"Recalculating Route..." with Joel Junker

Joel Junker was always told that leaders get results, and that leaders are measured based on the results that they get. But, after decades of building an identity around results — Army officer, Notre Dame grad, and a 27-year career helping military leaders transition into business, he realized it all came with a cost that he didn't fully see until life stopped cooperating with his plan.In this conversation, Joel traces the slow erosion of a control-driven leadership model and the unexpected forces that accelerated it: a Gonzaga master's program that quietly rewired how he thought about people, his wife's breast cancer diagnosis, a climb up Mount Adams, and a Jesuit priest who spent 25 years in Soviet prisons and came out talking about surrender. The result isn't a story about slowing down. It's about finally leading in a way that's actually sustainable — and, it turns out, more joyful.