People and Projects Podcast: Project Management Podcast

Summary
In this episode, Andy sits down with Dr. Maggie Sass and Dr. Ross Blankenship, consulting psychologists and authors of Friction: How Tension, Emotion and Change Reveal Better Leaders. Project managers are trained to remove blockers, and much of the time that's exactly right. But Maggie and Ross draw a distinction that's easy to miss: some friction is simply waste, and some friction is information.
You'll hear how the unwritten rules we learned about emotion early in life still shape how we lead, what starts happening in a room before an irritated leader says a word, and the four words Ross thinks can rescue a team meeting. We also dig into why burnout is often a system design problem instead of a self-care problem, what a project leader can actually do about structural friction when they can't redesign the whole system, and which human capabilities are worth protecting as AI makes more of our work faster and easier.
If you're looking for a more practical way to read the tension on your team and use what it's telling you, this episode is for you!
Sound Bites
"But I think the unwritten rule at home was that talking about emotions and living through them safely were two distinct things."
"Humans need things, and sometimes they don't even know what they need until you are together in a space or in a call."
"You don't ask questions. You don't bring up creative ideas because you have no idea how that's really gonna go given what you're watching a leader do."
"But I think the older I've gotten, the more convinced I am that our job as adults inside organizations is not necessarily to be perfect, but it's to repair as fast as possible when you make a mistake, and that's the thing that doesn't happen when people are scared."
"I've found that these four words can save your team (and marriage): 'I'm experiencing some friction'."
"It helps me remember that between the stimulus and the response, I have space, and the more that I give myself, the better."
"There is no real way to separate task and relationship because the humans are doing the tasks."
"Being the hero may allow you to solve massive problems or create really compelling products in the short term, but it's not a sustainable way to run a business because businesses are run by people and people have limits."
"It's a good example where AI makes you more productive, like, you got 'em done faster, and almost entirely strips the meaning out of it."
"And we need to take seriously that our kids need to learn to fail so that they develop resilience."
Chapters
00:00 Introduction
02:14 Start of Interview
02:23 The Unwritten Rules Maggie Learned About Emotion
04:06 Growing Up in Ross's House
05:41 Why Ross Was Skeptical of EQ
08:22 What Ross's Pushback Changed for Maggie
11:01 Do You Have EQ, or Do You Do EQ?
13:06 Can We Get Too Good at Smoothing the Path?
16:56 Where Ross Deliberately Leaves Friction in Place
18:46 What AI Missed When They Tried Using It on the Book
20:35 Leadership as Emotional Intelligence in Action
20:50 What Happens When an Irritated Leader Walks In
24:39 Four Words That Can Change the Room
27:00 When Your Body Writes the Story First
29:28 Maggie's Physical Cue and How She Creates Space
32:55 Burnout as a System Design Problem
35:28 Patterns, Hero Ball, and Structural Friction
37:00 A First Move When You Can't Redesign the System
38:39 Which Human Capabilities Should We Protect From AI?
42:11 What Maggie Refuses to Outsource
43:27 Parenting: When to Remove Friction, When to Allow It
46:22 The Tin Can Phone and a Kid Who Made Her Own Plans
48:44 End of Interview
49:18 Andy Comments After the Interview
53:13 Outtakes
Learn More
You can learn more about Maggie, Ross, and their book at TalentSmartEQ.com/friction.
For more learning on this topic, check out:
Episode 397 with Dr. Julia DiGangi. It's a discussion about emotions that has stuck with Andy for years, and it's a great supplement to today's conversation.
Episode 394 with Joshua Freedman. Joshua is a leading voice on emotional intelligence, making this a really good follow-up to Friction.
Episode 446 with Adam Galinsky. Helpful insights on how to inspire those around us instead of sucking the life out of them.
Chat with PMeLa
You can chat directly with PMeLa, the podcast's AI persona, to get episode recommendations and answers to your project management and leadership questions. Visit PeopleAndProjectsPodcast.com/PMeLa to chat with her.
