Leader Fuel with Dr Linda Travelute

Before he rolled out his turnaround plan, eBay CEO Jamie Iannone asked every top leader three questions. The second one is the question almost every leader skips, and it’s the one that earns you the right to change everything else. In Episode 101 of the Leader Fuel Podcast, Dr. Linda Travelute breaks down how great leaders listen down, up, and out before they lead change, why talented CEOs lose their boards without ever seeing it coming, and the five words that get you the truth. 

If you’re stepping into a new role, leading a new team, or launching a new strategy, start here. Leadership development, change management, executive leadership, emotional intelligence, and building buy-in, straight from a doctor of clinical psychology and leadership advisor.

In this episode:

• Why most failed changes fail in the first thirty days, not in the execution
• The three questions eBay’s CEO asked every top leader before his plan went anywhere
• Why Pivoting Pete isn’t indecisive (and what he actually is)
• The MUM effect: why the higher you go, the less truth reaches you
• Listening up: why CEOs rise fast and fall hard over conversations they never had with their board
• Why silence in the boardroom isn’t agreement, and the one question to ask every board member
• Two handbag sellers, twelve photos, and what listening to your community really looks like
• The question almost nobody asks, and why it changes the whole room
• The Three-Question Listening Tour you can start this week

Anchor story source: Stephanie Mehta, Modern CEO newsletter, Inc. and Fast Company. Learn more at MaximizedLeaders.com.

Dr. Linda Travelute is an Executive Director with John Maxwell Leadership and a certified Coach, Trainer, Keynote Speaker, and Corporate Facilitator who works with business leaders from startup to sustained success. She is the founder and CEO of Maximized Leaders Coaching & Training and Host of the Leader Fuel Podcast

Check out MaximizedLeaders.com for coaching programs and ways we can serve you and your team. 

Subscribe to the Leader Fuel Podcast on:

     Apple: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast 

     Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show

     Amazon: https://music.amazon.com/podcasts

Connect with Dr. Linda on Social Platforms:

     Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/drlindatravelute

     Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/lindatravelute/

     Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/DrLindaMaximizedLeaders

More resources including coaching and training:

     Website: https://maximizedleaders.com/

     Group Leadership Coaching/Training: https://maximized-leader-mastery

     Leaders Focus Formula: https://leaders-focus-formula

     Leader Maxxing Brief: https://linda-travelute/LeaderMaxxingBrief

In 2019, e.l.f. Beauty's stock had crashed to $6.71. The board was in scandal. Activist investors were demanding a sale. And CEO Tarang Amin named his recovery plan Project Unicorn.

What he did next became one of the most dramatic business turnarounds of the decade.

In this episode of the Leader Fuel Podcast, Dr. Linda unpacks John Maxwell's Law of Victory through the real story of how one leader refused the conditions everyone else accepted, and built a $5 billion company on the other side of that refusal.

You will learn:

• The neuroscience behind why most leaders give up exactly when victory is available
• The one identity question that determines whether your strategy has any chance of working
• The Victory Audit: three questions to run on your own leadership this week

This episode is for the leader who has inherited a broken situation, taken over a struggling team, or been told that the goal is not realistic.

The conditions do not have to be right for you to lead.

Dr. Linda Travelute is an Executive Director with John Maxwell Leadership and a certified Coach, Trainer, Keynote Speaker, and Corporate Facilitator who works with business leaders from startup to sustained success. She is the founder and CEO of Maximized Leaders Coaching & Training and Host of the Leader Fuel Podcast

Check out MaximizedLeaders.com for coaching programs and ways we can serve you and your team. 

 Subscribe to the Leader Fuel Podcast on:

     Apple: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast 

     Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show

     Amazon: https://music.amazon.com/podcasts

Connect with Dr. Linda on Social Platforms:

     Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/drlindatravelute

     Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/lindatravelute/

     Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/DrLindaMaximizedLeaders

More resources including coaching and training:

     Website: https://maximizedleaders.com/

     Group Leadership Coaching/Training: https://maximized-leader-mastery

     Leaders Focus Formula: https://leaders-focus-formula

     Leader Maxxing Brief: https://linda-travelute/LeaderMaxxingBrief

Why your team doesn't understand you, even after you've explained it three times, and why fixing it is your job. Dr. Linda Travelute shows what a young chef in Cleveland knew about being understood nearly a century ago.

Most leaders have said it at least once, usually at the end of a long week: I already explained this. In this episode of the Leader Fuel Podcast, Dr. Linda Travelute looks at why your team doesn't understand you and makes the case that the problem is yours to solve, and that the responsibility grows right along with your authority.

The episode opens at a grocery counter in the late 1920s, where the name printed on a new boxed spaghetti dinner stops a store owner cold. That name belonged to Ettore "Hector" Boiardi, the chef whose face has been on canned pasta for most of your life. When his customers and even his own salesmen couldn't pronounce it, he respelled it on the label rather than asking the market to learn it, and he explained that decision in a single sentence that doubles as some of the sharpest communication advice a leader can hear.

From there, Dr. Linda brings the same problem into a modern office, where a leader has explained a new process three times and still gets three messages asking what's due on Monday. She walks through a 1990 Stanford experiment on the curse of knowledge, research on why tone gets lost over email, and a 2006 study suggesting that feeling powerful makes it harder to see things from someone else's point of view.

You'll also hear how John Maxwell's Law of Connection applies to the ordinary work of giving direction, the three levels leaders move through on the way to being understood, and a clear line between adapting your delivery and abandoning your standards. The episode closes with three diagnostic questions and four steps you can put to work this week.

GRAB THE LEADER MAXXING BRIEF: Free, two to three times a week, one idea at a time, plus first access to new episodes and workshops. Leader Maxxing Brief

Listen to the full episode at Leader Fuel Podcast

Dr. Linda Travelute is an Executive Director with John Maxwell Leadership and a certified Coach, Trainer, Keynote Speaker, and Corporate Facilitator who works with business leaders from startup to sustained success. She is the founder and CEO of Maximized Leaders Coaching & Training and Host of the Leader Fuel Podcast

Check out MaximizedLeaders.com for coaching programs and ways we can serve you and your team. 

Subscribe to the Leader Fuel Podcast on:

     Apple: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast 

     Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show

     Amazon: https://music.amazon.com/podcasts

Connect with Dr. Linda on Social Platforms:

     Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/drlindatravelute

     Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/lindatravelute/

     Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/DrLindaMaximizedLeaders

More resources including coaching and training:

     Website: https://maximizedleaders.com/

     Group Leadership Coaching/Training: https://maximized-leader-mastery

     Leaders Focus Formula: https://leaders-focus-formula

     Leader Maxxing Brief: https://linda-travelute/LeaderMaxxingBrief

We’re bringing this conversation back because the leadership lesson at the heart of it is one that never seems to get old—and it may be especially relevant if you’ve ever wondered about the impact your presence has on the people around you.

What do leadership, power, and a wolf raised on a Wyoming farm have in common? More than you think.

In this episode, I share a jaw-dropping true story about my husband’s pet wolf—and the day it locked eyes with a parakeet…and the bird dropped dead. No bark. No growl. Just presence.

That wild, true story unlocks a powerful leadership lesson: your presence alone may be silencing your team.

If you’ve ever been told you “intimidate people,” noticed your team goes quiet when you speak, or wondered whether your authority is having an unintended impact, this episode is for you.

So, whether you’re hearing this conversation for the first time or revisiting it, I hope you’ll listen with fresh ears. Let’s explore how to prepare for the power you carry—and use that power to lead with confidence and care.

Here’s this week’s Leader Fuel replay.

Dr. Linda Travelute is an Executive Director with John Maxwell Leadership and a certified Coach, Trainer, Keynote Speaker, and Corporate Facilitator who works with business leaders from startup to sustained success. She is the founder and CEO of Maximized Leaders Coaching & Training and Host of the Leader Fuel Podcast

Check out MaximizedLeaders.com for coaching programs and ways we can serve you and your team. 

Free Resources Mentioned in the Episode:

    The Gossip Gauge - Assessment & Action Guide

     Daily Leader Intentions Guide

Subscribe to the Leader Fuel Podcast on:

     Apple: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast 

     Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show

     Amazon: https://music.amazon.com/podcasts

Connect with Dr. Linda on Social Platforms:

     Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/drlindatravelute

     Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/lindatravelute/

     Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/DrLindaMaximizedLeaders

More resources including coaching and training:

      Website: https://maximizedleaders.com/

      Group Leadership Coaching/Training: https://maximized-leader-mastery

      Leaders Focus Formula: https://leaders-focus-formula

      Leader Maxxing Brief: https://linda-travelute/LeaderMaxxingBrief

Most leaders measure engagement by looking at a dashboard. Survey scores went up two points, participation held steady, the consultant seems pleased. In this episode Dr. Linda Travelute makes the surprising case that the number on that chart is telling you almost nothing, and that the real engagement signal in your organization is walking around in the body of the person you brace yourself for, the one you call, “difficult”.

