The Unburdened Leader

Every day, we’re flooded with information–headlines, opinions, advice, noise. And beneath that deluge of input, we carry stories that tell us how we stay safe and what asking questions will cost us.

Certainty too often feels like safety. So we rush to respond before we understand and defend before we discern. We don’t pause to reflect or to question the loudest voices in the room–proverbial or otherwise.

But certainty at the expense of discernment can damage our connections to each other and to ourselves. 

Leadership that builds connection and trust for the long term requires us to cultivate the courage to ask questions and follow the answers, even when it’s uncomfortable. When we catch an old story running the show and stay curious instead of certain, we can metabolize what’s driving reactivity and protection. 

It’s how we stay open, grounded, and self-led in a world that rewards reactivity.

My guest in this conversation refers to this practice as faithful skepticism: asking hard questions without abandoning hope. When I read his moving essay, “Groomed by the Church: How The Clash Saved My Soul,” I knew I had to invite him here to discuss the importance of refining our discernment and cultivating skepticism as a vital tool for effective leadership. And how music serves as a powerful trailhead–both as a cultural lightning rod and as a catalyst for self-discovery. 

David Adey is a multimedia artist based in San Diego, CA. His work has been exhibited at The Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego, Orange County Museum of Art, Crystal Bridges Museum, Minneapolis Institute of Art, Frist Center for The Visual Arts, Oceanside Museum of Art, Cranbrook Art Museum, and venues nationally and internationally. His work has been featured in publications including Art in America, LA Weekly, The Huffington Post, Wired Magazine, Thisiscolossal, and PBS. He received his MFA in sculpture from Cranbrook Academy of Art. Adey is a professor of art and design at Point Loma Nazarene University.

Listen to the full episode to hear:

• How an outing to see a Black Sabbath cover band inspired David’s essay
• How the parallels of the Satanic Panic of his youth and our current cultural moment took the essay from journal entry to published work
• Why David believes in the power of being offensive with a purpose
• How the church’s narrow focus on spiritual dangers came at a cost to real life safety
• How David’s teenaged experiences inform how he now leads his students and parents his children
• The impact of his mother’s support when he both wanted to reject his musical loves and then reconnect with them
• Why faithful skepticism is a powerful antidote for certainty and cynicism

Learn more about David Adey:

Leaders carry the weight of more than their current roles.

We receive messages from the generations before us about our worth, work, and belonging that shape how we show up–for better or worse. This is just as true in our working lives as it is in our families.

If we want to change the narratives, we have to become aware of the legacy burdens–personal, familial, cultural, systemic–that have been passed down to us and choose to transform those burdens into opportunities for healing, growth, and leadership that alters the course of our teams and organizations for the better.

When we can name what we’ve absorbed–what doesn’t belong to our personal story but to those who came before us–we create space for healing and release. And from that place, we can hold onto our hope, lead with integrity, and stay grounded in what truly matters.

My guest today is a dear colleague and friend who is here to talk with me about the impact of generational messaging on our leadership, and how we can begin to dismantle these narratives for ourselves and in our organizations.

Crystal R. Jones is a Licensed Clinical Social Worker and Lead IFS-I Trainer who passionately spreads the healing essence of the IFS model worldwide. Known for her embodied compassion, relatability, and heart-led approach to her work, Crystal has personally experienced the transformative power of the IFS model in her own healing journey. This profound experience fuels Crystal’s dedication to creating safe spaces for marginalized communities, particularly Black women and women of color, to feel connected, seen, heard, and valued as they embark on their healing journeys individually and collectively. Crystal is fervently committed to teaching the model in a way that illuminates and speaks to BIPOC communities, ensuring its adaptability, accessibility, and relevance to diverse populations.

Listen to the full episode to hear:

• How legacy burdens are passed through families and cultures as messages of survival
• How Crystal reckons with cultural burdens by choosing to show up imperfectly and with vulnerability
• Self-reflection questions to help you identify and consider legacy burdens
• How belonging and shame show up when working with legacy burdens
• How Crystal is shifting workplace narratives for her teams and in her trainings

Learn more about Crystal Jones:

What does it mean to be good?

It’s a little word that carries a lot of weight for many of us. Be a good girl. Be a good friend. Be a good leader. Do good.

Good can sound like praise, but become a cage of expectations and shoulds, a performance that chips away at our authenticity. Good is no longer something we are, but is how others see us. It leads us to people please and keep the peace at all costs. And that’s especially true for women.

All too often, when women are in leadership, their goodness is measured by how they make others feel–good, comfortable, understood. All of that matters. But when the measure of leadership becomes how comfortable other people feel around us, we lose something essential.

We perform and manage emotions instead of building trust and respect. We seek to be liked and to fit in at the cost of real integrity and effectiveness. And likability is oh-so fleeting.

Respect, integrity, and true belonging take time and discomfort to build, but they last.

My guest today has written beautifully and bravely about the cost of being good, the truth of belonging, and the courage it takes to lead ourselves and others through discomfort.

Elise Loehnen is the New York Times bestselling author of On Our Best Behavior: The Seven Deadly Sins and the Price Women Pay to be Good and the host of the podcast, Pulling the Thread, where she interviews cultural luminaries about the big questions of today, including people like Joy Harjo, John and Julie Gottman, Dr. Gabor Maté, and Esther Perel. In addition to On Our Best Behavior, she is the author of a corresponding workbook—Choosing Wholeness Over Goodness—with coach Courtney Smith (July 2025), and the co-author of True & False Magic, with legendary psychiatrist Phil Stutz. Elise lives in Los Angeles with her husband, Rob, and their sons, Max and Sam.

