Courage to Advance with Kim Bohr

Kim Bohr, CEO of SparkEffect and host of Courage to Advance, sees it all the time: leaders who don’t think about professional visibility until they’re forced to. A layoff, a reorg, a pivot they didn’t plan for. And suddenly they’re trying to build a presence from scratch on a platform they’ve been ignoring. That’s not just inconvenient. That’s starting from zero when the stakes are at their highest. The common pattern is to treat professional presence as someone else’s job. The marketing team handles the brand. The company page is there. But the reality is simpler than that: people trust people, not logos. Company pages generate almost no real engagement. And a leader who only shows up when they need something is working from the same deficit as someone who only calls a friend when they need a favor. You feel the difference. So does everyone else. In this episode, Kim sits down with Nina Froriep, a visual storyteller, Emmy-winning producer, and LinkedIn content strategist who spent the early part of her career producing for Oprah and winning awards in documentary filmmaking. When the industry shifted, she turned that storytelling skill toward helping business leaders show up authentically through her firm, Clockwise Productions. What You’ll Discover Why leaders who wait until a crisis to build their network are already behind How Nina’s move from Oprah to LinkedIn showed her that less production builds more real connection The “List of 25”: a simple way to keep professional relationships warm before you need them Why sharing personal things you care about (a dog, a photo exhibit, a place you love) actually builds professional credibility How LinkedIn’s algorithm penalizes inconsistency and why once a week is plenty Why engagement, not posting, is the real growth strategy right now “If we create a void, it will be filled with conjecture. So give them something about you personally.” — Nina Froriep Courage to Advance is where we talk to leaders who are building the organizations they wish existed. Hosted by Kim Bohr, CEO of SparkEffect. New episodes drop every second, third, and fourth Tuesday of each month Subscribe and listen at https://couragetoadvancepodcast.com

Most companies treat employee motivation like a personality trait. When engagement drops, the default assumption is that the employee isn't driven enough or doesn't care enough. But what if the problem isn't who you hired? What if it's what you never asked them? Host Kim Bohr sits down with Daniela Tancau to unpack where the disconnect starts. That's the pattern Daniela has spent 18 years diagnosing. Across thousands of interviews with employees and candidates, she's watched organizations reduce HR to two functions (hiring and administration) while ignoring the tools that actually shape whether people stay and produce. Companies run anonymous surveys that can't identify individual motivational drivers. They train employees based on company needs, not employee goals. They assume a shared mission means shared motivation. Daniela founded Improve Work to close that gap. Based in Romania and serving entrepreneurs and team leaders across the U.S. and Western Europe, she developed a structured interview methodology organized around seven factors that affect employee motivation, from task alignment and manager relationships to salary expectations and career development. Her program is available as both a consulting engagement and a self-paced online course. What You'll Discover: Why "motivation comes from within" lets companies off the hook, and what they actually control The difference between personal motivation and employee motivation, and why confusing them leads to disengagement Why CEO-led motivation conversations signal care before asking for commitment The seven factors that determine whether an employee stays engaged or quietly checks out "You have to show care before you ask for the employees to care about your company and about your goals. So it's a two way street." – Daniela Tancau Courage to Advance is hosted by Kim Bohr, CEO of SparkEffect, and explores how leaders are building the organizations they wish existed, sharing the real decisions, setbacks, and strategies behind meaningful change. New episodes drop every second, third, and fourth Tuesday of each month. Subscribe and listen at https://couragetoadvancepodcast.com

