The 5-Minute Habit Preventing 99% of Failure | Dr Michelle Johnston
episodePreviously titled “The 5-Minute Habit That Prevents 99% of Leadership Failure | Dr Michelle Johnston” — renamed by the publisher on Aug 4, 2026
Transcript
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What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
The harder you grind, the worse leader you actually become. That's not a motivational quote, that's a warning. And today's guest, Dr. Michelle Johnston says, most leaders don't fail from incompetence. They fail because they mistake discipline for disconnection. And once you hear how subtle this shift is, you won't ever be able to unsee it in your own business. Lock in friends, this is another episode of Finding Peak.
What are you seeing in the market right now that was the impetus for your book, the seismic shift in you?
What is the main reason most leaders fail?
What did you see that you're like, I have to address this? There needs to be this book about this topic. What were you seeing?
Yes, great question, Ryan. So I'm an executive coach, and I was coaching all these leaders who were at the top of their game and thinking they were doing everything right and having all of the one-on-one meetings and all of the team meetings and all of the off-sites.
How can leaders shift from discipline to connection?
And they were telling me that at the end of the day, they were burned out, drained. They were struggling, finding purpose, that there was something not working. And so my co-author, Marshall Goldsmith, and I were at the Thinkers 50 Awards in London. in 2023, and we're listening to all the top thinkers. The Thinkers 50 is called the Oscars of Management Thinking. We're listening to the Amy Edmondsons, you know, at Harvard, Psychological Safety, and the Kirsten Fergusons of Heart and Humanity. We're listening to Dori Clark and Ruth Gotian, all these amazing speakers talking about the chaos like you identified around us and how technology is making us think that we're connected, and yet we're lonelier than we've ever been in the history of the planet.
We're more disconnected. We're more anxious. We're totally addicted to our technology, and it's only going to get worse. And so the big question on the table was, what in the world can leaders do with this chaos, with this addiction to technology, and it's not making us feel good? And so my whole brand is the seismic shift, right? So my first book, The Seismic Shift in Leadership, was I believe the biggest seismic shift is towards connection. This book addresses this disconnection epidemic that we're in, and it's more geared towards humans. of how I truly believe, Ryan, we need to shift from the what to the who. And that's going to make all the difference. We've got caught up in the progress, progress, progress, progress, progress, achievement, achievement, achievement, achievement, task, task, task.
One of my colleagues, Rhett Powers, said it beautifully. He said, it's not lost in translation. It's lost in transaction. We're just full of transactions and yet not full of meaning.
Okay, I have so many questions here. So one, I want to... I'm going to ask this question, and I mean it with no disrespect to the people who go to things like Fingers 50, right?
What inspired Dr. Johnston to write 'The Seismic Shift in You'?
But I would consider myself, for better or for worse, very much like... in the shit, right? I deal with people who are in the shit. You know, I am very, you know, I don't roll in the big academic circles. I tend to, you know, we talk a lot about on the show, you know, what I loosely call like a reality operating system. Like life seems to make more sense when we operate in reality, not the fantasy that we wish existed. And I find a lot of times when I read books, highfalutin academics that have theories and stats. And I surveyed 738 CEOs and they told me X. And when I'm talking to the people who really do this stuff, it's like they seem like luxury concerns, right? This is kind of my question. So many of the people that listen to this show are not the Fortune 500s, they're the Fortune 5000s and below.
They're the mid-market operators, entrepreneurs, startup people, side hustles trying to get to an entrepreneurial endeavor. And I think oftentimes the feedback I get is like, man, that guest, she was incredible and the information was great, but like... I don't experience any of those problems, actually. Those seem like luxury problems. How do we discern the luxury problems of this chaotic, I feel disconnected with, like, I just got to pay my bills.
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Chapters
8 chapters
1
What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
0:00–0:46
2
What is the main reason most leaders fail?
0:46–1:09
3
How can leaders shift from discipline to connection?
1:09–3:27
4
What inspired Dr. Johnston to write 'The Seismic Shift in You'?
3:27–10:28
5
What are the consequences of disconnection in leadership?
10:28–24:23
6
How can leaders effectively build trust with their teams?
24:23–34:50
7
What are practical steps to improve communication as a leader?
34:50–40:33
8
How do leaders prioritize their own well-being?
40:33–55:36
Speakers
3 identifiedMore from Finding Peak with Ryan Hanley
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