Podcast
The Leadership Line
Hosted by Tammy Rogers and Scott Burgmeyer · EN
Leading people, growing organizations, and optimizing opportunities is not for the faint of heart. It takes courage, drive, discipline and maybe just a dash of good fortune. Tammy and Scott, mavericks, business owners, life-long learners, collaborators and sometimes competitors join forces to explore the world of work. They tackle real-life work issues – everything from jerks at work to organizational burnout. And while they may not always agree – Tammy and Scott’s experience, perspective and practical advice helps viewers turn the kaleidoscope, examine options and alternatives, and identify actionable solutions.
10episodes
Episodes
Newest firstAll episodes
Why Treating Everyone The Same Hurts Performance
3d ago00:14:17Tap to summarize“Treat everyone the same” sounds like good leadership advice until you watch it drain the life out of a team. We kick things off with a quick, funny peanut butter detour, then turn it into a serious management lesson: when leaders smear praise, raises, and feedback evenly across everyone, they create the peanut butter effect. It looks fair on paper, but it quietly punishes effort, blurs standards, and teaches people that results don’t matter.Tammy shares a story from waitressing that makes the point instantly: keeping your own tips rewards service and hustle, while tip pooling protects slackers and frustrates the people carrying the shift. From there, we dig into what fairness at work should actually mean in performance management, including when (and when not) factors like seniority should matter. Scott adds a key caveat: accountability only works when what you measure is fair and reasonable, and when you look at performance over a real time window, not just a last-minute burst before review season.We also bring in the “energy vampire” idea and the assessment from our book, Chief Optimization Officer, to ask a tough question: are you breathing life into the organization or sucking it out? The big takeaway is simple and sharp: equal treatment can disable performance. Differentiated recognition, consistent feedback, and transparent metrics help you keep your achievers, develop your steady contributors, and stop rewarding outcomes that never arrived. If this hits home, subscribe, share it with a manager you care about, and leave a review. What’s the worst “peanut butter” policy you’ve seen at work?To learn more about the energy vampire assessment, click here. To learn more about out book Chief Optimization Officer, click here.
Transcribe →Truth Telling At Work
1w ago00:21:36Tap to summarizeThe fastest way to poison a team isn’t a big argument, it’s the silence that comes before it. We start with a real workplace conflict and use it to unpack a skill most organizations say they want but rarely practice well: truth telling at work. For us, it’s not about “brutal honesty” or getting the last word. It’s about giving clear, meaningful feedback that protects trust, improves performance, and strengthens working relationships.We dig into the foundations that make honest communication possible. First, integrity and the say-to-do ratio: if your actions don’t match your words, people won’t give your feedback any weight. Then we challenge the harder question, intention. Are we sharing truth to help someone grow, repair a relationship, or prevent a repeated problem, or are we trying to vent, punish, or feel powerful? We talk candidly about what happens when feedback turns reactive and why even accurate points can become damaging when the goal is to make someone feel small.We also get practical about trust at work, psychological safety, and why relationship comes before critique. Feedback lands differently when there’s a civil, respectful connection and a history of follow-through. And because everyone misses sometimes, we close on a missing ingredient in workplace culture: forgiveness, the ability to repair after wrong words, wrong timing, or wrong tone so people don’t carry old mistakes forever.If you care about leadership, employee engagement, conflict resolution, and building a team that can actually talk to each other, hit play.
Transcribe →The Unspoken Rules Of Work
2w ago00:30:42Tap to summarizeYou can do great work and still get taken out by a rule nobody wrote down. We start with some light banter, then get real about the unspoken workplace norms that quietly shape careers: how you talk about your boss, how you push back, and how quickly “truth” can turn into a reputation problem.Tammy shares a painful early-career story where she trashed her manager to the company president and learned a blunt lesson about power dynamics. From there, we dig into organizational maturity, managing up, and why taking responsibility matters more than having the best argument. We also talk about the hidden culture builders leaders rarely name out loud: second chances, forgiveness, and the trust equation. If people cannot recover from mistakes without being punished forever, trust never sticks and teams turn toxic fast.Scott tells a story from his quality director days when he defied a high-level executive, stayed calm, and still triggered a decade of political collateral. We break down what he said, why it landed the way it did, and how to communicate truth with the right level of formality and framing so your message gets heard without torching your future. Along the way we reframe “organizational politics” as relationship, translation, and finding win-win outcomes without losing your integrity.If you care about leadership, workplace communication skills, accountability, and building trust at work, this one will hit home. Subscribe, share with a coworker.
Transcribe →The Simple Habits That Keep You Employed
3w ago00:19:44Tap to summarizeShowing up late, ignoring direction, and making coworkers miserable will end more careers than a lack of technical skill. We start with a deceptively simple line from Tom Hanks about what it takes to succeed at work: show up on time, know the text, and have an idea. Then we put it under a microscope and talk about what “the minimum” really looks like in modern workplaces where reliability and teamwork feel rarer than they should be. We share a real story from a program built to close a middle-skill workforce gap in Iowa. The state funded technical training, yet people still struggled to stay employed. Employers weren’t complaining about the certificate or the knowledge. They were describing behavioral breakdowns: not showing up, not following procedure, and constant conflict. That insight led to a practical approach centered on self-awareness, clear expectations, and accountability around four basic employability skills: show up, show up on time, do what you’re asked, and be easy to work with. From there, we get honest about the hardest leadership problem we see everywhere: toxic employees who produce results but damage the culture. We talk about why “fixing the jerk” is less effective than leading so the organization stops tolerating jerk behavior in the first place, and we address the real-world constraint leaders bring up all the time: “I can’t replace them.” If that’s true, we push for a plan instead of acceptance, with thoughtful action rather than reactive blowups. If you want practical leadership advice, better team culture, and a clear framework for job performance, press play. Subscribe, share this with a leader or teammate who needs it.
Transcribe →Turning Pop Culture Into Better Leadership
May 2700:21:38Tap to summarizeWhat if the best leadership coaching you get this week comes from a movie night? We start with a deceptively simple question: what’s your favorite work-adjacent movie, and why does it feel true to real life at work? From there we connect scenes, characters, and team dynamics to the problems leaders deal with every day: pressure, performance, trust, and what to do when someone needs a push to see their own potential. We dig into Hoosiers and A League Of Their Own to talk about coaching, role clarity, and the underrated skill of building a strong team with the people you actually have. That leads to a blunt truth about management and workplace culture: everyone is imperfect, including the leader, so the job is to maximize strengths, reduce friction, and keep moving toward the goal without pretending people are easy. Then we jump to work-related TV shows, from Ted Lasso as a leadership primer to The Office as a painfully familiar workplace mirror. We even wrestle with the idea that “mind games” exist in business, while also naming the line you don’t cross: “killing people is not a good business plan.” The episode closes with practical reflective questions, a reminder to pivot when things get stuck, and a story about teaching emotional intelligence without fancy jargon. If you’ve ever learned more from a character than a training deck, you’ll feel seen. Subscribe for more, share this with a coworker who loves pop culture, and leave a review with the movie or show that taught you the most about leadership.
Transcribe →Say Yes
May 2000:17:31Tap to summarizeThe fastest way to stall your career is to walk into your first job trying to prove you have already arrived. We start with a surprisingly perfect metaphor: cowbells outside the window, marathons running past the house, and the Bix Run in Davenport where the crowd cheers so hard it feels like a moving party. It is funny, but it is also real, because careers work the same way. The energy is out there, the opportunities are moving, and you decide whether you are going to stay in bed or step onto the course.From there, we pivot into graduation season and the advice we wish every new college grad would hear before entering the workforce. Our simple take: be curious and say yes. Not yes to nonsense, but yes to learning, yes to the invite that scares you, yes to staying late one day to understand the bigger picture, yes to the unexpected project that teaches you more than any class. Curiosity builds context, and context is what turns “smart” into effective.We also get blunt about entitlement, ego, and the overlooked skill of being a great follower. Listening well, aligning with leaders, and respecting authority can be the difference between building trust quickly and burning bridges early. We talk about how confidence grows when you do hard things you never thought you could do, and how to handle the real concern of being taken advantage of without shutting down opportunities too soon.If you are a new graduate, a parent of a grad, or a leader mentoring early-career talent, this one is packed with practical career advice, leadership lessons, and mindset shifts you can use immediately.
