Thought Partners S3 E2 — The Messy Middle

For the show's first four-person episode, Ed and Paul bring in a pair of thought partners: Kyle Nelson and Deb Peters, the change-management practitioners and neurodivergence coaches behind Spark and Aim. Together they rumble with the messy middle of change, the stretch after you've committed and before you've arrived, where resistance, loss and most of the real growth live, and what leaders (and one-person businesses) can do there this week.

Join the conversation: the Thought Partners Discord is where we pick the questions for the rest of Season 3.

👉 https://discord.gg/5CU3xW4AD

Timestamps
00:05 — Welcome to our first four-person episode
01:41 — Meet Kyle Nelson and Deb Peters
03:59 — Is "change management" a lie?
05:50 — Adapt, sustain, evolve: change vs. transition
10:25 — Bridges' transition model and the trapeze
12:57 — Hanging on to the bar: Paul's clients and new beginnings
15:34 — Mindset takes time (people aren't widgets)
17:48 — Why "change" lands as loss
20:15 — Kyle and Deb as thought partners: how Spark and Aim began
24:32 — What "neurodivergent" means (and "neurospicy")
29:23 — Thinking preferences and the factory model of work
34:33 — The messy middle
39:28 — What the messy middle feels like, and resistance as a signal
42:37 — A sandbox, not a mess: the growth zone
45:09 — A neurodivergent lens on change
46:29 — This week's small try: treat a mistake as a learning opportunity
51:33 — Share interview questions ahead, and "clear is kind"
53:48 — Protect your people from extra disruption
54:29 — Managing your own change as a one-person business (and naming "Bob")
57:30 — The non-negotiable: leadership support
59:16 — Informed confidence, competence and connection
1:02:58 — Where to find Kyle and Deb

This week's small tries

- Treat a mistake as a learning opportunity: ask "What did you find? How can we apply it?" instead of shaming.

- If HR allows it, share interview questions with candidates ahead of time.

- Ask of every expectation you set: is this clear? If it is, what does the behavior look like?

- In the messy middle, protect your team from piling on additional disruptions.

- Running your own show? Name your inner critic, then throw it out the door.

Our guests

Kyle Nelson is an organizational psychology practitioner, Prosci-certified change manager (APTD), and neurodivergence coach.

Deb Peters is a certified change management practitioner and professional certified coach who works with neurotypical and neurodivergent people at pivot points.

Together they run Spark and Aim Neurodivergent Coaching: https://sparkandaim.com (also on LinkedIn: Spark and Aim Neurodivergent Coaching).

Coming up
- Episode 3 (October 20): shaped by your questions in the Discord.

Hosts
Ed Buchanan & Paul Tonden

Music: "Momentum," original Thought Partners theme.

Fifteen episodes in, Ed and Paul open Season 3 by naming it: a Season of Change. They rumble with the question "When did you realize things weren't going back to normal?", why "normal" feels so comfortable, and how to have a plan for when the plan doesn't go to plan. Then Ed puts ten brand-new questions on the table, the questions that will drive the rest of the season.

**Help shape Episodes 3–7:** join the Thought Partners Discord and add or upvote a question about change by **October 13**.

👉 https://discord.gg/5CU3xW4AD

## Timestamps

00:05 — Welcome to Season 3 (episode 15!)
01:28 — "It's our quinceañera": what 15 episodes has meant
03:59 — 25 engaged listeners or 500 casual ones
05:52 — Naming it the Season of Change
08:17 — Ten years ago today: could you have predicted this?
10:41 — When did you realize things weren't going back to normal?
14:10 — Control, forecasting, and what you're carrying
17:38 — Plans, curveballs, and the Empowered Learner
20:07 — Have a plan for when the plan doesn't go to plan
22:47 — Improv, beats, and why normal feels comfortable
26:14 — Comfortable with being uncomfortable (and Ed's first day teaching)
29:44 — Process people, routine, and whether change ever ends
34:45 — Krispy Kreme, AI, and the human in the loop
38:43 — From "back to normal" to a desired future state
39:03 — Lightning round: ten questions for a Season of Change
41:43 — More than three people: the thought-partner crash
44:11 — What, who, and how you come up with a good question
46:14 — Where the questions came from
49:09 — Anything new under the sun? (and Stoic D-minus days)
51:22 — Wrap

