The Leadership That Shines Podcast

The Leadership That Shines Podcast exists for the leaders who are done waiting to feel ready. Every week, Natalie Davis delivers leadership training built around three core values: impact, influence, and growth. The leaders who change their organizations, their businesses, and their communities are the ones who commit to growing themselves first. From professionals managing complex teams to solopreneurs building something from the ground up, this is where clarity becomes action and action becomes legacy.

The Leadership That Shines Podcast is a business podcast hosted by Natalie Davis, with 27 episodes on record and a Required Pod Score of 80.

Natalie Davis hosts The Leadership That Shines Podcast, a business show with 27 episodes published.

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  Episode #28

  Growth in Leadership: Why Growth Requires Change

  Sep 23, 202628 minS1

  Growth requires change, and host Natalie Davis spends this solo episode of Leadership That Shines breaking down why that connection caught her off guard this year even after a decade of running her own business. Natalie walks listeners through the real-time story behind one of her three core values, growth, using her own business as the case study: a scrapped business plan, a hard coaching conversation with a longtime mentor, and a key team member who gave notice two weeks before this recording. Natalie separates three concepts leaders tend to blend together: expansion, the visible increase in customers, revenue, or offerings; growth, the internal development in skill, leadership capacity, and systems needed to handle that increase; and change, what happens when expansion and growth actually reach the way people work, lead, and communicate. She uses her own nine-month journey building out backend systems and processes to show what happens when a business runs on one person's memory instead of a real system. In This Episode: The difference between expansion, growth, and change, and why leaders confuse them What happened when a longtime mentor told Natalie to throw out her entire business plan Why bringing on a team member exposed which "systems" only existed in her head How to respond when someone on your team tells you they're leaving for a new opportunity Why growing pains are real, not a sign that something is wrong Natalie also talks through the resistance that showed up as she prepares to bring a new team member on board, and why creating space for honest conversations on a team matters more than avoiding discomfort altogether. This episode offers a direct, unfiltered look at what growth actually costs, even when it's headed in the right direction. Listen and subscribe on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and YouTube. New episodes drop every Wednesday. Subscribe to the Flamingo Files newsletter on LinkedIn for a deeper dive into this conversation, published every Monday. Contact: themagic@leadershipthatshines.com | leadershipthatshines.com

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  Episode #26

  Listening to Understand vs. Reacting: A Leadership Lesson

  Sep 9, 20261h 1mS1

  Most hard conversations do not fail because of what was said. They fail because one person was reacting instead of listening. In this episode of Leadership That Shines, host Natalie Davis talks with Dustin Shepherd, a nearly thirty-year military veteran turned leadership coach, about the difference between listening to understand and listening to react. Dustin explains why reacting carries an emotional charge while responding carries cognitive judgment, and why most communication breakdowns on a team start the moment a leader stops listening for the signal and starts waiting for their turn to talk. The conversation also covers what it means to shape an environment instead of controlling every decision, how to tell a real crisis apart from an everyday problem, and a personal story about a roadside breakdown that became a lasting lesson for Dustin's son. He closes with a reflection on moving from survival to recovery, and how he wants to be remembered as a leader. Listen if you lead a team, manage difficult conversations, or want practical language for the moment someone brings you a problem you were not expecting. In this episode: Why reacting and responding are not the same thing, and how to tell which one you are doing What gets missed when a leader is only waiting for someone to finish talking How shaping the environment around a decision beats making every decision yourself A simple pressure test for telling a real crisis apart from an everyday problem Why psychological safety is about willingness to be vulnerable, not the absence of discomfort The story behind "fifteen extra steps" and what it taught Dustin's son about handling setbacks Guest: Dustin Shepherd CONNECT WITH DUSTIN SHEPHERD Polaris Leadership Academy: https://4pla.org/ If this conversation gives you language for a hard conversation you have been avoiding, share it with a leader who needs it, and follow Leadership That Shines so you do not miss the next episode. Join Natalie Live at the Reignite Live 2027 Event in Loveland, CO on January 22, 2027

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  Episode #25

  Leadership Development: Chris Majer on Team Cohesion, Organizational Transformation, and Nearly 50 Years of Disruptive Leadership Training

  Sep 2, 202657 minS1

  Leadership development does not happen through remedial programs, compliance checklists, or business school frameworks borrowed from people who have never led anyone into anything that actually mattered. In this episode of the Leadership That Shines Podcast, one of the top rated leadership business podcasts for professionals, entrepreneurs, and executives, host Natalie Davis sits down with Chris Majer, speaker, author of The Power to Transform, and nearly 50-year veteran of human performance, leadership training, and organizational development. Chris Majer coined the phrase team cohesion in 1982. He has applied his holistic leadership development framework with Olympic teams, the United States Army, AT&T, Nike, Microsoft, Cargill, and hundreds of organizations across industries. He has been on the Today Show, in Esquire, in People Magazine, and in boardrooms where he was the most disruptive presence in the room by design. Chris Majer's career began in rugby at the University of Washington, took a sharp turn through a copy of The Ultimate Athlete found in an airport bookstore at 30 years old, and has never followed a straight line since. That is the point. His leadership training philosophy is built on a single belief: the problems organizations think they have are almost always manifestations of one underlying breakdown, and the leaders who solve each symptom separately never fix the actual thing. The Leadership That Shines Podcast brings real leadership development conversations to professionals, founders, executives, and aspiring leaders every Wednesday. This episode is one of the most data-rich leadership training conversations the show has produced. In This Episode: Why the Army was trying to manage soldiers instead of lead them, and how Chris Majer told a room full of officers that their entire leadership approach was the problem The team cohesion framework Chris Majer built in 1982 that produced a 20% production increase at a Boeing subcontractor statisticians said was already at maximum output, a direct application of leadership training principles to measurable business results How a division of AT&T that was losing 200 million dollars generated a cumulative 3 billion dollars in profit over four years using Chris Majer's organizational transformation and leadership development methodology Why the holistic approach to leadership training outperforms symptom-by-symptom remedial programs every time, and what the woven cloth analogy means for every leader building culture and driving performance How Chris Majer rebuilt his entire leadership development delivery model after COVID eliminated live programming, and why the fundamental problem every organization faces right now comes down to coordination, not communication tools Chris Majer has been shaking up leadership training and organizational development for five decades. This episode is for every leader who has asked why do we do it that way, received the answer because that is how we always do it, and known immediately that answer was not going to be enough. About Chris Majer : Chris Majer is not just a speaker; he is a catalyst for transformation, a disruptor of conventional thinking, and a guide to unlocking the extraordinary potential within individuals and organizations. As an Amazon best-selling author and founder of the Human Potential Project (HP2), Chris brings a wealth of experience and a proven track record of success. The Power to Transform https://humanpotentialproject.com/