Most leadership development programs don’t fail because the content is wrong. They fail because of what organizations do, and don’t do, the moment the program ends.  Richard Mirabile, PhD, is a leadership development researcher and practitioner with more than 30 years of applied work across organizational psychology, corporate environments, startups, and consulting. He is the creator of SparkEffect’s Leadership Development program, a 16-module facilitated development experience built from decades of research on what genuinely changes how leaders lead.  In this episode, Mirabile and host Kim Bohr examine the gap too many organizations miss: the difference between doing leadership and being a leader. Most programs address the doing side: results, output, metrics. His argument is that the being side (how you show up, whether you listen, whether your team trusts you enough to tell you the truth) is what truly determines whether a leader holds up under pressure. And it’s rarely addressed in standard development programs.  What You’ll Discover:  Why the “single-shot” training approach almost never produces lasting behavior change  The difference between doing leadership and being a leader, and why most organizations only measure one  Why leaders are almost never terminated for technical failures, and what really derails them  How “facilitated development” differs from training, and why that distinction matters for L&D ROI  Where AI falls short in leadership development, and why human connection can’t be replaced  What Mirabile's “to-be list” looks like in practice, and how to try it this week  How SparkEffect’s Trust Elasticity research (71% of employees experienced major disruption in the last 24 months) connects to what leaders are doing, or not doing, right now   “If the trust isn’t there, it almost doesn’t matter what else you do.” — Rick Mirabile, PhD  About Courage to Advance: Hosted by Kim Bohr, President and COO of SparkEffect, Courage to Advance features researchers, executives, and practitioners doing the hard work of building organizations where performance and trust aren’t in conflict. Subscribe wherever you listen to podcasts at couragetoadvancepodcast.com. 

What does it actually look like when a CEO spends years intentionally handing over the reins, and both leaders are willing to tell the whole story?  This episode of Courage to Advance is different from any we’ve done before. There’s no outside guest. Instead, Kim Bohr sits down with Mike Humphries, her colleague, predecessor, and the leader who shaped Waldron for decades before the 2023 merger that created SparkEffect, to walk through their succession story together.  From the sudden loss of co-founder Tom Waldron in 2017 to a pandemic that hit three weeks into Kim’s tenure, to a merger that brought two established firms together in 2023, to the moment Kim officially stepped into the CEO role in April 2026. This conversation covers the real decisions, the hard conversations, and the trust that had to be built and rebuilt along the way.  In this episode, you’ll hear:  Why the sudden loss of a co-founder forced a CEO to rethink risk, retention, and succession all at once  The specific criteria Mike used to identify his successor, including why entrepreneurial experience and a failed business acquisition mattered so much  How Kim went from saying “no” to the role to ultimately committing, and the boundaries she set before saying yes  What it’s like to start a leadership role three weeks before a global pandemic shuts everything down  How merging two established firms during a CEO transition tested trust in ways that couldn’t have been planned for  Why “creating the space for someone to fill” (Mike’s words) worked better than any formal handoff plan  What being fully open about the succession timeline did for team retention and followership  If you’re a business owner thinking about when to start this process, or a leader who’s been told succession planning can't wait, this one’s worth your time.  About Courage to Advance: Hosted by Kim Bohr, CEO of SparkEffect, each episode features leaders who refuse to accept that business has to be dehumanizing. Based on SparkEffect’s Trust Performance Index research. New episodes every Tuesday.  Learn more: couragetoadvancepodcast.com  SparkEffect: sparkeffect.com 

What if the most important skill for leading a technology transformation has nothing to do with technology? It's a question Kim Bohr has been asking for years. And when she met Bob Wallis, she found someone who had spent his entire career proving the answer. Bob Wallis, fractional CIO and founder of 61 Keys LLC, has spent his career proving that the difference between a system rollout that succeeds and one that quietly destroys organizational trust comes down to one thing: how well you read the room. SparkEffect's own Trust Study found that only 36% of organizations that faced significant disruption emerged with stronger trust and in Bob's experience, the ones that lost ground almost always lost it the same way. Not because the software failed. Because the human foundation was never built. A background that runs from music education to Fortune 500 leadership development to multi-million dollar ERP implementations taught him that people don't change because of a business directive. They change when the leader driving change has earned enough trust to ask for it. Bob brings head and heart into every engagement interviewing vendor teams for fit, not just capability, setting honest expectations about the hard parts before they happen, and making sure HR has a genuine seat at the table rather than a notification after the decision is made. His measure of success isn't a smooth go-live. It's walking out the door knowing the internal leaders he developed don't need him anymore. What you'll discover in this episode: Why trust is the real foundation of every technology transformation and what breaks it before the project begins How to evaluate vendor relationships, not just vendor platforms Why HR belongs at the table with authority from day one What the Know-Feel-Do communication framework does for teams navigating uncertainty How to develop internal leaders during a project so the organization comes out stronger than it went in Why the best consultants measure success by what the organization can do without them    "Choosing the vendor matters more than choosing the platform." Bob Wallis Connect with Bob Wallis: 🔗  Website: https://61keysllc.com LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/bob-wallis-512ba322/ Connect with Kim Bohr and SparkEffect: 🔗   Website:SparkEffect Email: [email protected] LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/kimbohr/