## The ten questions (lightning round, 39:03)

1. What have you stopped waiting for?

2. What does it cost to keep treating change as an event, like the weather?

3. Who did you have to become to keep up, and do you like that person?

4. When everyone's shifting, who do you actually turn to?

5. What change did you fight the hardest that turned out to be the right call?

6. What did the last few years take from you, and what did they quietly hand you?

7. What used to be a crisis for you that's now just a Tuesday?

8. What's the one thing you refuse to change, no matter what?

9. What are you pretending to be fine with?

10. What advice about handling change do you think is just wrong?

Which one would you want us to rumble with? Tell us in the Discord: https://discord.gg/5CU3xW4AD

## Coming up

- Episode 2 (October 13): our first episode with more than three people — a thought-partner crash with Kyle Nelson and Deb Peters.

- Episodes 3–7: shaped by your questions.

## Hosts

Ed Buchanan & Paul Tonden

Music: "Momentum," original Thought Partners theme.

Season 3 is the Season of Change. Before the season proper begins, Ed and Paul set the table: why every conversation from the first two seasons kept circling back to change, the question-driven format that will carry Season 3, and the new Discord where you help decide what Episodes 3–7 are about.

Join the Discord and shape the season: https://discord.gg/5CU3xW4AD
Get your questions in by October 13.

TIMESTAMPS
00:05 Welcome to the mini-sode / episode zero / pint-sized Thought Partners
01:30 "I'm Ed." "And I'm Paul." What the show is, and why we call it our arena
02:30 Season 3 is the Season of Change: the through-line we found in Seasons 1 and 2
03:54 Every guest was living through big change, and how people wrestle with it
05:31 The first question: "Once we get through this, things go back to normal, right?"
06:50 A question-driven season, and why we don't want to write all the questions ourselves
07:22 The Discord: how you shape Episodes 3 through 7
08:36 "We may have buried the lede": the community is already forming
10:17 How to add a question, upvote one, or tell us who we should be talking to
11:08 Four starter questions, read aloud
12:18 Paul picks one: "What are you pretending to be fine with?"
13:53 What we hope the Discord becomes, and what we don't want it to be
16:41 Curiosity beats being right
18:46 The ask: questions due October 13
19:49 Take care of yourself and each other
19:55 Thought partners out

THE FOUR STARTER QUESTIONS

1. What have you stopped waiting for?
2. Who did you have to become to keep up, and do you like that person?
3. What's the one thing you refuse to change, no matter what?
4. What are you pretending to be fine with?
   Upvote one, or add your own, in the Discord.

COMING UP
Oct 6: Episode 1, "What if normal doesn't come back?"
Oct 13: Episode 2, with Kyle Nelson and Deb Peters
Episodes 3–7: shaped by your questions

Hosted by Ed Buchanan and Paul Tonden. Music: "Momentum," an original theme for Season 3.

A grant proposal. A conversation with your doctor. A veterans program in Maryland. Beth Ardner argues they are all the same act: telling a story well enough that someone sees themselves in it.

In the Season 2 finale, Beth comes back as our first two-time guest and makes a bigger claim than she did the first time. Storytelling is not one skill among many. It is the connective skill, the one that lets you turn durable skills, soft skills, world-ready skills, and every other rebranded version of the same idea into something people actually adopt. Stories build consensus. Consensus is how anything changes.

