The World Class Leaders Show: The CEO leadership podcast for leaders who solve big problems and build better futures.

If you’re a CEO or senior executive, your challenges don’t sound like “I need more leadership tips.”

They sound more like:

  • “Why am I still carrying this company on my shoulders?”

  • “Why doesn’t my top team own the strategy the way I do?”

  • “How do I challenge the board or investors without blowing up the relationship?”

  • “How do we build a company that still matters in 10 years, not just hit this year’s numbers?”

The World-Class Leaders Show is the CEO leadership podcast built for those questions.

Hosted by Andrea Petrone – A Global Influencer, CEO Whisperer, WIley Author, Executive Coach and Speaker – the show goes deep into what it really takes to lead at the top: using power well, doing the identity work of leadership, and making the big decisions that shape the future of your company.

Each episode brings real CEO stories and the best business thinkers in the world to the table. You’ll hear how sitting and former CEOs, chairs, and C-suite leaders tackle the biggest business problems of our time – growth, culture, strategy execution, transformation, technology, risk, and talent – and how they stay true to who they are while doing it.

You’ll use this podcast to:

  • Get your executive team truly aligned, so you stop re-fighting the same battles in every meeting.

  • Turn strategy into a small set of clear priorities and behaviours your people actually execute.

  • Hold your ground with boards, investors, regulators, and powerful internal stakeholders – and still move the agenda forward.

  • Use your voice and position with more clarity and impact, so people know what you stand for and where the company is going.

  • Find fresh inspiration and language to build a better future for your organization, your people, and the markets you serve – without losing yourself in the role.

Featuring leaders from Fortune companies and some of the best thinkers in the world (like Amy Edmondson, Adam Bryant, James Keyes), the show is known for its richness, depth, and straight talk. Ranked in the top 5% of podcasts globally, it’s followed by thousands of CEOs and senior executives who want more than recycled ideas and surface-level conversations.

If you care about solving real business problems, shaping the future, and doing the inner work required to lead at the very top, this podcast is for you.

Subscribe to The World-Class Leaders Show and upgrade both your leadership – and the future you’re building.

For ongoing CEO insights and behind-the-scenes context from each episode, follow Andrea Petrone on LinkedIn.

Episodes

2 hours ago

13 min

"We need to operationalize efficiencies."
I've heard that sentence in a dozen boardrooms. It always means the same thing: we're cutting costs and some roles will go. Everyone in the room knows it. Nobody says it. And the people who'll actually lose their jobs are left reading fog.
That's what this episode is about. Jargon isn't a communication problem, it's a courage problem. It's what we reach for when we haven't done the hard work of getting clear, and it does something for us even as it fails our teams. Say we're stopping the small business segment to go all in on enterprise, and you can hold me to it. Say we're optimizing our customer portfolio strategy, and I've risked nothing. Safe for me. Useless for everyone listening.
I share four moves to fix it, including the one test I trust most: can someone four levels down repeat your message accurately in the corridor? If not, you don't have a message yet.
And I'll be honest about why this is hard. Plain words commit you to a position you can be wrong about. The jargon was never protecting your team from confusion it was protecting you from exposure.
Your people aren't waiting for you to be more inspiring. They're waiting for you to be clear.
 
📘 PRE-ORDER MY NEW BOOK
Reinvention at the Top: The Playbook for CEOs to Lead Under Pressure (Wiley) is available for pre-order now.
👉 https://www.reinventionatthetop.com/preorder
 
🚀 JOIN WCL21
WCL21 is a private community for CEOs leading mid-market companies, featuring confidential peer roundtables, masterclasses, and leadership conversations.
👉 https://andreapetrone.com/wcl21
 
📩 NEWSLETTER
Join 192,000+ leaders receiving Andrea Petrone's weekly leadership insights.
👉 https://www.andreapetrone.com/newsletter/
 
CONNECT WITH ANDREA PETRONE
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Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/andreapetrone_x
 
Connect with Kaihan Krippendorff 
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/kaihankrippendorff/ 
 
Subscribe for weekly conversations with researchers and executives on leadership, teams, and organizational change.

