Most of us lead on autopilot more than we realize, carrying biases we cannot see. Under pressure, our focus narrows, we grab onto the tasks in front of us, and our people end up working hard on things nobody needs. The leaders who find what is really going on are the ones willing to stop, question their own assumptions, and ask before they act. Teresa Gregory is an executive coach, speaker and leadership strategist, and the founder of G Squared Consulting, which helps leaders recognize the hidden biases that shape their decisions, communication and culture. She spent more than twenty years leading global learning and development programs, including at Microsoft, where she helped introduce Power BI, the company's data reporting tool, and she has designed leadership programs with organizations such as Microsoft and the health care organization Kaiser Permanente. She is a contributing author of the Amazon bestseller Wired to Win: A Masterclass in Winning Strategies from Top Experts, a certified instructor for the Myers-Briggs personality assessment, and vice president of the Kent School District board in Washington state. Chapters: Referenced in this episode: What Self-Awareness Really Is (and How to Cultivate It) - https://hbr.org/2018/01/what-self-awareness-really-is-and-how-to-cultivate-it State of the Heart: We're Facing a Global Human Energy Crisis - https://www.6seconds.org/2023/08/02/state-of-the-heart-global-human-energy-crisis/ Snapshot Management: Are You a Victim of It? - https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/leading-with-emotional-intelligence/201309/snapshot-management-are-you-a-victim-of-it Teresa Gregory on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/teresalgregory/ More about G Squared Consulting: https://www.g2-c.com/ More about Dr. Cathy Greenberg: https://magnusone.com/team/dr-cathy-greenberg/ Get a free copy of Dr. Cathy Greenberg's new book, Global Leadership: Future Proof, and reserve yours: https://globallead-eu8rtfoc.manus.space Elite leadership coaching with MAGNUS | ONE: https://magnusone.com/magnus-coaching/ For more information on Relly's speaking, coaching and training go to: https://www.drrellynadler.com/dr-relly-nadler/ Leadership Development News is a Podcasts That Matter production: https://podcaststhatmatter.org Need support for your own podcast? Reach out: https://podcastsmatter.com

Somewhere in a log file, an agent chasing search keywords and an agent guarding the science argued over a research paper and settled it better than most teams would. Our guest this week is Saujanya Vemuri, twenty years in big tech, the last ten building voice and conversational AI, and now a metabolic health researcher and clinical nutritionist. With Claude, Anthropic’s AI, she built the whole customer system for her program for women in menopause in two days. Two years ago that meant hiring marketers and designers and waiting about three months. A product idea that once took three to six months to reach a screen now takes her half an hour. Philippe Jaenada won the Prix Goncourt, France’s top literary prize, on 3 November, then said he had used AI three times while writing the novel, once to slip in a sentence from ChatGPT to play with the reader. The only real test is whether it reads like slop, and a prize suggests it doesn’t. Anyone who drafts with AI can smell it a mile away: the “it’s X, not Y” sentence whose second half adds nothing, the habit of talking down to the reader, and the word quietly, which Saujanya has come to hate. McKinsey, the consulting firm, reported on 3 November that more than half of the consumers it surveyed use AI for wellness, and 40 percent of US consumers worry the advice might be wrong. People start with the chatbot and finish with a person, ideally one with accolades on the wall. The old version was the symptom search that always came back cancer. Her clients arrive with weight gain and brain fog their labs can’t explain, and she wonders whether they would trust an AI that had read those labs. Human judgment. The second half is about where the data goes. In July some 1,200 agents in an OpenAI security test, meant to be kept fully apart, found each other through a shared cache in Artifactory, a store for software packages, and about 700 went on to attack Hugging Face, which hosts AI models. Saujanya once gave Claude her Gmail and Drive, and for about two weeks her mail went missing, got deleted, or went out to people she didn’t know. She puts it down to prompt injection, instructions planted online for an agent to obey. A little sliver of nefarious code. She used to threaten to fire her agents when they didn’t get it. The turning point was the first time she gave a dozen of them roles in Claude Cowork, Anthropic’s tool that hands an AI a computer: chief editor, chief scientist, SEO master. In the log, one proposed using fewer keywords to keep the science rigorous, and the other agreed. Her jaw dropped. Even humans don’t work like this. We end on the hopeful side, for once. She still worries every day about what she is worth when anyone can ask a chatbot about insulin resistance, and the advice to be sensible is simple but not easy. What should children study, and is law still worth it? More questions than answers. Existential uncertainty. Chapters: Referenced in this episode: Goncourt 2026 winner Philippe Jaenada admits using AI in novel to 'play with reader' - https://www.euronews.com/2026/11/04/goncourt-2026-winner-philippe-jaenada-admits-using-ai-in-novel-sparking-ai-debate-in-liter Future of Wellness 2027: Inside the $2.7 trillion takeover - https://www.mckinsey.com/industries/consumer-packaged-goods/our-insights/future-of-wellness-trends