Episode 67: Leading When Your Team Is Beat Down
About this episode
In this episode, Robert Adams discusses how leaders can support their teams during prolonged periods of change and fatigue.
This week's Play: Name the three things that will not move. Your team does not have change fatigue. They have leadership fatigue. In this episode of A Student of Leadership, Robert Adams returns to The Plate, the second element of the Place Setting Framework, with a harder question. What does a leader serve their team in an extended hard season, when the change is relentless and everyone is tired? People can absorb almost anything if they trust the person asking them to do it. What they cannot absorb is leadership that disappears in the middle of the change. In this episode: - Why teams reporting the highest fatigue are not the ones experiencing the most change - Damola Adamolekun and the Red Lobster turnaround: walking into bankruptcy, low morale, and a "beat down" team, and starting with what he himself was going to put in front of them - "Leadership is self-improvement": Adamolekun's documented principle and what it means in practice - The McKinsey 2025 change fatigue research and what it reveals about anchoring vs. accelerating - Three behaviors that distinguish leaders who lead through extended turbulence well - Why the leader who runs themselves empty cannot serve a steady…
People in this episode
Host: Robert Adams
Guest: Damola Adamolekun
Topics covered
- leadership fatigue
- team dynamics
- change management
- self-improvement
- organizational behavior
Keywords
- leadership
- team fatigue
- change management
- self-improvement
- organizational change
- McKinsey research
- leadership behaviors
Mentioned in this episode
Organizations: Red Lobster, McKinsey
More episodes of A Student of Leadership - Real Leaders. Real Growth. One Table.
Explore listener stats, chart rankings, contacts and more on the A Student of Leadership - Real Leaders. Real Growth. One Table. podcast page.