291. The Future of Leadership: Expand the Circle with Matt Poepsel

What if leadership isn’t about pushing harder on performance, but about showing up with presence that energizes people and elevates outcomes? We sit down with Dr. Matt Poepsel—psychologist, Boston College professor, host of Lead the People, and author of Expand the Circle—to rewire how we think about leading in a world of AI disruption, remote ambiguity, and rising burnout. Matt shares how he moved from a “rubbish manager” copying others to a grounded leader who balances mission and people in equal measure, and he offers a practical path to do the same.

We dig into the leadership craft: clarifying values, aligning actions, and noticing what energizes or drains each person on your team. Matt explains why awareness is a performance tool, not a luxury, and how small, intentional shifts—like redesigning meetings for different thinking styles—unlock better ideas, trust, and speed. You’ll learn his outside-in/inside-out model: set intention by prioritizing customers and partners first, then take action by owning what you can control—your clarity, your cadence, your follow-through.

From healing separation through vulnerability to transforming “teams of executives” into true “executive teams,” this conversation is packed with usable frameworks and grounded stories. We also explore how to build a shared values language, create meaningful team identity, and ask the question that changes everything: What is it like to experience you as a leader?

If you’re ready to replace autopilot with intention and expand your circle from self to team to system, this one’s for you. Subscribe, share with a colleague who leads people, and leave a review with your biggest takeaway so we can keep raising the standard of leadership together.

🌐 Connect with Matt:
• Website: https://www.mattpoepsel.com/
• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/mattpoepsel/
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/mattpoepsel/

📚 You can purchase Matt's book on Amazon:
• Expand the Circle: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0BZ

Chapters

• 0:00 Rethinking Leadership’s Core Question
• 1:59 Meet Dr. Matt Pepsel and His Thesis
• 3:20 From “Rubbish Manager” to Authentic Leader
• 6:45 Mission And People In Equal Measure
• 10:58 Self-Discovery: Values, Style, Strengths
• 16:30 Coaching New Leaders Beyond Mimicry
• 20:16 Burnout, AI, and Why Playbooks Fail
• 25:23 Practical Values Work You Can Start Now
• 28:26 From Hollow to Whole: Congruence
• 32:55 Heed the Impact, Not Just Intent
• 38:24 Teams, Trust, and Collective Leadership
• 42:40 Awareness In Action: Adapt to Individuals
• 49:20 Outside-In Intent, Inside-Out Action

Transcript

Mick Spiers: 0:01

What if the greatest challenge in leadership today isn't about managing performance, but about managing presence. What if the real question isn't, how do I lead my team, but how well do I know myself in a world that's moving faster than ever, where AI burnout and constant change have redefined what normal looks like. My guest today argues that our leadership playbook hasn't caught up. I'm joined by Dr. Matt Poepsel, psychologist, professor at Boston College, host of the lead the people podcast, and author of expand the circle. Matt believes it's time we rethink leadership for a new era, one grounded in authenticity, awareness and connection. If you've ever felt that hollow feeling of being on autopilot or questioned whether you're showing up as your true self at work, this conversation will invite you to pause, reflect and expand your own circle of leadership. Hey everyone, and welcome back to The Leadership Project. I'm greatly honored today to be joined by Matt Poepsel. Matt is a PhD in Psychology with a focus on coaching and leadership, and he's the author of a book called expand the circle, enlighten leadership for our new world, and the host of the lead the people podcast. And he's also a visiting professor and part time professor at Boston College, also helping new leaders come that way. And the fundamental thing that he believes is that we need to rethink what we think about leadership in a modern world, and that's what we're going to unpack today. What does this mean to expand your circle. What does Enlightened Leadership look like? So Matt, without any further ado, we'd love to hear from you. Please say hello to our audience, and we'd like to know what inspired you to do the work that you do today and to write this book expand the circle?

Matt Poepsel: 1:57

Yeah. Mick, thanks so much for having me. Really appreciate it. And I would say that one of the things that really inspired me to write the book was just going from being a rubbish manager back in the day to actually scraping my knees and elbows and getting to the point where I could actually be a passable leader and show up for my people the way I wanted, and I wanted to capture, sort of my own journey and as an inspiration to Help others continue theirs.

Mick Spiers: 2:21

Very good. Matt, so, so what does what does a rubbish leader look like? What tell us the back story here?

Matt Poepsel: 2:27

Oh, I think it was just this notion of being really caught in my own head and trying to live up to some ideal that I had of what a leader was supposed to do was very inauthentic. I just tried to emulate those strong leaders around me, not recognizing or appreciating what my own personal style was that was a big part of it, and not understanding so much that, you know, where I started off, in the military, we had a saying that was mission accomplishment, troop welfare in that order. So you had to get the mission done. And if people had a decent time along the way, that was okay, but that was extra. It wasn't really as much of a focus. And I found in the civilian world that didn't translate well at all. And so I came to adopt a new mantra around mission accomplishment and employee welfare in equal measure. And the real trick of leadership now is, how do we make sure that the business gets what it needs, of course, but also make sure that we take our people with us. That's something that I really had to learn, and that's what made me a rubbish manager. Back when I first started, was just overly fixating on the work to be done, as opposed to who was doing that work.

Mick Spiers: 3:26

There's two major things that I take away there, Matt, and I'll work backwards to the one that I want to ask you more about. So this really sits well with us. And some of the mantras that we use at the show is that we believe that we succeed through our people, not at the expense of our people. And it shouldn't be a either or equation. It should be an and equation. The other part was in the start of your journey there emulating leaders before you. Many of us fall into this trap. I'm going to say, I'd almost be bold enough to say all leaders fall into that trap at some point that when they get their first leadership role, they potentially haven't stopped to think about what it means to be a leader, and their only role models are the role other leaders that came before them. And in a world where only one in five people truly like their job and or love their job and like their boss, we're just replicating the mistakes of the leaders before us. How does that sit with you?