We’ve spent years implementing HR technology to fix workplace problems that technology was never going to fix. Calli Bakken built a career inside that system, watched it fail, and came out the other side with a different answer: if you want employees to show up fully, start by solving the problems they carry through the door. After 15 years in HR, HR tech, and an employee engagement startup, Calli Bakken reached a conclusion most organizations aren’t ready to hear: companies had the data on what their people needed, and they chose not to act on it. No platform closes that gap. The will of leadership does. That realization, combined with becoming a parent in early 2020 and navigating a broken childcare system firsthand, led her to found Wiggle Work. Her model helps mid-size employers (200 to 1,000 people) build community-integrated childcare that is financially sustainable, trust-building, and designed for the way families actually live. In this episode, Calli and Kim Bohr explore what it costs organizations to keep treating childcare as someone else’s problem, and what becomes possible when they don’t. About Calli Bakken Calli Bakken is the founder of Wiggle Work, a consulting company mobilizing workplace childcare as a strategic workforce solution, and the Interim Executive Director of Matthew’s Voice Project, a nonprofit supporting students experiencing homelessness. She is also the co-host of the Work Sucks podcast.  

What if 70% of change initiatives are failing for the exact same reason and your AI rollout is next?  Ted Wolf, founder of Guidewise AI, has spent decades building businesses and overseeing technology implementations, including 300+ ERP rollouts, watching the same failure pattern repeat. The technology worked. The business case was solid. People just didn't change. After scaling a staffing company from $1,000 to 650 employees and an Iron Mountain acquisition, Ted co-founded Guidewise AI with his son to solve the problem nobody in the AI conversation is naming directly: people adoption is where every implementation actually wins or loses.  His Changeworks platform delivers something no project management tool has ever provided: 40 human-centered metrics that surface what employees believe, feel, and make meaning of during an AI rollout in real time, so leaders can address adoption before it becomes a crisis.  What you'll learn in this episode:  Why 70% of change initiatives fail and why your AI rollout is hitting the same wall  What "pilot purgatory" is and the three questions that get your organization out of it  How beliefs, emotions, and meaning-making determine whether your people adopt or resist  Why AI cannot be handed to IT, and which departments need a seat at the table from day one  What 40 human-centered metrics look like and why your current tools are leaving you in the dark  How HR leaders can stop being informed of the plan after it's already been made  What the dual workforce looks like in practice and why managing AI agents isn't that different from managing people  "You can spend years earning trust, but it really takes one decision and one bad day to completely destroy all the trust that was put in place." Ted Wolf  Connect with Ted Wolf: 🔗    Website: guidewise.ai  Email: [email protected]  LinkedIn: Ted Wolf : https://www.linkedin.com/in/tedwolftwo/  Connect with Kim Bohr and SparkEffect: 🔗   Website:SparkEffect Email: [email protected] LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/kimbohr/  

What if your organization’s biggest people problems aren’t a skills issue — they’re an access issue?  Only 2% of global CEOs have ever been CHROs. Dr. Suzi Potts spent 25 years watching family-owned businesses hit critical moments, generational transitions, restructurings, down markets, without anyone in the room who understood the human side of the decision. So she left a prestigious SVP role and built something different: a fractional CHRO model that gives small and mid-size businesses access to board-level people strategy exactly when they need it.  In this episode, Suzi and Kim Bohr dig into how the model works, what it took to bet on herself when the income was uncertain and every instinct said go back, and the one thing she tells every leader sitting on the edge of a transition.  What You’ll Learn  Why P&L is a lagging indicator and what signals you’re missing upstream  How “seasons and reasons” works in practice for high-stakes people strategy  What radical transparency did for Suzi’s longest client relationship  What every leader in transition needs to hear before they fold  Key Quote  “You absolutely can’t afford to not do it, because you’re already compromising.” — Dr. Suzi Potts  Connect with Suzi: [email protected]  Courage to Advance is hosted by Kim Bohr, President and COO of SparkEffect. New episodes drop every 2nd, 3rd and 4th Tuesday of each month.

