Skip Level
The promotion goes to the leader who's already thinking two levels up.A daily 8-minute show for mid-senior leaders who want to get noticed by the top table — and be ready before the role opens.Hard work got you here. It won't get you there.Promotions don't go to the busiest leaders. They go to the ones senior leaders already recognize as peers — people who speak the language of strategy, carry executive presence, and make decisions like they already own the bigger role.Skip Level is your daily shortcut to that leader. Every morning, in about eight minutes, hosts Maya and...
Let It Incubate
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Free worksheet can be found at: https://crayonleadership.com/podcast/skip-level/let-it-incubate/
The answer you are grinding for may already be waiting in the quiet. Maya and Marcus start with Charles Darwin's thinking path at Down House, then trace the brain's sequence — Alpha first, the quiet incubator, then the Gamma burst that delivers the aha — with research from Mark Jung-Beeman and John Kounios, and Amna Ghani's finding that hints only land when the brain is already in A...
Leave It Stronger
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Free worksheet can be found at: https://crayonleadership.com/podcast/skip-level/leave-it-stronger/
A leader's last act is not the farewell. It is the bench they leave behind. Maya and Marcus start with Emma Walmsley's handover at GSK to Luke Miels, then look at Disney twice — the rushed Iger-to-Chapek handoff, and the disciplined naming of Josh D'Amaro weeks before the transition — and land on succession as three jobs, not one name: build the bench, name the successor earl...
Grow the Field
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Free worksheet can be found at: https://crayonleadership.com/podcast/skip-level/grow-field/
The future you will be asked to lead is already growing. The question is whether you planted it. Maya and Marcus start with Sam Walton's notebook — decades of observations from his competitors' stores — then open Paul Gustavson's Imagine, the book Joe Dutkiewicz was Lead Editor of, and its twelve powers of imagination, organized into four phases: Observe, Orient, Decide, Act. Four steps close it out...
One Neck on the Line
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Free worksheet can be found at: https://crayonleadership.com/podcast/skip-level/one-neck/
Two heads can help. Two necks on the line just means nobody's is. Maya and Marcus start with Emma Walmsley's case against co-chief executives, then hear the research push back — shared leadership can work, as Netflix and Spotify show — and land on the real problem: not the number of leaders, but the fog around ownership. Four steps close it out: name one owner per outc...
Build the Coalition First
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Free worksheet can be found at: https://crayonleadership.com/podcast/skip-level/build-coalition/
No coalition, no change. Maya and Marcus open with Derek Sivers's first follower, then tell the story of Paul O'Neill's first speech at Alcoa — safety, not profits, to a room full of investors — and lay out John Kotter's guiding coalition: upward, outward, and the skeptic whose conversion is the proof. Four steps close it out: map the room, recruit before you announce, give the coal...
Steadiness, Not Dread.
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Free worksheet can be found at: https://crayonleadership.com/podcast/skip-level/steadiness-not-dread/
Your team does not need a leader who has no pressure. They need one who will not hand them yours. Maya and Marcus start with Emma Walmsley's line about chief executives complaining, then trace where pressure can go — down as worry, out as complaint, or through you as a decision — with research from Jon Miller and Drew Keller on stress intelligence, James Gross on reap...
Burnout Is Contagious. So Is Steadiness.
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Free worksheet can be found at: https://crayonleadership.com/podcast/skip-level/burnout-contagion/
Your team does not catch your intentions. They catch your state. Maya and Marcus start with two definitions of burnout — the American Psychological Association's broad one, and the World Health Organization's revised, work-specific one — then trace how strain spreads: first through mood, in Thomas Sy's and Sigal Barsade's research, then as burnout itself, in Arnold Bakker's study of intensive care nurses. The mechanism runs two...
Lead the Messy Middle
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Free worksheet can be found at: https://crayonleadership.com/podcast/skip-level/lead-middle/
Every change has a middle nobody wants to talk about. The old way is gone, the new way does not work yet, and everyone is pretending otherwise. Drawing on William Bridges' transitions — Endings, the Neutral Zone, and New Beginnings — Maya and Marcus show why the dip is not failure but the zone itself, where creativity lives and fake adoption is born. Different from the ADKA...
Find the Stuck Letter
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Free worksheet can be found at: https://crayonleadership.com/podcast/skip-level/stuck-letter/
When a change stalls, leaders usually blame resistance. But what if the problem is not resistance at all — just one stuck letter? Drawing on Prosci's ADKAR model, Maya and Marcus turn change into a diagnostic: score Awareness, Desire, Knowledge, Ability, and Reinforcement from one to five, and fix only the letter that's actually stuck. Training won't fix Desire, and more emails won't fix Ability. Fo...