Matt Poepsel: 4:24

lot of experience is going to try to emulate but I don't think we do our leaders a service when we promote them and don't tell them that we're all going to have different strengths, a different authentic style, different value systems that we need to incorporate into our leadership. And so when that didn't happen for me and I emulated those around me, I was just like I was wearing a coat that was too small. It just something wasn't quite right, and it wasn't coming through in my leadership. So thankfully, I pretty quickly realized that if I was going to survive this whole leadership thing and be an. Good at it at all. I really had to figure out, what am I all about? And so I started more of that self exploration journey about, how am I uniquely wired? What types of things am I doing in my leadership, just by instinct that actually produce results, whether that's a result in terms of, let's say, getting a project done on time, or a people result in terms of, Wow, that person really lit up when I made that comment, recognizing something they did. So paying attention along the way, and understanding that interaction between how I showed up as a leader, the types of decisions I made, the things I did, what was working and what was kind of working against me. I think that really helped me sort of stumble and find my way in the darkness. But we have to get to a point where we do better for future leaders, because the stakes are just too high now, and I think that leadership development is something that goes overlooked too often, and it causes a lot of strain and stress in a system that's really avoidable, in my opinion. So thankfully, I learned those tough lessons, but I think we need to do better for the generations of leaders that are coming up behind us.

Mick Spiers: 6:01

So I think there's a key takeaway there, for a lot of leaders listening to the show are more senior leaders. They have been in industry for a while. Have a listen to what Matt was just saying there. If you've got a newly promoted leader, don't just set them on autopilot and let them go. Sit down and have a chat to them about connecting to themselves and then listening to your Matt, yeah, we all have individual strengths and weaknesses, but we also have our own personalities. And it's that inauthenticity that you're talking about. If you're pretending to be someone else, it's not going to work, and people smell it a mile away, by the way. So how do you connect to yourself like that?

Matt Poepsel: 6:43

Yeah, I think there's got to be this opportunity to explore that within the context of work. And it's funny when you mentioned senior leaders, and I have the chance to consult with and coach so many of them. A lot of times they complain about not having leadership capacity in the organization. And my immediate reaction is, who's failing whom here? Because the reality is that we have to make that investment, and there's so many different ways we can do it. Sometimes it's formal, sometimes it's on the job, sometimes it's just creating opportunities for leadership development, practice, dialog, etc. And we have to recognize that Leadership isn't something that you just get to have. You have to develop this into the people who are a level down or two from you. Another common thing that I see is that senior leaders say, Well, if somebody is going to get to where I am, they have to do the things that I did over the last 1520 years. And the reality is that what's going to happen the next 15 to 20 years? It looks anything like the last 15 to 20 not that much when you think about it. Some of the core principles Yes, but the entire context is shifting. Everything is changing so quickly. So coming back to the individual who needs to now take their first promotion, although I would argue that even if you're an individual contributor, you're still a leader. Anybody who's going to fashion themselves as a leader, I think it starts at that bedrock of understanding about exploring my values, exploring my personality type, my behavioral preferences and style. I'll give you some examples real quick. From from my own world, I find that I am really driven my core values around a sense of service, also of creativity and some level of adventure. These are always things that have been a part of my life and my enjoyment. They just naturally seem to be what shows up when I get super quiet and feel like, What do I care about and notice in this world? And so when those things aren't present in my leadership, that's an inauthentic experience for me. The question then becomes, how do you bring in something like creativity or sense of adventure into a leadership opportunity. That's where we have to really do the hard work of saying, Well, what does that look like here, as a manager of two other people running a project management function, whatever it might be, and then trying to find those ways to connect those dots so that that energy flows as naturally as possible through me. In that regard, another thing around personality type, behavioral patterns, I find that I'm very talkative. I'm good at generating enthusiasm in others. I'm very much an innovator. I like to take risks. I like to do big picture thinking. That means, of course, I have a downside. I'm terrible at details. I don't like really long documents that I have to read and consume. I don't like always painting inside the lines. So you can give me certain types of tasks, and I'm naturally suited for those, but if you give me other types, they become soul crushing. If you put me in a cubicle and you said you're going to stay here, you're not going to get to interact with anybody, and your job is to produce quality slowly, that would be a soul crushing job for me, versus something that's more in line with my natural strengths. And I think that young people in particular, they come in the workforce, of course, they don't know what they're all about, because they're young, and they don't have the opportunity to have those experiences to figure out where their natural strengths are. As more experienced leaders, we. Need to hold up that mirror for them. We need to give them opportunities to try different things, or to ask the questions, or to share parts of our own journey, to try to help them make those connections faster, perhaps than we did.

Mick Spiers: 10:13

Really good, Matt. So, I'll tell you what I'm hearing, and there's a call to action here for all of the leaders, of leaders that are listening to the show. You've said in a few different ways that there's a lot at stake here and there is because you're not only just talking about the individual leader that we're talking about. You've got to remember that that leader is now curating or looking after the place where other people are spending up to 1/3 of their life. So the knock on effect of not setting up that leader for success is that leader is not going to have a good time, but so is their team not going to have a good time. So my question to everyone in the audience, if you're promoting new leaders, or they might have been in the craft for a couple of years now, did you set them up for success? Did you set them up for success, and what are you going to do to help them find themselves? Who are they what are their values? What do they stand for? What do they not stand for? What are their strengths? What? How is their authentic personality going to come through in their own path of leadership, not your path of leadership, their own path of leadership. And I think that's a series of conversations that people need to have.

