Episode 8

Leadership visibility is one of the most misunderstood skills in a woman's career, and Nicole Johnston has spent 30 years figuring out exactly why.

Nicole Johnston is a women's excellence and leadership speaker, TEDx speaker, bestselling author of Taboo Topics, and a certified coach who spent three decades in consumer products at companies like Procter and Gamble, Kimberly Clark, and Hershey Foods. She was often the only female sales leader in the room. What she saw there shaped everything she now teaches.

In this episode, Natalie Davis and Nicole Johnston go deep on the real reasons women get passed over for promotions, underpaid without knowing it, and burned out before they ever get the recognition they have earned. This is not a surface-level conversation. It is a direct, data-backed, and actionable look at the patterns holding women back and what to do about them.

In This Episode:

Why promotions are based on the perception of leadership potential, not task completion, and why that distinction changes everything about how you show up at work.

The 720 hours per year of invisible, non-promotable work women carry at home and in the office, and why it is directly connected to burnout and career stagnation.

How to identify your self-sabotaging behaviors and use role play, journaling, and audio recording to build the muscle memory for difficult conversations before you ever have them in real life.

The difference between a coach, a mentor, and a sponsor, and why women who do not build sponsorship relationships are consistently left out of the rooms where decisions get made.

Executive communication skills that shift how leadership sees you, including what clear, concise, and compelling looks like in practice and why women are socialized to communicate as doers, not leaders.

Nicole Johnston's book, Taboo Topics: Things Women Should Talk About But Don't, is available now. Each chapter addresses a real workplace challenge with practical next steps, including email templates for asking for a raise and tools for identifying the mental load you carry.

Connect with Nicole Johnston:

Instagram: @nicolejohnstonspeaks

LinkedIn: Nicole Johnston

Connect with Leadership That Shines:

Website: ⁠www.l⁠⁠⁠eadershipthatshines.com⁠⁠⁠⁠

Email: ⁠⁠⁠⁠themagic@leadershipthatshines.com⁠⁠⁠⁠

Newsletter: The Flamingo Files on ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Substack ⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠and ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠LinkedIn⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠

Check out the⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠Magical Mornings Journal⁠⁠⁠

Integrity in leadership is the center pillar. Without it, everything else collapses. In this episode of the Leadership That Shines Podcast, Natalie Davis sits down with Jim Carlough, leadership identity archetype, author, mentor, and speaker, for a direct, practical conversation about the six pillars that define how great leaders build loyal, high-performing teams.

Jim has spent over four decades in healthcare and leadership. He has mentored professionals for 25 years. His book, a 164-page, no-theory leadership roadmap built entirely from lived experience, is earning near-perfect ratings on Goodreads and Amazon from readers in countries across six continents. His workshops are helping accidental managers, founders, and executives reduce voluntary attrition and build the kind of psychological safety that makes people want to stay.

In This Episode:

• Why most organizations create accidental managers, and what that costs them within 18 to 24 months
• The six non-negotiable leadership pillars: integrity, compassion, empathy, stability, focus, and humor
• The question Jim has asked himself every night since 1983, and why it has kept his voluntary attrition rate below 5%
• How to tell the difference between compassion and empathy, and why a leader has to know when to use each
• Why humor is not a soft skill but a strategic tool that humanizes leaders and builds psychological safety

Jim's framework is not theory. Every story in this episode is real, every principle is tested, and every one of the six pillars is something a leader can start applying within 14 days.

Connect with Jim Carlough:Website: jimcarlough.com

Book: The Six Pillars Of Effective Leadership: A Roadmap to Success

Episode 6

Adaptive resilience in leadership is not about surviving the crisis. The real test begins the moment the crisis ends, and your old operating system no longer works.

In this episode of the Leadership That Shines Podcast, Natalie Davis sits down with Savio P. Clemente, TEDx speaker, bestselling author, board-certified wellness coach, and two-time cancer survivor, for a conversation about what it means to lead through adversity, reclaim your identity on the other side, and build the kind of resilience that goes beyond recovery.

Savio has interviewed over 2,500 thought leaders, executives, and changemakers in the fields of human behavior, resilience, and leadership. His work sits at the intersection of lived experience and research-backed frameworks. After 29 days in the hospital following a relapse of non-Hodgkin's lymphoma in 2024, Savio emerged with a deeper understanding of self-regulation, metacognition, and what it means to lead when everything around you has changed.

In This Episode:

• Why most leaders lose ground after a crisis, not during it, and what to do about it
• The difference between resilience and adaptive resilience, and why the distinction changes how you lead
• Savio's Aloha Reboot framework, a seven-minute practice for reconnecting with yourself under pressure
• How metacognition, the thinking of your thinking, gives leaders a psychological edge in high-stakes situations
• Why silence and stillness are not soft skills; they are performance tools for leaders at every level

This conversation is for leaders who have made it through something hard and are still figuring out who they are on the other side. Savio brings both the research and the receipts.

Connect with Savio P. Clemente

The Human Resolve Substack NewsletterWebsite

TEDx Talk: Seven Minutes to Wellness, How to Love Your Inner Stranger

New episodes every Wednesday.

Available on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, and all major streaming platforms.

Connect with Natalie & The Leadership That Shines Team:

Website: ⁠www.l⁠⁠⁠eadershipthatshines.com⁠⁠⁠⁠

Email: ⁠⁠⁠⁠themagic@leadershipthatshines.com⁠⁠⁠⁠

Newsletter: The Flamingo Files on ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Substack ⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠and ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠LinkedIn⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠

Check out the⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠Magical Mornings Journal⁠⁠⁠ ⁠