Then it gets personal. Beth writes collaborative fiction with fifteen people across the world, a hobby that just made her a Simming Prize Laureate. When one of those writers passed away this year, the group made plot decisions to honor his wishes and keep his character alive. That story becomes the clearest answer in the episode to the question everyone is asking right now: what can humans do that AI can't? You cannot give AI the context of a human.

We land where the show always tries to land. Not on theory, but on what you can do with it. Beth's answer for anyone who thinks they aren't a storyteller is simple, and it might change how you read everything after this.

00:00 — Cold open

00:39 — Welcome back: our first returning guest

01:24 — Fun fact: "capital" comes from cattle

03:06 — What Beth is juggling: a $25M RFP, apprenticeships,veterans

05:46 — Is everyone just busy, or is it 2026?

07:36 — Storytelling is THE skill, not a sub-skill of communication

10:03 — "All words are made up": the terminology trap

14:56 — How story builds consensus (Goldilocks)

17:40 — Relatability, morals, and consent

18:33 — Sci-fi that came true: Star Trek, the tablet, the communicator

20:34 — The second label: inspiration

22:19 — Timeless vs. of-a-time: history as consensus

24:53 — Learning is a skill too: storyteller as learner and teacher

27:48 — Retelling: Disney, remakes, and generational nostalgia

30:47 — Archetypes and the Bechdel test

33:42 — Why AI can write scripts, and where humans come in

34:54 — Inside collaborative writing: fan fiction, simming, fifteen authors

36:43 — Choose your own adventure as long-form improv

38:23 — The Simming Prize: Beth becomes a Laureate

40:50 — Who's in the room: a ferry captain, a UK cop, a winery

43:49 — AI in the hobby: where the line actually is

46:13 — AI as translation: getting what's in your head out

47:24 — Plotting with AI without losing the people

49:13 — What AI can't do: honoring a writer they lost

52:46 — Ed's challenge: what do you carry into the real work?

54:10 — "An apprentice is a title, not a person"

57:02 — Compassion and empathy as the real test

1:01:03 — How anyone can write their way out of a problem

1:04:29 — The close: first to say yes, and a new question

1:11:10 — Take care of yourselves and each other

Ed and Paul jam with career coach and musician Steven Fleming to tackle what it means to be "stuck in the dash" of life's transitions. Moving from corporate accounting to artistic freedom, Steven drops powerful mental models on overcoming fear, escaping the passive "NPC" mindset, and reclaiming your life's controller. The energetic session shifts into deep, raw vulnerability when Steven flips the script, challenging the hosts to reveal their own proudest personal triumphs.

Stick around to the end of this week’s episode for a very special performance by Steven Fleming courtesy of his YouTube channel https://www.youtube.com/@steventoddsounds/featured. Don’t miss it!

Chapters

0:00 Opening

05:01 Self-Discovery and Facing Fears

09:09 Integrating Passions and Professional Life

13:07 The Power of Perspective and Reality

16:55 Embracing Change and Energy

23:18 Being the Main Character in Your Story

25:16 Unlocking Your Superpower

34:17 Leadership as a Unifying Force

48:56 Questions for Reflection and Growth

It's that time of year. The calendar flips, performance reviews hit, and somewhere in the building a memo goes out: submit your professional development plan. No guidance. No direction. Just go do it — and oh, don't forget, you still have to do your actual job.

That's exactly where a friend of mine found himself when he reached out to talk it through. We're calling him Matt — names changed to protect the innocent. And the conversation went somewhere I didn't expect. What started as "I don't even know where to start" turned into something a lot more interesting once we stopped talking about what the company needed and started asking what Matt actually wanted.

In this episode, Paul and I get into the real friction behind professional development mandates — why so many of us dread them, what that resistance is actually telling us, and how to extract genuine value even when nobody handed you a map.

