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...
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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...
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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:...
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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....
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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 ...
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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...
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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...
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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...
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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...
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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_outlineIf 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 Greater Than 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 transforming conflict into productive energy, building decision-making hygiene, or unleashing creativity across silos, Stefan supports clients in practicing new ways of working that actually stick.
He’s known as an open-hearted iconoclast — someone who helps groups see differently, sense together, and align around the good, big work they’re here to do.
Stefan also breaks down:
Integrative Decision-Making in Action: How he guided an executive team from gridlock to collective agreement in just 35 minutes.
Purpose as a Compass: Why defining (or redefining) shared purpose is essential for decision-making, and how frameworks like PowerStart and liberating structures can help teams co-create clarity.
Organizational “Hygiene”: What it means to cleanse stuck team dynamics, untangle unspoken tensions, and build simple conflict protocols that empower direct, human conversations.
Stories We Tell at Work: How unchecked narratives and negativity bias shape team dysfunction—and what leaders can do to check the stories they’re telling themselves.
Systemic Obstacles: From scarcity mindsets to organizational “cultural memory,” historical systemic stories can ripple through teams and how leaders can disrupt those patterns.
Lead Together: Insights from the Lead Together framework and other experiential learning approaches that equip leaders and teams to navigate uncertainty with confidence.
The Future of Leadership: Why leaders must embrace iterative, experimental approaches to stay relevant in a world reshaped by complexity and AI.
Resources:
Learn more about Stefan’s work: workingtogether.io
UPCOMING WORKSHOP - 23-Sept 2025: The 12th Cohort of Liberating Structures Studio in collaboration with GreaterThan
Sign up for Stefan's Newsletter: The Diversion (sign up at workingtogether.io)
Book: Lead Together by Brent Lowe, Susan Basterfield, and Travis Marsh
Book: Reinventing Organizations by Frederic LaLou
Frameworks mentioned: Consent/Integrative Decision-Making, PowerStart, Purpose to Practice, Nine Whys, Liberating Structures, Cynefin Framework