What the Duck Are You Feeling? Getting to the Heart of Team Breakthroughs with Meredith Tozzer
Release Date: 06/03/2025
Blow up the Hierarchy: Why Building Teams Around Value Creation is the New Competitive Advantage
Team Lab
In this episode of the Team Lab Podcast, we sit down with Greg Petroff to discuss why traditional hierarchies often hinder work and how leaders can transition toward value-driven, outcome-oriented teams. Greg is a veteran design and technology leader who has driven major organizational transformations at companies like GE Digital, Google, ServiceNow, Compass, and Cisco Secure. He's a founding member of Design Executive Council, and advises organizations of all sizes on how to rethink workflows and team agency through the lens of new technological capabilities. In his public work...
info_outline
Toxic Teams & Narcissistic Leaders: The Science of Workplace Dysfunction
Team Lab
What if the "problem team member or leader" isn't the problem at all—but a symptom of a system protecting itself from the truth? In this episode, we sit down with Dr. Nathalie Martinek, a former cancer researcher who discovered unsettling parallels between tumor metastasis and toxic workplace behavior. After experiencing a carcinogenic work environment herself, Nathalie hung up her lab coat to study what she calls "the human lab"—how good people become participants in dysfunctional systems, often without realizing it. The Big Questions We Tackle: What's the difference between psychological...
info_outline
Moving Goalposts & Burnout: How to Lead Teams Through Constant Change with Suzanne Sitrin
Team Lab
What if navigating constant change isn’t about moving faster, but noticing who’s stuck at the edge of the bridge? In this episode, we sit down with Suzanne Sitrin, a leadership consultant who’s spent decades helping leaders guide teams through transformation: from the quality-management era to today’s rapid growth and perpetual pivots. Suzanne shares what actually helps when the bar keeps moving and people are running out of runway. The Big Questions We Tackle: How do you lead when the goalposts keep moving? Suzanne unpacks what she’s seeing in so many corporate environments:...
info_outline
Unlearn to Lead: Why Your Leadership Playbook Might Be Expired and What to Do About It with Karen Ferris
Team Lab
What if everything you learned about leadership is actually holding you back? And what if the secret to thriving through AI disruption and remote work chaos isn't adding new skills—it's unlearning the old ones? In this episode, we sit down with , organizational change expert, author of eight books including Be Remarkable: Learn to Unlearn, and a voice that cuts through the noise on what teams actually need from leaders today. Karen has spent her career watching organizations struggle with change—and she's seen what separates the ones that thrive from the ones that collapse under pressure....
info_outline
Building Trust in the Age of AI with Matt Tabor - Part 2
Team Lab
What if the workplace transformation everyone's worried about is actually the breakthrough we've been waiting for? What if AI agents don't replace us—they finally free us to do the work that actually matters? Welcome back to Part 2 of our conversation with Matt Tabor, organizational performance expert and founder of BCGN Group. If you caught Part 1, you heard Matt lay out his four 2030 future of work predictions: AI is a Valued Team Member People & Teams Fuel Growth and Innovation Silos Collapse; Outcomes Become Shared Cultures Prioritize Ethics, Resilience & Critical Thinking ...
info_outline
Building Trust in the Age of AI with Matt Tabor - Part 1
Team Lab
What if AI agents could finally break down the silos that have frustrated teams for decades? And what if freeing humans from task-based work actually creates the workplace we've always dreamed of? In our first episode of Season 2, and Part 1 of 2, we welcome Matt Tabor, organizational performance expert and founder of BCGN Group, to explore a future that's closer than you think. In addition to spending 25+ years empowering companies and leaders to cultivate adaptive organizations, Matt lead teams at Zendesk watching AI transform not just technology, but how teams think, connect, and create...
info_outline
Trust, Friction, Silos & Soul: Season 1 Wrap-Up
Team Lab
That’s a wrap! Season 1 of Team Lab: Reimagining the Way We Work is in the books. Join us for a reflective walk down memory lane, surfacing the big themes, sticky challenges, and practical tools that shaped our conversations with some of the most thoughtful leaders, coaches, and practitioners this season. What You’ll Hear in This Episode The Four Biggest Challenges Teams Face Trust & Vulnerability: Why predictive trust isn’t enough and why vulnerability-based trust is the real unlock for high-performing teams. Internalized Urgency: How rushing for the sake of rushing erodes...
info_outline
Breaking Decision-Making Gridlock: Purpose, Process, and People
Team Lab
If you’ve ever sat in a meeting that felt like a never-ending swirl of competing voices and unresolved tensions, this episode will show you what’s possible when teams bring structure, trust, and purpose into their collaboration. In this episode, we’re honored to welcome Stefan Morales, Founder of Working Together Consulting, Associate with and BASE. His background spans organizational development, social design, facilitation, and public engagement — all grounded in a belief that complexity isn’t something to fear, but something we can learn to navigate together. Whether it’s...
info_outline
The Ripple Effect: How One Leader's Change Can Transform Entire Organizations
Team Lab
What does it take to move an entire organization forward—without relying on brute force leadership or toxic top-down control? In this episode, Chris Hutchinson shares how authentic leadership creates ripple effects that move teams, organizations, and entire systems. Drawing from his book Ripple, Chris explains how small, intentional leadership actions can generate long-lasting, exponential impact. He reflects on his own journey from an early experience on a challenging team in the military to building thriving leadership ecosystems. We discuss why thriving teams start with trust and...
info_outline
From Small Cog to Big Impact: Sticky Listener Situation UNPACKED!
Team Lab
What happens when you're a capable leader trapped in a challenging organizational culture? How do you create value and showcase your team's worth when you're dealing with controlling stakeholders, chaotic planning processes, and an authoritarian leadership style that permeates the entire organization? In this special solo episode of Team Lab, hosts Angela Migliaccio and Cori Caldwell unpack a real listener situation from ‘Holly*’, a senior director at a large software company navigating the complexities of a highly matrixed, high-pressure environment with challenging stakeholder dynamics....
info_outlineWhat if the breakthrough your team needs isn't found in another strategy session or process improvement, but in a moment of unexpected connection? How can asking people to step outside their analytical comfort zone create the psychological safety that brings teams together? And why asking, "What duck are you feeling right now?" might just be what your next team meeting desperately needs?
In this episode of Team Lab, we're exploring these questions with Meredith Tozzer, HR partner and team transformation coach who brings a refreshingly unconventional approach to leading technical teams. With a background spanning art history, higher education, and global high-tech companies, Meredith has mastered the art of reading team dynamics and transforming tension into productive momentum.
Join us for a conversation that explores how "constructive friction" can actually accelerate your team's success instead of slowing it down, why the path to vulnerability is best initiated with silliness, and how to convert team resistance into authentic engagement.
Resources
Connect with Meredith Tozzer on LinkedIn
Mad Libs + Storytelling Team Exercise - Try Meredith's combination approach for team building that gets people out of their heads. Choose a topic or vision for the collective team to build upon. Have each team member write one sentence of a story, starting at the top of a sheet of paper. Have them fold it so the sentence can’t be seen by the next person
Three-by-Three Grid Icebreakers - Use silly animal pictures (rubber ducks, hedgehogs, raccoons) and ask team members to identify a picture that best represents them in this moment and why. This silly opening can help create safe spaces for sharing for the rest of the meeting!
Culture Amp Study referenced in the episode about high performance sustainability over time
Mental Health First Aid Training - Particularly valuable for leaders supporting high-pressure teams
---
Follow us on LinkedIn and subscribe/follow to never miss an episode!