Your intentions may be good, but is your team experiencing the leadership you think you’re showing?Discover how self-awareness, curiosity, and better communication can transform the way you lead.In this episode of NeuroConversant Leadership, Jeremy Doran speaks with executive coach Nader Vasseghi about the gap between what leaders intend and the impact they actually have. Nader shares practical insights on understanding your communication style, building psychological safety, and uncovering the hidden motivations that shape your decisions. You’ll also learn how to align your personal and professional purpose, make room for joy and creativity, and replace snap judgments with genuine curiosity.⏱️ Chapters00:00 – Why self-awareness matters in leadership02:15 – The three dimensions of leadership awareness03:53 – When good intentions have the wrong impact07:21 – How executive coaching builds awareness12:05 – Uncovering the motivations behind our decisions14:14 – Coaching, growth, and moving forward15:05 – Building psychological safety at work18:39 – Aligning personal purpose with professional goals21:23—Rediscovering joy, creativity, and play25:38—The communication shift from judgment to curiosity💡 Key takeawaysGood intentions don’t guarantee good impact. Pay attention to how people actually experience your words, emotions, and decisions.Build awareness in three areas: your inner world, your relationships with others, and the impact you have.Use assessments as conversation starters. Tools such as DISC, the Enneagram, and Working Genius can help reveal communication preferences and patterns.Get curious about your motivations. Look beyond the obvious explanation to understand the fears, beliefs, or assumptions influencing your choices.Create psychological safety through everyday actions. Trust is built by how leaders listen, respond to feedback, and handle disagreement, not just by what a company’s values statement says.Align your personal and professional missions. Make room for relationships, work, play, and health when deciding what success means to you.Replace judgment with curiosity. You don’t have to agree with someone to become curious about how they reached their point of view.🔗 Links & resourcesConnect with Nader Vasseghi.Website: https://cnergist.comLinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/nadervasseghi/ Books: https://cnergist.com/conscious-creation/ and https://cnergist.com/the-book/ Connect with NeuroConversant LeadershipWebsite: https://NeuroConversantleadership.com/ LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jeremydoranspeaks/ Learn about coaching, workshops, and leadership development: https://NeuroConversantleadership.com/contact-communication-leadership-training/ 👍 Enjoyed the conversation? Subscribe for more practical conversations about communication, leadership, and helping technical professionals become more effective leaders.💬 Join the conversation: What’s one situation where your intention was different from the impact you had? Share your lesson in the comments.🔎 About this episodeThis conversation explores executive coaching, leadership development, self-awareness, communication skills, emotional intelligence, psychological safety, workplace culture, and conscious leadership. It’s for technical leaders, managers, founders, and executives who want to communicate more effectively, build trust, and lead people with different perspectives and working styles.

Most scope creep advice focuses on contracts and change orders. Jake Lewon says the real defense starts earlier than that, in the relationship you build before a problem ever shows up.

Jake, VP of Construction for the Middlesex Corporation, and Jeremy talk about why Jake pushes for weekly face-to-face meetings with owners instead of letting them slide to monthly, why he frames every project as a shared-goal partnership rather than us-versus-them, and what happens once that trust erodes: a small disagreement over "100 feet of guardrail" can turn into guardrail at every endpoint on the job if nobody's paying attention. They also get into "issue stacking," why unresolved problems compound faster when they pile up together, why stripping personal pronouns out of formal project letters can lower the temperature on a dispute, and the informal, off-the-record check-ins Jake runs with his counterparts to catch friction before it becomes a real conflict.

Connect with Jake on LinkedIn https://www.linkedin.com/in/jake-lewon-56040031/ or through the Middlesex Corporation.

Conflict between a CEO and someone on their leadership team is uniquely hard to resolve, because there's almost no one to talk to about it. Not HR, not the board, often not even a spouse. Liz Crowley spent years in HR and employee relations before finding herself doing exactly that: stepping in as a neutral, confidential resource for CEOs and founders caught in conflict with the people they lead alongside.

She and Jeremy talk about why unresolved conflict is so distracting, how a leader can start second-guessing every decision once trust with a peer breaks down, and the two patterns she sees most often at the top: misaligned expectations on performance, and growth outpacing the team that got a company there. They also revisit something Jeremy's talked about before, the case for hiring for culture fit, as long as "fit" means a culture that rewards candor and pushback instead of silence.

Liz closes with her best piece of communication advice: find a trusted, confidential person to talk things through with, even when, especially when, you don't want to.

Connect with Liz on LinkedIn or at www.hrcollaborativesolutions.com