Matt Poepsel: 11:19

It's so true, and it's so when you talk about the stakes too, Mick, what's really happening now is work has become very complex, and when you look at the nature of most industries, it's collaborative work, it's knowledge work. It's about sharing information, it's about working together. And so this means that there has to be this elevated level of trust and safety and authenticity and the stakes of performance, meaning shortfalls in performance are really, really high. But additionally, we've never seen the level of burnout that we're seeing today inside of the organ, inside of organizations. People are really kind of at their at their limit of their rope here, and it comes from wave after wave of changes being absorbed over the last five plus years, economic headwinds, the rise of AI remote work that we still don't fully understand how to get it right. So many things are challenging our ability, not just to perform but to have a positive work experience. We've never needed leadership more than we've needed it now. But the problem is the what used to pass for leadership only exacerbates the problem. Now we don't need this solo approach to leadership. We need a collective approach, one that we take our people with us, as I said before, and this is something that means that if we want to do this, values work, if we want to do this appreciation about what makes us uniquely suited for the leadership task, we have to normalize these types of conversations. So in your action plan, what I love is we could very easily take a very simple values inventory, there's tons of them on the web, and just take a list of 20 common values, share them with all the leaders at your executive team level and say, if you can only pick two or three of these, which would they be? And let's compare notes around the room. And there are no wrong answers. Let's elevate awareness that we have differences. Let's challenge one another to say, How am I seeing this show up in your work, in your leadership? And if it's not, let's brainstorm with one another about what can we do to help and then let's cascade that down to our level, down leaders. Sometimes we call that executive leadership team or ELT plus one, down to that next level. Are they clear about their values? And if not, it's a very simple exercise to say. We've all been through this recently. We learned a ton. We know that this is important for driving the business forward, and now we'd like you to go through the same exercise. And let's all have this awareness. It's fast and free to do these things, but we have to want to do these things, and that's where a lot of companies go astray.

Mick Spiers: 13:43

Yes, I'm loving this, this word awareness, but also this infantry and almost doing. Giving yourself a scorecard of, Am I sticking true? Are my actions congruent with what I said my values were? And if not, what am I going to do about it?

Matt Poepsel: 13:58

100%. Yeah, within the last 30 days. Give me one or two examples of where you brought adventure into your leadership. You're like, whoa, holy cow, that's that's a lot of accountability. All of a sudden, the answer is, yeah, because for you to be at your best and feel like you're really showing up fully, you've got to honor those values. Otherwise, if you allow yourself to get so busy with the work to be done or delivering the results or hitting the metrics or whatever it is, and you have this hollow experience and a lot of what led me to write the book and to go on my own sort of soul searching journey, after years of success and years of promotion and years of high performance, but still feel that hollow feeling that's not something we want for our people or for ourselves, and so that it just shows that we have to change Our approach, otherwise we're going to end up in a place that we just don't want to be.

Mick Spiers: 14:44

Yeah, I recognize this hollow feeling that you're talking about. If you find yourself on autopilot, where you're just going through the motions, yeah, it doesn't feel right. Something doesn't feel right.

Matt Poepsel: 14:55

No. And the opposite of being Hollow is being whole. Whole means that we understand. We're all about. We're bringing it every day. You know, we're showing up fully. We're resonating with those around us. We're throwing those ripples and that energy sort of and lifting them as well. Because work is hard enough as it is, we don't need to make it harder on ourselves, right by taking only a fraction of ourselves and bringing it into our work, and convincing ourselves that maybe I'm maybe I like to use humor, but the executive team sessions are always so so stiff, and board meetings are always so, so serious all the time. Well, you can find a little way to bring in some humor. It's not going to kill anybody, and you're going to feel more complete as a result. If that's part of what gives you gravitas, and that's part of what you uniquely bring to the leadership moment, then you can't hide that away and feel natural, and if it truly is being punished, maybe you're not in the right spot, or maybe some other things have to change about your culture. But to deny a part of yourself is robbing others of their potential. It took me years to understand this, because you can't show up to be who you need to be to help them become who they need to be, and if you've made that choice deliberately, or it's just happened because, like you said, we got absorbed and kind of carried away by just the normal course of business, that's a tragedy. Because you're talking about people's development. You're talking about how you send them home to their families like this is the real deal. I don't think people give leadership the respect that it deserves. In many cases, they see it saying, Well, I took the management job because that's what it took to get the more money, and it was just kind of what was expected. You're in charge of people's livelihood, and not even just how much money they make, but in terms of the experience they bring to work, how they go home, into their communities. Like all of it, leadership can you just can't take it seriously enough. When you connect the dots fully.

Mick Spiers: 16:47

It's a major responsibility. Matt and I talk about this often. I say, you know, I ask people, when someone goes home at the end of the day and they've had a bad day, what kind of language are they talking about? Who are they talking about? They're not going home, going to their wife or their husband or their kids, going, you can't believe what that spreadsheet did to me today. There's a name there, and I'm going to, I'm going to hazard I don't know the numbers, by the way, Matt, so I'm going to just guess eight to nine times out of 10 it's their manager. That is the person that's in that sentence, followed by a few exploitives.

Matt Poepsel: 17:22

And the manager, in some cases, impinged them, did something, treated them badly, used harsh language around them in a way that was just inappropriate or didn't advocate for them, didn't look out for them, didn't say kind things about them when they weren't in the room, like they feel that too, and they know that too. So a manager's job could either be detrimental through their actions, but inaction can also be just as detrimental. Are we talking up our team members? Are we only talking up ourselves because we feel fear? Fear destroys everything good in organizations and in relationships. If we go into the staff meeting, and we have to talk about, well, here are my numbers for my department, and it's basically you're saying, Look at me, aren't I doing a good job? Because you're secretly afraid you're undermining your people, as opposed to making sure that everyone knows that they work for you. There's no nobody's going to be surprised by this, but when you celebrate your people and their achievements, you know now all of a sudden that appreciation, it does still reflect back on you, and I think it's received totally differently.