Transcribe →Disagree Without Being Disagreeable
May 1300:19:07Tap to summarizeThe fastest way to lose trust is to “win” with power. We start with a simple question that shows up everywhere from leadership meetings to group chats: how do you disagree with people without becoming disagreeable? Along the way, we call out a pattern that feels normal right now, using authority, volume, or status to force agreement, and we name the real cost: you create compliance, not commitment, and you train people to stop thinking out loud.We talk through why power moves can look effective in the moment but limit growth over time. A team built on yes-people can’t adapt, and a leader who always needs to be right eventually hits a wall. One of the most helpful reframes we’ve ever heard anchors the conversation: do you want to be right, or do you want to be in relationship? We unpack what “relationship” means in a practical workplace sense, keeping enough respect and curiosity to understand another perspective and stay effective together.Then we get tactical. We lean on a simple decision approach that emphasizes options, because options turn conflict into collaboration. You’ll hear specific phrases you can use with a boss when you’re nervous to speak up, like “I see this differently. Are you willing to have a conversation about it?” and “Can we explore other options, or has the decision been made?” We also cover how to handle peer conflict, how to avoid the stuff-it-then-explode cycle, and how to decide when an issue is truly worth pushing on.If you want better conflict resolution, stronger communication skills, and more psychological safety on your team, hit play.
Transcribe →Stop Labeling Coworkers And Start Leading People
May 600:21:59Tap to summarizeThe fastest way to misunderstand your team is to label them first. We start with a story about a legendary English teacher who used to mark “WBG” for Wild Blatant Generalization, then we bring that same red pen to one of the most common workplace shortcuts: “Boomers are like this,” “Millennials want that,” “Gen Z won’t do this.”From there, we dig into what’s actually useful when you’re managing multigenerational teams. Yes, formative events and technology shifts can shape how people see the world, but we argue that “generation” is a messy proxy for something more real: personal experience, life stage, and the environment you grew up in. Scott compares generational talk to the Predictive Index and other personality assessments, where preferences can be helpful data but become harmful the moment we treat them as destiny or an excuse not to grow.We also get into the nature versus nurture debate, why stereotypes can quietly diminish individuality, and how leaders can build a healthier workplace culture by staying curious about the person in front of them. If you care about leadership, employee engagement, inclusion, and reducing bias at work, this one will sharpen how you think and how you talk.
Transcribe →When Peer Leaders Stop Being A Team
Apr 2900:19:54Tap to summarizeYour peer leadership group has the same titles, the same seniority, and the same meeting cadence, yet it still feels like a cold war. People protect their turf, hold back information, and quietly keep score. We start by naming what’s really happening: a group of peers isn’t automatically a team, and “we just need more visibility” is often a polite way of saying trust is missing.From there, we dig into what trust looks like in real working meetings: disclosure, follow-through, confidentiality, and the ability to tell the truth without getting punished. We talk about why organizations set teams up to fail by assuming successful adults already know how to “team,” even though cross-functional collaboration is a skill set that needs expectations, practice, and reinforcement. We also unpack the hidden risk of leaderless peer groups where nobody calls out dysfunction, nobody rewards the right behavior, and ego slowly replaces shared purpose.Finally, we challenge leaders to look in the mirror. If you hand a hard decision to a peer group and walk away, you don’t get to be surprised when chaos follows. Delegation without support can damage relationships, waste talent, and drive good people out the door. If you care about healthy management teams, workplace culture, and better decision making, this conversation gives you a clear reset.
Transcribe →Don’t Blame The Org Chart
Apr 2200:13:44Tap to summarizeNo description available
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