EP#10🌿Everyone's Screaming About AI - What About The D-Word That's Here Now?

This episode explores reclaiming ownership, exploring the appalling statistic that 78% of managers are disengaged. People are hurting. What can a leader do about it?

This is me calling out to see if The Olive Tree Method will help the disengagement so many leaders are feeling and, for me, is worse than what AI looks like in the future. This is with us now. A leader who isn't engaged, can't even think about how to start leading their team through AI adoption. They're thinking about making it to the end of the day.

Champions of the environment - The coaching philosophy: your job isn't to fix people or implement systems. It's to build up the team you have in the environment you're in, and support them as champions of that space.  Champions are not the norm, they are built, refined and every detail is obsessed over! Can you look at you and your team in the same way?

A call to action for four leaders. Seven Weeks. Zero Cost. Feedback as the exchange. Run through The Olive Tree Method as your own. 

EP#10 - Listen Now

(9 minutes)

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On with the episode...

Are you part of the 78% that is disengaged at work, dropped into survival mode?

Are you feeling isolated, confused? Is the problem the team? Or maybe it is you? Or the place you’re in? 

Are you asking the questions, what can be done and looking for the answers?

Welcome back.

Today I want to talk about something that might be sitting with you also. Something that has been imprinted on my heart and fired me up this weekend beyond my current passion and motivation for People First Leadership. It's the quiet but widespread leadership crisis that has predominantly not been addressed. Directly affecting you and absolutely affecting your team. The disengagement statistic that is screaming we all need help.

Is what I'm offering going to help? I truly hope so.

I came across more data doing research and watching some powerful leadership podcasts over the weekend. I wanted to hug all the letters worldwide and those I know. This is bigger than I thought. I didn't realise the management level data was declining and so low. Seventy-eight percent of managers globally are disengaged, not thinking about leaving, already checked out and in self-protection mode.

And why? The reasons given are so common and I get it, I've felt it. Role overload with no redesign. Expansion without support. Burnout with no permission to name it, discuss it or solve it. Trust eroded from the people that are meant to have your back, probably under the same pressure, maybe more, and unable to verbalise or explain.

Through it all, a silence, a palpable resistance to be able to openly talk about it.

Well we talk about it, but it's more offloading than solving anything. It's more pushback without support and a lack of movement.

I think you get to a point where you think it's not worth moving on because you suspect that if you do, you'll be in the same situation within no time, which now I see would statistically be likely.

So if this is you, more than likely it has to be you, with nearly eighty percent of us feeling crappy about our workplace.

Your dilemma, your daily grind is real, unaddressed, costing money and more importantly, it's hurting people.

The exhaustion is real.

The feeling that you're holding it together with your fingernails while no one's looking is real and this is damaging stuff.

What's happening in reality?

When a manager's nervous system is in chronic dysregulation, which is what's happening prior to disengaging, we disengage to survive, you can't regulate yourself easily, you therefore can't regulate your team either.

The stress travels down, the team feels it, and they start protecting themselves instead of continuing to contribute.

The culture that was being built or had been built starts collapsing.

I think a lot of us might think, what's wrong with my team? When the answer maybe, “Everything depends on you.”.

That’s a quote from the coach who brought Serena Williams back from injury and coached her to sustained dominance and record-breaking titles in tennis for years.

Another epic coach, rang a massive bell for me with his perspective on our roles as leaders and how important it is to engage with each individual on that team and get them invested, to absorb, the idea of support, care, investigation, understanding, expectations of the others around them.

Our role, coach or leader was defined as building up the team we have, in the environment we are in.

I took those words personally. Direct ownership. We can give that up.

What’s wrong with my team, what’s wrong with my team? What’s wrong with me?

What’s wrong with this place.

To look at yourself and the people within your team as champions of that environment. In order to get the best from them.

For you all to be champions, it makes so much sense to support each other in that way.

It’s not the work. It’s the people that do the work.

If you don’t know what’s going on for anyone. How do you actually know what’s happening?

What to fix. What to improve. What to champion in each other.

Can you recognise everything depends on you.

If you’re not happy anyway, rattle the cages. Fight.

The answers, the help you need, I understand they can be so complicated.

Maybe it is another operational system, although that might only solve one issue.

Maybe it is another framework to work by, something that's new and innovative, although now the team might have to adapt their way of working to something that hasn't been specifically built for them or by them.

Maybe it is AI. Who's going to help the team adapt that into the environment?

Have you got the capacity?

If you can recognise that the most important condition around your team is you, they are a direct reflection of your own nervous system state. It's hugely empowering.

When you are regulated, when you ask for support because you know exactly what your team needs. When you show up present, instead of slightly edgy, jumpy, busy - you're instead calm, prepared, ready to support - your team can access their own regulation.

What helps us regulate? Information, awareness.

What will it take for you to look after your needs and therefore the needs of the team in a way that you can re-engage, be more empowered, move forward rather than continuing to run around from one thing to another?

If you agree leadership depends on you, there is so much within your control that will have an impact that you can do. Have you got the tools to know what's happening?

I didn't until I ran the olive tree method and it helped myself and a team in dire need of support to see what was going on. It was designed to reveal the conditions around us quickly, to help initiate conversations that produced real data, to connect, to draw lines around behavior, to work through where everyone was right now as a team, be clear about where we needed to be and help us map out how to get there together.

I talk in the upcoming episodes about communication flow around your team.

More about how the things you don't say, the exhaustion you hide, the support you never ask for, this overwhelm you carry alone, and how that becomes the nervous system signal your team receives.

And how changing that can change everything.

I'm excited you're here. I can't wait to share more.

Your dilemma is real. Disengagement is protection. It's also a signal for change.

You're absolutely not alone. Eighty percent of us in this with you and it is fixable.

People first leadership advocates are referring to the disengagement as leadership crisis.

The olive tree method, I think is a solution to helping put the control back into the hands of leaders and their team, regardless of where you are in the organization. I've put a call out to action for four leaders through LinkedIn to join together and run this method for themselves over the next seven to nine weeks with their own teams, zero cost, feedback as the exchange.

If this resonates with you, if you're ready to stop running in circles and start revealing what's actually happening with your team, I'd love for you to be part of this.

This isn't about me having all the answers. It's an offering that I believe will make a difference. Links will be below. I'd be so excited if you decided to try something different to get a different result. Regardless. Be blessed and I wish you the best day. Ciao.

Resource Links:

03.40 Netflix Coaching Champions Reference – The Playbook – A Coach’s Rules for Life

Next Episode...

Communication Flow - Two episodes to reveal how good or bad communication flow shows up, things that don't get said and how to improve.

EP#11 & 12 - Broadcast pending

🌿The Pilot Crew Call To Action? Closes Wed 29 July 2026

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