Dr. James Hewitt is a human performance scientist who works with some of the world's top businesses to bring about sustainable high-performance through science-backed strategies. In this conversation with GLN President and CEO David Ashcraft, James shares the connection between knowledge work and high performance activities like professional cycling and Formula 1 racing, and some simple steps that we can take to meet the demands of leadership.
Jul 08, 2025•42 min•Season 8Ep. 182
Developing, casting, and protecting an organization’s vision is one of the most critical functions of a leader. In this episode, GLN VP of Marketing Whitney Putnam asks President and CEO David Ashcraft to share what he’s learned about vision from his decades of leading. As always, you’ll find David’s insights to be practical, concise, and very clear. We hope you enjoy these tips on how to effectively share vision with your team.
Jul 01, 2025•15 min•Season 8Ep. 181
How often do you struggle to navigate the desire to contribute high-impact, important work for your organization, and the seemingly constant demands on your attention from email, messages, and other activities? As a voice in the battle against busyness, Juliet Funt helps organizations release their people so that they can give themselves to their most important, high-impact work. In this conversation with David Ashcraft, Juliet explains some of the mindset shifts that leaders need to undergo in ...
Jun 24, 2025•43 min•Season 8Ep. 180
In this second part of a two-part episode, GLN President and CEO David Ashcraft continues his conversation with author and consultant Les McKeown on the lifecycle stages of organizations, and the different ways leaders can respond in order to meet the unique challenges of each stage
Jun 20, 2025•33 min•Season 8Ep. 179
What does it take for a new organization to succeed? After launching numerous companies, Les McKeown began to identify some common patterns that new ventures all seemed to go through, releasing his findings in his book, Predictable Success: Getting Your Organization on the Growth Track—and Keeping it There . He recently sat down with the GLN’s own David Ashcraft to go deeper into the six stages in the lifecycle of an organization, and how leaders can respond in each of them. This is the first pa...
Jun 17, 2025•29 min•Season 8Ep. 178
As a pilot of a U.S. Navy F-14 Tomcat fighter plane, Carey Lohrenz learned the importance of being able to focus when the stakes are high. In this conversation with Jason Jaggard, she shares some of the simple tools that can help leaders in every situation learn to pursue excellence, plan effectively, and gain clarity on their “span of control.”
Jun 10, 2025•37 min•Season 8Ep. 177
Part of the work of leadership is about achieving and maintaining clarity: on your personal vocation, on your organization’s purpose and mission, and on the most important activities to achieve results. Moreover, clarity helps us navigate the curveballs and unexpected challenges that life inevitably brings our way. We are kicking off this month of talking about de-cluttering leadership by hearing from GLN President and CEO David Ashcraft. David shares some of the strategies and activities that h...
Jun 03, 2025•16 min•Season 8Ep. 176
What does it truly mean to be resilient? In this episode, GLN President and CEO David Ashcraft interviews top management thinker, organizational psychologist and self-awareness expert Dr. Tasha Eurich. Together they unpack Tasha’s latest book, Shatterproof, and discuss how leaders today—she calls them “stressed-out strivers”—can move beyond mere resilience and learn to thrive in our modern world.
May 27, 2025•48 min•Season 8Ep. 175
A quick survey of Jo Saxton’s life would tell you that she is deeply passionate about developing leaders. Whether it’s through speaking, her leadership of the Ezer Collective and Bethel University’s “The 25,” her podcast or her books, her mission is easy to see. Fresh off the stage at the 2024 Global Leadership Summit, she sat down with Jason Jaggard to talk about her work, and shared wisdom on what young leaders bring to the workplace and how seasoned leaders can engage this emerging generation...
May 20, 2025•37 min•Season 8Ep. 174
Recorded live at last year’s Global Leadership Summit, Erwin Raphael McManus sat down to interview Harvard Business School Professor Arthur C. Brooks. Arthur takes us on a deep dive of science and physiology of happiness and gives us an introduction on how to leverage meta-cognition to start becoming happier people. As Erwin mentions in the interview, Arthur is a firehose of information, and you will definitely want to take notes as you listen in to this conversation.
May 13, 2025•36 min•Season 8Ep. 173
How can leaders stay holistically healthy amidst demands for high-performance and the constant chaos of the modern world? GLN President and CEO David Ashcraft sits down with Whitney Putnam to share his thoughts on what leaders can do to care for themselves so they can stay in the game for the long haul.
