About this episode

The episode explores the paradox of loving your team while making tough leadership decisions, featuring insights from Jamie Ramsden on failure and organizational culture.

Can real love for your people and the hard decision to let one of them go ever coexist? That's the paradox at the center of this bonus episode of A Podcast About Leadership , where host Jonathan Kirschner, CEO of AIIR Consulting, sits down with his close friend Jamie Ramsden — a former CEO with 25 years of international business experience, executive leadership coach, and author of Let's Go: How Great Leaders Shape the Future . Across a wide-ranging conversation touching life, love, and leadership, the two trade personal stories about the moments that test a leader's identity most: not the strategy decisions, but the human ones. Failure Isn't the Opposite of Success — Jamie explains why the accomplishments people admire most are usually "hatched from failure," and why failure only becomes a gift when it's examined instead of avoided. The Sleepless Night Before the First Firing — Jonathan opens up about the distress of letting go of an employee for the first time, and the surprising clarity that followed once the decision was made. Can You Love Someone and Still Let Them Go? — The conversation's central dilemma: true love is unconditional, but true leadership means…

People in this episode

Host: Jonathan Kirschner

Guest: Jamie Ramsden

Topics covered

• leadership
• decision making
• human resources
• failure
• organizational culture

Keywords

• leadership
• employee termination
• failure
• organizational culture
• human decisions

Mentioned in this episode

Organizations: AIIR Consulting

Books & works: Let's Go: How Great Leaders Shape the Future

More episodes of A Podcast About Leadership

• The Power of the Quiet Voice: Lessons on Leadership from Bristol Myers Squibb · September 3, 2026 · 1h 6m
• The Hidden Skill Every Executive Ignores with Ken Roberts and Jamie Ramsden · July 30, 2026 · 1h 13m
• From Have-To to Want-To: What 50+ Years of Leadership Looks Like with Peter Arthur Smith · June 18, 2026 · 1h 11m
• TOPGUN Leadership: Lessons from Naval Aviation's Elite · June 4, 2026 · 1h 10m
• Bricks, Culture & The Building Blocks of Leadership with Brickworks' Steve Bell & Jamie Ramsden · May 21, 2026 · 1h 8m
• When Culture Is the Strategy: Lessons from Elite Leaders in HR · May 5, 2026 · 1h 4m

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