Your policies are not failing because of the 5% who might abuse them, but because they quietly erode trust with the 95% who are doing their best work. When disruption hits, control-heavy policies put managers in an impossible spot and make your top performers feel punished instead of trusted.​ Mitchell Jeffery, founder of Ember Collective, helps organizations redesign HR policies from control-based to trust-centered frameworks that actually support modern work. In this episode, he and host Kim Bohr break down why rigid attendance and one-size-fits-all rules damage credibility, and how reframing “fair” vs. “equitable” can transform the employee experience.​ Mitchell Jeffery and Kim Bohr explore: Why policies built for the 5% quietly alienate the 95%—and how to spot it in your organization.​ The fair vs. equitable framework for attendance, PTO, holidays, and bereavement.​ How return-to-office mandates and point-based attendance systems erode trust at the manager level.​ The four policies to reform first if you want to build trust resilience before the next disruption.​ For executives, CHROs, and senior leaders who want to build high-trust, high-performance organizations, this episode offers a practical starting point: begin with policy, not another culture campaign.

Your leadership skills vanish when fight-or-flight kicks in. Learn how to build trust when your brain screams "run." For executives facing high-stakes pressure.  Key Takeaways:  Why technical competence is useless if you can't access it under pressure  The exact moment manager trust collapses—and how to prevent it  Strategic NeuroRegulation: training your nervous system like a musician trains their fingers  Data: Organizations with self-regulating leaders handle disruption 6.5× better  Harry Pickens conquered stage fright performing with jazz legends, then proved his neuroscience framework through caregiving, cancer, and long COVID. Founder, Strategic NeuroRegulation Institute.  Learn More: → Download Trust Study: sparkeffect.com/trust-study 

71% of employees experienced a crisis in the past 24 months, but only 36% of organizations emerged with strengthened trust. The difference? Leaders who understand that rebuilding trust requires listening, not fixing. When Tammy Green became the third CEO in three years, 160 employees were in survival mode. Physicians were leaving. The board said, "Everything's broken." Most leaders would have arrived with a 90-day turnaround plan. Tammy made a harder choice: she stopped talking and started listening. The culprit? Leaders who confuse action with progress. Without authentic listening and trust reserves, organizations break under pressure rather than bend. Tammy Green and Kim Bohr explore: The listening tour that changed everything, observation over immediate action Why trust in managers is both stronger and more fragile than organizational trust Building trust reserves before a crisis hits, not during The three leadership superpowers: presence, listening to learn, and curiosity Resources: Connect with Tammy at tammygreenconsulting.com A practical framework for leaders rebuilding trust from survival mode to high performance.

71% of employees experienced a crisis in the past 24 months, but only 36% of organizations emerged with strengthened trust. The difference? Leaders who understand that career transitions trigger real grief.  Former NFL quarterback BJ Coleman learned this when told to "find your own way home." Now CEO of Pivotal Health Partners and author of The Pivot, he's developed eight rules for navigating identity crises during career shifts. His key insight? Career loss requires the same grief processing as any significant loss.  The culprit? Treating transitions as logistical events, not human experiences. Without grief processing, we break trust and strand employees in identity crisis.  BJ Coleman and Kim Bohr explore:  The "iceberg principle"—mapping your invisible value beyond your title Whycareer grief requires real processing, not just "moving on" Normalizing help-seekingwithout compromising performance  "Choosing your hard"—why acknowledging difficulty empowers change Resources: Download chapter one at bjcoleman.com/the-book  A practical framework for helping your people bend without breaking. 