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  Episode #24

  Leading Self in Leadership

  Aug 19, 20261h 1mS1

  Leading self comes before leading anyone else, and executive coach Parker Gates spends this episode of Leadership That Shines proving exactly how. Parker walks host Natalie Davis through a leadership journey that started by accident, running a deli kitchen at nineteen, moved through two decades in corporate IT, and landed in a coaching practice built around three daily practices: journaling, meditation, and movement. Parker traces the moment that changed everything, a week at Stanford's design school where he encountered a level of psychological safety and belonging he had never experienced in corporate America. That week led him to quit his job, build a company around design thinking, and eventually start teaching senior leadership teams why smart people in a room don't automatically make a good team. In This Episode: ● Why personal development and professional development are the same work ● How psychological safety became the missing ingredient on every team Parker built ● The three daily practices Parker uses with C-suite clients: journaling, meditation, movement ● How a recovery concept called "taking inventory" became a leadership tool ● Why "never skip day two" matters more than any single day of discipline Parker also opens up about twenty-four years of recovery, the friend he lost to cancer that led to his first real meditation practice, and the repair work he now teaches leaders to do when they fall short with their teams. This conversation moves through self-awareness, humility, and the practical steps behind showing up as a better leader every day. Listen and subscribe on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and YouTube. New episodes drop every Wednesday. Subscribe to the Flamingo Files newsletter on LinkedIn for a deeper dive into this conversation, published every Monday. Contact: themagic@leadershipthatshines.com | leadershipthatshines.com Guest: Parker Gates, executive coach | parkergates.com | Free practices video: parkergates.com/watch

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  Episode #23

  Purpose-Driven Leadership: Blake Cooper Griffin on Resilience, Identity, and Building a Life Worth Telling

  Aug 12, 202649 minS1

  Purpose-driven leadership does not come from a clean story. For Blake Cooper Griffin, it came from bullying in South Carolina, conversion therapy at 16, an agency that told him to hide who he was, and a moment at 22 years old with no money, no representation, and a decision to make about who he was going to be on the other side of all of it. In this episode of the Leadership That Shines Podcast, host Natalie Davis sits down with Blake Cooper Griffin, actor, author, activist, and founder of Brainworks Team, an educational mentorship consultancy helping students build academic growth, confidence, and purpose through service-based learning. Blake's career spans television, film, writing, entrepreneurship, and nearly two decades of advocacy work. His book, The Story of You: A Life Rewritten, available on Amazon and Barnes and Noble, is a framework for anyone who has ever needed to rewrite the narrative they inherited and build one worth living instead. This conversation moves between the deeply personal and the practically applicable. Blake talks about the moment his representation called him in and told him to stop bringing his partner to industry events, the decision he made in that crushing moment to reframe the mountain he had already climbed, and how that single shift in perspective became the foundation of every leadership and business principle he now teaches. In This Episode: Why purpose larger than personal success is the only thing that sustains a leader through the seasons when nothing is working and the dark moments feel permanent How Blake reframes rejection and setback as evidence of mountains already climbed, and why that reframe removes the defeat of feeling like you are starting from zero The three-step passion project framework Blake uses with students at Brainworks Team: educate yourself on the real need, make practical impact, then multiply it by educating your community Why Blake's mother's saying, everybody's somebody and everybody counts, became the lens through which he approaches every room, every role, every relationship, and every business decision What it means to write the story of you intentionally, and why the creative capacity every human being carries is not limited to one career, one identity, or one chapter Blake Cooper Griffin has been navigating the intersection of identity, purpose, and leadership for decades. This episode is for every leader who has ever been told to make themselves smaller to fit someone else's comfort, and who is still deciding whether to believe it. Connect with Blake Cooper Griffin: Book: The Story of You: A Life Rewritten, available on Amazon and Barnes and Noble Company: Brainworks Team, educational mentorship and consultancy Connect with Blake directly through his professional platforms Connect with Natalie Davis and Leadership That Shines: Email: themagic@leadershipthatshines.com Website: https://leadershipthatshines.com Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/leadershipthatshines?igsh=Z3JkNGZsbTU5bnIy Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/share/1J9yZRGaiW/?mibextid=wwXIfr Substack: https://lovejoyandnatalie.substack.com/ Subscribe so you never miss an episode. New episodes drop every Wednesday.

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