What if Leadership is Just Navigating Through Fog? with Pete Behrens

What if Leadership is Just Navigating Through Fog? with Pete Behrens

From The Talent Forge: Shaping Workforce Behaviors with Jay Johnson by Jay Johnson

March 20, 2026 · 36 min

About this episode

Jay Johnson and Pete Behrens discuss the challenges new managers face and the importance of understanding leadership beyond just a title.

The fastest way to break a great technical team is to promote your best individual contributor and then pretend leadership is “common sense.” Jay Johnson sits down with Pete Behrens, an engineer turned leadership coach and author of Into the Fog, to unpack why so many new managers underperform within a couple of years and what to do differently before the promotion happens. We dig into the real difference between leadership and a leader title, and why influence without authority is the...

People in this episode

Host: Jay Johnson

Guest: Pete Behrens

Topics covered

  • leadership
  • management
  • team dynamics
  • influence
  • coaching

Keywords

  • leadership
  • management
  • team performance
  • influence
  • coaching

Mentioned in this episode

Books & works: Into the Fog

More episodes of The Talent Forge: Shaping Workforce Behaviors with Jay Johnson

Explore listener stats, chart rankings, contacts and more on the The Talent Forge: Shaping Workforce Behaviors with Jay Johnson podcast page.