About this episode

Karl Van den Bergh discusses the importance of authenticity over conformity in building trust in B2B relationships.

Most leadership advice pushes you toward a familiar template: decisive, diplomatic, endlessly composed. It's meant to build trust. Often it does the opposite – because trust depends on people actually knowing who you are, not the version of you assembled to fit expectations. In this episode of Trust & Influence in B2B, Joel Harrison is joined by Karl Van den Bergh, Chief Marketing and Strategy Officer at Illumio, the breach containment company. Karl has spent more than 25 years leading go-to-market teams at global technology companies, including CMO roles at Gigamon and DataStax, and now writes regularly on authenticity and what it means to be human at work. Together they unpack why being yourself is a trust strategy rather than a soft skill, how to tell real authenticity apart from the performative kind, and why Karl believes AI raises the value of human, relational marketing rather than eroding it. In this episode: Why most leadership advice pushes conformity rather than authenticity, and what gets lost in the process The test that actually separates real authenticity from the performative kind Why brands that try to please everyone end up forgettable – and the campaign…

People in this episode

Host: Joel Harrison

Guest: Karl Van den Bergh

Topics covered

• leadership
• authenticity
• trust
• B2B marketing
• AI in marketing
• team performance

Keywords

• trust
• authenticity
• leadership
• B2B
• AI
• marketing
• team performance

Mentioned in this episode

Organizations: Illumio, Gigamon, DataStax

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