Listen to the full episode to hear:

• How Elise traced the cultural roots of the “good woman” back to early Christianity and the many additions, erasures, and mistranslations of Biblical stories
• Why we need to pay attention to our envy and how it shows up in relation to other women
• How envy, pride, and greed fuel each other and the ways we stay small and tear other women down
• How social media has heightened the risk of reputational damage and changed how women work and lead, for better and worse
• Why we latch onto ideas of goodness and purity more deeply in times of greater uncertainty
• How current narratives about the “natural” order are ahistorical manipulations that limit what we believe is possible

Learn more about Elise Loehnen:

We live in an age where truth twists into confusion, opinion drowns out data, and it’s increasingly difficult to figure out whose expertise we can trust.

Where did our mistrust in expertise come from? Its roots stretch back to deliberate misinformation campaigns beginning in the 1950s spread by the likes of Big Tobacco, Big Oil, and conservative church movements. Then social media poured gasoline on the fire, accelerating the spread of misinformation and making sowing division highly profitable.

Misinformation campaigns take advantage of our brains’ natural tendency to protect the familiar and mistrust outgroups. And they capitalize on the very real betrayals people have experienced at the hands of corporations, governments, schools, and healthcare systems.

Our challenge now isn’t just knowing the facts, it’s interrogating our own beliefs, asking where our evidence comes from, and resisting the pull of certainty. As leaders, we need to discern who we give our attention to, practice critical thinking, resist manufactured controversy, and platform voices committed to both truth and connection.

Today’s guest is a neuroscientist and author of Why Brains Need Friends, who works to make science accessible, relational, and rooted in respect. He doesn’t focus on winning arguments or shaming people into submission. He focuses on bridging divides, building trust, and reminding us that our brains–and our lives–are wired for connection.

Ben Rein, PhD is an award-winning neuroscientist and science communicator. He serves as the Chief Science Officer of the Mind Science Foundation, an Adjunct Lecturer at Stanford University, and a Clinical Assistant Professor at SUNY Buffalo. He has published over 20 peer-reviewed papers on the neuroscience of social behavior, and is the author of Why Brains Need Friends: The Neuroscience of Social Connection. In addition, Rein educates an audience of more than 1 million social media followers and has been featured on outlets including Entertainment Tonight, Good Morning America and StarTalk with Neil DeGrasse Tyson. He has received awards for his science communication from the National Academies of Science, Engineering, and Medicine, the Society for Neuroscience, and elsewhere.

Listen to the full episode to hear:

• How an especially vivid nightmare redirected Ben’s path to neuroscience
• Why the division and isolation of modern life is so bad for our brains and overall health
• How engaging with strangers isn’t as awkward as we often think it is, and why we should do it more
• How small social interactions build our sense of belonging, community, and wellbeing
• Why we need to recognize and then override our gut reactions to those we perceive as belonging to outgroups
• How social media sound bites vastly oversimplify the complex and unknown systems in our brains
• Why Ben’s primary mission to to help people understand the value of looking to data and evidence rather than personalities and experiences
• Why we all have to get better at fact-checking and questioning why we’re ready to believe something

Learn more about Dr. Ben Rein:

Have you ever thought of being an amateur as a good thing?

Many of us learned from an early age that our worth was tied to excelling at what we do and turning it into something productive. And many leaders carry the belief that they must be certain, skilled, and polished at all times.

But what if the exact opposite were true?

When we allow ourselves to dabble, to be amateurs, to be just okay at things, our brains literally become more adaptable and our nervous systems learn to stay grounded in the midst of risk, uncertainty, and vulnerability. Just as importantly, leaders who model dabbling create spaces where families, teams, and communities are safe to embrace curiosity and exploration. 

Resilient leadership requires us to meet high-stakes challenges with adaptability, grounded presence, and compassion. Intentional amateurship prepares us for life’s curveballs by building those skills in low-stakes settings.

Today’s guest returns to make the case for being a dabbler as a practice of freedom, resilience, and leadership. She shows us how choosing to play, experiment, and simply try expands our capacity for presence and courage.

Karen Walrond is an award-winning author, speaker, and leadership coach on a mission to create a kindness revolution.

Her books encourage readers to identify their values and inner light and use them to make the world brighter for others.  Audiences around the world have left her keynotes inspired with hope and a renewed determination to serve.  And her one-on-one leadership coaching sessions, workshops and retreats, rooted in the tenets of positive psychology coaching, have helped hundreds of clients unearth their gifts and past triumphs to lead with confidence, compassion and kindness.

Karen and her family split their time between Houston, Texas, USA and Bath, Somerset, UK.

Listen to the full episode to hear:

• The restorative power of doing something purely for the love of it
• How following her curiosity has shaped Karen’s career and how she protects her amateur pursuits
• How Karen’s dabbling adventures tapped into her seven attributes of intentional amateurism
• How intentional amateurship helps embed self-care, self-compassion, and self-transcendence into our lives
• How practicing being an amateur helps us bring curiosity, compassion, and resilience to our leadership
• Why the humbling experiences of dabbling are a vital reminder for leaders that they’re in it alongside their teams

Learn more about Karen Walrond: