107: Are You in the Right Seat?
Release Date: 11/06/2025
108: Hey Ladies! Stop Apologizing. Seriously.
Leadership Sandbox: Strategies to Uplevel Workplace Communication, Team Collaboration, and Your Corporate Culture
Tammy J. Bond fires up the microphone for women leaders, challenging the pervasive habit of over-apologizing in professional settings. She argues that frequently defaulting to phrases like "I'm sorry, but..." or "This might not be the right time, but..." causes your apologies to show up louder than your actual leadership, draining your credibility and inviting doubt. This episode confronts the conditioning that leads women to wait to be invited instead of owning the room and provides a power move to replace apologies with confident, conscious confrontation. Key Leadership Insights: The...
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107: Are You in the Right Seat?
Leadership Sandbox: Strategies to Uplevel Workplace Communication, Team Collaboration, and Your Corporate Culture
In this quick, yet critical episode, Tammy J. Bond tackles a fundamental leadership challenge: ensuring you have the right people in the right seats on your organizational "bus”. Prompted by a leader struggling with under-delivery (not under-performance), Tammy challenges the common impulse to start with people. Instead, she provides a strategic framework to audit your organization, starting with the needs of the business before assessing the talent you have. This episode is imperative for leaders planning their success for the upcoming year and looking to replace disfunction with...
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106: The Hybrid Trap: Why Your "Flexibility" May Be Working Against You
Leadership Sandbox: Strategies to Uplevel Workplace Communication, Team Collaboration, and Your Corporate Culture
Leaders, you might call it flexibility, but your team calls it chaos. Tammy J. Bond cuts through the "hybrid fantasy" that believes simple Slack chats can replace connection, clarity, and collaboration. She exposes the silent culture split created by hybrid models, arguing that failure is rooted not in location, but in disconnection and unstable leadership. This episode provides the strategic framework for leaders to start intentionally engineering trust to make hybrid work successful. Key Leadership Insights & Hard Truths: The Hybrid Fantasy: The belief that a few Zoom calls and Slack...
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105: Middle Manager Meltdown - Caused by Leadership
Leadership Sandbox: Strategies to Uplevel Workplace Communication, Team Collaboration, and Your Corporate Culture
Tammy J. Bond shares her frustration after hearing a story from a middle manager dealing with a chaotic environment. The core issue: senior leaders are prioritizing being liked and showing misplaced "compassion" over actual leadership, accountability, and clear expectations. This episode is a fierce examination of how this dynamic demoralizes middle managers, promotes a culture of mediocrity, and actively destroys team trust and performance. Tammy challenges both senior leaders to put on the "boss hat" and middle managers to lead down and courageously speak up. Key Takeaways for Leaders (At...
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104: Regulate Before You Communicate
Leadership Sandbox: Strategies to Uplevel Workplace Communication, Team Collaboration, and Your Corporate Culture
Celebrating two years and 104 episodes, Tammy J. Bond drops a truth bomb: If your communication sounds like chaos, it's because your nervous system is leading the meeting, not your core leadership. This episode breaks down the concept of the "Calm Cascade"—how your internal regulation sets the emotional thermostat for the entire team. Tammy argues that emotional regulation is not a soft skill, but a crucial leadership strategy. When you walk in "hot," your team burns out and tunes out; the best communicators are always the calmest in the room. Key Takeaways for Leaders: Regulation is...
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103: The Cost of Chaos - Stop Calling Chaos a Strategy
Leadership Sandbox: Strategies to Uplevel Workplace Communication, Team Collaboration, and Your Corporate Culture
Tammy brings the hard hitting truth: Chaos might feel like momentum, but it's really just motion without meaning. In this fast-paced episode, she dives into the high cost of allowing stress, drama, and avoidant behaviors to run your workplace. Through personal anecdotes (like the story of "Frank"), Tammy explains why unsustainability is the ultimate price of chaos—affecting everything from turnover rates and sick leave to team productivity. This is a crucial lesson on self-regulation, clarity, and building a workplace where order restores energy and trust. 4 Costs of Chaos Chaos is...
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102: Emotions and the Workplace - (Chapter 4)
Leadership Sandbox: Strategies to Uplevel Workplace Communication, Team Collaboration, and Your Corporate Culture
Tammy drops a truth bomb right from the start: Our emotions, not our thoughts, motivate us. This episode is a quick, hard-hitting guide on how your emotions can either drive you forward or keep you and your team stuck in a pattern of limiting beliefs. Tammy provides a four-point framework to help you master self-awareness, manage your emotional triggers, and turn your emotional intelligence into the "entry ticket" for every successful conversation. Key Takeaways for Leaders Emotions Win: We move in the direction of the dominant emotion. If you don't own your emotions, they own you and...