Here's a boardroom paradox: The person who can make or break your organization—your CEO—receives the least comprehensive performance evaluation. Most boards focus narrowly on KPIs and operating objectives, missing the nuanced competencies that truly predict success. In this conversation, Kim Bohr and SparkEffect Board Chair Mike Humphries reveal why well-intentioned boards still get CEO evaluations wrong. You'll discover the critical competencies beyond financial performance—adaptability, stakeholder leadership, and critical thinking—that separate sustainable success from short-term wins. Mike shares why co-creating evaluations with your CEO changes everything, what warning signs boards consistently miss when "numbers look good," and how independent assessments unlock honest feedback in the loneliest executive role. If you're a board member, CHRO, or senior leader responsible for CEO evaluation, this episode will transform how you approach executive assessment.    

The traditional change management playbook doesn't work for AI—and most organizations are about to learn this the hard way.  David Eliot, PhD candidate and author of Artificially Intelligent: The Very Human Story of AI, reveals a critical insight: those building AI systems actively benefit from keeping people confused. When confusion reigns, democratic participation gets deferred to tech executives who have vested interests—not the leaders and employees who'll live with the consequences.  The proof? Google's failed Toronto smart city versus Barcelona's thriving democratic smart city. Same technology. Opposite outcomes.  In this conversation, David and Kim Bohr (President of SparkEffect) explore:  Why AI Advisory boards filled with tech executives create dangerous knowledge gaps  The Barcelona model: democratic decision-making, hidden technology, citizen voting on data use  Google's Toronto failure: corporate opacity versus public good  The entry-level pipeline crisis: "We're going to run out of the well to promote from within"  AI as amplifier: magnifying both society's problems AND its solutions  Why understanding algorithms from 700 AD matters for today's implementations  SparkEffect's Trust Study found AI-driven systems among the most disruptive forces to employee trust.  The difference between the 36% who emerge stronger and the 64% who don't? Transparency, inclusion, and who controls the decisions.  Build trust through AI implementation. Listen now. 

Your best leaders aren't leaving because they lack passion—they're leaving because you're using motivational myths that defy brain science.  Dr. Bobby Hoffman reveals research on 6 million college students showing extrinsic motivation (money, recognition, status) drives performance—yet we shame people for wanting it. The result? Self-doubt, anxiety, burnout, and during change initiatives, your top talent walks out the door.  The culprit? The "follow your passion" narrative creating guilt around fundamental human needs while leaders design change initiatives for their own mental models instead of employees' self-beliefs.  In this conversation, Dr. Bobby Hoffman (Associate Professor at UCF, former corporate HR consultant for GE, NBC, KPMG, and the NBA, author of The Paradox of Passion and Hack Your Motivation) shares:  Why extrinsic motivation isn't shallow—it's essential for sustained performance  The "momostasis" principle: Why your brain requires motivational cycles with recovery periods  Why change initiatives fail: Ignoring employees' locus of control and mental models  Awareness hacks to prevent motivational crashes before they destroy trust  How to design rewards within employee discretion for long-term engagement  Resources mentioned: Dr. Hoffman's books The Paradox of Passion and Hack Your Motivation, plus 100+ Psychology Today articles translating neuroscience into actionable strategies.  Stop losing talent to motivational myths. Listen now. 

Your best employees aren't leaving because they became parents—they're leaving because you don't know how to support them. Mason Donovan and Mark Kaplan reveal shocking research: 100% of parents believe becoming a parent made them better employees—more empathetic, resilient, and organized. Yet the "motherhood penalty" persists (4% income decrease per child), while men get a 6% bonus. The culprit? Well-intentioned managers making career-killing decisions "on behalf of" parents without including them. In this conversation, Mason and Mark (Managing Partners of The Dagoba Group and authors of The Parenthood Advantage) share: The manager assumption trap driving talent away Why 95% of companies fail to support working parents adequately Three organizational quick wins to stop the talent bleed How parents can own their leave and advocate effectively Special offer: Get 25% off The Parenthood Advantage with code COURAGE Stop losing your best talent. Listen now.