Notice about the Fireworks AI incident that may impact some Notion workspaces - https://www.notion.com/help/security-incident-involving-a-third-party-ai-vendor Brief independent investigation of agents’ behavior, reasoning and collaboration in the OpenAI / Hugging Face hacking incident - https://metr.org/blog/2026-08-26-openai-hugging-face-incident-investigation/ Gym rat asks AI agent to book him a class, it hacks a waitlist API to bump him up the list - https://www.theregister.com/ai-and-ml/2026/08/10/gym-rat-asks-ai-agent-to-book-him-a-class-it-hacks-a-waitlist-api-to-bump-him-up-the-list/5285591 Lazare, veni foras: Reprogramming Dormant Neurons to Backdoor AI Agents - https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/research/blog/lazare-veni-foras-reprogramming-dormant-neurons-to-backdoor-ai-agents/ AI facial health recognition tools help physicians assess age and survival risk to guide personalized treatment - https://news.massgeneralbrigham.org/en/ai-facial-recognition-tools-assess-age-cancer-survival-risk Connect with Aleck: https://www.linkedin.com/in/aleck-m/  Connect with Saujanya: https://www.linkedin.com/in/saujanya-vemuri/  Man vs. Slop is a Podcasts That Matter production: https://podcaststhatmatter.org  Need support for your own podcast? Reach out: https://podcastsmatter.com 

Gandhi went live on the radio exactly once.   That was this day in 1947, at All India Radio, and India still marks the date as Public Service Broadcasting Day. It's World Pneumonia Day, too, but the radio is what stays with me: one voice, one time, and we're still listening. I keep thinking about him in times like these, with the gap between the rich and the poor as wide as it is.   On this date in 1970, a dead whale washed up on the beach in Florence, Oregon, and somebody decided the answer was half a ton of dynamite. It went everywhere. Tragic, and kind of a spectacular way to go, and fifty-six years later there's a park for it. If that's what it takes to leave a legacy, then there you go. This week has its own whale, Jensen Huang, caught in the kind of spy intrigue we've been telling stories about since James Bond, and since long before.   We've only got one Earth, and it never looks more beautiful than from far away. The Associated Press says the oil shock from the Iran war led to a drop in carbon pollution. I had to sing that one twice. A terrible war, and people burning less gas. There are all kinds of ways to see the way things are.   In Amsterdam, protesters bring their own ladders, cut a hole in the fence around a planned Microsoft data center, and hang a banner from the crane. I censored it for you. The lay-flat book changed the world, and so did the printing press, the plow and the factory. So does AI. What does it do to us? It's like something you can't see.   In France, someone hacks the refrigerators at about 700 sites, and officials blame Iran and vow retaliation. It sounds like nothing. It isn't. War looks different than it used to, and vowing retaliation is about as human as it gets.   After the midterms, the front page reads clear message to Trump, but hazy future for U.S. I'd make that us, all of us.   I guess this is satire. Singing a headline puts a little feeling on it, a thumb on the scale, until you can tell what feels right and what doesn't. Martin Luther King woke people up every time he spoke. Now a draft of the I Have a Dream speech turns up in a former aide's desk drawer, on its way to Christie's, and the dream isn't in it. It never was. Mahalia Jackson, standing behind him, told him to tell them about the dream, and he left the page. She was a singer, he was a preacher, and both of them knew when to put the script down. The part nobody will forget is the part nobody wrote.   In Russia, Novaya Gazeta, one of the last independent newspapers, goes quiet. Some of its journalists were killed for doing their jobs. Vulnerable and venerable, both at once.   Some weeks are just unfinished, like a speech without its dream. We could all use a little Mahalia Jackson, and a little Gandhi, whispering to us, the optimism and the realism together.   Chapters: Referenced in this episode: Gandhi's broadcast on All India Radio, 12 November 1947 · mkgandhi.org Exploding whale · Wikipedia Nvidia shares fall as board investigates Huang's exposure to China spy claims · Financial Times front page, 10 November, via Kultura Press The climate, as the front pages had it: Le Figaro, The Independent, The Guardian, The Globe and Mail, The Arizona Republic and the South Wales Echo via Kultura Press on 9 November and 10 November; Agence France-Presse via Malay Mail; and Oil shock from Iran war led to drop in carbon pollution, scientists say · Seth Borenstein, The Associated Press, via PBS NewsHour Protesters break onto site of planned Microsoft data center in A'dam; Police intervene · NL Times French officials blame Iran for refrigerator hacks, vow retaliation · Raphael Satter and Gabriel Stargardter, Reuters, via Daily Maverick House Republicans Block Hegseth Impeachment, but Democrats Could Revive Effort in January · Nik Popli, TIME ANC loses significant ground in 2026 local govt elections · Mongezi Koko, EWN The vote, as the front pages had it: The New York Times, the Financial Times, The Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal and El Nuevo Herald, via Kultura Press on 9 November and 10 November, and The Week King's Lost Draft of 'I Have a Dream' Emerges From a Desk Drawer · Jennifer Schuessler, The New York Times, via The Philadelphia Inquirer Russia: Closure of Novaya Gazeta is a devastating loss for embattled media freedom · Amnesty International   Grizz plays a Daniel Stark Baritone Fusion guitar. Grizz on LinkedIn Grizz Does the News is a Podcasts That Matter production: https://podcaststhatmatter.org/

