People and Projects Podcast: Project Management Podcast

Summary
In this episode, Andy talks with Amy Leneker, leadership coach, joy strategist, and author of Cheers to Monday. Amy's journey began with a burnout so severe that her doctor put her on medical leave. It took 10 words on a medical form to change everything: "What are your hobbies? What do you do for fun?" She couldn't answer it. That moment sent her on a mission to help leaders recognize stress earlier and respond to it far more intentionally.
In this conversation, Amy shares the stress stories many leaders carry without ever questioning them, and why those stories get quietly rewarded in so many organizations. You'll hear how the body whispers warnings long before burnout hits, why most common stress-relief advice actually makes things worse, and how Amy's three-step Un-Stressing Method gives leaders a clear, practical framework to move forward. She also shares a powerful real-world example of a team carrying 73 stressors that simply didn't need to be there—and what happened when they finally saw that.
If you're looking for a practical, empowering guide to break the cycle of stress and overwhelm in leadership, this episode is for you!
Sound Bites
"The story that I inherited, either intentionally or unintentionally, was you just work hard because that's the only choice you have."
"I think one of the biggest mistakes that I made was not recognizing how much choice I had."
"I couldn't remember the last time that I had real fun."
"Those unhealthy stress stories are rewarded."
"The majority of ways that we try to manage stress at work actually increase our stress."
"When I ignored the whispers, it got to the point where ignoring it was no longer an option.... If you ignore them long enough, then the body's going to scream."
"Talking about stress is stressful, but we've got to be able to see it if we're going to be able to do anything about it."
"Unclear expectations are resentments waiting to happen."
"People pleasing—it's not a healthy dynamic. It's not something that serves you or the people around you."
"Stress is contagious. There is no question about it."
"Yes, stress is wildly contagious, but so is joy."
Chapters
00:00 Introduction
01:39 Start of Interview
01:52 Early Messages About Work and Stress
04:36 The 10 Words That Changed Everything
06:39 Postponing Joy
07:30 Stress Stories Leaders Believe
08:19 How the Body Signals Burnout Before the Brain Does
11:44 What's Broken About Typical Stress Advice
12:58 Walking Through the Un-Stressing Method
15:03 Why Sequence Matters: See, Sort, Solve
17:32 Solving Stress vs. Fixing It
18:44 The Un-Stressing Method in Action: A Team Story
21:58 The Danger of Unstated Priorities
22:42 People Pleasing as a Warning Sign
23:38 Breaking the Cycle of Stress as a Parent
24:41 End of Interview
25:11 Andy Comments After the Interview
28:16 Outtakes
Learn More
You can learn more about Amy and her work at AmyLeneker.com.
For more learning on this topic, check out:
Episode 448 with Marie-Helene Pelletier. It's a book on how to develop resilience when demands are piling up. It's a great follow-up to today's discussion.
Episode 398 with Dr. Neha Sangwan, which is a book about learning to recognize wake up calls to help us avoid burnout.
Episode 164 with stress researcher Derek Roger. Derek brings a unique perspective to the discussion about stress.
Chat with PMeLa
You can chat directly with PMeLa—the podcast's AI persona—to get episode recommendations and answers to your project management and leadership questions. Visit PeopleAndProjectsPodcast.com/PMeLa to chat with her.
Pass the PMP Exam
If you or someone you know is thinking about getting PMP certified, we've put together a helpful guide called The 5 Best Resources to Help You Pass the PMP Exam on Your First Try. We've helped thousands of people earn their certification, and we'd love to help you too. It's totally free, and it's a great way to get a head start.
Just go to 5BestResources.PeopleAndProjectsPodcast.com to grab your copy. I'd love to help you get your PMP this year!
Join Us for LEAD52
I know you want to be a more confident leader–that's why you listen to this podcast. LEAD52 is a global community of people like you who are committed to transforming their ability to lead and deliver. It's 52 weeks of leadership learning, delivered right to your inbox, taking less than 5 minutes a week. And it's all for free. Learn more and sign up at GetLEAD52.com. Thanks!
Thank you for joining me for this episode of The People and Projects Podcast!
