Season 2 of Awaiting Approval comes to a close with something a little different.

No guest this time. No one-word theme attached to a single conversation. Just me, stepping back to look at what this season became.

And honestly… I’m still a bit stunned by it.

Since launching the show in summer 2025 with no marketing spend, the podcast has grown far beyond anything I expected. More than 10,000 listens. Charting in over 15 countries. And not a single day since August 2025 where it hasn’t appeared somewhere in the charts.

That still feels surreal.

But this episode is not really about numbers. It’s about what stayed with me.

Across Season 2, I gave each episode a single word. Not to reduce the conversation, but to give it an anchor. A way of holding onto the essence of what each guest brought into the room. And when I stepped back and looked at those words together, something else emerged.

A pattern.

Not a neat one. Not a single message repeated over and over. But a thread.

And the thread that kept surfacing, in all sorts of different ways, was kindness.

Kindness in the work. Kindness in leadership. Kindness in how we treat each other. And maybe most of all, kindness towards ourselves.

Because so many of these conversations touched on pressure, expectation, self-doubt, burnout, ambition, fear, and the endless feeling that we should somehow be handling it all better than we are.

And underneath all of that was this quieter truth.

We do not need to make it harder than it already is.

This episode is a reflection on what Season 2 has meant to me, what the guests gave so generously, and how the podcast has started to grow into something bigger than a series of interviews. I also talk about one unexpected side project that came out of the season - a playlist called Awaiting Approval - The Soundtrack - made up of one song from each guest, with no names and no explanations. Just emotional fingerprints, side by side.

Tune in on Spotify here

Tune in on YouTube here https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLg04wl30BvuxGIPVDNyfEZPO69njpSldz&si=xBMGXih7Drz8Qztr

There is also a look back at the first ever Awaiting Approval LIVE, which was very much an experiment, and a look ahead to Season 3, which is already in motion and feels bigger, deeper, and more emotionally honest than anything we’ve done so far.

More than anything though, this episode is about gratitude.

For the guests. For the listeners. For the people who shared the show, rated it, messaged about it, or quietly kept coming back to it.

Because without that, this would just be a collection of conversations.

With that, it becomes something else.

In this episode, we cover:

• The growth of Awaiting Approval since launch

• Why Season 2 felt different

• The one-word structure behind each episode

• The themes that emerged when looking across the full season

• Why kindness became the defining thread

• Pressure, self-doubt, expectation, and the emotional undercurrent of the season

• The importance of being kinder in the room, in the work, and to ourselves

• The origin of Awaiting Approval - The Soundtrack

• Why one song from each guest became its own kind of portrait

• Reflections on the first Awaiting Approval LIVE

• What I learned from putting the podcast into a room

• The different ways listeners can support the show

• Gratitude to every guest who trusted me with their story

• Why the audience matters more than stats ever can

• A first glimpse at what’s coming in Season 3

If the rest of Season 2 was about listening closely to others, Episode 18 is about listening closely to what the season itself was trying to say.

And for me, it said this:

Lead with care. Stay human. Keep going.

===

This is Awaiting Approval. The globally charting design podcast about the messy, human side of creative leadership.

Hosted by Adam Jennings - a creative leader with three decades of experience leading teams and projects for global brands including Microsoft, Salesforce, 20th Century Fox, Paramount Pictures, Ancestry, Dolby, BBC and many more - this show features honest, unscripted conversations with the leaders shaping design, storytelling, and innovation today.

These are the conversations you don’t hear in keynotes. The ones about imposter syndrome, trust, failure, confidence, and finding your voice as a leader.

Whether you’re just stepping into creative leadership or you’ve been at it for years, Awaiting Approval is your place to feel seen, challenged, and encouraged.

Awaiting Approval is a Cordial Fox production.

Hosted by Adam Jennings.

Produced by Adam Jennings & Jasmin Egner.

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Awaiting Approval. Season 2, Episode 18 - Debrief