The Orange Twist - Shake up your thinking on leadership, culture, and change in 10 minutes.
The Orange Twist is a short-form weekly podcast for organizational leaders, HR professionals, and coaches navigating the complex terrain of leadership, culture, and change. Hosted by Giovanna D’Alessio, MBA MCC, a seasoned leadership advisor and executive coach, each under-10-minute episode offers fresh, thought-provoking reflections that blend professional insight with personal inquiry.
Rooted in the work of thinkers like Robert Kegan, Robert Anderson, Peter Senge, Byron Katie, and others, this podcast explores the hidden dynamics shaping teams, systems, and self. From unexpected tensions in the boardroom to the quiet signals of organizational stuckness, The Orange Twist reveals how expanding our inner awareness can transform how we lead and how we live.
Designed for busy professionals who want depth without fluff, The Orange Twist invites you to pause, reflect, and reconnect with what really matters in your work—and beyond.
Episodes
22 episodes
Episode 22 - Where Attention Goes, Intention Grows.
Try this: fix your gaze to the left, then try walking straight ahead. You’ll drift.Just like in life and leadership—where your attention rests, everything else follows.In this episode, we explore attention not as passive noticing,...
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Season 1
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Episode 22
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7:56
Episode 21 - What are you holding back?
We all do it: avoid hard conversations. But what we leave unsaid doesn’t disappear — it builds up, creates distance, and slowly erodes trust and connection.In this episode, we explore the power of clearing withholds — the things...
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Season 1
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Episode 21
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12:05
Episode 20 - Beyond the Storm. Leadership and Teams in the BANI Era.
What happens when our leadership models no longer fit the world we're in?In this powerful episode, we explore the BANI framework—Brittle, Anxious, Nonlinear, Incomprehensible—as a new lens for understanding today’s complex challenges. Co...
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Season 1
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Episode 20
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10:47
Episode 19: Office Myths — The Stories Organizations Tell Themselves
Every organization runs on stories. Some inspire. Others quietly control. In this episode, Giovanna D’Alessio invites us into the mythscape of modern workplaces—the inherited narratives that shape culture, behavior, and identity, often without ...
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Season 1
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Episode 19
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8:32
Episode 18: The Third Place Between Leader and Team
Beyond the binary of leader and team lies a subtle, powerful space—a relational field where something larger can emerge. In this episode, Giovanna D’Alessio explores what she calls “the third place”: a space of shared authorship, deep listening...
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Season 1
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Episode 18
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8:04
Episode 17: The Echo in the Hall — How Unspoken Rituals Shape Culture
Beneath the strategy decks and vision statements, culture whispers through the room—in gestures, glances, and silent expectations. In this episode, Giovanna D’Alessio explores the hidden choreography of organizational life: the rituals we rarel...
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Season 1
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Episode 17
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8:10
Episode 16 — Listening Beyond Words: The Skill That Unlocks Trust and Insight
What if the most powerful leadership tool isn’t what you say… but how you listen?In this episode, Giovanna D’Alessio unpacks the quiet superpower of deep listening — not as a soft skill, but as a form of leadership intelligence....
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Season 1
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Episode 16
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11:08
Episode 15. The Leader as Coach
We’re living through a quiet revolution in leadership. In this episode, Giovanna D’Alessio explores one of the most profound shifts reshaping how we lead: from being the one with the answers, to becoming the one who grows others. Through a powe...
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Season 1
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Episode 15
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10:43
Episode 14: The Untaught Skill of Teaming
We say we value teamwork. But how many of us were ever taught how to team?In this episode, Giovanna D’Alessio unpacks why real teaming — not just collaborating, managing, or aligning — is one of the most vital yet overlooked lea...
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Season 1
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Episode 14
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9:12
Episode 13: The Consent Shift — Decision-Making for Grown-Up Teams
Most teams are stuck in outdated decision-making — swinging between command-and-control or endless consensus. The result? Confusion, delays, and decisions that sound aligned… but fall apart in practice.In this episode, Giovanna D’Alessio...
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Season 1
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Episode 13
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9:18
Episode 12 — Depth, Not Just Development: The New Journey of Leadership Growth
Leadership development is everywhere — and yet, many leaders quietly confess: “Something’s still missing.”In this episode, Giovanna D’Alessio explores the untold side of leadership growth — not the horizontal climb of skills and...
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Season 1
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Episode 12
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9:03
Episode 11 - From Control to Co-Creation: The Maturity Shift No One Talks About
We rarely talk about leadership as a question of psychological maturity — but what if that’s the missing conversation?In this episode, Giovanna D’Alessio explores a quiet but profound shift: from leading through control to leading throug...
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Season 1
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Episode 11
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9:24
Agentic Leadership: When AI Meets the Human Heart
In this episode of The Orange Twist, Giovanna D’Alessio leads us into an unexpected pairing: ancient oracles and artificial intelligence. From the smoky riddles of Delphi to the sleek dashboards of today, we explore what happens when l...
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Season 1
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Episode 10
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8:18
The Empty Chair and the Cost of Pretending
In Episode 9 of The Orange Twist, Giovanna D’Alessio shares a striking moment inside a Dutch boardroom: a sleek space, a leadership retreat, and an empty chair placed—deliberately—for the Customer. That silent gesture becomes the threa...
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Season 1
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Episode 9
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9:50
The Employee Experience Is a Soul Journey
We talk a lot about employee experience as if it were a design problem: tools, processes, perks, and touchpoints. But beneath the systems lies something more delicate — the emotional and spiritual landscape people walk through every da...
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Season 1
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Episode 8
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10:00
Through the Fire: Conflict as a Doorway
Conflict in teams is often treated as something to avoid, control, or quickly resolve. Yet beneath the discomfort, there is usually something more: a deeper truth waiting to be heard.In this episode, I explore how conflict can become a d...
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Season 1
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Episode 8
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10:53
The Two Loops of Transformation
Every organization, every system, even every person, moves through cycles of growth and decline. As one way of working begins to lose energy, new possibilities quietly start to take shape—often small and fragile at first. The Two Loops Mode...
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Season 1
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Episode 7
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10:08
The Many Roles We Play
We often think of roles as fixed: titles, job descriptions, places on the org chart. But in this episode, we explore a radically different view — one inspired by the work of Arnold Mindell and Process Oriented Psychology.Here, roles are ...
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Season 1
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Episode 5
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8:57
The Emotional Understory of Change
We talk a lot about change in organizations — restructuring, rebranding, reimagining the future. But underneath the Gantt charts and strategy decks, something quieter — and more powerful — is unfolding:Emotions.Today, we explore t...
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Season 1
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Episode 5
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7:32
The Team Is Not the Problem: It’s the Space Between
Today, we’re stepping into the invisible. Into the subtle field that shapes every team interaction, every meeting, every moment of collaboration — whether we notice it or not.You know the feeling. You walk into a room w...
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Season 1
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Episode 3
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9:44
The Invisible Architecture: How Worldviews Shape Organizational Life.
Every organization has an architecture—but not all of it is visible.In this episode of The Orange Twist, we explore the unseen frameworks that shape how we lead, collaborate, and respond to change. These hidden structures aren’t...
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Season 1
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Episode 2
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9:45