Mick Spiers: 18:26

Let me post something else to you about this, Matt as well, and I want the audience to really listen to this as well. These are mostly unintentional acts or omissions, right? So, no, I haven't met a boss yet. I'm sure there's someone out there that's going to prove me wrong one day. I haven't met a boss yet that rubs their hands together at the start of the day and goes right. What am I going to do today to make my team's life a living hell? But your unintentional acts or omission are what's impacting their lives and giving them this level of stress and anxiety and fear that Matt is talking about. And he's the he's the hit. It doesn't matter if you intend it or not. It only matters if, if the impact was felt. How does that sit with you?

Matt Poepsel: 19:10

It's so true. And I feel like when you get down to it, if we place more emphasis on the mission, or whatever it is, the task, the metrics, whatever you call it, and we don't place enough emphasis on people. That's when we start acting in this mechanistic way. When you look at organizations and at work, it's so easy to depersonalize it, dehumanize it, even by telling ourselves, Well, this is the job. This is what has to be done. We have to hit this revenue target. We have to hit this quality target, this throughput, productivity target, whatever it is, and it depersonalizes And dehumanizes it. But when we recognize the connected nature that every business is a people business, and what separates us from the competition is how well we can employ the energies and the capacity and the capabilities of our people, then we start to look at things a lot different. Like, and now, all of a sudden, that unintentional consequence that I might have had as a leader, I see it in a new light, and I recognize that the only way that we put up the performance numbers we want is to make sure that we're setting our people up to be successful and ensure that they're a cohesive group, right? A lot of what I do is around team and collective leadership, because groups of people do the most interesting and dangerous forms of work inside organizations. That's where we need real leadership. How do you encourage others to contribute their energy toward a collective goal? Now that's my own personal definition of leadership, and I crafted it very specifically because I think leaders need to understand that nothing happens without your people, right? And as much as you might feel like all eyes are on you, because that's that's a fair way to feel. What determines how high you'll go and how far and how fast and how successful the organization will be and your team will be, will come down to your leadership and how well you can spark that in others, not just, you know, make it all about yourself.

Mick Spiers: 21:05

Yeah. Really good, Matt. So, so then we are going to success through our people, but we're going to succeed through our ability to create the environment where they can do their very best work and to inspire them into that, into that meaningful action, and to be aware. Awareness and consciousness is, is probably the number one authenticity, awareness and consciousness are the words that are coming through for me out of today's conversation, the authenticity to connect to yourself, the awareness of self, but also then the awareness of our actions or emissions, the things that we don't do, the awareness of the impact that we're having on on other people is then going to determine whether they're in the in the space to do their very best work. And there was something that you said 10 minutes ago that I let slide at the time, but now I want to come back to it. You were also, it's you're also paying attention. You were noticing and naming what was working and what was not working. And that's also a level of awareness and and here's one of the tricky ones, Matt, I throw this at you, is that what works for one member of your team may not at all work for another member of your team. In fact, it may be detrimental to the other end of the team. So now we need to adapt to the individuals in our team, what are their preferences, and adapt to the situation that's that's in front of us and and bring the right leadership style for the right person at the right time. That's how we can create the best environment. How does that sit with you?

Matt Poepsel: 22:36

Completely and I feel like even even when we get it right with a person, we have to remember that we're in a very dynamic environment, and so sometimes the nature of the role changes. Now I need you to do something new that you're not as comfortable with or as good at. Maybe your performance slips. Maybe something's going on at home. Then I need to say, is everything okay? So even when we personalize it down to sometimes I call it hyper local, or this nature of the the one leadership intervention for one person, because, you know, five team members, you might have five different approaches, or five different preferences, or whatever it might be, and those things can change over time too. We're in this constantly dynamic, shifting environment, and what happens with our people is they want to hold on to things. They don't want things to change. I got this job just the way I want it. Don't ever change it. And you're like, I can't really, really guarantee that, because everything's changing right now, you're seeing this tremendous upheaval because of AI. Oh, now all of a sudden, it's like, I didn't ask to use AI. Well, guess what? Now you're being asked to use AI, or we don't really hire. I've talked to companies who've said we don't really hire entry level jobs anymore because AI's taken all that, all that work. You're like, whoa, that's going to create a significant problem when it comes to developing future leadership capacity. Let's talk about this, right? Let's figure it out. And I think this is why we just have to remember that stability isn't ever the goal. Organizations that stagnate right through stability will atrophy and eventually die. So we have to get our people comfortable with saying you have a job that you're doing today. Let's assume you're doing it well. If not, I'm helping you do it well. But don't get too fixed on the fact that the job that we're doing in a certain way today is how it's always going to be done. That's a recipe for disaster. That's the type of fixation on something that can't be promised, right? Instead, let's create safety. Let's create curiosity. Use your term from earlier, the learning you know that happens. Let's use all that as a way we can continuously navigate this wilderness together as a team, right? That's the type of mentality I want our leaders to have is saying, if you're ever lost in the woods, the first thing they say, You got to stick together. The second is we got to move. We got to navigate. We got to move around, because things are and we have to be aware to the point you were making before. How are we aware of all the things happening at every level, inside the individual, through the team dynamic, organizationally. All of it myself as a leader, what type of reaction my getting? We're always on high alert when it comes to the impact of of our leadership in the world. And I think that's that's a fair thing to ask of our leaders. Unfortunately, it's not something that we're seeing played out as much as we would