Join Us for LEAD52
I know you want to be a more confident leader–that's why you listen to this podcast. LEAD52 is a global community of people like you who are committed to transforming their ability to lead and deliver. It's 52 weeks of leadership learning, delivered right to your inbox, taking less than 5 minutes a week. And it's all for free. Learn more and sign up at GetLEAD52.com. Thanks!
Thank you for joining me for this episode of The People and Projects Podcast!
Talent Triangle: Power Skills
Topics: Leadership, Project Management, Emotional Intelligence, Friction, Conflict, Psychological Safety, Burnout, Team Culture, Artificial Intelligence, Parenting, Self-Awareness, Communication
The following music was used for this episode:
Music: Ignotus by Agnese Valmaggia
License (CC BY 4.0): https://filmmusic.io/standard-license
Music: Synthiemania by Frank Schroter
License (CC BY 4.0): https://filmmusic.io/standard-license

Summary
In this episode, Andy sits down with Dr. Jeremy Pollack, a social-organizational psychologist and founder of Pollack Peacebuilding Systems, author of Wired for Peace: Using 7 Neuroscience-Based Principles to Resolve Conflicts. Jeremy looks at conflict through the lens of the brain and nervous system, which helps explain why disagreements escalate so quickly and why the fixes we reach for often make things worse.
Andy and Jeremy talk about why de-escalation has to come before problem-solving, since solutions and stress do not mix. Jeremy walks us through his Sapien Model of six basic psychological needs, giving us a far more useful lens than labeling a stakeholder difficult, defensive, or resistant. You will hear how memory and prediction shape the way we read the person in front of us, what a team learns when its leader consistently avoids conflict, and why changing our experience of conflict requires new experiences, not just new beliefs. Jeremy also shares how this shows up at home, in marriage and parenting.
If you're looking for a practical, evidence-based way to handle the conflicts that come with leading, this episode is for you!
Sound Bites
"The most fruitful relationships from what I've seen at work, at home, et cetera, are those that can weather storms without the real fear of abandonment."
"That was pretty interesting to me to see how much of the science is telling us that, like, our brain is mostly a predictive machine."
"Anytime we're in an escalated or emotionally charged state, there's something going on in our brains, usually subconsciously, that's tracking a threat or an impediment to our basic needs."
"It's de-escalate first because solutions and stress just don't mix."
"What I'm feeling right now is not a result of what the person's saying. It's a result of the way my body is responding."
"I call it an experiential thumbprint. It's completely unique to you and no one else has your nervous system, and you don't have anyone else's."
"If we have a negative experience with someone and we go into a place of fear or pain or anger or something like that, the way that we see them going forward can change very, very quickly, and it's a lot harder to get us to unsee that."
"We access memories in edit mode. And so after we retrieve it, and when we write it back, it's not always quite the same thing, and that's always made me question not is that memory correct as much as is it completely correct."
"All conflict is an opportunity for learning."
"The threat of abandonment is the big thing to really watch for when we're having arguments."
Chapters
00:00 Introduction
02:27 Start of Interview
02:35 The Family Cultures That Shaped How Jeremy Sees Conflict
05:51 In Awe of How Much We Still Do Not Know About the Brain
07:49 The Brain as a Prediction Machine
09:55 The Salad Lady and What Sits Underneath Defensive Behavior
12:45 An Introduction to the Sapien Model
16:19 Why a Framework Beats a Label
16:58 De-escalate First: Catching Yourself Before It Is Too Late
20:54 When Our De-escalation Attempts Backfire
22:43 Empathy Without Having to Agree
25:03 How Memory Distorts the Person in Front of Us
27:46 We Do Not Access Memory as Read-Only
30:45 Joe, the Conflict-Avoidant CEO, and What a Team Learns
33:03 Taking Inventory When Nobody Pushes Back
34:53 New Experiences of Conflict, Not Just New Beliefs
38:08 Tell Me More: Creating a Gap Between Stimulus and Response
40:31 Peace Starts in Small Ways
42:49 Interrupting the Pavlovian Pattern
44:19 Bringing It Home: Marriage, Parenting, and Attachment
47:17 End of Interview
47:57 Andy Comments After the Interview
51:57 Outtakes
Learn More
You can learn more about Jeremy and his work at CoachJeremyPollack.com.
