with the people nobody has been asking. This is Part 2 of a two-part series. Part 1 covers Perspective and Purpose. If you want to lead through constant change with intention and confidence, this is a must-watch. 🎧 Listen to Part 1: The Four Forces™ of Resilient Leadership: Perspective and Purpose (Part 1) www.successlabs.com/podcast 🔎 Take the Resilient Leadership Self Assessment: https://successlabs.com/four-forces 📥 Free Leadership Resources https://successlabs.com/resources 📩 Sign up for our newsletter: https://successlabs.com/newsletter ✅ Follow Success Labs: https://www.instagram.com/success_labs https://www.tiktok.com/@successlabshq https://www.facebook.com/successlabs 🎵 Music recorded at Otaku Sound. Musical composition by Matt Lowery. Executive producers, Olive Lowery and Caroline Lowery. Featuring James Tiberius Kirk Madison Monroe. RESOURCES & REFERENCES MENTIONEDThe Four Forces™ of Resilient Leadership — Success Labs' proprietary framework: Perspective, Purpose, People, Problem Solving Patrick Lencioni's Five Dysfunctions of a Team Julie Laperouse — referenced as making the claim that most of the best new ideas come from people around age 25, citing artists' best work as evidence Resilient Leadership Self Assessment | |||
| The Four Forces™ of Resilient Leadership: Perspective & Purpose (Part One) | 04 Aug 2026 | 00:33:08 | |
In this episode of Leading in Change, Adrian Owen Jones and Melissa Thompson break down why everything you've been taught about leading through change is built for a world that no longer exists — and what resilient leaders actually do differently. If you feel like no matter how hard you work, you're always one step behind what's coming at you, if your team is struggling to make decisions without you in the room, or if you're tired of leading through one crisis only to find another one already waiting, this episode will give you a practical framework for leading in constant change instead of just surviving it. This is Part 1 of a two-part series on the Four Forces™ of Resilient Leadership. Adrian and Melissa dig into the first two forces — Perspective and Purpose — covering everything from learning agility and intellectual curiosity to values-based decision making, strategic agility in a poly crisis world, and why the most underrated leadership move right now is being transparent about your own development. Part 2 will cover People and Problem Solving. 🔎 Take the Resilient Leadership Self Assessment: 📥 Free Leadership Resources 📩 Sign up for our newsletter: ✅ Follow Success Labs: 🎵 Music recorded at Otaku Sound. Musical composition by Matt Lowery. Executive producers, Olive Lowery and Caroline Lowery. Featuring James Tiberius Kirk Madison Monroe. | |||
| How to Make Better Decisions (3-Part Framework for Leaders) | 28 Jul 2026 | 00:47:56 | |
In this episode of Leading in Change, Adrian Owen Jones and Devin Lemoine get into one of the most universal leadership struggles right now — making decisions when you don't have complete information and everything around you is moving fast. If you're the kind of leader who keeps waiting for more data before making the call, if your team is stalled because nobody is sure whose decision it is to make, or if you've been in a high-change environment and you know you're behind on decisions that need to happen, this episode will give you a clear framework for moving forward with confidence even when the picture isn't fully clear. Adrian and Devin walk through the three-part decision making framework (Evidence, Experts, Evaluate), why most decisions are reversible even when they don't feel like it, the competing values problem that makes even obvious decisions hard, and why the opportunity cost of waiting almost always outweighs the risk of deciding wrong. If you want to get better at making decisions in uncertainty, this is a must-watch. 📥 Free Leadership Resources 📩 Sign up for our newsletter: ✅ Follow Success Labs: 🎵 Music recorded at Otaku Sound. Musical composition by Matt Lowery. Executive producers, Olive Lowery and Caroline Lowery. Featuring James Tiberius Kirk Madison Monroe. | |||
| What Leaders Need to Know About Core Values | 21 Jul 2026 | 00:47:17 | |
In this episode of Leading in Change, Gloria McConnell and Adrian Owen Jones break down why most organizational values aren't actually doing anything — and what it takes to make them real. If your team has to look up the company values when you ask them to name them, if you have the words on the wall but can't point to a decision those values actually changed, or if you're leading through a period of change and feeling like there's nothing solid for your team to hold onto, this episode will give you a practical framework for making values work. Gloria and Adrian walk through the Above the Line/Below the Line exercise, the three stress-test questions every leader should answer, how to use values in feedback conversations instead of a policy manual, and what it looks like when values actually cost you something — including a real story about letting go of a multimillion dollar client. If you want your values to change how your team makes decisions, this is a must-watch. 📥 Free Leadership Resources 📩 Sign up for our newsletter: ✅ Follow Success Labs: Music Recorded in Otaku Sound. Musical composition by Matt Lowery. Executive producers, Olive Lowery and Caroline Lowery. Featuring James Tiberius Kirk Madison Monroe. | |||