Build Your Own Box
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What if the reason your team is stuck is not too little freedom, but too much? Drawing on David Epstein's Inside the Box, Maya and Marcus show why total freedom is the enemy of creativity and constraint is its companion — from Dr. Seuss's fifty words to Murakami's limited English — and why two levels up, your job is designing the box: one goal, one deadline, one...
Move at the Speed of Culture
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Free worksheet can be found at: https://crayonleadership.com/podcast/skip-level/culture-moves/
Poppi's cofounder says culture now moves on a three-day cycle — and brands stuck in data are missing it. Maya and Marcus turn that into a leadership skill: speed is not a size, it is three moves. Shorten the chain between idea and decision, decide before the data is perfect, and stay close to the edge where culture actually happens. PepsiCo did not try to be...
Your Next Ally Is Not Like You
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Free worksheet can be found at: https://crayonleadership.com/podcast/skip-level/your-next-ally/
Do you have to like someone to trust them at work? Drawing on Adam Grant's Vibe, Maya and Marcus sort connections into four kinds — associates, allies, pals, and companions — and show why sponsorship lives mostly in allies and companions, why asking one person to be all four is an impossible task, and why a relationship that feels strong can still disappoint when the kinds mism...
Your Reports Are Leaders Now
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Free worksheet can be found at: https://crayonleadership.com/podcast/skip-level/reports-are-leaders
You got promoted because you were the best doer in the room. Now your reports are leaders, and managing them like contributors is the fastest way to stall your own rise. Maya and Marcus combine Liz Wiseman's Multiplier disciplines with US Navy Captain David Marquet's intent-based leadership: multiply your leaders by giving them control, and certify their judgment instead of replacing it with yours...
Your First Thirty Days Start Now
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Free worksheet for this episode at: https://crayonleadership.com/podcast/skip-level/first-30-days/
What if the most important part of your next big promotion is already over before your first day even begins? Maya and Marcus explain why leaders who leapfrog a level or two are especially at risk — and why the real job of the first thirty days is learning, listening, and diagnosing, not launching a big plan. You will hear the sobering transition numbers, Mi...
Settle Nothing in the Heat
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When a colleague crosses a boundary you set clearly — and does it in front of other people — what do you do in the next sixty seconds? Maya and Marcus walk through the protocol for that moment: settle nothing in the heat, ask the colleague aside and set a date, prepare with a mentor instead of ruminating, and arrive at a meeting designed around listening and...
Don't Think Out Loud
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Tossing out a half-formed idea in a meeting feels honest and collaborative — until three people sprint off to build it before you have decided whether you like it. Maya and Marcus unpack Latriece Watkins's advice to leaders: do not think out loud. You will hear why your words get heavier as you climb, the story of a senior director whose musings cost his team tw...
Your Best Idea Was Never Said
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Your best idea was probably in the room at your last meeting — and never said out loud. Maya and Marcus take on the brainstorm with Jeremy Utley and Perry Klebahn's Ideaflow: quantity drives quality, and sixty years of evidence, from Diehl and Stroebe onward, says interactive groups produce fewer and weaker ideas than the same people working alone. Production blocking, evaluation apprehension, and the se...
The Two-Dollar Hot Dog
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A table of food lovers was leaving New York without one thing — a street hot dog. Will Guidara ran out, bought one for two dollars, and served it as a course at the best restaurant in the world. Maya and Marcus unpack Guidara's Unreasonable Hospitality — service is black and white, hospitality is color — the Dreamweaver system behind gestures that are overheard, never requested, and the ni...
Dig Wider, Not Deeper
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The career advice that built you — dig deeper, specialize — can trap you at the next level. David Epstein's Range shows elite performers usually sampled first, and Federer, not Woods, is the norm. Maya and Marcus explore Robin Hogarth's kind and wicked learning environments, Karim Lakhani's InnoCentive outsiders, and an insurance leader who borrowed triage from a hospital emergency department. Plus four steps for building rang...
Is Your OQ Showing?
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Climbing takes more than brains and people skills. Psychologist Daniel Goleman's research found emotional intelligence explains nearly ninety percent of the gap between star and average senior leaders — yet executives still stall. George Yip and Nelson Phillips named the missing third intelligence OQ, organizational intelligence: making the answer move. Maya and Marcus climb the IQ, EQ, OQ ladder, meet a director whose flawless strategy di...
The Six Ideas That Rose to the Top
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What if everything you need to get promoted is already in how you work — and the only thing missing is knowing which parts of it actually matter? Maya, Marcus, and researcher Lena distill thirteen episodes of Skip Level into three patterns — doing becomes directing, visibility is a skill, nobody is coming — then count down the six ideas with the strongest evidence and the most immedi...
Nobody's Coming to Promote You
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Free worksheet for this episode at: https://crayonleadership.com/podcast/skip-level/nobodys-coming/
She waited three years to be noticed. Then she built a business case, booked a dedicated meeting, and asked — landing the VP role. Maya and Marcus deliver the hardest truth in the series: if you don't ask, you don't get. Three moves: build the business case (not "I need" but "the business needs someone at this level"), ask for the roadmap not just the ro...
