The LeaderLab: Powered by LifeLabs Learning

Latest Episodes:

How FIT House of Brands Builds Resilient Teams Through Change with Taminy Fernandes Nov 02, 2026

Show notes

People don't necessarily resist change. They resist change that happens without clarity, context, or a sense of control.

In this episode of The LeaderLab Podcast, Micaela Mathre, interim Chief Revenue Officer at LifeLabs Learning, welcomes Taminy Fernandes, VP of People at FIT House of Brands, to discuss the leadership habits that build trust, strengthen manager effectiveness, and help teams navigate uncertainty.

Taminy shares why organizations must be intentional about developing managers, how to recognize when leaders are struggling, and why explaining the why behind decisions is one of the simplest ways to build trust.

They also explore how AI is reshaping the People function, from coaching and scenario planning to predictive analytics, and why human judgment and critical thinking remain essential.

Key takeaways:

Build resilience by creating clarity and predictability during change.
Equip managers with foundational skills instead of expecting them to learn through trial and error.
Recognize early warning signs of struggling managers, including repeatedly saying they don’t have time to manage and continuing to do too much of the work themselves..
Use AI to strengthen decision-making without replacing human connection and contextual understanding.
Help leaders distinguish meaningful insights from AI-generated noise.

Try this: In your next one-on-one, ask: "What was something that felt unclear or caught you by surprise this week?"

Workshops

Leading Change — Equip managers with the skills to navigate uncertainty, reduce resistance, and help teams adapt to change.
Building Trust — Strengthen the everyday leadership behaviors that create psychological safety, transparency, and trust.
Adaptivity & Resilience — Help teams respond to challenges, manage uncertainty, and build resilience in changing environments.
Applying AI Discernment — Help employees decide when and how to use AI, account for the full effort involved, and take responsibility for AI-assisted work.

Resources

Read

Watch

Empathy in Everyday Leadership: In Conversation with Claude Silver from VaynerX Oct 08, 2026

Show notes

Empathy at work isn’t just understanding how someone feels. It’s what you do next.

Claude Silver joins Micaela Mathre to explore how leaders turn care into everyday behavior; from giving clearer feedback to noticing when someone on the team has gone quiet.

Drawing on her journey to becoming Chief Heart Officer at VaynerMedia, Claude shares why manager training should give people something they can use immediately, how emotional fluency helps leaders navigate difficult moments, and why consistent attention matters more than a single thoughtful conversation.

Claude and Micaela also unpack the micro-yes before feedback, the confusion vague urgency creates, and practical ways to help people feel seen. Along the way, Claude shares an exercise for challenging negative self-talk with evidence, and they discuss where AI can help prepare people conversations—and where human judgment needs to lead.

In this episode:

The difference between recognizing an emotion and communicating it constructively.
Why feedback needs preparation, clear examples, and thoughtful timing.
Small ways to practice empathy through recognition, check-ins, and follow-through.
How to acknowledge uncertainty without pretending to have every answer.
Using AI to support your thinking without passing the review burden to someone else.

One idea to try: After your next check-in, choose one concrete action based on what you heard. Follow up, make a connection, or investigate a concern. Let the conversation lead somewhere.

Workshops:

Programs:

Read:

Resources:

Watch:

Why Your Team Isn’t Giving You Honest Feedback - and How to Change That with Dr. Dossier Harps Sep 09, 2026

Show notes

How do you get honest feedback when people may be reluctant to give it?

In this episode of The LeaderLab, Dr. Dossier Harps joins Micaela Mathre to explore Pulling for Feedback: asking deliberate, specific questions instead of waiting for someone else to speak up.

They discuss why critical feedback can trigger defensiveness, how hierarchy shapes what leaders hear, and why asking is only part of the skill. How a manager responds can determine whether someone feels safe being honest again.

The conversation also looks at how AI can help prepare better questions, why it can’t replace a willingness to learn, and how withholding constructive criticism can leave employees without the information they need to grow.

For People, HR, and L&D leaders, this episode offers practical ways to help managers seek useful input, respond with curiosity, and make feedback a regular part of how they lead.

Workshops:

Programs:

Read:

Resources:

Watch:

More Asking, Less Telling: Manager Habits for a Faster-Changing Workplace Jul 31, 2026

Show notes

AI can accelerate insight, sharpen thinking, and remove friction from how work gets done. But it cannot replace the trust, reflection, feedback, and human connection that help people grow.

In this episode of The Leader Lab, Megan Wheeler, Director of People Development at Articulate, joins Micaela Mathre to explore what leadership development needs to look like in an increasingly remote and AI-enabled workplace.

Drawing on nearly two decades of experience in organizational psychology, facilitation, coaching, and leadership development, Megan shares what she learned moving from studying and teaching leadership to leading teams herself. One of her biggest lessons: skills training alone is not enough. For new behaviors to stick, they must be reinforced by organizational systems and modeled consistently by senior leaders.

Megan also takes listeners inside Articulate’s approach to developing managers in a fully remote organization, including why the company brought leaders together in person to practice coaching, feedback, psychological safety, and cross-functional problem-solving.

Tune in to learn:

Why a leader’s emotional energy can shape the entire team
Why manager development requires both individual skills and system-level support
How in-person learning can strengthen connection in remote organizations
What leaders should and should not outsource to AI
How the Most Important Things method creates clarity during constant change
Why great managers do more asking and less telling

A grounded conversation for People, HR, and L&D leaders designing the next generation of manager development.

Workshops:

Programs:

Read:

Resources:

Watch:

Preparing for a Defining Moment: The Obama Foundation's Investment in Leadership Jun 17, 2026

Show notes

How do you create a culture where learning becomes part of the way people work?

