Unlocking High Performance, hosted by Jason Lauritsen, is a podcast for leaders who want strong results without burning out their people. Through solo reflections and honest conversations with leaders, Jason looks at how clarity, alignment, and connection shape the way work actually gets done.
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How To Scale Culture Without Losing It with Dan Kessler
Season 3 · Episode 17
Wednesday, August 19, 2026 • Duration 33:36
Growing a company from twenty people to a few hundred changes almost everything about how you lead. Culture is usually the first thing to feel the strain. In this conversation, Jason Lauritsen talks with Dan Kessler, president of Energage, the research partner behind the Top Workplaces program. He shares what it actually takes to keep a culture healthy while a business grows, makes acquisitions, and reinvents itself more than once. Dan is candid about how his role has changed over fifteen years, when core values are worth revisiting, how to tell whether an executive team is working well, and how his own instinct to be helpful can work against him. If you lead people through growth and want practical ways to keep your culture and your team aligned, this episode offers a grounded and honest look at the work it takes.
Key Takeaways
→ Culture and business performance tend to move together. A struggling culture can carry a business for a while, but strong results are hard to sustain without it.
→ Maintaining culture as you grow starts with the executive team, because the way the top operates sets the tone for the whole business.
→ There is no single right operating framework for a leadership team. What matters is picking one and adapting it to your business.
→ Core values should be durable, but they can be revisited as a company matures. Updating them is not the same as throwing them out.
→ Every strength has an underbelly. At Energage, the value of helpfulness can slide into enablement, where you solve problems people should be able to solve themselves.
→ A healthy executive team talks about the real issues, lets people say what they think in the room, and shares a clear sense of where the business is headed.
Widespread, unnecessary friction is often a sign the leadership team left the room without alignment or clarity.
→ Leading at scale means knowing when to roll up your sleeves and when to step back and trust your team to do the work their way.
→ Knowing who you are and showing up that way consistently makes leadership easier. For Dan, it comes down to love, levity, and purpose.
Timestamps
02:36 – Inside a purpose-driven B Corp software company
05:56 – The pressure of being a top workplace yourself
08:33 – Why strong culture and results go together
10:10 – What maintaining culture at scale really means
13:31 – Choosing an operating rhythm for your leadership team
16:22 – Why healthy culture starts at the top
18:51 – Knowing when to revisit your core values
23:56 – Signs your executive team is really working
27:32 – Leadership skills that growth and change demand
30:41 – Leading with consistency by knowing yourself
Keywords
scaling company culture, leading through growth, executive team alignment, when to update core values, workplace culture at scale, high performing leadership teams, Top Workplaces, culture and business performance, knowing when to delegate, leadership at scale
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Connect with Dan:
LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/dan-kessler-40b4a11/
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Connect with Jason Lauritsen:
Website: jasonlauritsen.com/
YouTube: youtube.com/@JasonLauritsenVideo
LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/jasonlauritsen/
Instagram: instagram.com/jasonlauritsen/
Why Team Agreement Falls Apart After Meetings
Season 3 · Episode 16
Wednesday, August 12, 2026 • Duration 12:07
You wrap up the meeting feeling good about it. Everyone nodded, the decision got made, and then the moment people step out of the room, it starts to come apart. This episode is about why that happens and what to do about it. The core idea is that agreement is not alignment. Agreement is the nod in the room. Alignment is when people leave and independently make the same call, and follow through the same way, without you standing over them. This episode digs into why senior teams so often mistake one for the other, shows how it plays out when a policy gets approved but every leader enforces it their own way, and gives you a simple practice you can run before the meeting ends to find out whether you have real alignment or just agreement on the surface.
Key Takeaways
→ Agreement is the nod in the room. Alignment is people independently committing to the same action after they leave.
→ A meeting can feel successful and still produce no real alignment, and senior leaders make this harder because their agreement is so convincing.
→ This usually is not about lying or faking. People say yes to the version of the decision they each understood.
→ When a decision lacks shared meaning, every leader goes back and interprets and enforces it in their own way.
→ One approved policy can create very different employee experiences across departments, and that reads as unfairness.
→ The cost of skipping alignment shows up as friction, wasted energy, lower morale, and slower execution.
→ Before the meeting ends, have each person privately write down what was decided and what acting on it looks like for them and their team.
→ Then go around the room and have everyone read what they wrote. By halfway around, you will know whether you have alignment.
