Leadership Tips | Create a Positive Spiral

Hard conversations at work will likely never be easy. But when we avoid them, the good people on our teams start filling in the blanks and making up stories about each other, and the wall between us keeps getting higher. In this episode, Desiree shares the WALL Blueprint from her breakout session at the 2026 Intentional Leader Summit. It’s a structure for having the conversations that need to be had, so the good intentions of the good people on your team can actually lead to a team that...

This week I'm connecting two ideas: my Breaking the Fourth Wall concept and Brené Brown's research on fitting in versus belonging. Brené's research found something surprising, fitting in and belonging are not the same thing. Fitting in is actually the greatest barrier to belonging. It's a survival strategy: reading the room and becoming who you need to be to get accepted. Belonging is the opposite. It's internal, it's unconditional, and it doesn't ask you to change who you are. I dig into why...

You don't have to wait for anyone to go first. You get to choose to be the first. In this episode, Desiree gives you a sneak peek into her brand new keynote, Breaking the Fourth Wall. It's a three-part approach to building trust with your team, and the starting point might surprise you. If your team has lost some ownership, engagement, or hope, this episode gets at the real reason why. Desiree opens with a personal story that reframes what leadership actually requires, then gets into why self...

Some goals only get built because someone else believed in them first. This week's tip is simple: share your BHAG. Your Big Hairy Audacious Goal. The one you've been sitting on, half-convinced it's too big to say out loud. Desiree shares the origin story of the Intentional Leader Summit, a leadership development conference that started as a passing comment to a pastor she was working with. No funding. No real plan. Just an idea spoken out loud, and someone willing to say "let's do it." That s...

Confidence gets talked about like it's something you're either born with or you're not. Extroverts have it, introverts don't. Some people just have "it" and some people never will. In this episode of You're the Boss, Now What?, Desiree Petrich pushes back on that idea completely. After coaching and speaking to thousands of leaders, she's found that self-leadership, not team dynamics, is usually the number one thing leaders want to work on. Not better meetings. Not less conflict. Confidence. T...