How do you stay grounded when the pressure is on and your next response could affect your team, your reputation, or your career?

In this episode of NeuroConversant Leadership, Jeremy Doran talks with Scott Sadler, PCC, an executive coach, entrepreneur, and certified breath coach, about managing pressure, making better decisions, and showing up as your authentic self as a leader.

Scott works with senior executives, emerging leaders, and high performers. Drawing on his coaching experience and his book, Elevate Under Pressure, he explains how stress can influence our perceptions and reactions, why our first interpretation of a situation may not tell the whole story, and how learning to regulate ourselves can help us lead more effectively.

One of Scott's central tools is a simple three-step process: Name it, slow it, choose it. Rather than reacting automatically, leaders can identify what they're feeling, create a moment of space, and deliberately choose how they want to respond.

Jeremy and Scott explore practical ways to use breathing, meditation, and body awareness to navigate stressful situations. They also discuss empathy, assuming positive intent, delegation, imposter syndrome, psychological safety, and the importance of creating workplaces where people can contribute without hiding who they are.

In this conversation, you'll discover:

• How to manage pressure and make decisions that reflect your values.

• Why a pause and a few deep breaths can change how you respond.

• How to distinguish a real threat from a challenge that makes you uncomfortable.

• Why the emotion you identify first may not be the deeper issue.

• How to listen to your body while still thinking decisions through.

• Why leaders don't need to have all the answers to be confident.

• How to balance assuming positive intent with recognizing your blind spots.

• Why authentic leadership matters, especially for people who feel different from those around them.

• How to listen more deeply to others and to yourself.

Scott's message is that effective leadership isn't about being perfectly composed or having everything figured out. It's about building the awareness to recognize what's happening, choosing your response, and staying connected to your values and the people around you.

Connect with Scott Sadler:

Website: https://scottsadlercoaching.comElevate Under Pressure: https://elevateunderpressure.comLinkedIn: Scott at Coach Sadler

NeuroConversant Leadership explores how to connect, communicate, and collaborate with people who think, work, and see the world differently.

It's not just what you say. It's how you say it.

In this episode of NeuroConversant Leadership, Jeremy Doran talks with Jay Alexander Poulton, The Accent Coach, about how to speak with greater clarity, confidence, and authority, whether English is your first language or your second.

Jay shares how his work helping international professionals communicate more effectively grew from his background in journalism and medical communications. He explains why having an accent isn't necessarily the problem, how cultural differences can lead to misunderstandings at work, and why even technically sound ideas can fall flat when the delivery doesn't connect with the audience.

The conversation gets practical, too. Jay breaks down three foundations of effective speaking: breath, articulation, and resonance. He explains how breathing, posture, vocal variety, and storytelling can make your message more engaging and help people better understand your ideas.

Jeremy and Jay also explore what these lessons mean for managers working with multicultural teams. Leaders have a responsibility to understand how different people communicate, adapt their approach, and address the perceptions their words and delivery create.

In this conversation:

• Why clarity and confidence go hand in hand

• How language and culture shape the way we interpret others

• Why your audience needs more than facts and data

• How managers can communicate more effectively with different team members

• The role of breath, articulation, and resonance in a strong speaking voice

• How posture and vocal variety affect confidence and authority

• How to review your own speaking habits and improve over time

Jay's closing advice is a useful reminder for anyone who feels self-conscious when speaking: don't worry so much about what other people think of you. Becoming more confident starts with focusing less on yourself and more on making a meaningful connection with your listener.

Connect with Jay: https://theaccentcoach.com

Find him on Instagram, LinkedIn, and Facebook under Jay the Accent Coach or The Accent Coach.

NeuroConversant Leadership explores how to connect, communicate, and collaborate with people who think, work, and see the world differently.

Your intentions may be good, but is your team experiencing the leadership you think you’re showing?Discover how self-awareness, curiosity, and better communication can transform the way you lead.In this episode of NeuroConversant Leadership, Jeremy Doran speaks with executive coach Nader Vasseghi about the gap between what leaders intend and the impact they actually have. Nader shares practical insights on understanding your communication style, building psychological safety, and uncovering the hidden motivations that shape your decisions. You’ll also learn how to align your personal and professional purpose, make room for joy and creativity, and replace snap judgments with genuine curiosity.⏱️ Chapters00:00 – Why self-awareness matters in leadership02:15 – The three dimensions of leadership awareness03:53 – When good intentions have the wrong impact07:21 – How executive coaching builds awareness12:05 – Uncovering the motivations behind our decisions14:14 – Coaching, growth, and moving forward15:05 – Building psychological safety at work18:39 – Aligning personal purpose with professional goals21:23—Rediscovering joy, creativity, and play25:38—The communication shift from judgment to curiosity💡 Key takeawaysGood intentions don’t guarantee good impact. Pay attention to how people actually experience your words, emotions, and decisions.Build awareness in three areas: your inner world, your relationships with others, and the impact you have.Use assessments as conversation starters. Tools such as DISC, the Enneagram, and Working Genius can help reveal communication preferences and patterns.Get curious about your motivations. Look beyond the obvious explanation to understand the fears, beliefs, or assumptions influencing your choices.Create psychological safety through everyday actions. Trust is built by how leaders listen, respond to feedback, and handle disagreement, not just by what a company’s values statement says.Align your personal and professional missions. Make room for relationships, work, play, and health when deciding what success means to you.Replace judgment with curiosity. You don’t have to agree with someone to become curious about how they reached their point of view.🔗 Links & resourcesConnect with Nader Vasseghi.Website: https://cnergist.comLinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/nadervasseghi/ Books: https://cnergist.com/conscious-creation/ and https://cnergist.com/the-book/ Connect with NeuroConversant LeadershipWebsite: https://NeuroConversantleadership.com/ LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jeremydoranspeaks/ Learn about coaching, workshops, and leadership development: https://NeuroConversantleadership.com/contact-communication-leadership-training/ 👍 Enjoyed the conversation? Subscribe for more practical conversations about communication, leadership, and helping technical professionals become more effective leaders.💬 Join the conversation: What’s one situation where your intention was different from the impact you had? Share your lesson in the comments.🔎 About this episodeThis conversation explores executive coaching, leadership development, self-awareness, communication skills, emotional intelligence, psychological safety, workplace culture, and conscious leadership. It’s for technical leaders, managers, founders, and executives who want to communicate more effectively, build trust, and lead people with different perspectives and working styles.