→ Alignment, not agreement, is where results come from, so do the work to create it while you are still in the room.
Timestamps
00:02 – A meeting that felt settled, then came apart
02:18 – Why the room agreed but nothing moved forward
02:44 – Agreement versus alignment, and why it matters
03:30 – How approvals hide a lack of shared understanding
05:47 – One policy, very different experiences across teams
08:11 – The real costs of settling for agreement
10:06 – A practice that reveals alignment before people leave
12:11 – Doing the work so results actually follow
Keywords
agreement vs alignment, team alignment in meetings, why decisions fall apart after meetings, getting leadership buy-in, senior leadership alignment, decision making in meetings, performative agreement, aligning leaders on policy, meeting follow through, building consensus at work
JOIN THOUSANDS OF LEADERS WHO ARE HARNESSING THE POWER OF RELATIONSHIPS AT WORK. Subscribe to our newsletter: https://tinyurl.com/59nrvxnj
Connect with Jason Lauritsen:
Website: https://jasonlauritsen.com/
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@JasonLauritsenVideo
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jasonlauritsen/
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/jasonlauritsen/
The Golden Rule of Management Behind High-Performing Teams
Season 3 · Episode 7
Wednesday, May 20, 2026 • Duration 12:14
In this solo episode of Unlocking High Performance, Jason unpacks one of the most important drivers of team performance: clarity. He describes a pattern he’s seen repeated across organizations of every size. Leaders get frustrated with team members who seem unmotivated or off track, when the real issue is that they have not been clear about what's expected.
Jason makes the case that clarity, not motivation, is the real fuel behind strong performance. When leaders assume their people understand expectations, they often create the very friction they're trying to avoid. This episode offers two simple practices that any leader can use to build real clarity with individuals and teams, including what Jason calls “The Golden Rule of Management.”
Key highlights from the conversation include:
👉Why most performance problems are actually clarity problems in disguise, and how leaders mistakenly label them as character or motivation issues
👉The two practices of clarity every leader can put into action to strengthen performance and reduce friction on their team
👉Why writing things down forces a level of clarity that talking alone never can
👉How the practice of comparing notes reveals the gap between assumed clarity and the real thing inside a team
👉A practical example of how a leadership team can use comparing notes to align on what it means to be a leader in their organization
👉The hidden cost of skipping clarity work, including wasted time, repeated conversations, and damaged trust between leaders and their teams
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JOIN THOUSANDS OF LEADERS WHO ARE HARNESSING THE POWER OF RELATIONSHIPS AT WORK.
Subscribe to our newsletter: https://tinyurl.com/59nrvxnj
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Connect with Jason Lauritsen:
Website: https://jasonlauritsen.com/
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@JasonLauritsenVideo
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jasonlauritsen/
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/jasonlauritsen/
#UnlockingHighPerformance #JasonLauritsen #HRLeaders
Why Job Descriptions No Longer Fit Modern Work with Lisa Sterling
Season 3 · Episode 6
Thursday, May 7, 2026 • Duration 37:02
Join Jason Lauritsen as he sits down with Lisa Sterling, Chief People Officer at Perceptyx, for a conversation about why the traditional job description has run its course and what becomes possible when leaders stop trying to fit people into predetermined boxes.
Lisa argues that job descriptions are a century-old artifact, originally built for factories that needed standardized, repeatable work. We are still using that same container to hold modern jobs, and it no longer fits. When we start deconstructing our jobs, we make room for people to do the work they are actually great at, and that is where real performance starts.
Key highlights from the conversation include:
👉 Why the job description is an industrial era container that no longer holds modern work, and what it takes to start rebuilding roles around tasks instead
👉 A behind-the-scenes look at the hackathon Lisa ran with her people team to break work into tasks, surface hidden strengths, and decide what AI could automate or augment
👉 How matching work to people's genius zones surfaces hidden strengths, improves retention, and gets more out of the team without adding headcount
👉 How Lisa is rethinking compensation, career ladders, and job architecture when titles and levels stop driving the work
👉 A more honest way to frame the AI conversation by focusing on tasks rather than jobs, which makes the question less scary and far more useful
Connect with Lisa:
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/lisamsterling/
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JOIN THOUSANDS OF LEADERS WHO ARE HARNESSING THE POWER OF RELATIONSHIPS AT WORK.