• 00:00 – Cold Open: "Go Learn This, Because I Said So"
• 01:09 – Back in the Sandbox
• 01:19 – Meet Matt: A Mandate with No Map
• 03:15 – Paul's Background and the Familiar Tune of PD Season
• 05:18 – Apply It or It Didn't Happen
• 07:52 – Value Shows Up in Context
• 08:53 – The Uncomfortable Truth: What If They Just Don't Want To?
• 10:17 – Paul's Estate Sales Approach to Extracting Value
• 12:39 – The Sticky Note on Paul's Desk
• 13:12 – The Treasure Box: Whose Development Is This, Really?
• 16:03 – "Go Learn This, Because I Said So" (And Why That Backfires)
• 17:25 – The Trust Equation: Who's Actually Centered Here?
• 19:47 – Green Pastures, No Map
• 21:00 – The Three Filters: Accessible, Aligned, and Applicable
• 24:04 – When You Need the Value to Show Up Immediately
• 26:45 – Compliance Isn't the Same Thing as Growth
• 30:10 – What Organizations Actually Get Right
• 31:28 – Story Time: Ed Walks Into the Wrong Room
• 40:53 – What He Actually Got Out of It
• 44:54 – The Clique That Was Studying Cliques
• 45:29 – Ed Was the Disruption
• 48:45 – The Guiding Question

What happens when you suddenly lose your job? In this episode, therapist-in-training Dr. Ryan Poirier joins the podcast sandbox to talk about navigating the raw grief of career transitions. Ryan shares how a high school wrestling move called the "neck bridge" can teach us to survive heavy professional pressure without getting completely pinned. The conversation covers how to repurpose AI as a graduate school study tool , why mistakes are our best leadership teachers , and how to use the "Acknowledge, Accept, Address" framework to process big emotions. Finally, Ryan shares a powerful live epiphany: your internal personal mission and integrity matter far more than any corporate statement on a wall.

Time Stamps

00:00 – Processing Job Loss and Finding the Glimmer

01:48 – Welcome to the Arena: Unfinished Thinking in the Sandbox

03:44 – The Metaphor of the Neck Bridge

06:27 – Redefining the Creative Canvas: Problem Solving vs. Art

10:55 – The Human Edge vs. Artificial Intelligence

14:19 – Operational Creativity & Graduate School AI Hacks

17:15 – Narrative Storytelling and Stumbling into Psychology

21:30 – People-First Leadership and the Safety to Fail

24:02 – Ladder vs. Rock Climbing Wall: Reimagining the Career

26:44 – Shifting Professional Values and Organizational Friction

33:24 – The Framework: Acknowledge, Accept, and Address

35:41 – Healing Through Creative Play

39:52 – Advisor Advice and the Hospital Psych Unit Path

41:34 – Unpacking Ikigai and Writing to Your Future Self

45:40 – Embracing the Messy Process of Collaborative Problem Solving

52:14 – Workplace Reminders and Staying Out of the River

56:10 – The Realm of Possibility: Prioritizing Self-Care in Transition

1:00:04 – The Epiphany: Internal Personal Mission vs. External Banners

1:01:17 – Approaching Careers as Experiments and Final Wrap-Up

What happens when you spend your entire life collecting elite academic degrees, only to realize the view from the top of the ladder isn't what you actually wanted? In this episode, Ed and Paul sit down with Dr. Kathleen Stone to talk about stripping away the corporate armor, surviving intense life transitions, and why the standard advice to "follow your passion" might be making you miserable.

Timestamps:

00:00 – Mirror Check

01:05 – Drop the "Doctor" Title

03:06 – People Over Projects

06:33 – Email Typos & Leadership Flaws

12:57 – Why "Follow Your Passion" Is Bad Advice

17:51 – Harry Potter, Cosplay, & Clear Skies

21:27 – Life Is Too Short: Caregiving & Sunshine

28:17 – Pulling the Five-Degree Resumé Thread

33:53 – Evolving Whys: "Yes, And"

39:54 – Coasters, Dinosaurs, & Closing the Arena

Links

Kathleen Living Life YouTube Channel