Talent Triangle: Power Skills
Topics: Stress Management, Leadership, Burnout Prevention, Wellbeing, Resilience, Team Culture, People Pleasing, Priority Setting, Workplace Conflict, Joy, Self-Awareness, Communication
The following music was used for this episode:
Music: Tropical Vibe by WinnieTheMoog
License (CC BY 4.0): https://filmmusic.io/standard-license
Music: Summer Morning Full Version by MusicLFiles
License (CC BY 4.0): https://filmmusic.io/standard-license

Summary
In this episode, Andy sits down with Evan Unger, a consultant and trainer who has spent more than 30 years helping leaders facilitate collaborative decision making across projects, programs, and organizations around the world. Evan's work focuses on helping groups move forward when opinions differ, tension is present, and time is limited. This conversation is packed with immediately actionable ideas.
Andy and Evan dig into why even experienced leaders struggle in high-stakes meetings, and how Evan's POPRA model (Purpose, Objectives, Process, Roles, Agreements) can transform the way you prepare and run them. They talk about how to manage the "HIPPO" (Highest Paid Person's Opinion) without suppressing the voices you most need to hear, a simple virtual technique called the simultaneous chat that can change the dynamic of any online meeting, and how to make sure your meetings actually land, with clear action items and time to close things out properly. Evan also shares his perspective on where AI fits in the future of facilitation, and some surprisingly personal advice about what he'd tell his younger self.
If you're looking for practical, immediately usable tools to run better meetings and lead more collaborative decisions, this episode is for you!
Sound Bites
"On a scale of zero to a hundred percent, how effective are the meetings you attend? On average, and I can't tell you most of the time I get a number below 60% and often much lower."
"My confusion as a leader, as a project manager, is immediately the confusion of the group because the group goes to where I'm at. And if I'm confused, welcome to what's about to happen in your meeting: Confusion, Chaos, Dysfunction."
"The other extreme, and this is truly the art of leadership, is even though I have strong opinions as the project manager, I remain completely neutral, but I'm an expert in process, an expert in how I get other experts to come together, collaborate, make decisions, get 'em to buy in."
"If I'm the HIPPO and I run the meeting as the expert, I will suppress conversation. People will not tell me what I need to know to make the decision, and I'm going to sub-optimize decisions, and I'm not going get people to buy in."
"So the art of leadership is knowing how to start and work from the right side of the continuum where I'm an expert in the process of getting others to collaborate and asking questions to elicit their thinking."
"If I'm not hearing from people as the facilitator of the collaborative conversation, that is a first sign that something's gone awry and I need to know how to hold space."
"The meeting's purpose and objectives, that's the first tether, the first anchor. If that's not clear, there is no tool or technique that is going to save me."
"Time is fuel. And we have limited fuel in the plane flight. When time is running out, we don't go knock on the cockpit and say to the pilot, fly faster."
"People say to me, 'Evan, I've got Copilot now. I got these AIs doing all the monitoring and tracking'. It's like, yeah, great, but you can't trust what it said. You still have to come back and say, 'Do we all agree what we decided and where we go from here?'"
"The five points were: 1, learn Spanish and become fluent in Spanish. 2, become fluent in Mandarin. 3, make sure you get a hard sciences or engineering degree when you go to school. Do it. Take all the liberal arts courses you want, but have something that people actually want. 4, go do a 10-day silent meditation as soon as you get out of school. And 5, take a backpack when you get out of school. Travel the world for a year.... That list is now down to two points."
"The plan is now to find something that can't be AI'd out of existence."
"But really, the art of being a good coach, a good consultant, a good parent, a good manager is querying the people to help them figure out their own answer."
Chapters
00:00 Introduction
01:44 Start of Interview
02:00 Evan's Background and Work
03:13 Why Meetings Fail — The Plane Metaphor
05:07 Preparing for High-Stakes Meetings: The POPRA Model
07:48 Distinguishing Purpose from Objectives
08:39 Facilitating Without Formal Authority
11:43 Spotting Meeting Drift
12:58 Balancing Dominant and Quiet Voices
16:12 Face-to-Face Facilitation Techniques
17:22 Handling Challenging Participants
21:17 Ensuring Meetings Land: Follow-Up Habits
23:59 AI and the Future of Facilitation
32:25 Advice to Younger Self
34:37 How These Skills Apply to Life
36:03 End of Interview
36:29 Andy Comments After the Interview
41:22 Outtakes
Learn More
You can learn more about Evan and his work at terischwartzassociates.com. You can also connect with him on LinkedIn.