The anchor story in this episode is Boeing. In November 2016, Boeing surveyed the employees whose job was to represent the FAA inside the company. Thirty nine percent reported undue pressure. Twenty nine percent were afraid to say so. Two years later, 346 people were dead. Dr. Linda Travelute uses that story to explain why the person you find hardest to work with is your most engaged employee, and why your engagement survey is measuring the wrong thing entirely.

You will get three diagnostic questions, four steps you can run inside a normal week, and one number Boeing published in 2024 that most leaders would read as a disaster and that is actually the healthiest thing the company has done in twenty years.

Mentioned in this episode: the Maxwell Leadership Team Culture Health Scorecard, a short anonymous diagnostic that shows leadership teams how culture is actually showing up across the organization. Details at MaximizedLeaders.com.

Listen to the full episode at Leader Fuel Podcast.

Host: Dr. Linda Travelute holds a doctorate in clinical psychology and spent 35 years leading teams of 500 or more before becoming an advisor to the C-suite. She works with CEOs, CHROs, CLOs, and boards in regulated and people-intensive organizations — financial services, credit unions, healthcare, government, utilities, law firms, manufacturing, and hospitality — on one question: are the leaders you've named as ready-now actually ready?

A succession plan tells you who is next. It cannot tell you who is prepared. Dr. Linda assesses the difference and builds the bench that closes it.

She is the founder and CEO of Maximized Leaders Coaching & Training and Host of the Leader Fuel Podcast

Check out MaximizedLeaders.com for coaching programs and ways we can serve you and your team. 

 Subscribe to the Leader Fuel Podcast on:

     Apple: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast 

     Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show

     Amazon: https://music.amazon.com/podcasts

Connect with Dr. Linda on Social Platforms:

     Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/drlindatravelute

     Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/lindatravelute/

     Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/DrLindaMaximizedLeaders

More resources including coaching and training:

     Website: https://maximizedleaders.com/

     Group Leadership Coaching/Training: https://maximized-leader-mastery

     Leaders Focus Formula: https://leaders-focus-formula

     Leader Maxxing Brief

There's a small store in San Francisco that's being run entirely by an artificial intelligence. It approves every request that comes its way, it has never once gotten angry with anyone, and it has answered twenty seven separate late arrivals with some version of no worries. When the New York Times asked the employees what their boss is like to work for, they said they like her. They meant it.

The store is also losing money, and four months in, not one person working there is better at their job than they were on day one.

In this episode of the Leader Fuel Podcast, Dr. Linda uses that store as a mirror, and then goes straight into the psychology sitting underneath it. She covers the fifty year old bias that makes humans physically stall before delivering bad news, and the uncomfortable detail that the bias gets stronger with the people you're closest to. 

She walks through the shock study that found uncertainty is harder on the human body than certain pain, which changes what your silence is actually doing to the person you think you're protecting. 

And she makes the case that the phrase psychological safety has been quietly stripped of half its meaning by leaders who were looking for permission.

You'll leave with three questions to sit with and five things you can do before Friday, including the single sentence of framing that roughly doubled how many students acted on hard feedback in a landmark study.

In This Episode

• The retail experiment that turned an AI into the world's most agreeable manager
• The MUM effect, and why the people closest to you get the worst information you have
• The shock study that explains why silence doesn't spare anyone
• How psychological safety got hijacked, and the second axis your company deleted
• Autonomy, relatedness, and the one motivational need a nice leader almost never meets
• The Law of Addition, and the gap between serving people and pleasing them
• Why avoidance never announces itself, and always arrives dressed as a virtue
• The wise feedback sentence, and how to say the standard and the belief in one breath

Dr. Linda Travelute is an Executive Director with John Maxwell Leadership and a certified Coach, Trainer, Keynote Speaker, and Corporate Facilitator who works with business leaders from startup to sustained success. She is the founder and CEO of Maximized Leaders Coaching & Training and Host of the Leader Fuel Podcast

Check out MaximizedLeaders.com for coaching programs and ways we can serve you and your team. 