Mick Spiers: 25:14

Really good, Matt, I want to put a pin on maybe like. this, this initial chapter that we've had together, and ask our audience to do this is to do that stock take of yourself, connect to yourself, and are you being true to yourself in your leadership? Have a think about the impact that you're having on your team and and have this awareness to be able to almost use trial and error, but also adapt as you go. And what works today will not work six months from now, and you need to do these little pivots that Matt is talking about and paying attention. That's what it is. That's the words that you said before. You're paying attention to what's working, what's not working, and making sure that you're making those adjustments. Here's the question I want you to ask yourself, what is it like to experience you as a leader? What is it like to experience you as a leader and take that home with you and and use that as a bit of a homework as to whether you do have unintentional acts or omissions that are having an impact on your team in a way that you didn't intend. And once again, it doesn't matter that you whether you're intended or not. It what matters is the impact that you're having. What I want to throw at you now, Matt is, is a couple of phrases I've seen from your work, and I just want to unpack them a little bit. Let's start with the book. What does expand the circle mean to Matt Poepsel?

Matt Poepsel: 26:31

Yeah, I had hit a time in my life where I had had a lot of history of success in the working world, but I kind of hit a wall and Mick, I don't know what I was thinking. Somehow I scheduled my midlife crisis right in the middle of a global pandemic. It was a terrible idea. I shouldn't have done it. But what happened was I ended up kind of almost like falling out of love with work and falling out of love with myself and everything else around me a little bit, and just trying to figure out, like, who I don't understand things that used to make sense don't make as much sense anymore. And I think we all had our values reprioritized a little bit during that time, and we were all adjusting to this new in my case, working in high tech, it was an online first world, and everything was just kind of swirling. And I just got to a certain age where I knew that the next chapter for me was going to look different than what it had before. I had already had military service. I had climbed through the ranks in corporate I had made it to become a software product executive. In my case, studied leadership at the highest levels for PhD, been through Harvard Business Schools, executive education programs, etc. Still hit that wall, and it just sent me like flying, and I was just felt almost like I was in free fall, and I decided to land in all places on a meditation cushion. And I picked up a habit that I hadn't done in 15 plus years. And I said, I need to just sit down and get quiet and see what happens. And as I sat there trying meditation as best I could, I'm just terrible at it. So I could only think about work. And as I was studying Eastern philosophy, I started thinking about Western psychology, and this kind of made a rich soup in my mind. And this notion of a meditation practice around expanding the circle of compassion, starting with yourself and working your way out to maybe your family, maybe your co workers. Can you expand it further to strangers and really on out into the universe. It's a beautiful Eastern thing to think about. But I realized from Western psychology, I went through the same process. I had to learn how to lead myself before I could learn to lead others, and I had to do that before I could learn to lead a team and lead at the organization level, and even press my leadership out into the world. So it started to spark for me, this notion that we approach leadership often in an outdated way. We think it's all about us. We think it's about a technical aspect of getting the work done, and everything is more connected than it might seem when you talked in the earlier segment. We're talking about paying attention and seeing not just reactions, but just interactions between people. It's because everything's connected. And so it really became, for me, this understanding about I find it ironic in some ways, that the future of work is requiring us to go back to our deepest human aspects that we've studied for more than 5000 years, and get back to that more contemplative state and bring that into our action as leaders today. So expand the circle which in the Eastern world had kind of started for expanding the circle of compassion. I borrowed that into expanding the circle of leadership. And if I can properly lead myself, then I can show up and more effectively lead others throughout my organization, and really even show up as a better leader, to my family, to my community and society, serving the planet and whatever you know the listener believes in that's bigger than ourselves, all of that can be served through a more thoughtful, intentional approach. Leadership, and one that's more enlightened in the sense of casting off our outdated attitudes and beliefs about what leadership is supposed to be, we have to revisit everything, because everything has changed, except for our leadership.

Mick Spiers: 30:12

Yeah, it's very true, Matt, and that there's a another call to action for everyone. If you've just haven't stopped and really thought about what it means to be a leader in a modern world, you need to rethink that right now. I'm loving the metaphor of expand the circle and borrowing on expanding the circle of compassion to expanding the circle of leadership. I love that you're bringing into multiple aspects of your life. What I'm also hearing Matt is then that can have a domino effect the interconnected world. If you're connected back to yourself, and you've started with yourself, and then you've started to influence those around you, I'm hoping that you're inspiring those leaders to then also do the same. And if they create their circle, then we're going to start having some interconnected circles that are expanding, and now we're starting to have a multiplication effect. The word multiplier was ringing through my head when I heard you talking about the way that you do that. How does that sit with you?