For more learning on this topic, check out:
Episode 413 with Rich Malman and Jim Stewart. They talk about what they call meeting goblins and how to deal with them. It's a very project management-specific take on running better project meetings.
Episode 246 with Steven Rogelberg. Steven is a meeting researcher, but a really practical guy, and he shares great ideas about running more effective meetings.
Episode 72 with Steven Rogelberg. An earlier conversation with Steven that is still packed with practical ideas on making meetings work.
Episode 245 with Elise Keith. Elise is a meeting researcher who shares so many practical ideas on how to make meetings more effective—ideas Andy still calls back to years later.
Chat with PMeLa
You can chat directly with PMeLa—the podcast's AI persona—to get episode recommendations and answers to your project management and leadership questions. Visit PeopleAndProjectsPodcast.com/PMeLa to chat with her.
Pass the PMP Exam
If you or someone you know is thinking about getting PMP certified, we've put together a helpful guide called The 5 Best Resources to Help You Pass the PMP Exam on Your First Try. We've helped thousands of people earn their certification, and we'd love to help you too. It's totally free, and it's a great way to get a head start.
Just go to 5BestResources.PeopleAndProjectsPodcast.com to grab your copy. I'd love to help you get your PMP this year!
Join Us for LEAD52
I know you want to be a more confident leader–that's why you listen to this podcast. LEAD52 is a global community of people like you who are committed to transforming their ability to lead and deliver. It's 52 weeks of leadership learning, delivered right to your inbox, taking less than 5 minutes a week. And it's all for free. Learn more and sign up at GetLEAD52.com. Thanks!
Thank you for joining me for this episode of The People and Projects Podcast!
Talent Triangle: Power Skills
Topics: Meeting Facilitation, Collaborative Leadership, Decision Making, HIPPO Effect, Virtual Meetings, Meeting Preparation, Time Management, AI, Project Management, Change Management, Communication, Facilitation Tools
The following music was used for this episode:
Music: Ignotus by Agnese Valmaggia
License (CC BY 4.0): https://filmmusic.io/standard-license
Music: Fashion Corporate by Frank Schroeter
License (CC BY 4.0): https://filmmusic.io/standard-license

Summary
In this episode, Andy talks with Brett Harned, founder of the Digital PM Community and the Digital PM Summit, and author of Project Management for Humans: Helping People Get Things Done. Brett has spent years coaching project leaders and helping organizations rethink what project management really is. His core conviction: the human side of the work is not a nice-to-have. It is the work.
In this conversation, you'll hear how Brett fell into project management and what early experiences shaped his perspective on people and projects. You'll learn the patterns he sees repeated across teams and industries, practical habits for when projects feel messy or start to drift, and why he believes project management is a leadership role that most organizations still undervalue. Brett also shares his candid take on AI, what it can and cannot do for project leaders, and what advice he would give his younger self.
If you lead projects or teams, whether or not you have a PM title, this episode is for you!
Sound Bites
"Often with PMs, it's finding or receiving or feeling the permission to lead like a human instead of like a machine or a robot."
"Projects fail because conversations didn't happen or they happened way too late."
"Project management is a leadership role and too often organizations don't see it as a leadership role the way that they should."
"Project managers are quietly carrying emotional labor that no one really acknowledges."
"You can't earn trust by being invisible."
"The role has become less about task tracking and more about judgment, good communication and trust building."
"If you call people on your team resources, they have every right to call you overhead."
"Slowing conversations down before speeding up the work is like the biggest thing."
"Drift isn't usually about effort. It's about misaligned understanding."
"AI is not going to replace a really good leader."
"AI is great at admin. It's terrible at the leadership stuff. It can't read the room, it can't navigate tension, it can't earn trust."
"Say the thing now. Saying something early is almost always safer than saying it too late."
"The job of a project manager isn't to absorb chaos. It's to make it a conversation."
"Caring about people and building relationships is a skill, and it's a skill that's necessary for this career."