Subscribe to the Leader Fuel Podcast on:

     Apple: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast 

     Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show

     Amazon: https://music.amazon.com/podcasts

Connect with Dr. Linda on Social Platforms:

     Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/drlindatravelute

     Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/lindatravelute/

     Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/DrLindaMaximizedLeaders

More resources including coaching and training:

      Website: https://maximizedleaders.com/

      Group Leadership Coaching/Training: https://maximized-leader-mastery

      Leaders Focus Formula: https://leaders-focus-formula

      Leader Maxxing Brief: https://linda-travelute/LeaderMaxxingBrief

KEYWORDS: nice boss vs good leader, being liked as a leader, MUM effect, giving hard feedback, psychological safety and accountability, wise feedback, self determination theory at work, people pleasing leadership, John Maxwell Law of Addition

When Mozart wrote variations on an old French melody, he named the original song in the title rather than himself, and the world credited him anyway. In this episode of the Leader Fuel Podcast, Dr. Linda Travelute uses that story, and the stranger one behind Happy Birthday to You, to explain how credit actually gets assigned on a team and why correcting it later almost never works.

This episode will change how you handle recognition on your team: the person who keeps ending up with credit that isn't theirs is usually not the cause of the problem. But we’ll show you what is, where credit actually gets decided, why the window is far shorter than most leaders assume, and five specific things you can do about it inside a normal work week to make sure credit is given to the right people.

KEYWORDS: leadership credit, giving credit to your team, employee recognition, Law of Empowerment, John Maxwell leadership, workplace attribution, leadership podcast, Dr. Linda Travelute, Maximized Leaders

Dr. Linda Travelute is an Executive Director with John Maxwell Leadership and a certified Coach, Trainer, Keynote Speaker, and Corporate Facilitator who works with business leaders from startup to sustained success. She is the founder and CEO of Maximized Leaders Coaching & Training and Host of the Leader Fuel Podcast

Check out MaximizedLeaders.com for coaching programs and ways we can serve you and your team. 

Subscribe to the Leader Fuel Podcast on:

     Apple: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast 

     Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show

     Amazon: https://music.amazon.com/podcasts

Connect with Dr. Linda on Social Platforms:

     Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/drlindatravelute

     Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/lindatravelute/

     Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/DrLindaMaximizedLeaders

More resources including coaching and training:

      Website: https://maximizedleaders.com/

      Group Leadership Coaching/Training: https://maximized-leader-mastery

      Leaders Focus Formula: https://leaders-focus-formula

      Leader Maxxing Brief: https://linda-travelute/LeaderMaxxingBrief

In July of 2005, a man in Montreal picked up a red paperclip and decided he wanted a house. Fourteen trades later, he had one. Everybody talks about the house. Almost nobody notices the trade that actually made it possible, and that is the trade you have been avoiding for years without knowing it.

In this episode of the Leader Fuel Podcast, Dr. Linda names the pattern she sees in nearly every stalled leader she coaches: not a shortage of ambition, not a shortage of planning, but a refusal to trade the small unimpressive asset already sitting on the desk. 

She merges the story with John Maxwell’s Law of Trade-Offs, you have to give up to grow up, and shows why the trade-off that stops most leaders is not painful at all. It is undignified. Those are very different problems with very different solutions.

You will learn the three tells of this pattern, why the assets that came to you easily are the most valuable ones you own, and a four step inventory-and-offer sequence you can finish before Friday.

In this episode

1. The fourteen trade story and the one trade that actually mattered
2. Why rigor is the most convincing disguise avoidance ever wore
3. The three tells: blurry inventory, finish-line comparison, discounting what came easily
4. Maxwell’s Law of Trade-Offs applied to assets you think are too small to count
5. Three diagnostic questions and a four step move for this week
   #johnmaxwell

Dr. Linda Travelute is an Executive Director with John Maxwell Leadership and a certified Coach, Trainer, Keynote Speaker, and Corporate Facilitator who works with business leaders from startup to sustained success. She is the founder and CEO of Maximized Leaders Coaching & Training and Host of the Leader Fuel Podcast

Check out MaximizedLeaders.com for coaching programs and ways we can serve you and your team. 

Subscribe to the Leader Fuel Podcast on:

     Apple: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast 

     Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show

     Amazon: https://music.amazon.com/podcasts

Connect with Dr. Linda on Social Platforms:

     Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/drlindatravelute

     Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/lindatravelute/

     Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/DrLindaMaximizedLeaders

More resources including coaching and training:

      Website: https://maximizedleaders.com/

      Group Leadership Coaching/Training: https://maximized-leader-mastery

       Leaders Focus Formula: https://leaders-focus-formula

       Leader Maxxing Brief: https://linda-travelute/LeaderMaxxingBrief