Matt Poepsel: 31:12

Yeah, I think there's this almost like a vibrational frequency. And when we attune others to our sort of, whether you believe in consciousness, energy, just maybe just demeanor, maybe the fact that you know you ever seen how yawns are contagious, but so are smiles, right? So there's always this human, as humans, we're neurologically wired right, to react and to pay attention and to have a response to one another, and I feel like that's that sort of magnifying effect that can happen when we amplify because we're more intentional with our leadership and how we show up, then we can either create or destroy energy and others, right? If I come in and I act solely from my own perspective, and I treat people the way that I would prefer to be treated, but it may not be how they wanted to be treated, it's going to zap their energy. They're gonna be like, oh geez, here we go. One common example I mentioned earlier, I'm a very extroverted person, so I like to think and talk out loud, but I have a lot of introverted team members who are like, you're wearing us out with all your talking. Can we please, just like, have a moment to kind of get our thoughts together and then maybe share our notes. So I learned over time that I had to change the way I ran meetings if I wanted to get all the good ideas heard, if I wanted everybody to be equally seen, if I wanted there to be a collaborative, participative environment, I couldn't just lead as if everyone was just like me. I had to adapt my leadership to fit the group, the collection, the cohesive and I'm so glad that I did. And immediately the energy went up, the ideas were flowing more freely, the amount of trust, the dedication, commitment, turnover goes down like only good things happen with we're willing to modify our leadership approach based on what we discover. So that was just a very small example, but an important one, which is to say, recognizing that my own preferences are different from those of my team and when it comes to leadership, the paradox is that it's not about you, it's about the mission, and it's about the people that are in your care as you pursue it. The paradoxical part comes from it's only about you in the sense of taking action, so all I can do is create that environment that you shared earlier. Mick, which is saying, How can I create an environment that helps people be more successful? And if I have introverts on my team that are drained by My energy about me just being myself unhinged, then I have to change that. I have to change the environment so they can be at their best. Because it's not just about me as the leader, acting however I want, because that's what I'm most comfortable with. That's not what leaders do. That's something else entirely. So yeah, that amplifying effect of saying, How do I get all of us amplifying one another, sending those ripples, expanding that circle through our team. And when my team, let's say I, run a project team, and we interface with five different teams in a given day, how can our team's interaction elevate those teams too, even though we're not on those teams, but we interface with them. That's how much connectivity takes place inside organizations, because very rarely do you see one person who's responsible for some massive output of the company? It's always teams, if not, teams of teams doing things. So now that amplifying effect, if we do it really, really well, can send those ripples ripping through the organization and elevating the energy, the goodwill, the interaction, the knowledge sharing, the ideas, all of it. And if you're listening and you're like, that doesn't sound like where I work at all, you can change it. You can change that starting today, but you have to want to, and you have to follow through. And it doesn't come fast or easy, but it is possible. And I tell you, I'll take possibility, right?

Mick Spiers: 34:40

Yeah, really good, Matt. I want to play back to you what I'm taking away, make sure I understand it and then, and then, this will be a good way to reinforce it for the audience as well. So the key part I'm hearing is some of the your own awareness of what brings you energy, what energizes you and what drains your energy, right? So you need to know that you see. Of but then you need to know that for everyone in your immediate circle, what bring what energizes them and what drains their batteries, what did, what absolutely drives them insane and draws the life from them? You need to know that, and it's going to be different for every single person in that circle. And then to the paradox that it's not about you, it's about the environment you create for them, for them to do their very best work. And yet the paradox is that the one thing that is mostly in your control is your actions. So it's it's only about you. So what you should focus on is, what are my actions and how am I impacting those Am I energizing them, or am I draining their batteries? And then I notice you are doing it even beyond your team. How are we interacting with with other teams, like, how are we collaborating with other teams, and are our actions as a team, energizing them and getting the best out of them, or are we, I'm gonna swear for a second, are we pissing them off and creating separation? How does that sit with you?

Matt Poepsel: 36:08

It's so true. It's so true. And I think that what happens is that we sometimes get the order wrong. And I always say that leadership, we have to work outside in when it comes to our intention, but we have to work inside out when it comes to our action. So when we think about outside in when it comes to our intention, I would start to set the frame with, let's say, our customers inside of the business, and then let's work backward into those other teams that are interfacing directly with the customers, and eventually work all the way into ourselves. So the if we can make our customers successful, we make our sales people or whoever successful, for example, that intentionality is the right way to flow that. But instead, if we go inside out, we're like, well, here's what I need, or I'm on the hook for this, or I have to deliver these metrics, and so I want to make sure that I'm taken care of, or my team's successful. Above all others, that's where things start to fall apart and create separation. Action works in the opposite way. If we expect actions of others to make us successful, that's the wrong approach as well. So instead of saying, well, they need to start getting me my XYZ reports on time so that I can do what I need to do, well, hold on a second. How do we start to take action from the inside out? What can we do to create the conditions or to share or communicate or brainstorm or set up a meeting to try to figure out something, whatever it might be. So I'll go back to that core point. When it comes to intentionality, we want to work outside in. How do we put other success above our own in a way that will naturally make us successful? When it comes to action, we want to work from inside out. How do we take accountability and action ourselves to create the conditions in the environment for other success, and know that it's going to create this ripple, cascading effect, and it's going to energize and to really power the success of the other teams around us. I always say that I meet a lot of teams of executives, but I meet relatively few executive teams, and that's a huge difference. A team of executives is made up of people, a group that's got a lot of successful people who've had a lot of success in their careers, and they got promoted, and now they're all working technically together. They look like a team on paper, but they don't act like a team. Instead, an executive team, a true executive team, subordinate self interest in favor of the team concept. They put the company's success first and foremost, and they recognize that sometimes they have to make concessions. So if you're the head of sales and marketing, or you have your production and quality like, how are you going to subordinate some of your interests in favor of the team concept. It's not an easy thing to do, especially when you've had a degree of success over your career, you know, 20 plus years. So I it's another question I'd have for the listeners, if you find yourself a team at any level, but I'll stick with the executives for a second. Are we a team of executives, or are we an executive team? That team concept is what has to win, and that's where that outside in intentionality and inside out action. That's where that really starts to come to fruition.

Mick Spiers: 39:05

Yeah, really good, Matt, that's a great question for everyone to ask about whatever team you're in. Are you a team of executives? Are you an executive team, and what are you co creating together? Are you just a bunch of individuals that are thrown together, or are you co creating something that you couldn't have possibly done individually, but collectively you could be doing by blending on each other or relying on each other's strengths and and the way that you interact with each other. And I think that plays nicely with this outside in, Inside Out concept, because what I'm taking Matt is the outside in part is being aware of the world and the people around you, that deep awareness about what's needed here and then the inside out. Is the question that was coming into my head, Matt is, what can I do differently to get a different result? Not what can you do? What can I do differently to get a different result? How does that sit with you?