For more learning on this topic, check out:
Episode 371 with Amanda Ripley. Amanda is an amazing writer, and her book High Conflict is a great follow-up to today's discussion.
Episode 148 with Dan Shapiro. The title of his book Negotiating the Nonnegotiable sounds like it's about negotiating, but it's really about navigating the conflicts that suck the life out of us.
Episode 61 with Mike Roberto. That discussion was over 15 years ago, and there are ideas from it that Andy still uses to this day.
Chat with PMeLa
You can chat directly with PMeLa, the podcast's AI persona, to get episode recommendations and answers to your project management and leadership questions. Visit PeopleAndProjectsPodcast.com/PMeLa to chat with her.
Join Us for LEAD52
I know you want to be a more confident leader–that's why you listen to this podcast. LEAD52 is a global community of people like you who are committed to transforming their ability to lead and deliver. It's 52 weeks of leadership learning, delivered right to your inbox, taking less than 5 minutes a week. And it's all for free. Learn more and sign up at GetLEAD52.com. Thanks!
Thank you for joining me for this episode of The People and Projects Podcast!
Talent Triangle: Power Skills
Topics: Leadership, Project Management, Conflict Resolution, Neuroscience, De-escalation, Psychological Safety, Emotional Regulation, Memory, Stakeholder Management, Team Culture, Accountability, Parenting
The following music was used for this episode:
Music: On Point by Steven O'Brien
License (CC BY 4.0): https://filmmusic.io/standard-license
Music: Energetic Drive Indie Rock by WinnieTheMoog
License (CC BY 4.0): https://filmmusic.io/standard-license

Summary
In this episode, Andy sits down with Johan Roos, professor and executive advisor at Hult International Business School, Executive Director of the Peter Drucker Society Europe, and co-inventor of the LEGO® Serious Play® method. Johan is the author of Human Magic: Leading with Wisdom in an Age of Algorithms, and he has spent decades studying how people think, create, decide, and lead together.
Andy and Johan explore the two paths Johan calls erosion and amplification, starting with a question Andy has been wrestling with as he hands more of his manual driving over to Tesla's self-driving. You'll hear what an eroding project manager actually looks like day-to-day, why practical wisdom matters when the analytically optimal answer is not the wisest one, and how AI feeds one kind of curiosity, the laser, while starving another, the radar. Johan also explains the difference between becoming an AI concierge and practicing what he calls professional citizenship, and he shares what parents can do to help their kids hold onto the messy, hands-on curiosity that machines cannot supply.
If you're looking for a thoughtful, hopeful way to use AI without surrendering your judgment, this episode is for you!
Sound Bites
"Almost every good idea I've had was not in front of the screen."
"I know what to do, but I've stopped understanding why.".... The eroding project management can no longer explain the why."
"So in a sense, they argue that the better the system, the stronger pull down the erosion curve."
"So the message is really when the machines are taking over more and more of some of these subtle, very valuable capabilities we have, we have to climb the value creation ladder."
"So a complexity is exactly where our wisdom gets exposed."
"So every metric said fantastic, but nobody asked why, and is this right?"
"If AI can write a document that is important to you, the document was never where the value lived."
"But we just have to be careful to not sort of delegate too much of our brain power and sort of erode our jelly bean."
"When you lean back and you haven't struggled enough, you may be super smart and, and the best brilliant individual in the world, but, you know, friction is good."
"Are you able to argue for your case without holding on to the AI-produced slide?"
"Protect the wandering curiosity, unstructured exploration, questions with no immediate payoff, the freedom to follow something nowhere in particular."
Chapters
00:00 Introduction
02:35 Start of Interview
02:44 Growing Up Inquisitive and the Power of "Because"
06:04 Self-Driving Cars, GPS, and the Erosion of Our Abilities
10:31 Becoming an Active Supervisor Instead of a Passive Passenger
13:55 What an Eroding Project Manager Looks Like Day to Day
18:52 When the Optimal Answer Is Not the Wisest One
22:03 Intuition, Gut Feel, and When Something Does Not Smell Right
25:54 The Laser and the Radar: Two Kinds of Curiosity
27:52 Creating Independently Before Consulting AI
30:44 What Happens in the AI-Free Time
35:18 Is It Intuition or Is It Ego?