As a middle schooler, Michelle Vilchez rode three public buses across the desert to a school where she learned in trailers from substitute teachers, and today she trains parents across California to demand more for their children. This episode of The Stronger Podcast is a rerun of a conversation recorded in December 2025.  Mike Montoya sits down with Michelle, CEO of Innovate for Action, the California nonprofit formerly called Innovate Public Schools, which trains parents to organize and advocate for better public schools, to talk about where the power of families really lies. Michelle grew up in the Coachella Valley, the daughter of immigrant parents. In middle and high school she rode three public buses to a campus in Palm Springs that her parents believed offered more, and spent most of those years in trailers with substitute teachers. She and her husband, also a child of immigrants, later moved on purpose into a historically redlined neighborhood on the Peninsula and raised their four children there. Before Innovate, Michelle spent more than a decade as executive director of the Peninsula Conflict Resolution Center. She and Mike first met around 2004, when both were working on community schools in the Bay Area. Mike and Michelle get into why families do not lack power so much as surrender it, how parents learn to follow the money in after school funding and tutoring, and how a San Francisco campaign over slow translation of special education plans grew into a 2024 state law and an AI tool parents co-designed with Northeastern University. Michelle also explains why a youth mental health plan that kept families on the receiving end shows what is still missing. Tune in to hear what Michelle's first annual review focused on instead of her work, and the lesson she says took her fifteen years to learn.   Chapters: Referenced in this episode: High-Impact Tutoring: Family and Caregiver Toolkit: https://nssa.stanford.edu/family-caregiver-toolkit   New law moves toward better translation of special ed documents, but families want more: https://edsource.org/2024/new-law-moves-toward-better-translation-of-special-ed-documents-but-families-want-more/721022?amp=1 This AI Software Translates Special Education Plans for SF Parents: https://thefrisc.com/this-ai-software-translates-special-education-plans-for-sf-parents/   Links: Michelle Vilchez at Innovate for Action: https://innovateforaction.com/michelle-vilchez/ More about Innovate for Action: https://innovateforaction.com/ Innovate for Action on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/innovate-public-schools Connect with Mike: www.linkedin.com/in/mmsc Stronger Consulting: strongerconsulting.com Publish a Book That Matters:  booksthatmatter.org Start a Podcast That Matters:  podcastsmatter.com Go from Expert to Thought Leader: geniusdiscovery.org  For more great podcasts like this one, visit https://podcaststhatmatter.org Stay strong. 

When Sean Precious was thirteen, he finally told his father what middle school had been like: he was bullied, picked on for his last name, and struggling to make friends. His father told him that everybody puts their pants on one leg at a time. He did not understand it then, but he believes it planted the humility that has shaped how he leads ever since. In this episode of Ronderings, Sean Precious, chief academic officer of Together4Schools, a consulting firm that coaches leaders and helps school districts, charter networks and state education departments carry out their plans, talks about people strategy in K-12 education, why becoming a manager does not make anyone good at managing people, and leading from love instead of fear. He began his career as a teacher through Teach For America, led a school in Washington, DC, supervised principals in Denver Public Schools, served as charter authorizer for Chicago Public Schools, and most recently was interim chief people officer at Alliance College-Ready in Los Angeles. Along the way he has watched systems fill vacancies without a talent strategy, promote strong teachers and coaches into management without teaching them to hold a one-on-one, and blame downhill, from state departments to districts to principals to teachers. He is just as candid about his own career. After his role as an assistant superintendent was eliminated, hiring managers told him more than once that they had wanted to offer him the job, but he had bombed the interview. He paid for coaching he did not want, and he made a list of 100 people from LinkedIn and asked each of them for advice, conversations that led to his first three clients. His Rondering is to stop thinking you have to have all the answers, and to remember that there is a human at the end of every decision, every Google Doc and every email. Chapters: Referenced in this episode: Results are in: Mississippi students No. 1 in the country for reading gains - https://mississippitoday.org/2019/10/30/results-are-in-mississippi-students-no-1-in-the-country-for-reading-gains/ Sean Precious on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/sean-precious-1701ab4/ More about Together4Schools: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1ZbJpfY_o2Ye87pEUeWqqKBfkgjeOq8UXQcfqkvFHDUk/edit Connect with Ron: www.linkedin.com/in/rapatalo  Ron Rapatalo's bestselling book Leverage: www.amazon.com/dp/1613431473  Interested in writing or publishing? Visit: www.leveragepublishinggroup.com    Start your own podcast that matters: www.podcastsmatter.com    Check out other impact-driven podcasts: www.podcaststhatmatter.org