Most leaders think persuasion is a pitch. Jay Conger has spent his career proving it’s something else entirely — and that the difference explains why most major change initiatives quietly fail.

Jay grew up watching his father host world leaders from Queen Elizabeth to Nikita Khrushchev as a deputy at the State Department. Those dinner table stories became the foundation for a career studying what actually makes people follow you.

Topic Highlights:

– Why compliance gets you through the quarter and can cost you your best people first

– How one unscripted moment can build or destroy your reputation faster than any strategy deck

– The move that separates leaders who get commitment from those who only get compliance

– How to persuade a skeptic without arguing via the small-pilot approach

Guest Bio:

Jay Conger is a professor at the McKenna School of Business at Claremont McKenna College and one of the world’s leading researchers on leadership, influence, and persuasion. He has advised executives and organizations across industries for decades.

Episode Links:

Dr. Jay Conger on LinkedIn

The Persuasive Leader (Jay’s book)

Busting Three Common Myths of Change Management (Bain study)

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Just a couple months ago, Katie and Billy Kim packed up their lives in New Jersey — two careers, two kids, and a mortgage — and moved to Korea.

To make it happen, they navigated a year-long project involving six trips to the South Korean consulate, an unexpected citizenship complication, a possible military draft, a cancer diagnosis, and ultimately, the realization that fear and inconvenience are the worst reasons to not make something happen.

Topic Highlights:

– Why Katie first shut down the idea of moving across the world – and what changed her mind

– The consulate saga that almost derailed everything

– The “excuse test”: how to tell whether something is a real constraint or just discomfort

– The three things the Kims agreed on before they even booked a flight and why most teams only get one of them right

– Why a shared “why” matters more than a perfect plan when things don’t go as expected

Guest Bio:

Katie Kim is a marketing executive and former VP of Global Marketing at MillerKnoll. Billy Kim is an independent investor and the family’s designated maverick.

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Your manager has been telling you for three years that your work is excellent. Then one day you're let go. Nobody saw it coming except the person who signed your reviews. James Coyle has watched this play out more times than he can count. His take: that's not a performance problem. That's a leadership failure.

Topic Highlights:

– Why avoiding the hard conversation is always more expensive than just having the hard conversation

– The ethos behind the “tell me how people get paid” principle

– What basketball taught James about self-awareness (and why most players always think they're one of the best two on the team)

– The three-bucket framework for deciding what to do with underperformers

– The difference between an average employee and a great employee

Guest Bio:

James Coyle is the EVP, President Marketplace of OPENLANE, a leading digital marketplace for wholesale vehicles, and a former senior leader at Amazon during its most aggressive growth years.

Episode Links:

OPENLANE

James on LinkedIn

How To Fire People Properly: When Waiting Too Long Goes Wrong

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