37:48 Turning the Models Loose on His Own Book
40:00 Asking AI to Be Brutally Honest
41:02 AI Concierge Versus Professional Citizenship
45:51 Advice for Parents Raising Kids in the Age of AI
49:26 Staying Human: Theater, Walks, and Getting Your Hands Dirty
50:44 End of Interview
51:15 Andy Comments After the Interview
54:46 Outtakes
Learn More
You can learn more about Johan and his work at humanmagic.one.
For more learning on this topic, check out:
Episode 500 with Steve Brown. Steve is a former Google DeepMind futurist, and he has a unique perspective on where we've been and where we're going with AI.
Episode 479 with Matt Mong. Matt shares his take on the AI skills we need to stay relevant in the years to come.
Episode 463 with Faisal Hoque. Faisal helps us go beyond the fear and the hype around AI to a helpful way to think about the human-AI relationship.
Chat with PMeLa
You can chat directly with PMeLa, the podcast's AI persona, to get episode recommendations and answers to your project management and leadership questions. Visit PeopleAndProjectsPodcast.com/PMeLa to chat with her.
Join Us for LEAD52
I know you want to be a more confident leader–that's why you listen to this podcast. LEAD52 is a global community of people like you who are committed to transforming their ability to lead and deliver. It's 52 weeks of leadership learning, delivered right to your inbox, taking less than 5 minutes a week. And it's all for free. Learn more and sign up at GetLEAD52.com. Thanks!
Thank you for joining me for this episode of The People and Projects Podcast!
Talent Triangle: Business Acumen
Topics: Leadership, Project Management, Artificial Intelligence, Practical Wisdom, Curiosity, Critical Thinking, Creativity, Decision Making, Judgment, Professional Development, Human Skills, Parenting
The following music was used for this episode:
Music: Echo by Alexander Nakarada
License (CC BY 4.0): https://filmmusic.io/standard-license
Music: Chillhouse by Frank Schroeter
License (CC BY 4.0): https://filmmusic.io/standard-license

Summary
In this episode, Andy sits down with Owen Fitzpatrick, a psychologist, speaker, and author of Inner Propaganda: Leading Hearts and Minds through Turbulent Times. Owen has spent close to 30 years studying how beliefs form and change, interviewing people everywhere from North Korea to Rwanda to Afghanistan. His thesis is unsettling: our brains do not simply take in facts and reach objective conclusions. They build a story we then experience as reality.
Owen and Andy work through what that means on real projects. You'll hear how a warning from a colleague can quietly harden into a conviction about a teammate, and how Bayesian reasoning gives you a way out. You'll learn Owen's five types of truth, how to tell courageous conviction from dangerous denial, and what leaders can actually make stable when they cannot promise a stable outcome. Owen also explains why pushing harder for buy-in is often the very reason people resist, and how an antifragile identity helps teams face uncertainty like AI without denial or panic.
If you're looking for a fresh way to think about belief, influence, and leading through turbulent times, this episode is for you!
Sound Bites
"We all live in that world where we think we're the one person that isn't the victim of propaganda, and my point or my thesis is we're all victims of our own inner propaganda."
"We're not necessarily just convinced by others. We convince ourselves."
"Because I think when we say, 'I'm no good at something,' we lock ourselves into it."
"Well, if you're not great at communicating with people, get great."
"Most of the time our beliefs just create a sort of a reality for us, and that reality can help us or harm us."
"So our brains are prediction machines."
"Whenever we talk about belief, believing in your ability to succeed in the future is critical if you want to succeed in the future, but that doesn't mean you deny the present."
"It, it's not that we think negatively, it's we believe negatively, and we see the world through those lenses."
"So I think we want to be able to challenge our beliefs and build a bit more and get more comfortable with uncertainty away from the table, but when we're at the table with our team, that's when we bring the certainty."
"We like the idea that we are making this decision of our own free will."