Most scope creep advice focuses on contracts and change orders. Jake Lewon says the real defense starts earlier than that, in the relationship you build before a problem ever shows up.

Jake, VP of Construction for the Middlesex Corporation, and Jeremy talk about why Jake pushes for weekly face-to-face meetings with owners instead of letting them slide to monthly, why he frames every project as a shared-goal partnership rather than us-versus-them, and what happens once that trust erodes: a small disagreement over "100 feet of guardrail" can turn into guardrail at every endpoint on the job if nobody's paying attention. They also get into "issue stacking," why unresolved problems compound faster when they pile up together, why stripping personal pronouns out of formal project letters can lower the temperature on a dispute, and the informal, off-the-record check-ins Jake runs with his counterparts to catch friction before it becomes a real conflict.

Connect with Jake on LinkedIn https://www.linkedin.com/in/jake-lewon-56040031/ or through the Middlesex Corporation.

Conflict between a CEO and someone on their leadership team is uniquely hard to resolve, because there's almost no one to talk to about it. Not HR, not the board, often not even a spouse. Liz Crowley spent years in HR and employee relations before finding herself doing exactly that: stepping in as a neutral, confidential resource for CEOs and founders caught in conflict with the people they lead alongside.

She and Jeremy talk about why unresolved conflict is so distracting, how a leader can start second-guessing every decision once trust with a peer breaks down, and the two patterns she sees most often at the top: misaligned expectations on performance, and growth outpacing the team that got a company there. They also revisit something Jeremy's talked about before, the case for hiring for culture fit, as long as "fit" means a culture that rewards candor and pushback instead of silence.

Liz closes with her best piece of communication advice: find a trusted, confidential person to talk things through with, even when, especially when, you don't want to.

Connect with Liz on LinkedIn or at www.hrcollaborativesolutions.com

"Stop hiring for culture fit" is popular advice right now. The logic: if everyone on the team thinks alike, nobody catches the bad ideas before they cause real damage. Jeremy agrees with the diagnosis but pushes back on the fix. In this episode, he argues that culture isn't the problem, the definition of culture is.

Most hiring managers use "culture fit" to mean someone who feels like a natural match, and that gut check quietly overrides the actual skills and experience on the checklist. Jeremy redefines culture as something closer to psychological safety: a place where disagreement is expected, differing ideas get real consideration, and managers are willing to be wrong. He backs it up with research from Ernst & Young, HP, and JPMorgan Chase, all of which found that cognitively diverse teams outperform homogenous ones on complex problems, not as a diversity initiative, but as a business decision.

He also covers what happens after the hire: cognitively diverse people who get overruled or ignored stop sharing ideas and disengage, which erases the advantage of hiring them in the first place.

Jeremy's running a free webinar on hiring practices on October 7th at noon Eastern, aimed at startup founders but relevant to any first-time manager. Email JDoran@NeuroConversantLeadership.com to reserve a spot.

Related reading on the shift away from "culture fit" hiring:

• Gallup: https://gallup.com/workplace/402503/move-beyond-hiring-culture-fit.aspx
• HR Brew: https://www.hr-brew.com/stories/2024/12/20/hr-2025-ditch-bad-recruiting-habits
• Haiilo: https://haiilo.com/blog/10-weird-hr-trends

Jeanna Malines built a 25-year career in executive recruitment before a late AuADHD diagnosis sent her in a new direction. She now runs Trajecta, working with neurodivergent and neurotypical professionals on career transitions, job searches, and workplace communication.

She and Jeremy talk about why late diagnosis is so common, particularly in women during perimenopause, why so many parents are only recognizing their own patterns after their kids get diagnosed, and why Jeanna stopped using labels for how she feels and started naming the feeling instead. That shift, she says, changed how she handles task paralysis and executive dysfunction day to day.

They also cover the Pomodoro technique and why the first small step matters more than motivation, how to reframe rejection as a numbers game, what's actually happening behind the scenes when a job application gets rejected, building a 30-60-90 day onboarding plan, and how to know when and how to disclose neurodivergence at work.

Connect with Jeanna on LinkedIn: https://linkedin.com/in/jeannamalines or at www.trajecta.net

Command, currency, credibility, culture. Those are the four ways a leader gets things done, and command is the one people reach for first even though it costs the most.

Jeremy walks through all four, then spends most of the episode on culture specifically. Southwest Airlines used to be a case study in it: no assigned seats, funny pilots, a flight attendant rolling toilet paper down the aisle for a free drink. Then outside investors came in, the focus shifted to cost cutting, and the culture went with it. Same story shows up in healthcare. Hospitals build everything around the patient. Disney builds everything around the employee, and the guest experience follows from that.

The episode ends on project leaders specifically, since most of them don't have real authority over anyone. Command's off the table, so culture, credibility, and currency are the tools that are left.

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