Podcast Summary: Fixable – "Quick Fixes: How to Step into Leadership, Improve Your Organization, and Regain Lost Support"
Hosts: Anne Morriss & Frances Frei
Date: November 3, 2025
Episode Overview
This episode of Fixable centers around "excellence by design" and how leaders at every stage can create environments where both they and their teams thrive. Anne Morriss and Frances Frei apply their coaching philosophies to answer three listener questions, each focused on challenges related to assuming new leadership roles, deciding whether to stay or leave a challenging organization, and regaining lost support as a manager. Throughout, the hosts emphasize actionable mindsets, practical tools, and experiments for real workplace change.
Key Discussion Points & Insights
1. Moving from Individual Contributor to Leader
Caller Situation: Listener is beginning their leadership journey in marine conservation, feeling out of depth but motivated to lead effectively.
(03:16–08:49, 12:37–13:05)
Mindset Shift:
- Leadership is about making others better.
“Leadership is the practice of making other people better. It’s a significant other orientation.” —Frances, 04:50
- The path of an individual contributor focuses on mastery, while leadership is about enabling others’ success.
“When you are on the path of individual contributor, it is a path of mastery... It is a very different mindset to how will I enable impact by working through these other complicated, imperfect human beings.” —Anne, 05:53
Core Toolkit for New Leaders:
- Growth mindset
- Recommended Carol Dweck’s “Mindset” (drawing on Satya Nadella’s experience at Microsoft) as foundational reading.
“If you want to get started on this lifelong journey... this is the beginning of your toolkit.” —Anne, 08:18
- Three Practical Behaviors (Frances, 09:01–11:09):
- Build and rebuild trust.
- Trust is foundational; must be intentionally developed and restored when broken.
- High standards and deep devotion.
- Set ambitious expectations while demonstrating care and commitment to team members.
- Seek difference.
- Embrace and lead diverse viewpoints and skills — don’t default to people “just like you.”
- Build and rebuild trust.
Embracing Mistakes:
“Be very excited about learning things for the first time, which often is accompanied by getting it wrong before you get it right.”—Frances, 12:01
Summary List (Anne, 12:37):
- Adopt a growth mindset
- Intentionally build trust
- Set others up for success (high standards, deep devotion)
- Seek out difference
2. Should I Stay or Go? Agency in Middle Management
Caller Situation: Middle manager at a large vet hospital feels powerless to advocate for her team due to disconnected and overburdened HR/upper management. She asks: Should she continue fighting for change or consider leaving?
(16:09–27:19)
Reclaiming Power & Agency
- Before leaving, ask: Is my powerlessness because of others’ failings — or because I haven’t learned how to step into my own power?
"An alternate hypothesis is you’re feeling powerless because you have not yet learned how to step into your power. I'd like you to explore that..." —Frances, 17:25
- “Lift your head,” see your options, and realize you aren’t “held captive.” This realization reduces the grip of survival anxiety and opens up new possibilities.
“There’s a lot of power and agency that comes with picking your head up, looking around, realizing you have options…” —Anne, 17:51
Running Experiments
- Try new advocacy approaches:
“Run experiments in how to make this system better, take more risk, take more decisive action...” —Anne, 17:51
- If standard approaches haven’t worked, experiment with:
- Language (Is it us vs. them? Are there unintended ‘villains’?)
- Protagonists and KPIs (Are you focusing on what matters most to leadership?)
- Link advocacy to upper management's priorities:
“Link the efficacy and support of your team to whatever this objective is that the leaders in the system are trying to achieve.” —Anne, 22:56
Critical Path Framing
- Get yourself and your team on the ‘critical path’ of leadership’s immediate needs — especially in times of crisis (e.g., pivot to helping with profitability, sales, etc.).
“Leadership does not currently see you on the critical path to their success... Even if it means you and your team have to pivot and reframe what you’re doing.” —Frances, 23:45
Concrete Example:
- Cross-functional collaboration (e.g., customer service teaming with sales during revenue crunches) can make a middle manager’s team indispensable and earn leadership attention.
“You make the shift... co-sign with sales. How can we sign up to be helpful to your revenue numbers?” —Frances, 26:23
Exit Only If...
- After creative experimentation, if no progress is made and power remains elusive, then build a plan to exit.
3. Rebuilding Trust as a New Leader
Caller Situation: First-time manager at a fast-growing company—team is losing faith, and projects are stalling. She feels promises of leadership responsibility weren’t matched by actual autonomy.
(29:48–39:48)
Redefining Leadership (Away from ‘Autonomy’)
“Leadership is not a pass to go figure it out on your own and come back with the polished solution... It comes with full accountability, not full license... you have accountability to win.” —Frances, 30:31
Co-Production, Not Solo Effort
- Leaders must co-produce results with both their teams and those above them.
- “Co-production” is standard in education & healthcare (teacher/student; doctor/patient) but applies in all organizational leadership settings.
“Great leaders have a co-productive mindset… Great leadership is always co-productive with the other stakeholders.” —Frances, 33:25
Practical Steps for the Manager:
- Approach stakeholders early and often — learn their ideas and concerns BEFORE finalizing plans.
- Reframe “feedback” as a co-production opportunity, not as a personal failure.
On Tough Feedback:
- Recognize when frustration with upper management may have unintentionally “leaked” to your team and undermined trust.
“When we, even in the smallest way, make a two-dimensional caricature of other people or even hint at throwing other people under the bus, the person who suffers most is... the person who does that.” —Frances, 36:09
Memorable Insight on Feedback’s Pain
“Other people’s words will only hurt you to the degree to which you already believe them.” —Anne (summarizing Peter Crone), 37:16
- The feedback that “stings” is often feedback we fear to be true; do the emotional work to become curious instead of wounded.
Cultivate Curiosity:
- “Summon that gorgeous curiosity. Particularly when it smarts, because that’s the gold here when we get feedback.” —Anne, 39:34
Notable Quotes (with Attribution & Timestamps)
- “Leadership is the practice of making other people better. It’s a significant other orientation.” —Frances, 04:50
- “The artist’s path is a path towards expertise and excellence... It is a very different mindset — from self to other, artist to operator or leader.” —Anne, 05:53
- “Be very excited about learning things for the first time, which often is accompanied by getting it wrong before you get it right. Enjoy.” —Frances, 12:01
- “You’re feeling powerless because you have not yet learned how to step into your power. I'd like you to explore that...” —Frances, 17:25
- “There’s a lot of power and agency that comes with picking your head up, looking around, realizing you have options…” —Anne, 17:51
- “Run experiments in how to make this system better, take more risk, take more decisive action...” —Anne, 17:51
- “Leadership is not a pass to go figure it out on your own and come back with the polished solution.” —Frances, 30:31
- “Great leaders have a co-productive mindset… Great leadership is always co-productive with the other stakeholders.” —Frances, 33:25
- “When we... even hint at throwing other people under the bus, the person who suffers most is... the person who does that.” —Frances, 36:09
- “Other people’s words will only hurt you to the degree to which you already believe them.” —Anne, 37:16
- “Summon that gorgeous curiosity. Particularly when it smarts, because that’s the gold here when we get feedback.” —Anne, 39:34
Timestamps for Key Segments
- [03:16] – New manager asks for leadership toolkit
- [04:50] – Leadership as “making others better”
- [05:53] – Shift from “artist” to “operator/leader” mindset
- [08:18] – Growth mindset book recommendation
- [09:01–11:09] – Three behaviors for leaders: trust, high standards/devotion, seeking difference
- [12:01] – Embracing mistakes and learning
- [16:09] – Middle manager asks: stay or go?
- [17:25] – Stepping into your own power
- [17:51] – Agency from imagining options
- [22:56] – Linking advocacy to leadership priorities
- [23:45] – Getting on ‘critical path’ for leadership attention
- [26:23] – Example: Service teams supporting sales during crisis
- [30:31] – Leadership as accountability, not unchecked autonomy
- [33:25] – The ‘co-production’ principle in leadership
- [36:09] – Watch for ‘leaked’ frustration
- [37:16 & 39:34] – Quotes on receiving and metabolizing hard feedback
Closing Thoughts
Anne Morriss and Frances Frei urge listeners to approach leadership as both a mindset (curiosity, learning, service to others) and a set of repeatable experiments (trust, standards, seeking difference, and co-production). Their practical advice is to run experiments, stay in dialogue with stakeholders, and use feedback — even (especially) when it stings — as fuel for growth. The throughline: meaningful change, both personal and organizational, can happen fast with the right focus and intention.
Contact the show: fixable@ted.com or call 234-FIXABLE (234-349-2253)