"And when you look at what a belief is, a belief is an idea we feel certain about, and that word feel is the most important word of that sentence."
"It's okay to believe less in certain things. It's okay to believe more in certain things. It's okay to believe better."
Chapters
00:00 Introduction
02:29 Start of Interview
02:40 The Belief About Himself Owen Took Too Long to Update
05:56 A Sweaty Debate Speech and What Came After
08:28 Not Good at Something Is a Skill Gap, Not an Identity
09:45 The Belief Growth Mindset
12:55 The Sandra Story: When a Warning Becomes a Conviction
14:07 Why the Brain Craves Cognitive Closure
17:15 Using Bayesian Reasoning to Loosen a Belief
21:00 Melanie Perkins and Alan Mulally: Conviction or Denial?
21:36 The Five Types of Truth
26:24 Just Because It Is Your Truth Does Not Make It True
28:41 Where Objective Truth Actually Belongs
31:47 What "Leadership Is Propaganda" Does Not Mean
34:45 Why Change Management and AI Adoption Stall
36:30 Why Owen Chose Propaganda Over Self-Talk
37:57 Do I Believe It Because It Makes Me Look Good?
38:49 Answering the AI Question Without Denial or Hype
40:15 Building an Antifragile Identity
44:27 Certainty Is Contagious, and When to Change Course
45:20 What Leaders Can Make Stable in a Volatile Period
47:45 Control What You Can, Influence What You Can, Accept the Rest
51:01 When Pushing for Buy-In Creates the Resistance
52:45 You're Asking the Wrong Question About Persuasion
54:30 Reading the Person Before You Make the Ask
57:30 Helping Kids Hold Strong Beliefs Without Contempt
1:01:46 End of Interview
1:02:15 Andy Comments After the Interview
1:05:09 Outtakes
Learn More
You can learn more about Owen and his work at InnerPropaganda.com.
For more learning on this topic, check out:
Episode 370 with Chantel Prat. One of the smartest, clearest, and funniest books on the brain, and why all of it matters for how you lead.
Episodes 59 and 60 with Cathy Davidson. She explains how the brain science of attention changes everything.
Episode 32 with Brad Kolar. A look at the direct implications of neuroscience for leadership.
Owen's TED Talk, available here on YouTube.
Chat with PMeLa
You can chat directly with PMeLa, the podcast's AI persona, to get episode recommendations and answers to your project management and leadership questions. Visit PeopleAndProjectsPodcast.com/PMeLa to chat with her.
Join Us for LEAD52
I know you want to be a more confident leader–that's why you listen to this podcast. LEAD52 is a global community of people like you who are committed to transforming their ability to lead and deliver. It's 52 weeks of leadership learning, delivered right to your inbox, taking less than 5 minutes a week. And it's all for free. Learn more and sign up at GetLEAD52.com. Thanks!
Thank you for joining me for this episode of The People and Projects Podcast!
Talent Triangle: Power Skills
Topics: Leadership, Belief, Persuasion, Influence, Uncertainty, Change Management, Growth Mindset, Psychological Reactance, Buy-In, Artificial Intelligence, Resilience, Project Management
The following music was used for this episode:
Music: The Fantastical Ferret by Tim Kulig
License (CC BY 4.0): https://filmmusic.io/standard-license
Music: Funny by Frank Schroeter
License (CC BY 4.0): https://filmmusic.io/standard-license

Summary
In this episode, Andy welcomes Cheryl Strauss Einhorn, founder and CEO of the decision sciences company Decisive and author of The Human Edge: Smarter Decisions in the Age of AI. Cheryl has spent decades helping people make better decisions, and her message here is a simple one: AI can gather, summarize, and compare, but it can't know what matters most unless we do the thinking first.
Andy and Cheryl talk about why "AI first" can quietly turn into AI only, and why a poor answer from AI is actually useful feedback about your own thinking. Cheryl explains why separating the what of a decision from the why can change the path forward, shares her vision of success question, and walks through how human bias and AI bias reinforce each other. You'll also hear a practical way to use AI personas to pressure test your thinking before a big stakeholder conversation, plus what parents can do to help kids strengthen their decision-making muscles instead of letting them atrophy.
