426: Becoming Your Own Compass When the Path Isn’t Clear
Becoming Unshakable With Heather R. Younger
Release Date: 09/30/2025
Finding Your Unshakable Team
Becoming Unshakable With Heather R. Younger
What helps us stay grounded when life or work suddenly feels uncertain? In this episode of Becoming Unshakable, I’m joined by Dr. Josh Hartzell for a conversation about self-leadership, resilience, support, and the people we need around us when the ground starts to move. Josh brings a perspective shaped by more than two decades in military medicine, medical education, leadership, and patient care. One lesson from medicine has stayed with him throughout his career: before responding to an emergency, take your own pulse. For leaders, that can mean resisting the urge to react immediately and...
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How to Stabilize a Team in the Middle of Constant Change
Becoming Unshakable With Heather R. Younger
What does leadership look like when change never seems to stop? In this solo episode of Becoming Unshakable, I’m talking about how leaders can create greater steadiness for themselves and their teams when uncertainty, pressure, and disruption become part of everyday work. Many people are dealing with rapid technological change, organizational uncertainty, heavier workloads, and the feeling that the next disruption is always just around the corner. Leaders may not be able to control those forces, but they can influence how we respond and how our teams experience them. I share some of the...
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Why Employees Don't Speak Up
Becoming Unshakable With Heather R. Younger
Have you ever wondered why people seem to have plenty to say after a meeting, but very little to say while they are actually in the room? In this solo episode of Becoming Unshakable, I’m talking about why employees stop speaking up and what that silence may be telling us about trust, psychological safety, and belonging inside a team. People rarely stop contributing because they suddenly stop caring. More often, they have learned through experience that speaking honestly is not worth the risk. Maybe they have been interrupted, dismissed, criticized, or watched someone else pay a price for...
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How to Learn to Lead a Team from a Steady Place Inside of Pressure
Becoming Unshakable With Heather R. Younger
What happens when the pressure hits and the plan you carefully put together suddenly changes? In this episode of Becoming Unshakable, I share a very personal example of what it means to lead from a steady place when things do not go as expected. My new book, The Unshakable Team, was scheduled for release on September 29, but an unexpected decision meant copies started shipping three weeks early. My first reaction was panic. I had plans, campaigns, and timing built around that launch date. But within minutes, I had to remind myself of the very principles I have spent years teaching leaders,...
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The Hidden Cost of Emotionally Unpredictable Leadership
Becoming Unshakable With Heather R. Younger
Have you ever worked with a leader whose mood seemed to determine the mood of the entire team? In this solo episode of Becoming Unshakable, I’m looking at the hidden cost of emotionally unpredictable leadership and why our emotional consistency has such a powerful effect on the people around us. Teams are constantly reading their leaders, often before a single word is spoken. They notice our tone, body language, reactions, and energy, and those signals can influence whether people feel safe enough to speak up, challenge an idea, admit a mistake, or raise a concern. That is where emotional...
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Excellent Performance Requires Extreme Recovery
Becoming Unshakable With Heather R. Younger
What if becoming unshakable has less to do with pushing harder and more to do with learning how to recover? In this solo episode of Becoming Unshakable, I’m talking about something leaders often undervalue until they have already hit the wall: intentional recovery. We spend so much time thinking about performance, results, responsibility, and caring for the people around us that it can become easy to overlook the person carrying all of that weight. But sustained performance requires capacity, and capacity has to be restored. I share why I believe leaders should begin thinking of themselves...
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Celebrate What’s Good—Even When You Don’t Know What’s Next
Becoming Unshakable With Heather R. Younger
Can resilience become the very thing that keeps us in difficult situations longer than we should stay? In this episode of Becoming Unshakeable, I speak with James Ferguson, an award-winning Culture Pioneer and respected voice in workplace culture. James shares how losing jobs, working under poor leaders, and facing an aggressive cancer treatment shaped the way he thinks about leadership, perspective, and perseverance. During his treatment, a doctor warned James that the chemotherapy could “remove the glue” holding him together. James made a personal decision that it would not remove his...
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Psychological Safety Isn't About Being Nice
Becoming Unshakable With Heather R. Younger
What if trying to keep everyone comfortable is actually making your team less safe? In this episode of Becoming Unshakable, I tackle one of the biggest misconceptions I see around psychological safety: the idea that good leaders protect people from difficult conversations, disagreement, or discomfort. They don't. Psychological safety means people can question decisions, admit mistakes, raise concerns, and bring uncomfortable truths into the room without fearing embarrassment, punishment, or retaliation. That doesn't remove accountability. In fact, when safety and accountability exist together,...
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Why Your Hardest Season Isn’t Wasted: Finding Strength in the Struggle
Becoming Unshakable With Heather R. Younger
Have you ever looked at the person you were becoming and realized you no longer recognized yourself? Jane Grote Abell grew up inside Donatos Pizza, the family business her father founded with a belief that business could be built on love. After the company was sold to McDonald’s, however, Jane found herself working under a leadership style that gradually caused her to operate from fear. She began questioning her decisions, shrinking her circle, and changing how she showed up at work. The woman who had always been encouraged to speak up slowly lost her voice. Then, while sitting alone in the...
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How Death Teaches Us to Truly Live
Becoming Unshakable With Heather R. Younger
What does it really take to become unshakeable when life forces you to confront your own mortality? In this episode of Becoming Unshakeable, I welcome longtime friend, innovation leader, author, and Sustainovation founder Nick Kittle for a deeply personal conversation about resilience, self-leadership, relationships, and what it means to live differently after a life-changing experience. At 35, Nick died for 22 seconds during a medical test. What felt to him like four days became a turning point that changed how he thought about time, work, relationships, and the life he wanted to lead. He...
info_outlineIn today’s episode of Becoming Unshakeable, I’m doing something a little different. This is one of my solo shows where I answer questions that listeners have sent directly to me. It’s my way of making sure your voice is part of this conversation, because even though I cannot see you when you listen, I want to stay connected to what matters most to you.
In this episode, I respond to three powerful questions. We explore how to continue showing care when upper management pressures or restrictions get in the way, how to balance compassion with clear expectations and accountability, and what to do when your calendar is so full of other people’s needs that you feel like you are losing yourself in the process. These are real-life situations, and they all connect back to what it means to be grounded in who we are and how we present ourselves.
Becoming unshakeable is not about never being rattled. It is about staying calm and centered when the world feels off its rocker. It is about making intentional choices to lead with clarity, care, and accountability. As you listen in, I invite you to reflect on your own sphere of influence, your daily practices for grounding, and the ways you might bring both compassion and strength into your leadership.