2 hours ago

13 min

Sep 3, 2026

44 min

Steve Jobs. Elon Musk. Mark Zuckerberg. We tell their stories like they invented the future alone in a garage. Kaihan Krippendorff says that the story is mostly fiction, and the data backs him up.
 
On this episode of The World Class Leaders Show, host Andrea Petrone talks with Kaihan Krippendorff, founder of Outthinker and one of Thinkers50's top 20 global management thinkers, about who actually creates the world's biggest innovations. Spoiler: it's usually not the founder.
 
Kaihan walks through the numbers. Looking at the 30 most transformative innovations of the last 30 years, from the internet to DNA sequencing to solar advances, roughly 70 percent were conceived by employees working within already established companies, not by entrepreneurs starting something new. He explains why we tell the founder story anyway, because it's a great story, not necessarily a true one, and why that matters more than it sounds. If the only innovation story we tell is to quit school, go to a garage, disrupt everything, most people quietly write themselves out of the innovation conversation entirely.
 
From there, Andrea and Kaihan dig into what founders actually do well, creating the conditions for other people to innovate, and what most companies get wrong about unlocking that from their own employees, including an idea borrowed from Amy Edmondson's work on psychological safety that has nothing to do with venting complaints and everything to do with giving people room to propose a half formed idea without getting shot down.
 
What you'll get out of this episode:
Why 70 percent of the most transformative innovations came from employees, not founders
Why the garage founder story is more myth than fact, and why it gets told anyway
What founders actually do well, and why that's different from inventing
The psychological safety piece most companies get wrong about employee innovation
Kaihan's framework for finding a fourth option when everyone else is stuck choosing between three
His concept of proximity, and why value creation is moving closer to the moment of demand
The four things he believes AI still can't do in strategy
 
Timestamps:
00:00 Trailer
02:01 The Lego story
04:19 Innovation is forgotten, not learned
06:20 How industries shift unnoticed
08:46 When past success blinds leaders
11:15 Think inside a new box
12:33 Military strategy's limits
15:23 What top strategists do differently
17:44 The 70 percent stat
19:08 Why the garage myth sticks
21:45 Space for impossible ideas
24:55 What proximity means
27:48 Four questions for your next move
31:12 What AI still can't do
36:13 Why we trust illogical humans
37:39 Culture shapes strategy
41:07 His final message for CEOs
 
📘 PRE-ORDER MY NEW BOOK
Reinvention at the Top: The Playbook for CEOs to Lead Under Pressure (Wiley) is available for pre-order now.
👉 https://www.reinventionatthetop.com/preorder
 
🚀 JOIN WCL21
WCL21 is a private community for CEOs leading mid-market companies, featuring confidential peer roundtables, masterclasses, and leadership conversations.
👉 https://andreapetrone.com/wcl21
 
📩 NEWSLETTER
Join 192,000+ leaders receiving Andrea Petrone's weekly leadership insights.
👉 https://www.andreapetrone.com/newsletter/
 
CONNECT WITH ANDREA PETRONE
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/andreapetrone/
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/andreapetrone_x
 
Connect with Kaihan Krippendorff 
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/kaihankrippendorff/ 
 
Subscribe for weekly conversations with researchers and executives on leadership, teams, and organizational change.

Sep 3, 2026

44 min

Aug 27, 2026

10 min

A CEO told Andrea, "I don't recognize my own calendar anymore." He built the company, the company outgrew him, and nobody around him would say it. This episode is about the hardest reinvention a leader ever has to make and why growth is so good at hiding the need for it.
In This Episode
The business reinvents itself; the leader doesn't. Andrea unpacks a pattern he's watched for years: a company changes shape three times over new markets, new model, new scale while the CEO keeps leading the way they did when it was small enough to hold in two hands. It works, right up until it quietly stops working. And because the numbers are still climbing, nobody looks underneath them, leaving the leader alone with a feeling they have no words for. He names the signals worth watching (every decision still routes through you, your leadership team has stopped disagreeing with you, you're working harder each year while the company grows slower), explains why this change is a different order of difficulty it asks you to change the person doing the leading, not something outside you and shares the heart of the shift: naming the loss of who you were, leading from the question instead of the answer, and measuring how many good decisions get made without you.
 
