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PODCAST

The Compassionate Leader School Podcast

Debbie Lawrence

How do I attract and keep the best employees? How do I create a workplace where people want to be, to stay, and beg their friends to join them? And how do I balance being a compassionate, thoughtful and fair leader while getting stuff done and making money? These are just some of the questions business strategist and master teacher Debbie Lawrence will dive into on The Compassionate Leader School podcast. Along with episodes that feel like you"re sitting right there with her in the boardroom,

business management

All Episodes

17:32

What My Annoyance Knew Before I Did

The Compassionate Leader School Podcast ·

2026/09/30

"I think I messed up the formula in cell F14. Can you fix it for me, please?" For three months, that email kept coming. Every time, I fixed it. It only took two minutes, and if I'm honest, it felt good. In this episode, I tell you about my client Courtney and the spreadsheet I built to help her track her projections against her actuals. Several times a month she'd break a formula, and several times a month I'd rescue her. Then one morning, three emails landed before 10:00 am, and I felt a sma...

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15:22

The One Question That Tells You Who Stays and Who Goes

The Compassionate Leader School Podcast ·

2026/09/23

You already know the answer. You've just been telling yourself you don't, because "gathering more information" feels safer than admitting you made this decision months ago and haven't acted on it yet. In this episode, I tell you about my client Elizabeth, who knew in month two that her new hire wasn't the right fit. Four months of performance plans, repeated coaching conversations, and quietly redoing his work every night followed anyway, because admitting what she already knew felt harder th...

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15:39

You're Running Two Jobs. Only One Pays You.

The Compassionate Leader School Podcast ·

2026/09/16

Two people can hold the exact same title. Only one of them is quietly doing a second job no one put on the org chart. You plan the birthday. You read the room before the meeting starts. You carry what someone told you in confidence and can't put back down. None of that is in your job description yet, for women who lead, all of it is expected. In this episode, I tell you about a management meeting where I was one of six women left at that table following a call to exit for some of the attendee...

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15:45

Too Intense to Be Liked

The Compassionate Leader School Podcast ·

2026/09/09

For years, across different roles and different managers, I kept getting the same note. Not the same words every time, but close enough that I started to hear it before it was said. "You're a perfectionist. You're intense. You'd go further if you loosened up a little." I remember sitting with that last one the longest. Loosen up. It was stated as if the thing that was responsible for the stellar work I produced, the thing I was actually being paid for, was also the thing standing between me a...

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16:19

What a Bridal Shower Taught Me About Letting Go

The Compassionate Leader School Podcast ·

2026/09/02

Somewhere in your business is a hundred-hour puzzle you built and are proud of. And you're the only one who's allowed to touch it because you're good at it and you keep telling yourself no one could complete it quite the way that you do. In this episode, I share the years I spent running a college registrar's office, building the entire class schedule myself, three times a year, close to a hundred hours a shot, convinced I was some kind of unicorn nobody else could replace. Then I tell ...

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18:36

The Bow Wasn't Big Enough

The Compassionate Leader School Podcast ·

2026/08/26

People pleasers can't be trusted. They're not dishonest on purpose. They're someone whose "yes" comes from the fear of disappointing you rather than saying "no". In this episode, I share the story of a December I spent hand-painting a 4-foot Christmas trunk for my boss's sister, night after night, into the early hours of the morning, on top of one of the busiest stretches of our year. I said yes in about 30 seconds and resented every hour of it. And when the bow wasn't big enough, I painted a...

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19:14

You're Spending Your Best Hours in the Wrong Circle

The Compassionate Leader School Podcast ·

2026/08/19

She lies down at 10 at night. At 1 in the morning she's still running scenarios. The rollout. The training schedule. Who's going to quit over this. Every one of those is getting the same grip, the same attention, and the same tightness in her chest including the ones that were decided 1,200 kilometres away by people whose table she wasn't invited to join. In this episode, I share the story of my client Juanita, a branch manager who found out by email that her company was rolling out a n...

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19:46

I Had the Hard Conversation. Then I Let It Slide.

The Compassionate Leader School Podcast ·

2026/08/12

In this episode, I share the semester I spent chasing an instructor in my faculty for every report he owed me, the conversation I finally sat down and had with him over the break, and the four months afterward when I watched him slide right back into the pattern and said nothing. This episode is about how the conversation is one afternoon and holding the line is every day after it. When someone slips back and you stay quiet, rather than thinking you're not being generous with them, unde...

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18:07

The Promotion That Exposed a Blind Spot

The Compassionate Leader School Podcast ·

2026/08/05

Two people can look like the exact same kind of talent from the outside. One of them executes brilliantly. The other builds from nothing. Promote the wrong one into the other's job, and you don't just lose a great performer. You could break them and the team around them. In this episode, I share the story of a client, Carolyn, who did everything a good leader is supposed to do. She promoted from within. She picked the person everyone agreed was the obvious choice. Within months, she was watch...

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19:12

Effort ≠ Results

The Compassionate Leader School Podcast ·

2026/07/29

Trying hard and producing results look like the same thing. The problem is, they aren't. And rewarding the first when you need the second is how a leader can end up doing someone else's job for a year. In this episode, I share the story of Nathan, one of our new hires everyone was excited about who tried hard, talked constantly about his plans, but never produced deliverable work. I kept fixing it myself instead of sending it back, for an entire year. Stating that effort ≠ results isn't some ...

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18:39

Are You Building a Close-Knit Family or a...

The Compassionate Leader School Podcast ·

2026/07/22

Marilyn ran a cleaning services company with a small, tight-knit team of eight people she genuinely cared about, including a couple of close friends. She wanted everyone to feel like they belonged. And by the time she came to me, she was exhausted, resentful, and covering for team members she couldn't hold accountable, while her best people quietly absorbed the gap. In this episode, I share Marilyn's story and use it to walk through a pattern I see all too often in leaders who lead with warmt...

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19:11

The Missing Ingredient in Your Mindset Work

The Compassionate Leader School Podcast ·

2026/07/15

For two years, Monica was a rock star at her company. Then she started missing deadlines, forgetting conversations, and seeming scattered in meetings. Her boss’s first thought: She’s gotten complacent. She’s checked out. She hadn’t. Her nervous system had. In this episode, I share Monica’s story. She's a senior leader who hadn’t lost her skill or her drive, but had lost access to her own regulated nervous system after a series of events in her personal life collided over the same six weeks. W...

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14:53

Regular Check-ins Eliminate Surprises (the kind that...

The Compassionate Leader School Podcast ·

2026/07/07

Becka had been working 60-hour weeks for three years. She cared deeply about her team. She was constantly available. And one day, her best performer quit. Not because Becka wasn't trying but because Becka had no system. In this episode, I share Becka's story about a leader who was present, invested, and working herself into the ground, and still failing the people on her team in a way she couldn't see until someone walked out and told her directly. The problem wasn't her effort or her intenti...

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19:12

What "I Don't Have Time" Is Really Telling You

The Compassionate Leader School Podcast ·

2026/07/01

She said she didn't have time. She'd been saying it for months. Her manager had heard it so many times that she wasn't sure what to believe anymore. Was the workload genuinely unmanageable? Was this a performance issue? Was something else going on entirely? She had tried applying more pressure. She had tried granting more latitude. Neither conversation went anywhere. What she hadn't tried yet was data. In this episode, I share the story of my client Katie, who was coaching for performance wit...

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17:51

Your Lid Is Dictating Who Stays and Who Goes

The Compassionate Leader School Podcast ·

2026/06/23

Your best people are leaving because of the ceiling. And in most cases, the ceiling has a name. It's the leadership capacity of the person above them. At some point, that person is you. In this episode, I go back to a phone call I received early in my career at IBM. A colleague named Ron, one of the most talented salespeople I'd ever known, told me he was leaving. He wasn't angry. He wasn't dramatic. He'd done the math, and the math told him there was no room to grow where he was standing. Th...

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19:44

Are You Being Collaborative or Waiting for Permission...

The Compassionate Leader School Podcast ·

2026/06/17

She sat across from me in our coaching session, frustrated with her team. She’d been trying to get everyone aligned on a point-of-sale upgrade for weeks. Different people wanted different things. Nobody was moving with urgency. I asked her: “Do you know which platform you want?” She said yes. “So what’s keeping you from making the purchase?” She paused for a long time. “Because I want it to be collaborative.” That answer is the whole episode. This week, I share the story of Trish, a ret...

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15:30

The Most Expensive Business Decision You'll Make Is...

The Compassionate Leader School Podcast ·

2026/06/10

"It's just easier to do it myself than to try to explain it to them right now." It sounds like efficiency. It sounds like a leader with high standards who knows how to keep things moving. It sounds like someone who cares enough to make sure the work gets done right. It's also the reason your plate keeps growing and your team keeps waiting. In this episode, I share two stories. The first is Monica, a client who ran a small manufacturing company from an office on the plant floor, who was so far...

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17:38

Vagueness is Mean

The Compassionate Leader School Podcast ·

2026/06/03

"I've mentioned it. I've been consistent about this. Why isn't it landing?" It sounds like patience. It sounds like leadership that respects the other person's capability. It sounds like giving someone the space to correct course on their own. So why are you not getting the result you're expecting? In this episode, I share the story of a senior team member I'll call Lily and what I had to learn, through real trial and error, about what a coaching conversation requires. Not a single mention. N...

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14:13

A Meeting Without a Result Isn't a Meeting. It's an...

The Compassionate Leader School Podcast ·

2026/05/26

"We need to schedule a meeting about this." It sounds like initiative. It sounds like collaboration. It sounds like a leader who keeps her team moving. Sometimes it's a very organized way of not moving at all. In this episode, I share two stories from my own experience — one from my late twenties, when I accidentally ran the best volunteer committee meeting of my life, and one from a project team I've been co-chairing for several years. Both taught me the same thing, thirty years ...

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17:01

Hire for Results, Not Potential

The Compassionate Leader School Podcast ·

2026/05/20

"She has so much potential. I just have a good feeling about her." It sounds like leadership. It sounds like generosity. It isn't. In this episode, I share a client story about a leader who hired the most energetic person in the room and spent the next three months doing two jobs. And a story from my own early career, sitting on a hiring panel at a post-secondary institution, watching a room of intelligent people convince themselves that enthusiasm was enough to teach and that we could ...

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60 results

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