Subscribe to our newsletter: https://tinyurl.com/59nrvxnj
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Connect with Jason Lauritsen:
Website: https://jasonlauritsen.com/
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@JasonLauritsenVideo
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jasonlauritsen/
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/jasonlauritsen/
The 5 Drivers of Employee Performance
Season 3 · Episode 5
Wednesday, April 29, 2026 • Duration 22:18
In this solo episode, Jason shares the framework he calls the Five Drivers of Performance. It is what he has distilled from years of real-world leadership advising, and it challenges one of the most persistent assumptions leaders make when performance breaks down.
Jason unpacks what actually drives employee performance and why most leaders misdiagnose it. He walks through each of the five drivers, from the most common to the least, and explains how to tell which one you are dealing with.
Key highlights from the conversation include:
👉 Clarity is the most common cause of underperformance, and most leaders are far less clear with their people than they think they are.
👉 Feedback failures are the second most frequent driver, often invisible to the leader until the damage is already done.
👉 Know-how gaps appear when someone understands what is expected but genuinely lacks the skills to deliver it.
👉 Capability issues arise when someone is in the wrong role for who they are, regardless of how much support they receive.
👉 Desire and motivation are rarely the real problem, and when the other four drivers are addressed, they tend to take care of themselves.
Download the Clarity Check-In Process here:
📝 https://schedule.jasonlauritsen.com/widget/form/wtzmGOMCMigAyG3OFAz0
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Connect with Jason Lauritsen:
Website: https://jasonlauritsen.com/
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@JasonLauritsenVideo
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jasonlauritsen/
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/jasonlauritsen/
How Clarity at the Top Makes Culture Actually Work with Melissa Moore
Season 3 · Episode 4
Wednesday, April 22, 2026 • Duration 25:16
In this episode, Jason sits down with Melissa Moore, the first People and Culture Executive hired at Ampere Computing before their rapid growth.
Together, they unpack how intentional leadership, values operationalization, and a relentless focus on clarity helped build a high-performance culture as the company scaled from 275 employees to over 1,400 across six countries.
Key highlights from the conversation include:
👉 Clarity at the top is non-negotiable: How CEO Renee James established a clear vision and values before the people function even existed, and why that foundation made everything else possible.
👉 Values without behavior are just words: The process Ampere used to translate values into specific, agreed-upon behaviors, then embed them into hiring, performance, and recognition from day one.
👉 Leaders have to live it too: How Ampere kept its leadership team accountable to the same values they expected from everyone else, including tying culture fit to promotion and progression decisions.
👉 Culture belongs in the operating model, not just HR: How Ampere wired its values into the R&D methodology, engineering cadence, and annual roadmap, not just people programs.
👉 Belonging isn't enough, people need to matter: Why feeling included falls short, and what it actually takes for employees to feel valued, see their impact, and stay connected to the work.
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Connect with Melissa
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/melissammoore1/
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Connect with Jason:
Website: https://jasonlauritsen.com/
YouTube: youtube.com/@jasonlauritsenvideo
LinkedIn: linkedin.com/jasonlauritsen
Instagram: instagram.com/jasonlauritsen
Why Don’t People Come With User’s Manuals?
Season 3 · Episode 3
Wednesday, April 15, 2026 • Duration 17:09
In this solo episode, Jason introduces a practical team exercise called the personal user's manual. The concept is simple. It's a way for each person on a team to document how they work best so their teammates don't have to guess.
We have instructions for nearly everything we own. But when it comes to the people we work with every day, there's no guide. No clear way to know how someone prefers to communicate, when they're focused and offline, what kind of feedback lands well for them, or what quietly drives them up the wall. That gap creates unnecessary friction. The personal user's manual is a low-effort, high-value practice that closes it.
Key highlights from the conversation include
👉 What a personal user's manual is and how Jason first came across the practice more than 15 years ago
👉 The core categories worth including in a team template: work schedule and style, communication preferences, feedback and recognition, strengths, and personal pet peeves
👉 Why recognition preferences are more personal than most leaders assume and how asking the right question upfront saves a lot of awkwardness late
👉 A clear walkthrough of how to run the practice, from building a template to hosting a team conversation where people can ask questions and get curious about each other
👉 The specific team situations where this tends to have the biggest payoff, including newer teams, teams navigating change, and managers stepping into a role for the first time.
