What Can Leaders Learn From 14 Newsletters And 16 Podcast Episodes?
Eight Consistent Themes From The First Half Of 2025
Six months into 2025, the world isn’t easing up—and neither has the work of understanding how to lead in it.
This feels like the right moment to pause and reflect. Over the first half of the year, I’ve published 14 editions of this newsletter and released 16 episodes of the my podcast, Humanity At Scale: Redefining Leadership. That cadence has enabled me to listen closely—to leaders navigating pressure, to patterns inside organizations, and to the deeper human signals beneath it all.
This edition is my chance to step back. To look across what’s emerged, synthesize what I’ve learned, and share some important themes that will continue to shape the evolution of organizations, leadership, and human interactions.
I hope you enjoy this edition. If you do, I’d love for you to subscribe and share it with others who might benefit. Let’s dive in.
Eight Humanity-Centric Themes From The First Half Of 2025
Six months into 2025, the pace of change is relentless.
AI is reshaping how decisions get made. Trust is becoming harder to earn—and easier to lose. The signals inside organizations are growing louder, messier, and harder to interpret. Amid it all, one thing is clear: leadership is being redefined. It’s no longer about having the answers. It’s about creating the conditions where humanity—empathy, purpose, resilience—can scale.
Across my Humanity at Scale newsletters and Humanity At Scale: Redefining Leadership Podcast, I’ve been tracking the shifts. What follows are eight of the most consistent and powerful themes that have emerged so far this year. I’ve also provided links to some of the most relevant content.
1. Purpose-Driven Leadership Beyond Profit
I continue to uncover a stronger call for leadership grounded in something more meaningful than performance metrics. Across industries and cultures, leaders are beginning to question whether their organizations are merely efficient—or truly impactful. Purpose can no longer be treated as a tagline or aspiration. It needs to become a filter for how decisions get made, how systems are designed, and how success is defined.
The call to “leave the world better than we found it” is pushing leaders to rethink performance in terms of sustainability, equity, and collective well-being (🎙️ From Profit to Purpose: Rethinking Design’s Role in Society with Don Norman).
Performative leadership rooted in personality and power is being replaced by purpose-driven models that build trust and scale decision-making (📝 Hero Leaders Are Appealing, But Don't Scale).
Purpose can’t just live in values decks—it must inform how priorities are made and how teams operate daily (📝 Ready To Make Some 2025 Resolutions?).
2. Trust as the Foundation of Engagement and Loyalty
Trust is one of the most valuable—and most vulnerable—asset inside organizations. But this year’s conversations show that trust isn’t broken through betrayal. It erodes quietly through inconsistency, mixed signals, and over-polished leadership messaging. In a climate of change fatigue and skepticism, trust is increasingly built not through charisma or competence, but through coherence.
Loyalty doesn’t come from clever strategy—it comes from consistently doing what you say you’ll do, especially when things go wrong (🎙️ Beyond Profits: The Power of Customer Loyalty with Fred Reichheld).
When leaders overpromise and underexplain, employees start disengaging—quietly and chronically (📝 It’s Time to (Re)Build Trust).
Overplaying expertise and under-delivering on shared ownership erodes psychological safety and long-term trust (🎙️ Why Smart Leaders Ask More and Tell Less with Liz Wiseman).
3. Empathy and Dialogue to Bridge Divides
In the face of cultural polarization, social friction, and organizational conflict, empathy isn’t optional—it’s essential. But what’s hopefully emerging is a more mature understanding of empathy. It’s not just about being nice or listening well. It’s about having the discipline to approach disagreement with curiosity, and the systems to embed that mindset into leadership practice.
Political polarization can’t be solved with arguments, but with leaders who show people they are heard, not judged (🎙️ Beyond Right and Wrong: Rethinking Moral Disagreements with Kurt Gray).
Persuasion starts with connection—people listen more when they feel respected and not dismissed (🎙️ From Conflict To Connection: Harnessing Curiosity, Empathy, and Dialogue with Dr. Tania Israel).
Oversimplified binaries in leadership (right vs. wrong, fast vs. slow) drive division instead of insight (📝 How Can We Break Free from the "Us vs. Them" Trap?).
4. Human-Centered Workplace Culture and Well-Being
Burnout, disengagement, and turnover aren’t just HR problems—they’re leadership signals. The workplaces that will be thriving aren’t the ones with perks and posters. They’re the ones where people feel safe to challenge, empowered to grow, and trusted to contribute. Culture isn’t declared—it’s designed through daily signals, expectations, and micro-moments.
Seemingly small moments—recognition, micro-interactions, how conflict is handled—shape whether people feel seen and safe (📝 What Shapes Organizational Culture? Micro Moments).
High-performing teams aren’t coddled—they’re stretched thoughtfully, with room to grow and fail without fear (🎙️ Why Smart Leaders Ask More and Tell Less with Liz Wiseman).
Safelite built industry leadership by treating both customers and employees as central decision-makers—ensuring frontline empowerment aligned with purpose (🎙️ Scaling with Heart: How Safelite Balances Growth, People, and Purpose with Renee Cacchillo)
Letting go of control created more ownership, trust, and innovation across a global operations team (🎙️ The “Dragon Slayer” Approach: Empowering Teams to Elevate Senior Care with Nikki Kresse).
5. Balancing Technology and Humanity in an AI-Driven World
AI has moved from concept to co-worker. But what’s becoming clear in 2025 is that the challenge isn’t just how we use AI—it’s how we lead through it. Leaders are being asked to make fast, high-stakes decisions about automation, ethics, and human value. And the answers won’t come from technical experts alone. They’ll come from those who can center humanity while still embracing progress.