If you're looking for practical ways to make smarter decisions in the age of AI, this episode is for you!
Sound Bites
"AI is about patterns, but we're about purpose."
"We need to be the chief deciders in our own life."
"We need to make sure that we actually have a way to push back and check the veracity of what it's giving us because it's a known liar."
"And so the authenticity of human interaction is what actually builds trust, strengthens relationships, and really gives us a lot of the connections that are important to us in our home life and our work life."
"You don't need to have a perfect prompt for AI."
"AI is going to give you other people's answers."
"'Knowledge is power' isn't as true now. It's what you are able to do with the knowledge, and it's why you want to collect the knowledge in the first place."
"I almost never would accept AI's first answer."
"We tend to have evolving hypotheses unless we really build an audit trail of our thinking."
"So in the world of medicine, a fever tells you something is wrong, but it tells you nothing about what is wrong or where to look."
"So first we know AI's a sycophant, right?"
"If it's 99% accurate in its conclusion, but its underlying data is the wrong data set, you've got the wrong answer."
"I would say the more that I've studied these cognitive biases, these mental shortcuts, the more I realize that we see the world through a dirty windshield."
"Our brains are muscles, and just like we exercise to strengthen our muscles, if we don't exercise, they atrophy."
Chapters
00:00 Introduction
02:00 Start of Interview
02:12 Growing Up Surrounded by Questions
04:30 What Leaders Should Watch Out for in "AI First"
07:07 When AI Confidently Makes Things Up
09:04 How AI First Turns into AI Only
09:20 Why Polished Doesn't Mean Authentic
11:59 A Prompting Problem or a Problem Definition Problem?
14:37 The Vision of Success Question
15:45 Why a Bad Answer Is Useful Feedback
19:06 Separating the What from the Why
20:32 Research: More Information Isn't Better Judgment
24:35 Progressive Prompting and Never Accepting the First Answer
25:18 Fabricated Quotes and the Trouble with Attribution
26:50 Documenting Assumptions and Building an Audit Trail
29:25 Committing to Your Own Thinking
32:29 How Human Bias and AI Bias Reinforce Each Other
34:55 Knowing About Biases Doesn't Make You Immune
36:51 Using AI Personas to Challenge Your Thinking
40:20 AI and Stakeholder Management
42:42 Helping Kids Become Better Decision-Makers
44:25 End of Interview
44:51 Andy Comments After the Interview
48:13 Outtakes
Learn More
You can learn more about Cheryl and her work at AREAMethod.com.
For more learning on this topic, check out:
Episode 460 with Joe Sutherland. It's an interesting look at the intersection of AI, data, and decision-making, and a great follow-up to this discussion.
Episode 381 with Jim Loehr. One of Andy's favorite conversations about decision-making, from a remarkable figure in the human performance world.
Episode 99 with Mike Roberto. A conversation about his book Why Great Leaders Don't Take Yes for an Answer, recorded long before ChatGPT showed up, and still insightful today.
Chat with PMeLa
You can chat directly with PMeLa, the podcast's AI persona, to get episode recommendations and answers to your project management and leadership questions. Visit PeopleAndProjectsPodcast.com/PMeLa to chat with her.
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Join Us for LEAD52
I know you want to be a more confident leader–that's why you listen to this podcast. LEAD52 is a global community of people like you who are committed to transforming their ability to lead and deliver. It's 52 weeks of leadership learning, delivered right to your inbox, taking less than 5 minutes a week. And it's all for free. Learn more and sign up at GetLEAD52.com. Thanks!
Thank you for joining me for this episode of The People and Projects Podcast!
Talent Triangle: Power Skills
Topics: Decision Making, Artificial Intelligence, Leadership, Project Management, Critical Thinking, Cognitive Bias, Problem Solving, Stakeholder Management, Judgment, Curiosity
The following music was used for this episode:
Music: Echo by Alexander Nakarada
License (CC BY 4.0): https://filmmusic.io/standard-license
Music: Tuesday by Sascha Ende
License (CC BY 4.0): https://filmmusic.io/standard-license