71% of employees just faced major disruption—most of it AI-driven. Yet in most organizations, HR isn't in the room when AI strategy gets decided. In this urgent conversation, Kim Bohr and change management expert Maria Ross reveal why HR has approximately six months to claim their seat at the AI transformation table—or risk watching technology teams make people decisions without you. Drawing on SparkEffect's groundbreaking Trust Study showing only 36% of organizations emerge stronger from disruption, they expose the hidden cost of treating AI as "just a tech project." You'll discover the exact conversation starters that get HR heard, why empathetic leadership drives 61% more innovation, and which crisis interventions actually preserve trust (hint: transparency about uncertainty backfires). This isn't about ChatGPT adoption. It's about positioning HR as the architect of human-centered transformation—before someone else defines your organization's future. Download the full Trust Report and presentation deck HERE

Your direct managers are your organization's greatest trust asset—and your most dangerous vulnerability during crisis. New research reveals why. In partnership with cultural anthropologist Dr. Aaron Delgaty, SparkEffect conducted the most comprehensive study on organizational trust during disruption. The findings flip conventional crisis management wisdom: 71% of employees experienced significant workplace disruption in the past 24 months, yet only 36% emerged with stronger trust. What separated the winners from the losers? How leadership—especially frontline managers—handled the critical moments when trust was most fragile. Discover why manager trust takes the biggest hit during crisis despite outperforming organizational leadership in normal times, the intervention that's twice as likely to strengthen trust (it costs nothing), and how "trust elasticity" determines which organizations bend versus break under pressure. This isn't theory. This is data-driven insight into the leadership capability that will define competitive advantage in an era of constant disruption.

While AI can ask powerful questions and validate feelings, it can't synchronize nervous systems or call your B.S. when you need it most. In this essential conversation, SparkEffect's Chief Coaching Officer Rod Bacon reveals why the most transformative leadership breakthroughs require human connection, productive tension, and biological synchronization that technology cannot replicate. Discover why mirror neurons matter more than algorithms, how "sacred pressure" drives real growth, and why one executive found AI's validation brought her to tears—but zero transformation. Learn the critical difference between comfort and growth, why trust is the new strategic capital, and how the best coaches create the productive discomfort that sparks genuine change. A must-listen for leaders navigating the AI revolution while building high-trust, high-performance cultures.

Your Gen Z employees aren't difficult. They're revolutionizing how we work. Dr. Meisha Rouser, organizational behavioral scientist with 20+ years experience, reveals groundbreaking research on why this generation's "why" questions are transforming outdated workplace paradigms. Discover what happens when employees who watched their parents lose homes in 2008 refuse to sacrifice everything for companies that show no loyalty back. Learn why Gen Z's demand for empathetic management and clear expectations actually drives better performance across all generations. Get practical strategies for feedback that resonates, boundary-setting that unlocks creativity, and connection-building in hybrid environments. Dr. Rouser explains how COVID created critical professional development gaps you must address and why your best performers need to understand their work's impact. Not just their tasks. Transform your leadership approach with insights that bridge generational divides and create thriving, productive teams.

High-performing organizations are 17 times more likely to train their executives on AI. Yet, most companies are dangerously unprepared for the AI revolution. In this best-of episode from Season 1, i4cp co-founder Kevin Oakes reveals groundbreaking research showing only 11% of organizations are successfully operationalizing AI, while those ignoring it face extinction. Discover why companies like Moderna and Mastercard achieved 80% AI adoption rates, the critical role of executive training in AI success, and practical strategies to close your organization's AI readiness gap before competitors leave you behind. Kevin shares actionable insights on building a future-ready workforce, creating AI governance frameworks, and why HR's involvement in AI strategy has become non-negotiable for organizational survival. Learn how leading companies are redeploying talent rather than replacing jobs, why "learning cultures" outperform their competition, and specific next practices that separate AI leaders from laggards in today's rapidly evolving marketplace.

71% of organizations faced major disruption in the past 24 months, yet only 36% emerged with stronger trust. Season 2 of Courage to Advance explores how exceptional leaders navigate complexity while maintaining the trust that makes organizations thrive. Host Kim Bohr, President & COO of SparkEffect, brings you candid conversations with executives who've successfully led through transformation—from AI integration to culture shifts to leadership transitions. Each episode delivers practical strategies for making difficult decisions that honor employees, shareholders, and organizational purpose. These aren't theoretical discussions—they're real stories from leaders actively building resilient, trust-based organizations. Join a growing community of HR leaders and executives who refuse to navigate disruption alone. New episodes every two weeks.