Many organizations are trusting AI outputs without questioning the algorithmic biases behind them—a dangerous pattern that erodes accountability (🎙️ Unlocking Digital Transformation: The Neuroscience of Change with Kamales Lardi).
As AI tools act more autonomously, leaders must decide whether they’re empowering humans—or replacing them (📝 "Agentic AI" Is the New Buzzword—Is it the Future or Just Another Fad?).
Narrative is not just a communication tool but a form of cognitive technology—essential for leadership in AI-driven systems (🎙️ From Homer to GPT: The Collision of Human Imagination and AI with Katherine Elkins).
Ethical AI must prioritize amplifying human potential—not replacing it—with design grounded in humility, inclusion, and lived experience (🎙️ The Ethics of Empowerment: How AI Can Make Us Stronger with Vivienne Ming).
6. Resilience, Learning, and Adaptability Through Change
We’re long past the illusion of control. The leaders that will gain traction in the future are the ones who treat disruption as feedback—not failure. They move forward by learning fast, iterating openly, and creating environments where experimentation is safe. Resilience, in this new context, isn’t just about bouncing back—it’s about bouncing forward.
Failing publicly taught one entrepreneur more than any MBA—resilience came from reframing the collapse as “tuition” (🎙️ Purpose, Perseverance, and People: Ryan Hogan’s Formula for Success).
Many leaders rationalize bad decisions by layering on complexity—when what’s really needed is honest reflection (📝 It's Time To Confront The Complexity Pandemic).
Looking ahead requires more than planning—it takes imagination and courage to design for the future we want, not just the one we inherit (🎙️ Designing The Future: How to Be a Good Ancestor with Lisa Kay Solomon).
Leading in the fast-paced and uncertain environment can push very reactive behaviors, but leaders need to stay intentional and make sure they reflect on the effect of their actions (📝 The Leadership Power of Intention and Reflection).
7. Empowering and Inclusive Leadership
The lone-hero model of leadership still lingers—but it’s no longer getting great results. Today’s challenges are too complex for any one person to solve alone. The shift is underway: toward leadership that listens more, shares more, and builds systems that elevate others. The leaders who scale in 2025 are those who make room for others to lead.
Hero leadership creates bottlenecks and burnout—scalable leadership starts by empowering others to lead (📝 Hero Leaders Are Appealing, But Don't Scale).
Setting a bold vision and then stepping back gives teams more ownership and unlocks better outcomes (🎙️ Innovate or Stagnate: Mastering Leadership in a Dynamic World with Charlene Li).
Great leaders act as “multipliers”—they draw out intelligence from others rather than hoarding decision-making power (🎙️ Why Smart Leaders Ask More and Tell Less with Liz Wiseman).
8. Embracing Complexity and Driving Systemic Change
Complexity is no longer a nuisance—it’s the new normal. But this year’s insights show that leading through complexity doesn’t mean simplifying the world. It means being clear, intentional, and values-driven in how we respond. The most forward-looking leaders aren’t the ones who have answers. They’re the ones designing systems to ask better questions.
Systemic challenges—from climate to equity—require leadership that’s grounded in ethics and collective benefit (🎙️ From Profit to Purpose: Rethinking Design’s Role in Society with Don Norman).
Most complexity inside organizations is self-inflicted—simplification isn’t reduction, it’s intentional focus (📝 It's Time To Confront The Complexity Pandemic).
Embed empathy into the scaffolding of your operations, as Safelite did by redesigning core systems like workspace layouts and safety feedback loops to scale care with intention (🎙️ Scaling with Heart: How Safelite Balances Growth, People, and Purpose with Renee Cacchillo).
Too many organizations treat change as an overlay instead of a foundation. When digital transformation isn’t designed with people at the center, complexity multiplies and adoption stalls (🎙️ Unlocking Digital Transformation: The Neuroscience of Change with Kamales Lardi).
Sparking New Leadership Thinking
Here are five actions for leaders who want to scale humanity with intention in the second half of 2025:
Design purpose into everyday decisions, not just vision decks. Make purpose a filter for tradeoffs, not a slide in your all-hands. Revisit how priorities are set, who gets rewarded, and whether your operating rhythm reflects your stated values.
Turn empathy into infrastructure. Don’t just encourage listening—rethink workflows, rituals, and routines to structurally support understanding, belonging, and care.
Simplify with courage, not compromise. Cut layers, meetings, or metrics that add friction instead of value. The real leadership move isn’t more control—it’s subtraction with clarity. Look for where complexity is masking deeper misalignment.
Rethink trust as coherence, not charm. Audit the consistency of your messages, incentives, and behaviors. Trust breaks down when people hear one thing and experience another—even if your intent is good.
Build space for narrative, not just data. Especially in an AI-driven world, invest in shared stories that help people make sense of what’s changing and why. Treat narrative as leadership infrastructure—not as afterthought.
The Bottom Line
The first half of 2025 has made one thing clear: complexity isn’t slowing, and neither is the pressure on leaders. But within that turbulence, a different kind of leadership is taking shape—one rooted in trust, guided by purpose, and scaled through systems that reflect what makes us human. The path forward isn’t about keeping up. It’s about leading with intention in a world that won’t wait.
Humanity At Scale: Redefining Leadership Podcast
Make sure to check out my podcast, where I reimagine leadership for today’s dynamic world—proving that true success begins with prioritizing people, including employees, customers, and the communities you serve. From candid conversations with executives to breakthrough insights from experts, Humanity at Scale: Redefining Leadership Podcast is your ultimate guide to leading with purpose and empathy.
The podcast is available on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and YouTube.
Humanity at Scale is a movement to inspire and empower leaders to create humanity-centric organizations
Such a great summary