Libsyn Directory

#111: The Practice of Curiosity and Why Leaders Default to Certainty

Release Date: 07/22/2026

#122: Why Great Strategy Fails Without Clear Trade-Offs

Executive Commute With Jayson Krause

In Episode #122 of The Executive Commute, Jayson Krause is joined by prioritization expert Jill Urbanoski, owner of Euda Prioritize, to explore why strategy succeeds or fails in the trade-offs leaders make after the plan is set. Jill spent years as a chief of staff to a CEO and sat on an executive team at a large finance organization. That experience gave her a front-row view of how strategy, decision-making, competing priorities, and limited resources collide in real organizations. Her central argument is simple: prioritization is not a list. It is the practice of deciding which good...

#121: Why Resilient Businesses Can't Depend on the Owner

Executive Commute With Jayson Krause

In Episode #121 of The Executive Commute, Jayson Krause is joined by business and enterprise value creation coach Linda Ratner to explore resilience in leadership, life, and business, and why a resilient company cannot depend on the owner carrying everything alone. Linda's path spans emergency-room nursing, entrepreneurship, scaling Impact Urgent Care to seven locations, selling to private equity, and eventually coaching business owners and leadership teams. She explains how triage, staying calm under pressure, setting clear priorities, building accountability, and putting the right...

#120: What Actually Changes People?

Executive Commute With Jayson Krause

In Episode #120 of The Executive Commute, Jayson Krause steps back from four recent conversations to ask one leadership question: what actually changes people? Across discussions with Steve Rice, Dr. Ted Vokes, Chris Foy, and Murray Rodgers, a pattern emerges. Leaders often spend their energy trying to improve behaviour directly, but the stronger lever may be the conditions that shape behaviour in the first place. Jayson revisits Steve Rice's case for human empowerment over human resources and why engagement efforts can miss the deeper relationship between people and their work....

#119: Human Flourishing

Executive Commute With Jayson Krause

In Episode #119 of The Executive Commute, Jayson Krause is joined by educator and human flourishing advocate Steve Rice to explore what it means to live, work, and lead from the inside out. Steve shares how his own path moved from achievement, external validation, and a career that did not feel like an authentic fit toward a life centred on calling, purpose, and work as an expression of who he is. He describes the difference between living from the outside in and the inside out, and why fear often remains present when people move toward meaningful growth. The conversation...

#118: Evil and Dark Leadership

Executive Commute With Jayson Krause

The conversation explores the difference between influence and manipulation, why dark leaders are often drawn to power, how “kiss up, kick down” behaviour can hide for years, and why organizational culture plays such a critical role. Ted also discusses what he calls dark-activated behaviour: people who may begin acting destructively when the culture rewards or tolerates it. In Episode #118 of The Executive Commute, Jayson Krause is joined by industrial-organizational psychologist Dr. Ted Vokes for a deep examination of evil, the dark tetrad, and what dark leadership can look like inside...

#117: The Power of Questions

Executive Commute With Jayson Krause

In Episode #117 of The Executive Commute, Jayson Krause is joined by Level 52 coach and facilitator Chris Foy to explore the power of questions and why strong leadership often requires letting go of the need to have every answer. Chris explains the shift many leaders must make after being promoted for their expertise: moving from the person who solves the problem to the leader who creates the conditions for other experts to think, decide, and grow. Questions can build agency, accountability, curiosity, and capability, but only when they come from genuine wonder rather than an attempt to steer...

#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...

#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.

#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...

#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,...

More Episodes

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 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

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