#111: The Practice of Curiosity and Why Leaders Default to Certainty
Executive Commute With Jayson Krause
Release Date: 07/22/2026
#116: Coherence Is the Price of Being Trusted Under Pressure
Executive Commute With Jayson Krause
In Episode #116 of The Executive Commute, Jayson Krause is joined by Murray Rodgers, author of The Psychedelic CEO, for a conversation about coherence, internal fragmentation, and the inner state leaders carry into every room Murray describes coherence as a state with less conflict between our thoughts, emotions, and actions. It is not simply calmness. It is the ability to stay present, anchored in what feels true, and responsive to what a moment actually requires. Drawing from his own experience of career success, depression, psychedelic work, being fired from a company he founded, and a...
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#115 The Best Leadership Lessons From My Summer Conversations
Executive Commute With Jayson Krause
It’s been a busy summer at Level 52. Rather than publishing our regular August newsletter, we spent the month recording conversations for with leaders, entrepreneurs and coaches who challenged my thinking in unexpected ways. Some conversations confirmed things I believed. Others completely overturned them. This month’s newsletter is a collection of ideas I haven’t been able to shake.
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#114: Leading When Nothing Is Certain
Executive Commute With Jayson Krause
In Episode #114 of The Executive Commute, Jayson Krause is joined by Cathie Saroka, Level 52 Coach and Facilitator and CEO of Goldray Glass, for a conversation about leading through uncertainty without carrying the weight alone. Cathie has spent decades leading through recessions, business volatility, personal challenges, the pandemic, and constant change. Her experience has taught her that strong leadership in uncertain times is not about projecting certainty or having every answer. It is about building a team that can think, challenge, adapt, and solve problems together. Jayson and Cathie...
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#113: Resilience Is Not Toughing It Out
Executive Commute With Jayson Krause
In Episode #113 of The Executive Commute, Jayson Krause is joined by Level 52 coach and facilitator Lara Koretsky for an honest exploration of resilience, adversity, and growth. Resilience is often described as the ability to bounce back or keep pushing when life becomes difficult. Lara challenges that definition. True resilience is not about returning to who you were before adversity or ignoring the toll it has taken. It is the ability to learn, adapt, recover, and create something stronger from the experience. Drawing from profound personal loss, family challenges, burnout,...
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#112: How Transparent Leaders Build Trust in Tough Times
Executive Commute With Jayson Krause
In Episode #112 of The Executive Commute, Jayson Krause is joined by experienced entrepreneur, former CEO, and TEC Canada Chair Mark Terrill for a candid conversation about transparency in leadership. They explore why transparency is essential for building trust, particularly during difficult periods, and why employees create their own explanations when leaders fail to communicate clearly. Mark also explains why effective transparency does not mean sharing everything. Leaders must balance openness with confidentiality, timing, focus, and empathy. When handled poorly, transparency can become...
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#111: The Practice of Curiosity and Why Leaders Default to Certainty
Executive Commute With Jayson Krause
A 360-degree review told Tyler Chisholm exactly what was wrong with his leadership: he filled every room, jumped to conclusions, and never let his team finish a sentence. His team had stopped contributing. They were just waiting to be told what to do. In this episode of The Executive Commute, Jayson Krause talks with Tyler Chisholm, CEO and author of Curious as Hell, about the moment that feedback forced him to rebuild how he leads. Tyler unpacks the difference between the leader he was in the boardroom and the host he'd become on his own podcast, and how closing that gap turned curiosity from...
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#110: Your Empathy Might Be Making You a Worse Leader
Executive Commute With Jayson Krause
Empathy gets treated like a personality trait: you either have it or you don't. Roxana Radulescu, Level 52 coach and facilitator, argues that's wrong. It's a muscle, and most leaders are either overusing it, avoiding it, or using it to avoid the hard conversation instead of having it. In this episode of The Executive Commute, Jayson Krause talks with Roxana about what empathy actually is (her definition: care plus trust), what it isn't (sympathy, agreement, an excuse to skip feedback), and where it goes wrong at the top of organizations. They dig into a Yale psychologist's argument that...