Chapters
00:00 Introduction
01:52 Start of Interview
01:57 How Brett Describes What He Does
03:29 When the People Side Became Clear
06:52 Patterns Across Teams and Organizations
10:32 How Expectations of the PM Role Have Changed
12:28 The Impact of Remote and Hybrid Work
15:26 Practices for When Projects Feel Messy
18:20 How to Name What Is Happening Out Loud
21:30 A Question for When Projects Start to Drift
23:43 How AI Will and Won't Change the PM Role
25:50 Practical Ways Brett Uses AI
30:21 Advice to Younger Brett
33:40 How PM Skills Show Up Outside of Work
35:58 The PM Squad and Same Team Partners
38:01 End of Interview
38:22 Andy Comments After the Interview
41:30 Outtakes
Learn More
You can learn more about Brett and his work at SameTeamPartners.com and BrettHarned.com.
For more learning on this topic, check out:
Episode 336 with Clint Padgett. During the interview with Brett, Andy mentioned the weakness of using only percent complete or status colors. That's something Clint and Andy talked about in episode 336.
Episode 99 with Mike Roberto. The topic of conflict came up several times in this discussion. In episode 99, Mike and Andy talk about managing the tension between conflict and consensus. It's a discussion worth hearing, especially if you grew up thinking conflict is mostly a negative.
Episode 500 with Steve Brown, former Google DeepMind futurist. Andy and Steve talk about AI and the future of work, and it's a discussion highly recommended for anyone leading projects today.
Chat with PMeLa
You can chat directly with PMeLa—the podcast's AI persona—to get episode recommendations and answers to your project management and leadership questions. Visit PeopleAndProjectsPodcast.com/PMeLa to chat with her.
Pass the PMP Exam
If you or someone you know is thinking about getting PMP certified, we've put together a helpful guide called The 5 Best Resources to Help You Pass the PMP Exam on Your First Try. We've helped thousands of people earn their certification, and we'd love to help you too. It's totally free, and it's a great way to get a head start.
Just go to 5BestResources.PeopleAndProjectsPodcast.com to grab your copy. I'd love to help you get your PMP this year!
Join Us for LEAD52
I know you want to be a more confident leader–that's why you listen to this podcast. LEAD52 is a global community of people like you who are committed to transforming their ability to lead and deliver. It's 52 weeks of leadership learning, delivered right to your inbox, taking less than 5 minutes a week. And it's all for free. Learn more and sign up at GetLEAD52.com. Thanks!
Thank you for joining me for this episode of The People and Projects Podcast!
Talent Triangle: Power Skills
Topics: Project Management, Leadership, Team Dynamics, Communication, Emotional Labor, Human-Centered Leadership, Conflict Management, AI, Future of Work, Stakeholder Management, Psychological Safety, Remote Work, Project Recovery
The following music was used for this episode:
Music: Echo by Alexander Nakarada
License (CC BY 4.0): https://filmmusic.io/standard-license
Music: Synthiemania by Frank Schroeter
License (CC BY 4.0): https://filmmusic.io/standard-license

Summary
In this episode, Andy welcomes Jen Fisher, author of Hope Is the Strategy: The Underrated Skill That Transforms Work, Leadership, and Wellbeing. In project management circles, we often hear the phrase "hope is not a strategy." Jen challenges that assumption, arguing that real hope is not wishful thinking at all. Instead, it's a practical cognitive process that can help leaders navigate uncertainty, pressure, and change.
In the discussion, Jen explains how hope requires three elements: clear goals, multiple pathways to reach them, and the agency to believe we can influence outcomes. You'll also hear her personal story of realizing she was languishing under constant performance pressure, and how a candid conversation with her boss sparked the beginning of a healthier and more hopeful way of working. Along the way, Jen shares practical tools such as possibility journaling, energy ledgers, and hope spotting. She also explains why vulnerability can be a leadership superpower and how simple language shifts can turn hope killers into hope builders.
If you're leading teams and projects under constant pressure and looking for practical ways to sustain both performance and wellbeing, this episode is for you!
Sound Bites
"How would I describe myself? I'm a hope dealer."
"Hope is not flimsy. It's not whimsical."
"Real hope actually requires action."
"What drives hopelessness is feeling like there's nothing you can do."
"Hope is the belief that tomorrow can be better than today."
"67% of managers said that they've never been trained in how to manage other people. We put humans in charge of other humans, but we give them very little skill and training in how to lead."