| 3 Things to Do Before Rolling Out AI in Your Organization | 13 Jul 2026 | 00:45:45 | |
In this episode of Leading in Change, Adrian Owen Jones and Devin Lemoine break down what organizations need to do before rolling out AI — and why skipping these steps is exactly why most implementations stall or get reversed. If your leadership team keeps saying "we need an AI strategy" but nobody can agree on what that means, if you've already started rolling out AI tools and things aren't going the way you planned, or if you're heading into strategic planning season and want to get ahead of this before next year, this episode will give you a clear starting point. 🤖 AI Readiness Assessment — Is Your Organization Ready? 📥 Free Leadership Resources 📩 Sign up for our newsletter: ✅ Follow Success Labs: | |||
| 4 Things Leaders Must Do to Build a Team That's Ready for AI | 07 Jul 2026 | 01:06:05 | |
Most organizations are treating AI like a technology rollout. Buy the tools, get access, train the team, move on. But the leaders having the most success right now aren't the ones who moved fastest on tools. They're the ones who recognized what AI actually surfaces: a leadership design problem. Old decision-making structures that are too slow. Information that's too siloed. Teams that haven't been given the reps to think independently. Cultures where making a mistake isn't safe. In this second episode of the Leading in AI series, Adrian Owen Jones and Devin Lemoine get practical about what leaders can actually do — with the teams they have, right now — to close that gap. They cover how to scale for agility instead of consistency, how to shift decision-making from the top down to the team level, why a simple task audit is one of the most underused leadership tools available, and what it really means to invest in people when everything around them is changing. This is a conversation about the human side of AI adoption — and why getting that right matters more than getting the technology right. Part 2 of 3 in the Leading in AI series. 👉 Part 1 — Managing Your Career in the Age of AI Watch on Youtube: https://youtu.be/dRmcypl7vJI?si=Yw0r_n6zkXrfbQXg Listen on Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/episode/4fR23Db54bZYaS8cfwyuBK?si=d9iC-QFnRqmv9J0Y2PnDYg Listen on Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/is-job-security-still-possible-in-the-age-of-ai/id1896858200?i=1000774834864
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| Is Job Security Still Possible in the Age of AI? | 30 Jun 2026 | 00:42:14 | |
Job security and career security are not the same thing — and understanding the difference matters more right now than it has in decades. In this first installment of a three-part Leading in AI series, Adrian Owen Jones sits down with Devin Lemoine to talk about what it actually takes to build career security in a fast-changing environment. They break down three things that determine your staying power: mastery (staying ahead of the curve, even when that means being a beginner again), reciprocal relationships (the kind where you'd confidently ask for help and confidently give it), and demonstrated impact (translating what you've done into language that actually shows your value). Devin shares the "200 person test" from her decades of outplacement work in the '90s, and Adrian breaks down the PIE framework (Projects, Image, Exposure) along with the now-well-known "BAMF binder" — a physical record of accomplishments that built her confidence walking into interviews. A grounded, practical conversation for anyone trying to think clearly about their career instead of reacting to the next headline. 👉 Learn more about our work at successlabs.com | |||
| The Secret to Giving Great Feedback (And Why It Matters) | 23 Jun 2026 | 00:53:12 | |
Most managers think they're giving feedback. Their employees disagree. Recent Gallup research found that only 1 in 5 employees say they receive meaningful feedback on a weekly basis. Yet employees who receive meaningful feedback are three times more engaged than those who don't. So what's going wrong? In this episode, Adrian and Melissa explore why feedback is one of the most important, and often the most misunderstood, leadership skills. They discuss the common mistakes managers make, why avoiding feedback can damage trust and engagement, and practical strategies for delivering feedback in a way that helps people grow. You'll learn: • Why feedback is a relationship skill before it's a communication skill Whether you're a new supervisor, an experienced leader, or someone looking to improve communication at work, this conversation will help you approach feedback with more confidence and effectiveness. Resources Mentioned: • Radical Candor by Kim Scott Looking to strengthen your leadership skills? Visit Success Labs at https://www.successlabs.com Be sure to subscribe to Leading in Change for leadership development resources, workshops, coaching, and practical tools for managers, supervisors, and emerging leaders. | |||