Matt Poepsel: 40:01

I think it's exactly right. And a lot of times I also talk about aspiration, meaning, you know, what do you want for these people that are on the outside, right? I want the customers to be successful. I want our sales teams to be successful. I want my team members be successful, and eventually, down the road, yes, I would also like to be successful. What a different approach than Well, I've got to have mine. I know I've got to win. I've got a family to feed. I've got, well, all of a sudden, that energy is what's going to come out of your leadership, too, and people are going to realize you're just out for yourself. I mean, I'm taking this to the extreme, but sometimes this is exactly what happens, and sometimes it's subconscious. So raising awareness to say, Boy, you know what? When I felt some fear in that meeting because somebody questioned something that my team was doing, I really reacted from a very personal place. What does that signify? What does that indicate? You know, maybe I'm not feeling the safety, or maybe I haven't done a good job communicating why we needed to shape this project in this way. So you're always coming back to, what could I do differently based on either my own self regulation, like in the heat of the moment, or in terms of my own organizational functioning, like, have I really created enough transparency into what my team is doing and why and how this is supportive of our collective goal? If not, of course, people are going to question it right because they're worried about their side of it, or they're seeing something differently. So we have to have this shared understanding and the shared vision and goal, then I think things work out a lot better. But we're human. We have to give ourselves permission to feel the feels, so to speak, but we also have to hold ourselves accountable to say, like, is this the form of leadership that I really want to be putting out there, or is it something that's just a byproduct of my unconscious approach, and I'm allowing my emotions or my my thoughts to run away with me.

Mick Spiers: 41:46

Yeah? Wonderful man. Yeah, I wanted to test one more phrase that I've heard from you. And what does this word these, this phrase, healers of separation. What does that mean?

Matt Poepsel: 41:57

Yeah, I think that a lot of times what happens is that, whether it's economic headwinds, an upset customer, any of these types of things, they drive a wedge between people and organizations. They create fear. Fear creates distance, and distance is the last thing we want when we're pursuing collective goals. You know, again, if you're lost in the woods, the first thing they say is, we gotta stay together. Gotta stay together. And so there's these forces that are trying to rip us apart. I don't know if they're trying to, but they have that effect if we allow it to. So when my mind is that whenever we see distance between ourselves, like, let's say that we're arguing with a customer about whether we upheld some aspect of our legal agreement in the contract. Well, the more they take their side, the more we take our side. It creates that distance, that separation, and that's bad for business. It's bad for everybody. And the more we double down on our own self interest, then we're not finding that way of bringing ourselves closer together. So to be a healer of separation, which is what I think the leadership ideal is that we do this. It helps us to break down that distance, to create cohesion, to draw people toward us. And there's a lot of ways I can do this. One example is if I embrace vulnerability, if I share some of my shortcomings, if I ask for my team's help, if I were to say I remember I said earlier, I'm terrible at details. If I say to my team, my boss, you know, the CEO has given me project, and it's going to require some detailed work that I need to do. And as you know, I've shared with you before, it's not my natural strength, but I'm going to do this because it's important to him, and it's important to me, and it's important to our company's success. So I'm going to do this, but I'd like to ask for your help in making sure that I'm following through. What have I done? Have I weakened my position as a leader because I admitted that I'm imperfect? No, I've made myself vulnerable. I've opened the fact I've been transparent about my limitations, because we all have them, and I've made them a partner in my success, even though they work for me the next day, they don't work for me anymore. No, of course they do, right? They're still my direct reports, and they're still going to, actually, in this case, be drawn closer to me, because I've humanized myself. I've made it okay for them not to be perfect either, right? It's this way of drawing and creating this sort of tight cohesion that we're going to need, because we're going to be tested. Every leader who's listening on this show right now, you will be tested, and when that happens, you want to make sure that you have this strength, this ability to draw people closer to you. So being a healer of separation means that there are just these natural forces that tend to pull us apart. It's up to us to heal that separation by taking the practices and the techniques that draw people in, that make them feel safe and and delighted in their imperfections and feel that magnetism that keeps us safe and close together when we're doing hard work, as opposed to allowing ourselves to drift apart or driving a wedge between us, which is where we really run into organizational, interpersonal, relational challenges only bad things happen from separation.

Mick Spiers: 45:01

Really good, Matt, and the example that you used around the vulnerability, I can tell you what was coming into my head is you're building trust, but you're also giving an opportunity for that person to feel seen, heard and valued, that they matter, that i Hey, I really need your help here. They feel good. When someone feels like you need them, they feel good about themselves, and they'll do better work when they feel like they matter. So that was part of it. And then then the separation. The question here is, are you taking intentional actions to bring people together and bring out the best in the collective, in the group, or are your acts or omissions allowing separation or driving the wedge that you said. So these are great questions for everyone to ask themselves. Matt, and all of it is natural and all of it is human. So give yourself some self kind of compassion here, but be intentional about it. Is what I'm hearing, Matt.

Matt Poepsel: 45:57

One quick example, too, is if you're listening on the call, you might be part of multiple teams, but let's just pick one of the teams that you, that you lead, or that you're a meaningful part of, what's the name of that team, and if you say, Oh, we're the accounting team, ho hum, that's not very it's not prideful to put that identity is and see myself as part of the accounting team, right? I worked with a team they call themselves the honey badgers because they were tenacious. I'd rather be a honey badger than just be on the accounting team. Right? So it's like, this is an example where sometimes fun team names or an identity or a concept, something that kind of relates to our values, that creates cohesion, that heals separation, and now there's a point of pride for that. And we're not saying, if you're not a honey badger, you're not good. You're just saying, This is how we approach our work, and all of a sudden, that can get you through some tough times too. So how much does it cost? How much time does it take to come up with a fun team name? The answer is not much. But do we all do it? No. And then when that happens, we wonder why people aren't fully engaged or committed to the work or to the team concept. It's like you haven't given us something to identify with. We're all the people that work for John. Okay, I guess that's our team. We're John's team. That's the worst of all worlds. That's there's no mission in that at all. So it's like, how do we heal separation? How do we close gaps by giving ourselves a collective identity? That's something everybody listening on the call can make sure that they're doing if they if they haven't already, haven't already, let's get that done.