Additional resources for Personal Users Manuals:
https://slack.com/blog/collaboration/how-personal-operating-manuals-can-help-you-build-a-stronger-team-at-work
https://www.atlassian.com/team-playbook/plays/my-user-manual?tab=instructions
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Connect with Jason Lauritsen:
Website: https://jasonlauritsen.com/
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LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jasonlauritsen/
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What the 2026 Global Talent Trends Report Reveals About a Workforce in Crisis with Kate Bravery
Season 3 · Episode 2
Wednesday, April 8, 2026 • Duration 30:19
Jason Lauritsen sits down with Kate Bravery, Senior Partner and Global Leader of Talent Advisory at Mercer, to dig into the findings from Global Talent Trends report. Now in its 11th year, the study draws on more than 12,000 voices across 24 countries and 16 industries, capturing the perspectives of employee experience, leadership, AI adoption, and the growing pressure on organizations to deliver stronger performance in a workforce that is increasingly depleted and disengaged.
At the center of this episode is a hard truth: work is no longer working for a lot of people. Kate shares that only 44% of employees in this year’s study say they are thriving, the lowest level Mercer has seen in more than a decade. At the same time, executives are pushing for faster productivity gains, more aggressive transformation, and deeper AI integration. The tension between those two realities is where this conversation lives, and Kate helps us see it clearly.
Key highlights from the conversation include:
👉 Mercer's latest data shows employee thriving has fallen to 44%, the lowest level they’ve seen in more than a decade.
👉 Employees are feeling the strain of pay pressure, slower career growth, and people systems that no longer match how fast work is changing.
👉 Kate explains the “proximity paradox,” where access to AI tools can actually raise anxiety when leaders aren’t helping people understand what changes.
👉 The gap between executive priorities and HR priorities is still there, with leaders pushing for AI-driven performance while HR is still trying to modernize the basics.
👉 Jason and Kate explore how AI could help HR move from slow, backward-looking processes to faster, more responsive support for employees and managers.
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Connect with Kate:
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/kate-bravery/
Global Talent Trends 2025 Report: https://www.mercer.com/insights/people-strategy/future-of-work/global-talent-trends/
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Connect with Jason:
Website: https://jasonlauritsen.com/
YouTube: youtube.com/@jasonlauritsenvideo
LinkedIn: linkedin.com/jasonlauritsen
Instagram: instagram.com/jasonlauritsen
How to Solve Your Brilliant Jerk Problem
Season 3 · Episode 1
Thursday, April 2, 2026 • Duration 16:30
In this straight-talking solo episode of Unlocking High Performance, Jason Lauritsen tackles one of the most difficult leadership challenges CEOs, HR leaders, and managers face: what to do about the “brilliant jerk.” These are the high performers who deliver results on paper but create dysfunction, erode trust, and quietly damage the people around them.
Jason explains why tolerating toxic high performers can slow decisions, weaken team dynamics, drive disengagement, and hold entire organizations below their true potential. If you’ve ever felt trapped by someone you think you “can’t afford to lose,” this conversation offers a clearer way forward.
Key highlights from the conversation include:
👉 Why “brilliant jerks” are so hard to address, especially when they’re top performers or senior leaders whose results make leaders feel dependent on them
👉 The hidden organizational costs leaders often miss, including executive team dysfunction, slower decision-making, morale damage, disengagement, and the loss of strong people who quietly opt out or leave
👉 Why leaders almost always wait too long to act, and why the most common response after finally making the call is: I wish I hadn’t waited so long
👉 Jason’s practical framework for handling the situation: get specific about the problematic behavior, confront it directly, set clear expectations in writing, define a timeline for change, and make consequences unmistakably clear
If you’re leading a team, supporting leaders in HR, or trying to build a healthier performance culture, this episode is a timely reminder that high performance should never come at the expense of your people.
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Connect with Jason Lauritsen:
Website: https://jasonlauritsen.com/
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@JasonLauritsenVideo
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jasonlauritsen/
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/jasonlauritsen/
#UnlockingHighPerformance #JasonLauritsen #Leadership #PeopleLeadership #HRLeadership #WorkplaceCulture #EmployeeExperience #ManagerEffectiveness #OrganizationalHealth
Unlocking High Performance Official Trailer
Sunday, March 29, 2026 • Duration 01:58
An introduction to Unlocking High Performance and the conversations shaping leadership, growth, and performance.
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