Timestamps00:00 — "I don't recognize my own calendar anymore"01:00 — The founder still leading a company that no longer exists02:00 — You're not being asked to become better. You're being asked to become different.03:00 — The silence around it: who tells the CEO?04:00 — Why changing how you lead feels like betraying yourself05:00 — Working harder as the most respectable way to avoid the real change05:30 — The four signals you haven't caught up yet06:00 — Naming the loss: honoring the old self without staying it07:00 — Lead from the question, not the answer — and change what you measure08:00 — The plateau that nothing forces you to fix09:00 — Reinvention at the Top: why pre-orders matter10:00 — The question to sit with: did the company you run today hire the leader you're still being?
 
📘 PRE-ORDER MY NEW BOOK
Reinvention at the Top: The Playbook for CEOs to Lead Under Pressure (Wiley) is available for pre-order now.
👉 https://www.amazon.co.uk/Reinvention-Top-Playbook-Under-Pressure/dp/1394430426
 
🚀 JOIN WCL21
WCL21 is a private community for CEOs leading mid-market companies, featuring confidential peer roundtables, masterclasses, and leadership conversations.
👉 https://andreapetrone.com/wcl21
 
📩 NEWSLETTER
Join 183,000+ leaders receiving Andrea Petrone's weekly leadership insights.
👉 https://www.andreapetrone.com/newsletter/
 
CONNECT WITH ANDREA PETRONE
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/andreapetrone/
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/andreapetrone_x
 
Subscribe for weekly conversations with researchers and executives on leadership, teams, and organizational change.

Aug 27, 2026

10 min

Aug 20, 2026

41 min

In this episode of The World Class Leaders Show, host Andrea Petrone sits down with Amy Edmondson, Novartis Professor of Leadership at Harvard Business School and the world's #1 ranked management thinker (Thinkers50), to challenge what most people get wrong about psychological safety.
Amy explains why psychological safety isn't about being nice or comfortable. It's about candor. She and Andrea talk through the "skunk at the picnic" story behind a failed acquisition, the real difference between blameworthy and intelligent failure, and how organizations fall into what she calls "failure theater," celebrating mistakes without ever building real accountability.
They also get into how leaders can protect high quality conversations under pressure, how to repair psychological safety once it's broken, and why systems thinking might be the next big skill leaders need to develop.Amy Edmondson is the author of "The Fearless Organization" and "Right Kind of Wrong," winner of the Financial Times & Schroders Business Book of the Year award.
 
⏱ TIMESTAMPS:00:00 Introduction to Amy Edmondson 02:41 How Amy accidentally discovered psychological safety through a hospital study 09:51 The biggest misconception: it's not about being nice 13:45 Why "safe" doesn't mean "comfortable" 17:05 The "skunk at the picnic" story 19:05 Protecting psychological safety under pressure 24:06 Why stress triggers self-protection, and how teams can counter it 26:46 Blameworthy failure vs. intelligent failure 31:05 "Failure theater" explained 35:19 How to repair psychological safety after it's broken 39:43 Beyond psychological safety: systems thinking 42:48 Amy's challenge for every CEO listening
📘 PRE-ORDER MY NEW BOOK
Reinvention at the Top: The Playbook for CEOs to Lead Under Pressure (Wiley) is available for pre-order now.
👉 https://www.amazon.co.uk/Reinvention-Top-Playbook-Under-Pressure/dp/1394430426
 
🚀 JOIN WCL21
WCL21 is a private community for CEOs leading mid-market companies, featuring confidential peer roundtables, masterclasses, and leadership conversations.
👉 https://andreapetrone.com/wcl21
 
📩 NEWSLETTERJoin 183,000+ leaders receiving Andrea Petrone's weekly leadership insights.
👉 https://www.andreapetrone.com/newsletter/
 
CONNECT WITH ANDREA PETRONELinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/andreapetrone/
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/andreapetrone_x
Connect with Amy EdmondsonLinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/amycedmondson/ 
Subscribe for weekly conversations with researchers and executives on leadership, teams, and organizational change.