Mick Spiers: 47:25

Yeah, really great, Matt, so I'm going to draw us to a close now. I'm going to summarize a few things, key words for today, awareness, awareness and authenticity, awareness of yourself. Who are you? What are your values? What do you stand for? What don't you stand for? Are your actions congruent with with your values. Are you being true to yourself and not just mimicking the behavior of leaders before you? Are you then aware of your surroundings or aware of the people around you? What do they like? What do they not like? What energizes them, what drains their energy? And are you taking intentional actions to draw people together and to create the environment where they can do their very best work, where they can have impact, where they can feel seen, heard and valued. These are all intentional actions. They're not autopilot actions. And this elevation of consciousness, this expansion of the circle, the impact that we're having around us to think outside in and then act inside out. This is what leadership looks like in a in a modern world. So we need to stop just cookie cuttering The the behavior of leaders before us, which, to be honest, didn't really work that well anyway. Matt, but the world has moved. The world has changed a lot. We need to move our leadership with us. All right, Matt, so we're going to take us to the Rapid Round now, where this is that same four questions we ask all of our guests. What's the one thing you know now? Matt pepsil, that you wish you knew when you were 20?

Matt Poepsel: 48:54

I think that one of the things is that leadership is a it's a craft. We have to study it. We have to apply ourselves to study it, practice it, pay attention. We have to reflect on it. You wouldn't expect to learn to play the violin and a one hour zoom. It's something you have to keep at every day. And I think mastering leadership is one of the greatest gifts we could give ourselves, because it's a gift that we give to the world. And so yes, leadership is a craft that has to be studied and practiced and reflected upon, and I didn't appreciate that then, but I'm glad that I learned pretty early that that was necessary.

Mick Spiers: 49:29

Yeah, couldn't agree more. Matt, absolutely brilliant. What's your favorite book?

Matt Poepsel: 49:34

The favorite book I'm reading right now is 10x is easier than 2x by Dan Sullivan and Benjamin Hardy, and it really talks about it forced me to question, like all the things that I do, what percentage of those are truly in my zone of genius, and am I prepared to make the changes to my own calendar, for example, in my activities, in order to get to whatever I perceive my next level to be? So that one's up there for sure?

Mick Spiers: 49:58

Yeah. Okay, very good. What's your favorite quote?

Matt Poepsel: 50:01

Well, that's a good one. Favorite quote, know thyself from Socrates is a pretty good one. Or was it Aristotle? I can remember might have been Socrates, but know thyself is a great, a great piece of advice, and I think that's a great place for leaders to start. So I'll stick with that one. And I feel like self awareness, it's something I teach at Boston College, and I'm just so amazed at the journey that students go on, and these are practicing professionals who've been at this a long time. They've had a lot of success, but self awareness is something we just can't take for granted. So I'll say, know thyself.

Mick Spiers: 50:30

Very good, Matt. I know that you've captured the attention of our our audience here. How do people find you? If they'd like to know more.

Matt Poepsel: 50:39

LinkedIn is a great place for me. I've got the hard to spell last name, but Matt Poepsel on LinkedIn is great. mattpoepsel.com if you want to check out my website, but and lead the people podcast, if you're interested in listening to podcasts, those are all great places, and LinkedIn is definitely where I'm the most active.

Mick Spiers: 50:55

You're really good, Matt. And I'm also going to plug there, expand the circle Enlightened Leadership for our new world. Grab a copy of the book as well, but absolutely bring it. Matt, thank you so much for sharing your gift today. You're You're very present with us. You gave us the gift of your time, your your wisdom. Gave us actions that we can go and put into into place straight away. Greatly appreciate it. Thank you so much.

Matt Poepsel: 51:20

Thank you. Mick.

Mick Spiers: 51:22

Yet another powerful conversation here, this time with Matt. Poepsel, three questions to take with you today. What is it like to experience you as a leader? Are your actions aligned with your values or have old habits crept in? Are you energizing or draining the people around you? Every interaction is either creating energy or taking it away. Which are you doing and are you healing or widening the separation in your team, in your meetings, in your culture? Are you bringing people closer together or letting distance grow? Remember Matt's core insight, leadership in a modern world is about awareness, authenticity and intentionality. Work outside in with your intentions, seeing others' needs first, and act inside out with accountability. Take ownership for how you show up. Leadership isn't a title, it's a craft, one to be studied, practice and reflected upon every single day. So this week, take a moment to slow down, look inward and ask yourself, what kind of energy am I bringing into the room, and how might I expand my circle just a little further in the next episode, we're going to be joined by John martinker, an expert on organizational change and mergers and acquisitions, and he's going to talk to us about what it means to be a leader during a time of great organizational change. Thank you for listening to The Leadership Project, mickspiers.com a huge call out to Faris Sedek for his video editing of all of our video content and to all of the team at TLP. Joan Gozon, Gerald Calibo and my amazing wife Sei Spiers, I could not do this show without you. Don't forget to subscribe to The Leadership Project YouTube channel, where we bring you interesting videos each and every week, and you can follow us on social, particularly on LinkedIn, Facebook and Instagram. Now, in the meantime, please do take care, look out for each other and join us on this journey as we learn together and lead together.