Write Like the Room You Want to Enter
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Free worksheet for this episode at: https://crayonleadership.com/podcast/skip-level/write-like-the-room/
His forty-slide deck died in the exec meeting. His two-page memo got the decision. Maya and Marcus unpack why the higher you climb, the more writing matters — from Bezos banning PowerPoint at Amazon in 2004 to the six-page narrative memo. Three moves: lead with the answer (recommendation first, then why), write the memo not the deck, and write for the skimmer two levels up. Sam's st...
Influence Without Authority
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75% of cross-functional teams fail at their basic goals. But a program manager with zero direct reports shipped a launch across four teams — by making it everyone else's win. Maya and Marcus unpack how to lead when you have no title: map the interests, trade in currencies (give first), and make it their win. With fewer layers and leadership dispersing laterally, influence is becoming the co...
Managing Up Without Sucking Up
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Managing up isn't sucking up — it's one of the most promotable skills there is. Maya and Marcus break down how to create value for your boss without losing yourself: learn their operating system, bring solutions not problems, and make them look good upward (no surprises). Adapting to your boss's communication style makes you 70% more effective. Alex's story — the senior manager with a vague big-picture boss who...
The Strategic No
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He said yes to 11 initiatives. His flagship slipped twice. Maya and Marcus make the case that "no" is a promotion skill: 94% of professionals work 50+ hours a week, context-switching costs up to 40% of productive time, and overcommitment directly predicts burnout. Three moves: pause before every yes, tie every no to a strategic yes, and publish a Not Doing List. Tom's story — from scattered VP to focused le...
Your Work Doesn't Speak for Itself
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Her dashboard saved the company millions. Nobody upstairs knew her name — until she started writing a monthly one-pager. Maya and Marcus unpack the visibility paradox: identical performance gets rated differently based on who's narrating it. Three moves: document as you go (build a receipts file), narrate the work not yourself, and establish a visibility rhythm. Nadia's story — from invisible analyst to principal. Maya and Marcus are...
Stop Collecting Mentors
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You've got mentors. You've had the coffee chats. So why hasn't anyone opened a door for you? Maya and Marcus unpack the research on the one relationship that actually moves careers — and why the people with the most mentors often get promoted the slowest. Maya and Marcus are AI voices, created with text-to-speech. This show is written and produced by Joe Dutkiewicz of Crayon Leadership. Jo...
The Real Meeting Happens Before the Meeting
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You brought the best data in the room. Everyone nodded. And the decision went the other way anyway. Maya and Marcus unpack the research on where decisions are actually made — and the four moves that separate leaders who present from leaders who decide. Maya and Marcus are AI voices, created with text-to-speech. This show is written and produced by Joe Dutkiewicz of Crayon Leadership. Joe eq...
The Override Call — When to Trust Your Judgment Over AI
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The AI said yes. Her judgment said no — and she was right. Maya and Marcus dig into fresh 2026 research on how senior leaders really handle AI recommendations, why the most confident-sounding AI is the most dangerous kind, and the three-test framework for knowing when your judgment should overrule the machine. Plus: the dissent memo that turned one leader's override into a promotion story. Maya and Ma...
The Succession Logjam — Why Nobody Above You Is Leaving (and What That Unlocks for You)
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What if the biggest thing between you and your next promotion isn't a competitor or a budget — but the fact that your boss isn't going anywhere? Executive turnover has cratered, and nearly 60% of late-career execs plan to stay put. Maya and Marcus lay out the playbook for getting promoted when there's no seat to promote into — including Dana's story, the director who got a VP role...
The Information Tax at the Top
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The higher you climb, the less truth you hear. Maya and Marcus unpack Gallup's 2026 finding that senior leaders are 10 points lonelier than their teams — and why it's really an information problem. Plus the three quiet filters warping what reaches the top, and how being the person who tells the truth upward becomes a career move. Maya and Marcus are AI voices, created with text-to-speech. This sh...
Executive Presence — The 26% Nobody Explains
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A quarter of your next promotion has nothing to do with your results. Maya and Marcus decode executive presence — the most cited and least explained factor in who gets promoted — through Priya's story: her best quarter ever, and a review that just said 'you need more executive presence. Maya and Marcus are AI voices, created with text-to-speech. This show is written and produced by Joe...
The Promotion Language Is Strategy
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What if the reason you're not getting promoted has nothing to do with how hard you work? Maya and Marcus unpack fresh 2026 research on what promotion committees actually reward — and why the habits that earned your last promotion may be blocking your next one. Maya and Marcus are AI voices, created with text-to-speech. This show is written and produced by Joe Dutkiewicz of Crayon Leadership. Jo...