Aug 20, 2026

41 min

Aug 13, 2026

12 min

Losing a top performer costs 2.5 times their annual salary and most leaders don't see it coming until it's too late. Andrea Petrone shares the seven things that actually keep great people, and why none of them is a bigger paycheck.
When a talented employee walks out the door, you lose far more than their output. You lose years of institutional knowledge, you take a hit to team morale and trust, and you absorb the time and expense of rebuilding from scratch.
Research puts the cost of losing a single high performer at roughly 2.5 times their annual salary  but as Andrea explains, the financial number isn't the worst part. The real damage is the disruption, and it usually happens because
leaders unintentionally neglect the things that make people want to stay. In this episode, Andrea walks through seven practical shifts: paying well but going further with recognition and growth, rewarding potential instead of only
past results, helping people connect their daily work to a bigger purpose, protecting their autonomy instead of micromanaging, building relationships that go beyond job titles, taking mental health and burnout seriously, and
making feedback a continuous two-way conversation rather than an annual formality. Retention, he argues, isn't about flashy perks,  it's about building an environment where people feel valued, trusted, and supported.
 
📘 PRE-ORDER MY NEW BOOK
Reinvention at the Top: The Playbook for CEOs to Lead Under Pressure (Wiley) is available for pre-order now.
👉 https://www.amazon.co.uk/Reinvention-Top-Playbook-Under-Pressure/dp/1394430426
 
🚀 JOIN WCL21
WCL21 is a private community for CEOs leading mid-market companies, featuring confidential peer roundtables, masterclasses, and leadership conversations.
👉 https://andreapetrone.com/wcl21
 
📩 NEWSLETTER
Join 183,000+ leaders receiving Andrea Petrone's weekly leadership insights.
👉 https://www.andreapetrone.com/newsletter/
 
CONNECT WITH ANDREA PETRONE
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/andreapetrone/
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/andreapetrone_x
 
Subscribe for weekly conversations with researchers and executives on leadership, teams, and organizational change.

Aug 13, 2026

12 min

Aug 6, 2026

43 min

Even the most accomplished executives secretly feel like frauds. MIT Professor Deborah Ancona has spent over a decade studying why and the real cause has nothing to do with confidence.
On this episode of The World Class Leaders Show, host Andrea Petrone talks with Deborah Ancona, Distinguished Professor of Management at MIT Sloan and Founder of the MIT Leadership Center about her research on "Family Ghosts in the Executive Suite" and why imposter syndrome persists no matter how much someone has achieved.
Deborah explains how childhood roles the pleaser, the perfectionist, the joker quietly resurface in the boardroom, driving burnout and self-doubt long after they've stopped being useful. She walks through the exact process she uses with C-suite leaders to spot these patterns and reframe them without losing what made them successful. Then Andrea and Deborah shift to her X-Teams framework explaining why the best teams look outward before setting goals with real examples from Takeda and Microsoft.
In this episode: The real root of imposter syndrome (it's not a confidence problem) What "family ghosts" are, and why high achievers have the strongest ones A 4-step process to recognize and reframe self-sabotaging patterns What X-Teams are, and why "out before in" drives real innovation
⏱ TIMESTAMPS: 00:00 Why execs secretly feel like frauds 02:26 From MIT theory to real world 04:49 What are "family ghosts"? 06:27 The Perfectionist Ghost 08:12 The People-Pleaser Ghost 12:46 Spot your own ghost in 4 questions 14:52 The exec who couldn't stop joking 15:35 The 3-step reframe method 21:13 The "provisional self" trick 25:27 Sense-making: the #1 leadership skill 31:18 Meet X-Teams: "out before in" 35:00 Why teams become an echo chamber 39:34 Inside a pharma biotech deep-dive 42:16 X-Teams at Microsoft 45:33 When you skip senior buy-in 47:02 Where to find Deborah's work
📘 PRE-ORDER MY NEW BOOK
Reinvention at the Top: The Playbook for CEOs to Lead Under Pressure (Wiley) is available for pre-order now.
👉 https://www.amazon.co.uk/Reinvention-Top-Playbook-Under-Pressure/dp/1394430426
🚀 JOIN WCL21
WCL21 is a private community for CEOs leading mid-market companies, featuring confidential peer roundtables, masterclasses, and leadership conversations.
👉 https://andreapetrone.com/wcl21
📩 NEWSLETTER
Join 183,000+ leaders receiving Andrea Petrone's weekly leadership insights.
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CONNECT WITH ANDREA PETRONE
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CONNECT WITH DEBORAH ANCONA
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/deborahancona123/ 
Subscribe for weekly conversations with researchers and executives on leadership, teams, and organizational change.

