The Day the New Deal Began - The Ready Set Podcast - 015

In this episode, we look at what a recent Fast Company investigation into the lives of a hundred senior-level mothers reveals about leadership — and connect it to the story of Frances Perkins, the woman who witnessed the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire in 1911 and spent the next forty years building the structural requirements that forced leaders to close the gap between what they said they valued and what they actually built.What we cover:The AI bedtime story — and why what looks like ingenuity is actually a signal about what the system is extracting from the people inside itWhy the problems we call systemic almost always have a behavioral layer underneath them that individual leaders are choosing every single dayThe Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire and the moment Frances Perkins said everything she would eventually fight for came into focusWhy Perkins understood that leaders don't voluntarily close the gap between stated values and actual practice — and what she built to force them toHow four Ready Set behaviors — Shared Success, Values-Based Integrity, Clarity Establishment, and Mission Minded — show up in this conversation and what closing the gap actually looks like in practiceThe question every leader should be sitting with after this episode: what are you currently requiring of people that they should never have to compensate for in the first place?Three things to sit with this week:Where is the gap between what you say you value and what the actual daily experience of being on your team confirms?Who on your team is building their own workarounds to compensate for clarity, flexibility, or support you never provided — and what would it look like to close that gap instead?What is one behavioral decision you could make this week — not next quarter, this week — that would make the culture you describe more honest?For the full behavioral breakdown — including all four behaviors and the research behind them — check out the article at thereadyset.substack.com. The Fast Company piece that sparked it is linked below as well as in the article and worth reading in full.https://www.fastcompany.com/91541720/corporate-america-is-crushing-senior-level-mothersPaid membership for The Ready Set is open. KLIR gives you a personalized behavioral picture of where you actually stand across the ten behaviors we've covered. The AI Ready Set Coach helps you build a real development plan around your specific results. It's not a content upgrade — it's a genuine development experience.Learn more: https://ready-set-membership.c2advising.com/The Ready Set is a behavioral leadership model built on 15+ years of observational data. New content drops weekly on Substack.Subscribe: thereadyset.substack.com Get full access to The Ready Set at thereadyset.substack.com/subscribe