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#108: Why Burnout Isn't a Workload Problem
Executive Commute With Jayson Krause
Most leaders think burnout comes from too much work. So they respond with wellness programs, lighter workloads, and lunch hour yoga. Then nothing changes. In this episode of The Executive Commute, Jayson Krause sits down with Dr. Tianne Foster, physician, burnout researcher, and author of Reality Check, to unpack what actually drives burnout and why most organizations are solving the wrong problem. Trained across Canada, the US, and the UK, Dr. Foster became obsessed with burnout after a senior physician told her entire class to get out of medicine while they still could. Her conclusion:...
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#109 MML What does high performance actually look like?
Executive Commute With Jayson Krause
Welcome to The Meaningful Leader — July Edition. This month, we’re looking at the invisible forces that shape how leaders and teams actually perform: the standards we fail to define, the belonging we misunderstand, the thinking environments we create, and the warning lights we ignore. Three of this month’s sections were sparked by great conversations I had on with Level 52 coach and facilitator - Jessica Heafey, Flow state advisor - Dr. Murray Heber, and author of Reality Check - Dr. Tianne Foster. Links to each full discussion are below. But the thread running through all of...
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#107 Why Belonging Is Not About Being Nice
Executive Commute With Jayson Krause
Belonging gets mistaken for everyone getting along. But what if a team with no conflict is the clearest sign that belonging is missing? In this episode of The Executive Commute, Jayson Krause sits down with Level 52 coach and facilitator Jessica Heafey to explore belonging, what it is, what it isn't, and the mistakes leaders make trying to create it. Drawing on a career that began in professional theatre, Jessica explains why being hired is not the same as belonging, why the difference between kind and nice matters more than most leaders realize, and why real belonging asks...
info_outlineA 360-degree review told Tyler Chisholm exactly what was wrong with his leadership: he filled every room, jumped to conclusions, and never let his team finish a sentence. His team had stopped contributing. They were just waiting to be told what to do.
In this episode of The Executive Commute, Jayson Krause talks with Tyler Chisholm, CEO and author of Curious as Hell, about the moment that feedback forced him to rebuild how he leads. Tyler unpacks the difference between the leader he was in the boardroom and the host he'd become on his own podcast, and how closing that gap turned curiosity from a personality trait into a daily discipline. They get into where curiosity actually helps, where it gets weaponized into control, and what it takes to build a team that feels safe enough to think out loud.
They cover:
- The feedback that forced a leadership reset
- Curiosity as a practice, not a trait: self, relational, and strategic curiosity
- How questions get weaponized to control instead of learning
- Where curiosity fails (and command and control takes over)
- A simple tool for pausing before you react
- What actually predicts whether a leader succeeds or fails
If your meetings go quiet the moment you start talking, this one's worth the full hour.
Follow Jayson Krause:
YouTube: 
/ @jaysonkrauseleadership
LinkedIn: 
/ jayson-krause
0:00 - Introduction
0:41 - The 360 Review That Changed His Leadership
3:43 - What Changed When "Podcast Tyler" Led Meetings
6:00 - Tracking Fixed vs. Growth Mindset After Every Call
8:41 - From Playful Trait to Deliberate Practice
10:05 - Why Tyler Wrote Curious as Hell
13:21 - Writing in Flow: AI as Collaborator
15:50 - The Self Curiosity the Book Forced to the Surface
17:31 - Defining Curiosity as a Leadership Practice
19:16 - The "No Time to Be Curious" Myth
22:03 - The Latin Root of Curiosity
28:44 - Weaponizing Curiosity
29:39 - Isn't a Leader's Job to Manipulate?
37:18 - Self Curiosity Comes First
39:19 - When Curiosity Isn't the Right Tool
42:17 - The Tactical Sigh
45:08 - Would You Rather: Curious vs. Safe to Be Curious Around
46:34 - Creating the Conditions for Curiosity
49:13 - The Nuclear Button
52:06 - The Cost of Reacting Instead of Leading
53:00 - True or False: Questions and Culture Health
56:02 - The Worst Advice About Curiosity
57:31 - "Tell Me More": Curious vs. Diagnostic Questions
59:38 - How to Know Curiosity Is Missing
1:02:42 - Know When to Call a Coach
1:04:51 - The Invisible Force Behind Leadership Success
1:06:26 - Closing Thoughts