Aug 6, 2026

43 min

Jul 30, 2026

8 min

Your credibility as a CEO isn't built over years, it's won or lost in your first 90 days. In this episode of World Class Leaders, executive coach Andrea Petrone shows you exactly how to build it fast: why new CEOs and top leaders are judged within their first three months, the three traps that quietly destroy credibility (waiting too long to act, drowning in data, and ignoring culture), and the three winning moves, clarifying your identity, securing symbolic wins, and aligning around a few priorities that build instant trust and set the tone for years of leadership.
In this episode: 
Why the first 90 days shape how your board, peers, and employees interpret every decision you make afterward
The 3 traps that make new CEOs look cautious, reactive, or out of touch
Why "listen and observe" can backfire if it goes on too long
How excessive reporting and analysis quietly kills momentum
Why culture not strategy is the blind spot that sinks new leaders
The 3 winning moves top CEOs use to build trust fast, including a real example from Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella
Chapters:
00:00 — Why the first 90 days define your leadership reputation
01:15 — Trap #1: Waiting too long to act
02:10 — Trap #2: Overloading on data and analysis
03:00 — Trap #3: Ignoring company culture
04:39 — Winning Move #1: Clarify your leadership identity
05:45 — Winning Move #2: Pick symbolic wins early
06:40 — Winning Move #3: Align around 2-3 priorities (the Satya Nadella example)
07:45 — Recap and why this matters more than ever
📘 PRE-ORDER MY NEW BOOK
Reinvention at the Top: The Playbook for CEOs to Lead Under Pressure (Wiley) is available for pre-order now.
👉 https://www.amazon.co.uk/Reinvention-Top-Playbook-Under-Pressure/dp/1394430426
 
🚀 JOIN WCL21
WCL21 is a private community for CEOs leading mid-market companies, featuring confidential peer roundtables, masterclasses, and leadership conversations.
👉 https://andreapetrone.com/wcl21
 
📩 NEWSLETTER
Join 183,000+ leaders receiving Andrea Petrone's weekly leadership insights.
👉 https://www.andreapetrone.com/newsletter/
Connect with Andrea Petrone
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/andreapetrone/
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/andreapetrone_x

Jul 30, 2026

8 min

Jul 23, 2026

44 min


When Carlos Abrams-Rivera became CEO of Kraft Heinz, the biggest challenge wasn't managing a global business, it was discovering how leadership changes you. Overnight, people treated him differently. One of his executive coaches gave him a warning he'd never forget: "You no longer own your own face."
In this episode of The World Class Leaders Show, Andrea Petrone sits down with Carlos for a candid conversation about the realities of leading at the highest level. Drawing on more than 30 years of leadership across Kraft Foods, Mondelēz, Campbell's, and Kraft Heinz, Carlos shares the lessons that only come from leading one of the world's largest consumer brands.
From navigating the loneliness of the CEO role and receiving the brutal "Red Folder" feedback that reshaped his leadership, to building trust, leading through uncertainty, and proving the ROI of AI before scaling it across 36,000+ employees, this conversation offers a rare look inside the mindset of a Fortune 500 CEO.
Whether you're a CEO, founder, entrepreneur, executive, or aspiring leader, you'll walk away with practical insights on leadership, decision-making, resilience, AI, and building organizations that thrive through change.
🔑 In This Episode
What really changes the day you become CEO
Why people start treating leaders differently overnight
The "Red Folder" leadership exercise that transformed Carlos' approach forever
Why every CEO needs coaches and brutally honest feedback
How to protect your family while carrying the weight of leadership
Why CEOs have become one of the last trusted voices in society
How Kraft Heinz proved AI's ROI before scaling it across 36,000+ employees
⏱ Chapters
00:00 Introduction
00:36 The Biggest Surprise After Becoming CEO
02:49 Why Carlos Performs Best Under Pressure
05:35 Why Every CEO Needs Coaches
10:08 The "Red Folder" Leadership Lesson
15:40 Protecting Your Family from CEO Pressure
18:27 Why CEOs Are Becoming Society's Trusted Voice
23:46 How Kraft Heinz Approached AI
28:03 Changing Company Culture with AI
32:55 AI Advice for CEOs in the Next 90 Days
34:59 Life After Stepping Down as CEO
39:08 Why Volatility Is the New Normal
43:20 Advice for Future Leaders
 