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101: It’s Not Support If It Enables (6 of 6 Part Series)
Leadership Sandbox: Strategies to Uplevel Workplace Communication, Team Collaboration, and Your Corporate Culture
In the final episode of our 6 Part Series, "Communication Lies Leaders Believe", Tammy delivers a hard truth: some of the support you're giving your team isn't helping—it's enabling. This episode busts the myth that constantly helping will lead to growth and exposes the codependent patterns that can quietly destroy a team's culture. Tammy reveals how over-functioning for your people can lead to burnout among your top talent and a cycle of learned helplessness in your low performers. She provides a reset with 3 clear steps to stop rescuing and start truly empowering your team. Your job is to...
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100: Hope Is Not A Strategy (5 of 6 Part Series)
Leadership Sandbox: Strategies to Uplevel Workplace Communication, Team Collaboration, and Your Corporate Culture
In this milestone 100th episode, Tammy J. Bond tackles one of the biggest lies leaders tell themselves: that hope is a strategy. She celebrates the podcast's journey and shares why consistency and intentionality, not hope, are what keep a vision alive. This episode, part 5 in the 6 part series, powerfully debunks the myth that optimism or hard work will magically fix dysfunction. Tammy reveals how relying on hope leads to passivity, sets teams up for disappointment, and creates a culture of reaction instead of intention. She provides a clear, three-step toolkit for replacing passive hope...
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099: Their Insecurity Isn’t Your Leadership Problem (4 of 6 Part Series)
Leadership Sandbox: Strategies to Uplevel Workplace Communication, Team Collaboration, and Your Corporate Culture
In this powerful episode of the "Communication Lies Leaders Believe" series, Tammy tackles a hidden saboteur in every team: employee baggage. Your team members aren't just bringing their skills to the table; they're bringing their past fears, limiting beliefs, and insecurities. Tammy busts the myth that it's a leader's job to fix this. Instead, she provides a clear, three-step framework to name it, frame it, and lead through it. This isn't about being an "accidental therapist"; it's about setting strong boundaries and creating a culture of accountability where insecurity doesn't become the...
info_outlineIn this quick, yet critical episode, Tammy J. Bond tackles a fundamental leadership challenge: ensuring you have the right people in the right seats on your organizational "bus”. Prompted by a leader struggling with under-delivery (not under-performance), Tammy challenges the common impulse to start with people. Instead, she provides a strategic framework to audit your organization, starting with the needs of the business before assessing the talent you have. This episode is imperative for leaders planning their success for the upcoming year and looking to replace disfunction with intentional structure.
Key Leadership Insights:
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The Performance Gap: If team members are doing "solid work" but lacking creativity or "anything extra," the problem likely isn't the person's effort—it's the position's fit or a lack of clarity from the leader.
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The Strategic Bus Audit: Don't start with the Who (people). Start with the What (the seats/positions needed) to achieve your goals.
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What: Define the positions, expectations, and goals required for the next level of growth.
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How: Determine the model or required competencies for success in those seats.
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Who: Then look at your team members to see who possesses the qualities and qualifications to fill the defined seats.
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Hope is Not a Strategy: Relying on the hope that someone will "figure it out" or move on is like "throwing a dart blindfolded." Action is required to align people with position expectations.
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Beyond the Resume: Many leaders hire based on the resume, not the heart or true organizational need. Hiring for impressive qualifications without clearly defining the position leads to mismatched talent.
Actionable Tools & Strategic Questions:
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Audit Your Team's Energy: Use the Working Genius Model (by Patrick Lencioni), or similar tools, to discover what parts of the job give your team members energy versus what leaves them feeling frustrated. Align their roles to maximize energy and momentum.
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Know Their Place on the Bus: Ask your team members what they want more of, what they want less of, and what truly lights them up about their job.
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The Avoidance Trap: If you're avoiding the conversation, you're wearing the avoidant behavior hat. You must have the conversation to clarify how the individual can win at their current position.
Leader, lead yourself well first. Get your expectations clear. Be intentional about taking your organizational "bus" apart and putting it back together based on the needs of the growth model, not the people you currently have. You might discover your bus should become a spaceship!
(Discover Derek Gorse’s artwork - spaceman art reference from episode)
What other bold conversations would you like to know how to navigate?
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Chapters
00:00 Assessing Team Dynamics and Leadership Roles
08:19 Identifying the Right Seats on the Bus
09:34 The Importance of Intentional Leadership Conversations