What happens in a leader's brain in the moment between a trigger and a response? Why does that moment determine whether teams trust each other or fall apart?

In this solo follow-up to the conversation with Andrew McNeill of LX Leaders, Richard examines the neuroscience behind reactive vs. responsive leadership, what Google's Project Aristotle and Amy Edmondson's research reveal about psychological safety as a driver of performance, and why vulnerability in leadership isn't about oversharing; it's about calculated courage. The episode also explores fierce compassion (why avoiding hard conversations isn't kindness), research on team charters as a form of trust infrastructure, and why one-off workshops fail where sustained interventions succeed.

Includes a five-part Monday Morning Test with actionable steps for individual leaders, teams, and organizations.

Guest episode reference: Andrew McNeill, LX Leaders (LXleaders.com)

Andrew McNeill is a leadership coach, mindfulness teacher, and co-founder of LX Leaders, a partnership helping leaders and teams thrive under pressure. A veteran of UK central government, Andrew served as one of the directors leading the national response to the Grenfell Tower tragedy. This experience crystallized how mindfulness practice directly sustains leadership performance in crisis.

In this episode, Andrew and Richard explore the fault line between well-being and performance, and why treating them as separate priorities is one of the most damaging assumptions in organizational leadership today.

Andrew shares how burnout drove him to a mindfulness practice that unlocked a promotion he'd been chasing for 7 years, why compassion in leadership requires more courage than aggression, and a powerful team exercise that consistently generates authentic human connection in corporate environments.

They also discuss how to measure the impact of mindfulness on team trust and retention, the post-COVID backlash against well-being conversations, and why the next decade will demand leaders who can build genuine human connections rather than manage performance.

Whether you're a CHRO navigating return-to-office tensions, a senior consultant working with fractured teams, or a leader questioning whether "soft skills" are actually the hardest ones, this conversation offers a practical framework for leading with both presence and accountability.

Find Andrew's work at LXleaders.com and connect with him on LinkedIn.

Burnout isn't just about being tired. It's a trust crisis, and the most serious damage happens inside.

New research shows 55% of the U.S. workforce is experiencing burnout, a six-year high. But the statistics miss something critical: burnout doesn't just exhaust you. It erodes your confidence in your own judgment. Nearly one in four employees reports that workplace stress has significantly reduced their ability to trust their own decisions.

In this solo episode, Richard explores the hidden relationship between chronic workplace stress and erosion of self-trust, drawing on insights from his recent conversation with talent development leader Jeremy Hannah and the latest research on burnout, organizational trust, and recovery.

In this episode, you'll learn:

• Why self-trust is the "operating system" that burnout corrupts, and how that affects every other trust relationship
• The three-part mechanism: how capacity gaps become internalized failure, curiosity dies, and isolation accelerates the spiral
• What sabbatical research reveals about recovery timelines (hint: it takes longer than you think)
• How micro-wins, external feedback, and deliberate curiosity rebuild the neural pathways of self-trust
• The uncomfortable truth about why employees don't speak up, and what leaders miss as a result

Plus: The Monday Morning Test with specific action steps for CHROs, COOs, and individual contributors.

Whether you're a senior leader trying to understand why your high performers are quietly disengaging, or a professional who's lost confidence in your own judgment without knowing why, this episode names what's happening and offers a path forward.

Research cited: Eagle Hill Consulting Workforce Burnout Survey 2025, Aflac WorkForces Report, Microsoft Work Trend Index, Journal of Occupational and Organizational Psychology, Academy of Management sabbatical research, and more.

Companion episode: Interview with Jeremy Hannah, Viante Talent Solutions

Connect with Richard: LinkedIn | Substack

What happens when a successful career starts to feel hollow, and you actually do something about it?

Jeremy Hannah spent 20 years in talent management and leadership development, advising Fortune 500 companies on culture transformation, talent strategy, and building people-centered organizations. Then burnout caught up with him. Instead of pushing through, he and his wife, Valerie, made an unconventional choice: they sold almost everything they owned and spent a year traveling to over 20 countries.

That sabbatical became the foundation for Viante Talent Solutions, the executive coaching and consulting firm Jeremy now runs from Perth, Australia, the most remote major city on Earth.

In this episode, we explore:

• The slow-burn warning signs of burnout (and why losing your curiosity is a red flag)
• What it takes to trust yourself enough to step away from a stable career
• How coaches build trust with skeptical executives in early sessions
• The difference between making someone uncomfortable vs. making them unsafe
• Why the "light switch moment" in coaching is the most rewarding—and hardest to manufacture

Whether you're a senior leader rethinking your next chapter, an HR professional navigating talent strategy, or someone quietly wondering if a career break is worth the risk, this conversation offers a practical, honest look at what reinvention actually requires.

Guest: Jeremy Hannah, ACC | Co-Founder, Viante Talent Solutions | viantetalent.com

Connect with Jeremy: LinkedIn @jeremybhannah | Instagram @jeremybhannah

Why do leaders invest in training and change nothing on Monday morning? The knowing-doing gap (the distance between what leaders know about good leadership and what they actually practice) is one of the most persistent problems in organizational life. In this solo deep-dive, Richard argues the gap isn't a training problem. It's a trust problem.

Building on last week's Season 3 premiere with leadership consultant Marcy Levy Shankman, this episode pulls in peer-reviewed research on psychological safety, emotionally intelligent leadership, and organizational culture to explore why even the best leadership development programs fail to produce lasting change and what practitioners can do about it.

The Big Idea: Organizations spend over $360 billion annually on leadership development, and 75% rate their own programs as not very effective. The research suggests the problem isn't what people learn; instead, it's whether their environment makes it safe enough to act on what they know. Fear-based cultures erode both interpersonal trust and self-trust, creating a feedback loop that no amount of training can break.