May 06, 2025•17 min•Season 8Ep. 172
Stephanie Chung spent her career in the aviation industry, rising from being a baggage handler to eventually making history as the first African American and second female president of a major private aviation company. During that rise, she was a top sales executive, generating $1B in revenue annually. Stephanie is now a highly sought-after speaker, and her most recent book, Ally Leadership: How to Lead People Who Are Not Like You , was released in 2024. In this conversation with GLN President a...
Apr 29, 2025•48 min•Season 8Ep. 171
Dan Owolabi is a CEO, a sought-after speaker and an author. He founded Branches Worldwide based on the belief that faith-fueled entrepreneurs can transform communities. Branches Worldwide works diligently to raise up entrepreneurs around the world and to connect them with resources, mentors and community. At the 2024 Global Leadership Summit, Dan sat down with Jason Jaggard, CEO of Novus Global and Global Leadership Podcast team member, to talk about why entrepreneurship is so critical to local ...
Apr 22, 2025•35 min•Season 8Ep. 170
At the 2024 Global Leadership Summit GLN President and CEO, David Ashcraft interviewed Joni Eareckson Tada—an internationally recognized speaker, author, and advocate who has spent decades leading with grace, resilience, and faith. After a diving accident left her quadriplegic at 17, Joni turned her pain into purpose, founding Joni and Friends, a global ministry serving people with disabilities. Her journey is a powerful testament to the kind of leadership that transcends circumstances—one marke...
Apr 08, 2025•40 min•Season 8Ep. 169
This month, our focus at the GLN is on leaving a leadership legacy and today podcast host (and GLN VP of Marketing), Whitney Putnam interviews GLN President and CEO David Ashcraft on his experience with organizational transitions and successions. David shares gems from his 30 years of local church leadership, including how to get started planning a legacy, and the one thing that can absolutely derail a positive transition. Every leader should be thinking about what (or who) will follow them, and...
Apr 01, 2025•20 min•Season 8Ep. 168
A healthy and effective team culture is essential to organizational success, but building a culture of excellence is not automatic. Today’s episode is a live recording of a workshop led by GLN President and CEO David Ashcraft. In the workshop, David shares how to establish team culture in a practical and effective way and explains how values and behaviors help drive successful outcomes for a team. In addition, David also runs through some of the specific values and behaviors that currently defin...
Mar 25, 2025•41 min•Season 8Ep. 167
In this special live recording of the podcast, Craig Groeschel interviews former Duke University men’s basketball coach Mike Krzyzewski (“Coach K”): a Naismith Hall of Fame coach, five-time national champion at Duke, and six-time gold medalist as head Coach of the US Men’s National Team. Coach K shares essential ingredients that helped produce his extraordinary career, including how to keep leadership current and how to respond to unexpected challenges. Regardless of where you are in your leader...
Mar 11, 2025•40 min•Season 8Ep. 166
Today’s episode draws on the wealth of experience of GLN President and CEO, David Ashcraft, as he and GLN VP of Marketing Whitney Putnam cover a variety of topics related to working with teams. This conversation ranges from values, to empowerment, to conflict, and is absolutely full of practical leadership gems.
Mar 05, 2025•27 min•Season 8Ep. 165
“Love” and “work” are not words that are usually thought of in the same context. For today’s guest, however, “love” has a measurable and positive impact on the metrics of work. Marcus Buckingham is known for starting the “Strengths Revolution.” He is also a global researcher and New York Times bestselling author, and he recently joined the GLN’s David Ashcraft for a conversation about the role that love plays—or should play—in our work. Whether you are a leader who wants to know how to bring the...
Feb 26, 2025•1 hr•Season 8Ep. 164
Paula Faris joins the podcast today to talk about the different ways leaders can “lead with heart.” Paula is an award-winning journalist, bestselling author, podcast host and the founder of CARRY Media, and she sat down for this conversation with Global Leadership Network President and CEO David Ashcraft. Together they explore the roles that intuition and passion have had in Paula’s life, how leaders can protect themselves while practicing openness and authenticity and how leading with heart inf...