"You can perform when you're languishing, but the question is really why should we or why would we want to."
"For the first time in my professional life, I actually felt seen and heard and valued."
"Toxic positivity only makes people feel worse."
"Possibility journaling is really thinking about what might be possible here."
"Vulnerability is proof that you're human."
"When people are feeling uncertain, they want to connect to somebody that feels human."
Chapters
00:00 Introduction
01:45 Start of Interview
02:00 What Hope Is Not: Clearing Up the Misconceptions
03:45 What Real Hope Actually Requires
05:42 Agency and the Feeling of Hopelessness
06:24 Burnout vs. Hopelessness: Is There a Difference?
07:55 Wellbeing Intelligence: The Leadership Skill We're Missing
11:44 Languishing: That Gray Space Between Fine and Flourishing
14:15 The Hidden Cost of Time Pressure on Creativity
17:00 Breaking Through the High-Functioning Facade
20:15 Setting Boundaries as a Recovering People Pleaser
24:03 Practical Tools: Possibility Journal, Energy Ledger, and Hope Spotting
29:15 Vulnerability as a Leadership Superpower
33:46 Hope Killers and Hope Builders: The Language of Hope
38:00 The Hope Audit and the Hope Strategist Toolkit
39:33 Applying Hope at Home and as a Caregiver
41:30 Where to Learn More About Jen
41:26 End of Interview
41:54 Andy Comments After the Interview
45:18 Outtakes
Learn More
You can learn more about Jen and her work at Jen-Fisher.com.
For more learning on this topic, check out:
Episode 462 with Margie Warrell. Part of Jen's message in the book is the importance of agency—of believing that you're not a victim and that you have options. Margie is a fierce advocate for how to take action when you're feeling hopeless. I highly recommend her work.
Episode 448 with Marie-Hélène Pelletier. It's an engaging discussion about burnout and resilience, and a fantastic follow-up to this discussion with Jen.
Episode 396 with Thomas Curran. It's an episode on perfectionism, and I think you'll find it an excellent follow-up to this discussion as well.
Chat with PMeLa
You can chat directly with PMeLa, the podcast's AI persona, to get episode recommendations and answers to your project management and leadership questions. Visit PeopleAndProjectsPodcast.com/PMeLa to chat with her.
Pass the PMP Exam
If you or someone you know is thinking about getting PMP certified, we've put together a helpful guide called The 5 Best Resources to Help You Pass the PMP Exam on Your First Try. We've helped thousands of people earn their certification, and we'd love to help you too. It's totally free, and it's a great way to get a head start.
Just go to 5BestResources.PeopleAndProjectsPodcast.com to grab your copy. I'd love to help you get your PMP this year!
Join Us for LEAD52
I know you want to be a more confident leader–that's why you listen to this podcast. LEAD52 is a global community of people like you who are committed to transforming their ability to lead and deliver. It's 52 weeks of leadership learning, delivered right to your inbox, taking less than 5 minutes a week. And it's all for free. Learn more and sign up at GetLEAD52.com. Thanks!
Thank you for joining me for this episode of The People and Projects Podcast!
Talent Triangle: Power Skills
Topics: Leadership, Wellbeing, Burnout, Hope, Resilience, Vulnerability, Boundaries, Team Culture, Employee Engagement, Languishing, Psychological Safety, Workplace Performance
The following music was used for this episode:
Music: Imagefilm 034 by Sascha Ende
License (CC BY 4.0): https://filmmusic.io/standard-license
Music: Tuesday by Sascha Ende
License (CC BY 4.0): https://filmmusic.io/standard-license

Summary
Welcome to our 500th episode! To celebrate this milestone, Andy talks with Steve Brown, AI futurist, keynote speaker, and author of The AI Ultimatum: Preparing for a World of Intelligent Machines and Radical Transformation. Steve brings a rare perspective shaped by years at Intel and Google DeepMind, and today helps organizations navigate two vital questions: what future do you want to build with AI, and what future do you want to avoid?
They explore why waiting isn't actually the safe option it feels like, how to think about the different "flavors" of AI beyond just generative tools, and what it really means to orchestrate humans, AI agents, and robots together in the workplace. Steve introduces three types of AI agents—offload, elevate, and extend—and explains the crucial difference between automating tasks and truly transforming how work gets done. You'll also hear his candid take on the fear of being replaced and why doubling down on your humanity is the smartest career move you can make right now.