Three Things You'll Learn:

• Why the knowing-doing gap is a trust and culture problem, not a knowledge problem, and what a 27,000-person study on psychological safety reveals about why it persists
• How leaders confuse positional authority with relational trust, and why that confusion starves teams of the safety they need to experiment and grow
• Four research-grounded principles practitioners can use to start closing the gap: treating the gap as diagnostic, reframing failure as data, auditing the distance between stated values and actual systems, and earning relational trust before expecting behavioral change.

Trust for Thought: Think about the last time you knew the right move at work but didn't make it. Was the obstacle really knowledge, or was it something about your environment that made the cost of trying feel too high?

Research and sources discussed: Jeffrey Pfeffer & Robert Sutton (The Knowing-Doing Gap), Amy Edmondson (psychological safety), Edmondson & Kerrissey (2024), Adam Grant (Think Again), Marcy Levy Shankman & Scott Allen (emotionally intelligent leadership), Gallup, Edelman Trust Barometer 2025.

Why do managers struggle to lead change even when they have authority? In this episode, leadership consultant Marcy Levy Shankman explains the critical difference between positional power and relational trust, and why confusing the two is the most common mistake new leaders make. You'll learn the confidence-comfort framework for closing the knowing-doing gap, how to build trust with remote teams, and how to recognize the warning signs of a fear-based organizational culture. Whether you're a new manager, senior leader, or HR professional, this conversation offers practical tools for building the kind of trust that turns compliance into commitment. Topics covered: leadership trust, authority vs. influence, emotional intelligence, organizational culture, team management, the knowing-doing gap, virtual team trust, psychological safety, fear-based culture, change management

Key Takeaways

• Why positional authority doesn't equal leadership influence
• The confidence-comfort framework for team performance
• How to diagnose a fear-based workplace culture
• Two questions every manager should ask in one-on-ones

Trust For Thought

Ask someone on your team who's stuck:

• What would make you more confident that you could try this and recover if it doesn't work?
• What would make you more comfortable experimenting here?

Resources Mentioned

Emotionally Intelligent Leadership by Marcy Levy Shankman & Scott Allen Think Again by Adam Grant 2026 Edelman Trust Barometer (report)

Connect Newsletter: Trust Be Told on Substack New episodes: Every Tuesday LinkedIn: Richard Roman

In the Season Two finale, host Richard Roman looks back across the conversations that (on the surface) spanned wildly different worlds: medieval literature, organizational change, intuitive coaching, higher education, trauma-informed yoga, entrepreneurship, branding, and investigative journalism. But beneath these differences, one theme kept emerging: What do we do when the systems meant to help us are the ones causing harm? What is our role within those systems?

Drawing from each guest’s story, Richard presents a narrative about trust, power, institutional design, self-leadership, and the courage required to “stay with the trouble,” borrowing Donna Haraway’s invitation to remain present with complexity rather than flee toward false hope or collapse into despair.

The episode closes with three questions for listeners to carry into the new year:

• Which system in your life is “working as designed," but not designed for you?
• Who are your "oddkin," the people who help you stay with the trouble?
• What is one small relational action you can take this week to build trust where you are?

Season Two ends with gratitude to the guests who trusted Richard with their stories and to the listeners who have journeyed through another season of this inquiry into trust. Season Three arrives in early 2026.

Stay Connected

If this episode resonated with you, here are a few ways to stay connected and go deeper:

• 📩 Substack – Read essays and reflections that expand on each episode at Trust Be Told on Substack.
• ▶️ YouTube – Watch clips, shorts, and full conversations on the Trust Be Told YouTube channel.
• 📲 Instagram – Join the conversation and see behind-the-scenes stories at @trustedpod.
• 🌐 Website – Explore resources and download The Trust Toolkit at Trusted Arc Labs.

And don’t forget to follow, rate, and review the podcast wherever you listen. Thank you for your support!

In this cross-published episode from You’ll Thank Us Later, Christine Wilson sits down with Richard for an open, clear-eyed conversation about the college application process, mainly what influences decisions, what applicants should prioritize, and how to navigate a system that often feels opaque or anxiety-inducing.

Richard shares practical insights from his experience in admissions and his ongoing doctoral research on trust in higher education. Together, they explore:

• Why Early Decision is often misunderstood
• How admissions officers actually read applications and evaluate essays
• Which extracurriculars signal authentic engagement, and which ones don’t matter nearly as much as people think
• How institutional priorities shape outcomes more than “perfect” student profiles
• Why families should stop comparing their student to everyone else
• How public and private universities differ in mission, incentives, and evaluation
• What financial aid offices are really doing behind the scenes

For parents, students, counselors, or anyone curious about how admissions decisions get made, this episode offers clarity, calm, and a more trustworthy pathway through a process that can otherwise feel overwhelming. Note: This episode was originally recorded in June 2025.

Keywords

college admissions, higher education, trust, financial aid, application strategy, essays, public vs. private universities, student success, education policy, parental guidance

Stay Connected

If this episode resonated with you, here are a few ways to stay connected and go deeper:

• 📩 Substack – Read essays and reflections that expand on each episode at Trust Be Told on Substack.
• ▶️ YouTube – Watch clips, shorts, and full conversations on the Trust Be Told YouTube channel.
• 📲 Instagram – Join the conversation and see behind-the-scenes stories at @trustedpod.
• 🌐 Website – Explore resources and download The Trust Toolkit at Trusted Arc Labs.

And don’t forget to follow, rate, and review the podcast wherever you listen. Thank you for your support!