In this episode of The Leader Lab, Patrick Choquette, Director of Learning & Development at The Obama Foundation, shares lessons from a career spanning public service, education, international development, and leadership development.

From teaching in Ghana as a Peace Corps volunteer to leading learning programs across global teams and mission-driven organizations, Patrick explores what it takes to create environments where people grow, managers thrive, and learning becomes part of everyday work.

He shares why managers represent the highest ROI for organizational development, how strong systems create better learning outcomes than standalone training programs, and why AI may be one of the most powerful learning reinforcement tools available today.

🎧 Tune in to learn:

Why managers have the biggest impact on employee growth and engagement
How to create learning systems instead of relying on one-off training events
Lessons from scaling development across thousands of employees globally
What mission-driven organizations can teach us about leadership
How AI can help reinforce leadership behaviors and learning habits
Why behavior change matters more than knowledge transfer

A practical conversation for People leaders, L&D professionals, and executives building stronger managers and more adaptive organizations.

Workshops:

Programs:

Read:

Resources:

Watch:

Give Feedback That Lands: The Playing Cards Method with Kathy Pearce May 27, 2026

Show notes

What makes feedback useful instead of just emotional?

In this Skills Spotlight episode of The Leader Lab, Kathy Pearce, Facilitator at LifeLabs Learning, joins host Micaela Mathre to unpack the Playing Cards Method™, one of LifeLabs’ most memorable frameworks for turning blurry feedback into clear, actionable communication.

Using the four suits in a deck of cards, Kathy explains how Hearts and Clubs represent vague praise and criticism, while Diamonds and Spades point to the specific behaviors someone should keep doing or change.

Kathy shares practical workplace examples, including how managers can give clearer feedback about AI-generated work, why public Diamonds can create ripple effects across teams, and how “Diamond Days” help organizations build stronger feedback habits.

🎧 Tune in to learn:

Why “great job” and “that was terrible” are equally unhelpful
How to turn Hearts into Diamonds and Clubs into Spades
Why specific praise helps teams replicate great work
How to avoid leading with assumptions in feedback conversations
What managers often get wrong when giving feedback about AI
Why feedback skills require constant practice, even for experts
How shared language makes feedback easier to recognize and improve

A thoughtful, practical conversation for managers, People leaders, and teams who want feedback to create clarity instead of confusion.

How SonderMind’s VP of People Is Scaling Managers, Culture, and AI Readiness Apr 15, 2026

Show notes

What does it take to scale teams, culture, and leadership at the same time?

In this episode of The Leader Lab, Sara Marzitelli-Sanchez, VP of People at SonderMind, shares how she’s helping leaders grow alongside their organizations by focusing on manager development, human-centered leadership, and practical AI adoption.

From her unconventional path into HR to her belief that “people are complex beings,” Sara explains why the fundamentals of People leadership stay consistent across industries, and why this role is more industry-agnostic than most think.

She also shares how meeting every employee helps her build trust (and make HR feel less “scary”), how it gives her a 30,000-foot view of the business, and how that insight shapes smarter People strategies.

🎧 Tune in to learn:

Why investing in manager training is a core business strategy & not just L&D
How to remove the “HR is scary” barrier and build trust across teams
What it looks like to lead with a 30,000-ft view of team function and challenges
Why brain science-backed training creates more effective, scalable managers
How to navigate the shift from individual contributor to people leader
What it takes to build AI fluency across an organization

A practical, grounded conversation for People leaders building resilient, scalable teams in a fast-changing world.

From “War for Talent” to “War on Talent”: Change, and Executive Alignment in NerdWallet’s AI Shift Mar 11, 2026

Show notes

What does it take to lead people well when the rules of work keep changing?

In this episode of The Leader Lab, Lynee Luque, Chief People Officer at NerdWallet, shares how she’s navigating AI adoption, organizational change, acquisitions, and remote-first leadership, while keeping the human side of work at the center.

Hear how Lynee approaches leading through ambiguity, why copying and pasting playbooks rarely works, and how People teams can act as the testing ground for change before it scales across the organization.

🎧 Tune in to learn:

How to lead through uncertainty without over-relying on process
Why mindset shifts need to come before AI skill-building
What it takes to support a truly remote-first workforce
How NerdWallet approaches acquisitions by elevating, not absorbing, new companies
Why today’s shift from the “war for talent” to the “war on talent” matters for every People leader

A thoughtful, practical conversation for People leaders building resilient, adaptive teams in a fast-changing world.

Inside Fabletics: How L&D is Preparing for an AI-First Future with Will Feng Nov 24, 2025

Show notes

What’s the role of L&D in the age of AI?

In this episode of The Leader Lab, Will Feng (VP of People, Fabletics) shares how TechStyle Fashion Group is rethinking learning, from the ground up. Hear how they’re developing human skills, engaging middle managers, and building an “AI-first mindset” across brands.

🎧 Tune in to learn:

The power of peer-based learning and clear communication
What an AI-first mindset really looks like
How middle managers can be your greatest asset in transformation
How they reached 90% L&D program participation

A practical, real-world conversation for People leaders shaping the future of work.

AI in Learning & Leadership: Why Human Skills Still Win with Priscila Bala and Michelle King Sep 17, 2025

Show notes

AI is transforming how we learn at work, but it can’t replace human connection or the practice it takes to turn knowledge into lasting skills. In this episode of The LeaderLab, LifeLabs CEO Priscila Bala and Facilitation Manager Michelle King share why people skills remain essential in the age of AI. They discuss the risks of relying too heavily on technology in leadership development and why live, human-centered learning is critical for building trust, collaboration, and resilient teams.
📌 Explore more resources:

Our TOPPODCAST Picks

Follow Us

Stay Connected

The LeaderLab: Powered by LifeLabs Learning

Related Podcasts

Links

Stay Connected