If you're looking for a practical, empowering guide to leading through the AI revolution—without the hype—this episode is for you!
Sound Bites
"The difference between an AI-enabled or AI-first company and an AI laggard is going to be so great that if you don't get on the train, you may get to the point where you can never catch up."
"Your competitors who have embraced AI faster than you are going to be just kicking your butt all over town."
"There's a serious cost to inaction in that you can become made irrelevant."
"The danger with that is you may automate yourself. It may automate away all of the differentiation you have in your brand and your company."
"AI is this sort of amplification technology, and the challenge is to balance cost-cutting and value creation."
"Each flavor of AI is useful for solving a different type of business problem."
"It feels like a digital employee, right? A digital worker that works for you."
"It's taking the suck out of your job."
"The real opportunity here, is to transform the way you do work rather than just try and automate away tasks or people."
"The workplace of the future is going to be three groups. Humans will still be in the workforce. Great! Go us!"
"You won't be replaced by an AI or a robot. You'll be replaced by someone who knows how to use AI better than you do."
"Double down on your humanity."
"Focus on building the skills that cannot be replaced, or at least won't be replaced by machines anytime soon."
"At the end of all of this is going to be lives of abundance, where we have the things that we need."
Chapters
00:00 Introduction
01:45 Start of Interview
01:54 Steve's Career Journey from Intel to DeepMind
05:00 Understanding the AI Ultimatum
08:23 Our First AI Moments
09:32 The Flavors of AI
13:54 Three Pathways to Creating Value with AI
15:11 Automation vs. Transformation
17:10 Orchestrating Humans, AI, and Robots
19:01 Real-World Examples of AI Agents
21:33 Physically Intelligent Robots in the Workplace
24:13 Addressing Fear and Resistance to AI
26:44 Preparing the Next Generation for the AI Age
29:56 Where to Learn More About Steve
31:01 End of Interview
31:38 Andy Comments After the Interview
36:23 Outtakes
Learn More
You can learn more about Steve and his work at SteveBrown.ai.
For more learning on this topic, check out:
Episode 479 with Matt Mong. It's a discussion about the AI skills you need to stay relevant.
Episode 454 with Christie Smith. She talks about how AI is changing leadership, and what we can do about that now.
Episode 437 with Nada Sanders. It's a discussion about future-prepping your career in an age of AI.
You can also chat directly with PMeLa—the podcast's AI persona—to get episode recommendations and answers to your project management and leadership questions. Visit PeopleAndProjectsPodcast.com/PMeLa to chat with her.
Level Up Your AI Skills
Join other listeners from around the world who are taking our AI Made Simple course to prepare for an AI-infused future.
Just go to ai.PeopleAndProjectsPodcast.com. Thanks!
Pass the PMP Exam This Year
If you or someone you know is thinking about getting PMP certified, we've put together a helpful guide called The 5 Best Resources to Help You Pass the PMP Exam on Your First Try. We've helped thousands of people earn their certification, and we'd love to help you too. It's totally free, and it's a great way to get a head start.
Just go to 5BestResources.PeopleAndProjectsPodcast.com to grab your copy. I'd love to help you get your PMP this year!
Join Us for LEAD52
I know you want to be a more confident leader–that's why you listen to this podcast. LEAD52 is a global community of people like you who are committed to transforming their ability to lead and deliver. It's 52 weeks of leadership learning, delivered right to your inbox, taking less than 5 minutes a week. And it's all for free. Learn more and sign up at GetLEAD52.com. Thanks!
Thank you for joining me for this episode of The People and Projects Podcast!
Talent Triangle: Business Acumen
Topics: Artificial Intelligence, Leadership, Future of Work, AI Strategy, Digital Transformation, Agentic AI, Automation, Organizational Change, AI Ethics, Competitive Advantage, Human-AI Collaboration, Technology Adoption
The following music was used for this episode:
Music: Lullaby of Light featuring Cory Friesenhan by Sascha Ende
License (CC BY 4.0): https://filmmusic.io/standard-license
Music: Fashion Corporate by Frank Schroeter
License (CC BY 4.0): https://filmmusic.io/standard-license