Feb 18, 2025•45 min•Season 8Ep. 163
This month’s theme at the Global Leadership Network is “leading with heart,” and in this episode of the Global Leadership Podcast, Whitney Putnam sits down with GLN president and CEO David Ashcraft. Together, they explore what it means to lead with heart and examine practical ways that leaders can begin to lead with openness and authenticity. David and Whitney also discuss how to avoid some potential pitfalls that can occur as leaders begin to open up to those around them.
Feb 11, 2025•18 min•Season 8Ep. 162
As leaders, we understand that purpose and calling play critical roles in achieving our goals. This week’s guest highlights the potential pitfall of focusing solely on achievement. In this episode, former top sports agent Molly Fletcher shares how long-term joy and happiness come not from achievement but from daily improvement and fulfillment. At the 2024 Global Leadership Summit, she discussed key concepts from her book, Dynamic Drive: The Purpose-Fueled Formula for Sustainable Success , in a l...
Jan 28, 2025•35 min•Season 8Ep. 161
One aspect of purpose and calling is being willing to live it out with freedom and joy. But what do you do if your purpose is highly visible and involves frequent accolades and applause? In this episode, author and speaker Megan Fate Marshman sits down with Jason Jaggard to share about how private disciplines help balance her public call. Together they explore the importance of slowing down, the importance of grounding your identity in Christ and how emotions like anger and anxiety can be signpo...
Jan 14, 2025•36 min•Season 8Ep. 160
“Vision leaks” is a well-known leadership axiom, and to kick off January’s theme of being a “purposeful leader,” Whitney Putnam sits down with GLN President and CEO David Ashcraft. In this conversation, they explore the role purpose and mission has in David’s life and leadership. We’ll also hear about some common pitfalls that leaders can face regarding purpose, and how he has learned to guard against them.
Jan 07, 2025•20 min•Season 8Ep. 159
Our topic for December is “conflict,” and GLN President and CEO gets us started with this conversation with Whitney Putnam. We invite you to listen as David shares how his approach to conflict has evolved and some of the practical lessons he’s learned over time. Conflict is inevitable, but it does not have to result in negative consequences; it can actually improve our relationships and our work together.
Dec 12, 2024•18 min•Season 8Ep. 157
It’s difficult to keep our cool when disagreements and tension crop up in our relationships. Yet, this is the moment when we most need to be calm and curious. Is there a way that we can start to move beyond reacting impulsively and start to become curious about what is truly going on behind the conflict we are experiencing? Comedic thought leader, author and actor Michael Jr. sat down with Craig Groeschel at the 2024 Global Leadership Summit and shared what we often get wrong about conflict. He ...
Dec 10, 2024•35 min•Season 8Ep. 158
How do you react when you fail? Have you ever wished that you could learn more quickly from your failures and move on? In this episode, GLS Executive Producer Lori Hermann sits down with CEO, executive coach and best-selling author Ryan Leak to hear how he learned more from his failures than he ever did from his successes. In their conversation, they discuss his documentary, “Chasing Failure,” and how failure became the best teacher throughout his life.
Nov 26, 2024•40 min•Season 8Ep. 156
Are you a leader who wants to help your team learn to risk more and fail well? In this episode, Harvard Business School professor Amy C. Edmondson sits down with our Jason Jaggard to unpack her research behind her latest book, The Right Kind of Wrong: The Science of Failing Well. Their conversation includes the difference between a mistake and a failure, the 3 categories of failures, and how to encourage a team to experiment and learn quickly.
Nov 12, 2024•39 min•Season 8Ep. 155
For leaders, there’s no avoiding failure; it just comes with the territory. However, how leaders respond when things don’t go as planned—how they lead through failure—is absolutely critical. This month, we are going to focus on ways that leaders can lead through failure and turn potential disappointment into powerful lessons for growth and renewal. In this episode, GLN President and CEO, David Ashcraft, shares stories of times when things did not go as planned, and how he has learned to “fail we...
Nov 05, 2024•19 min•Season 8Ep. 154
Hospitality is one of the most powerful differentiators that an organization possesses, but it can be challenging to create and sustain it across an entire culture. In this episode, cofounder and former president of Ritz-Carlton Hotel Company, Horst Schulze, shares hospitality insights from a legendary career with GLN President and CEO, David Ashcraft. If you’re a leader who is interested in creating a culture of excellence and customer-focused hospitality, we invite you listen in to this rich c...
Oct 22, 2024•40 min•Season 8Ep. 153