 
📘 PRE-ORDER MY NEW BOOK
Reinvention at the Top: The Playbook for CEOs to Lead Under Pressure (Wiley) is available for pre-order now.
👉 https://www.amazon.co.uk/Reinvention-Top-Playbook-Under-Pressure/dp/1394430426
 
 
🚀 JOIN WCL21
WCL21 is a private community for CEOs leading mid-market companies, featuring confidential peer roundtables, masterclasses, and leadership conversations.
👉 https://andreapetrone.com/wcl21
 
 
📩 NEWSLETTER
Join 183,000+ leaders receiving Andrea Petrone's weekly leadership insights.
👉 https://www.andreapetrone.com/newsletter/
Connect with Andrea Petrone
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/andreapetrone/
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/andreapetrone_x
Connect with Carlos Abrams-Rivera
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/abramsrivera/

Jul 23, 2026

44 min

Jul 16, 2026

45 min

A McKinsey study found that 72% of senior executives now make bad decisions as often as good ones and the world isn't slowing down to give them room to cat
ch up. Wars, inflation, AI disruption, and an ever-growing list of stakeholders are colliding faster than most leadership models were built to handle.
In this episode, Andrea Petrone sits down with Cornelia Choe, CEO of The Leaders Alliance and co-author, alongside Marshall Goldsmith, of the upcoming book The Panoramic Leader: How Great Leaders See Differently. Cornelia has advised CEOs, C-suite executives, and heads of multilateral organizations across five continents, with a background in private equity and Morgan Stanley, degrees from Georgetown University and Harvard Kennedy School, and a life lived across seven countries.
Together, they unpack panoramic leadership, the discipline of updating the mental map that quietly drives every decision you make, before reality outpaces it. Cornelia walks through the GEM method (Get up close, Establish meaningful bonds, Map your evolving perspective) using real turnarounds at Ford and Best Buy, introduces the idea of "optimistic fear" through Serena Williams' comeback after her biggest loss, and gives leaders one simple question to find their own blind spots: who's not at my table?
Key Takeaways:
Why 72% of senior executives make bad decisions as often as good ones.
How Alan Mulally turned around Ford by eating lunch in the employee cafeteria.
Why your "mental map" can quietly turn into your biggest blind spot.
How the GEM method helped Best Buy outmaneuver Amazon, Samsung, and Apple.
Why "optimistic fear" fueled Serena Williams' comeback after her worst loss.
How one question, "who's not at my table?" exposes hidden blind spots.
Why leadership identity needs to flex across context without losing itself.
_________________________________________________________________
BOOK PRE-ORDER
📘 My new book 'Reinvention at the Top: The Playbook for CEOs to Lead Under Pressure' (Wiley) is out in October. Pre-order your copy now:
👉 BOOK PRE-ORDER LINK
_________________________________________________________________
FREE GUIDE
Want to establish authority and lead with confidence from Day One as a CEO?
Grab your FREE copy of '10 Foolproof Ways New CEOs Establish Authority From Day One':
👉 Download - https://bit.ly/10-fool-proof-ceo-strategies 
_________________________________________________________________
WCL21
WCL21 is a private, curated community of CEOs running mid-market companies. Monthly roundtables, masterclasses, and confidential conversations that don't happen anywhere else. We're in the founding member phase — a few seats remain.
👉 Request your invitation: https://andreapetrone.com/wcl21 
_________________________________________________________________
1:1 COACHING
Want to work with me directly? I coach a small number of CEOs and senior leaders each year through exactly the challenges in this show.
👉 Apply for 1:1 coaching: https://calendly.com/andreapetrone/strategy-call-30
_________________________________________________________________
COACHING APP
Want to grow as a leader on the go? My Executive coaching app helps Directors, VPs and C-suite leaders build world-class leadership habits, guided by the Throughline™ framework: Identity, Message, Presence.
👉 See the app: https://studio.com/apps/andreapetrone/executive
_________________________________________________________________
NEWSLETTER
Join 183,000+ leaders who read my weekly insights on leading at the top:
👉  https://www.andreapetrone.com/newsletter/
_________________________________________________________________
MORE FROM ANDREA
Follow our Host Andrea Petrone on:
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/andreapetrone/  
Website: https://www.andreapetrone.com
Instagram: instagram.com/andreapetrone_x
Follow The World Class Leaders Show:
Apple: https://shorturl.at/JZAmQ
Spotify: https://shorturl.at/DSHUl
LinkedIn:   https://www.linkedin.com/company/the-world-class-leaders-show/
Website: https://www.andreapetrone.com/podcast/
_________________________________________________________________
Follow Cornelia Choe:
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/cornelia-choe/
Website: https://www.corneliachoe.com
Book: The Panoramic Leader: How Great Leaders See Differently — with Marshall Goldsmith, out July 7 (https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0GX2XPRMV)
Company: The Leaders Alliance 

Jul 16, 2026

45 min

Jul 9, 2026

12 min


Here's something I've learned after coaching hundreds of CEOs. When a company stalls, the strategy is rarely the first thing that fails. The top team failed first, quietly, months before the numbers showed it. In this episode I walk through the six signs that tell you your leadership team is failing you, often long before the results do.
Leadership breakdowns don't announce themselves. They show up as slightly slower decisions, a little more politics, one too many escalations landing on your desk, nothing dramatic enough to trigger alarm until the damage is already done. I cover the six signals to watch for, from decisions routing through the CEO and disagreement disappearing from the room, to bad news arriving late and leaders quietly working around each other instead of through each other.
I also get into why CEOs consistently wait too long to act, and the one question every CEO should be asking about their leadership team before the board asks it for them. The bottom line is that a wrong person left too long in a leadership seat doesn't just underperform. They reset the standard for everyone below them.
Timestamps
0:00 Introduction and the central idea
0:30 Why strategy doesn't fail first, the top team fails first
3:00 The six signals of a failing leadership team
8:00 Why CEOs wait too long to act
10:00 Closing thoughts and the question every CEO should ask
_________________________________________________________________
BOOK PRE-ORDER
📘 My new book 'Reinvention at the Top: The Playbook for CEOs to Lead Under Pressure' (Wiley) is out in October. Pre-order your copy now:
👉 BOOK PRE-ORDER LINK
_________________________________________________________________
FREE GUIDE
Want to establish authority and lead with confidence from Day One as a CEO?
Grab your FREE copy of '10 Foolproof Ways New CEOs Establish Authority From Day One':
👉 Download - https://bit.ly/10-fool-proof-ceo-strategies 
_________________________________________________________________
WCL21
WCL21 is a private, curated community of CEOs running mid-market companies. Monthly roundtables, masterclasses, and confidential conversations that don't happen anywhere else. We're in the founding member phase — a few seats remain.
👉 Request your invitation: https://andreapetrone.com/wcl21 
_________________________________________________________________
1:1 COACHING
Want to work with me directly? I coach a small number of CEOs and senior leaders each year through exactly the challenges in this show.
👉 Apply for 1:1 coaching: https://calendly.com/andreapetrone/strategy-call-30
_________________________________________________________________
COACHING APP
Want to grow as a leader on the go? My Executive coaching app helps Directors, VPs and C-suite leaders build world-class leadership habits, guided by the Throughline™ framework: Identity, Message, Presence.
👉 See the app: https://studio.com/apps/andreapetrone/executive
_________________________________________________________________
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Jul 9, 2026

12 min

2024 Andrea Petrone

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Version: 20241125