They called it a quick chat.

Marisa Kamall was on maternity leave. Still recovering from pneumonia that had nearly killed her. Her newborn was in the next room. And HSBC the company she'd given 15 years to, the one where she'd grown from analyst to Managing Director, leading teams of thousands across four continents called to restructure her role. Over Zoom.

When she cried, her manager said: 'I didn't think you'd react like this.'

That moment taught her something that no performance review, no promotion, and no amount of over-delivering ever would: no company will care about your career the way you do. The system wasn't built to make room for her. And the life she has now GAIA, the leadership community, the coaching, the mission only exists because she stopped waiting for it to.

This is one of the most honest conversations we've had on Burn The Rules.

Chapters

00:00 — Welcome + Marisa’s journey into the conversation

04:05 — The inside reality of corporate success

10:10 — Why Gaia exists and the mission behind it

20:43 — The “quick chat” call that changed everything

26:02 — Rebuilding identity, confidence, and leadership after corporate

31:48 — Stop rehearsing the person you think you should be

38:08 — What it really means to lead from within

42:55 — The triple hit: motherhood, illness, and restructuring

47:07 — Fitness, discipline, and regulating mind, body, and soul

57:13 — Why the system doesn’t make room for you

58:48 — How Gaia grew from an idea into a real community

64:29 — ChatGP She and women shaping the AI era

68:12 — The questions every leader should ask themselves

69:09 — Ten and Done quickfire round

72:35 — Who Gaia is for + how to connect

73:54 — Final message: speak up and take care of yourself

Connect with Marisa:
LinkedIn

GAIA: www.GaiaRises.com

For more information about me go to: chethirani.com

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How many of your decisions this week were shaped by what you actually believe and how many were shaped by what you wanted other people to think of you?

This is the most camouflaged leadership trap I know. It doesn't look like weakness. It looks like being collaborative. Like being emotionally intelligent. Like being a good person. But it's approval-seeking and it's costing you more than you know.

And for the first time in the series, it doesn't just diagnose. It shows you a way through.

I share my parents' story a love marriage that cost them everything the community approved of, and gave them everything that actually mattered. And a 2012 workshop that fell apart completely and taught me the most important thing I know about what happens when you finally drop the mask.

The version of you that stops trying to be liked is the version that finally starts to lead.

Chapters

00:00 Introduction: The leadership trap of approval seeking

02:54 How approval seeking manifests in leadership behaviors

04:48 The story of the speaker's parents and leadership values

08:21 The importance of authenticity and dropping the mask

10:14 Action steps to overcome approval seeking in leadership

14:51 Redefining Leadership

15:20 The Practice of Leadership

More on me:
Take the Pressure Pattern Check

For more information about me go to: chethirani.com

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Most high-performing leaders spend years building a life that looks exactly like success is supposed to look. The title. The salary. The house. The holidays. The family photo that belongs on the front of a magazine.
Deepika Sandhu had all of it. And she still felt profoundly, quietly empty.

So she did something that almost nobody does. She scheduled her own breakdown. Put it in her calendar. Showed up for it. And in the space that created the slowing down, the silence, the sitting with herself she found the clarity that 25 years of relentless performance had never given her.

Today, Deepika is the founder of Soul Sparks Press North America's fastest growing publishing house, built to over 106 authors in 21 months. She's a six-time award-winning bestselling author, CEO of the Year at the Unicorn Summit, and someone who now describes her life not by what it looks like but by how it feels.

This conversation is between two people who are genuinely inside each other's worlds. Which is exactly why it goes to places most podcast conversations don't.

Chapters
00:00 The Pressure of Silicon Valley Leadership
04:45 Transitioning from Corporate to SoulSparks Press
07:41 Redefining Success and Impact
10:26 The Journey of Self-Discovery
13:07 The Power of Scheduled Breakdowns
15:51 Dismantling Old Beliefs
18:45 Taking Risks and Embracing Entrepreneurship
21:48 Managing Pressure and Doubt
24:24 The Importance of Support and Community
27:11 Flow vs. Deadlines in Creativity
30:01 The Evolution of Self and Business
32:56 Navigating Pressure Moments
35:42 Overcoming Doubt and Inner Critic
39:38 Trusting the Process
45:44 Owning Your Choices
50:36 Lessons from Life Transitions
56:24 Finding Your Authentic Voice
59:31 The Power of Storytelling
01:10:29 Redefining Leadership
01:10:57 The Practice of Leadership

Connect with Deepika:
Instagram
Soul Sparks Press on Instagram
Soul Sparks Press Website

More on me:
Take the Pressure Pattern Check

For more information about me go to: chethirani.com

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The return-to-office debate has nothing to do with culture, collaboration, or productivity. It has everything to do with control. And the leaders mandating it mostly can't tell you why beyond 'we need people back in the building.'

But before the remote work crowd starts cheering this episode comes for you too. Because flexibility isn't automatically freedom. And a green dot on Slack isn't the same as doing your best work.

The real problem isn't where people sit. It's whether your leaders can actually lead regardless of where anyone is.

If that question makes you uncomfortable, this episode is for you.

Chapters

00:00 The Real Debate Behind Return to Office

02:53 The Leadership Quality Problem

05:41 Key Factors for Team Success

08:30 Building Trust and Connection

More on me:
Take the Pressure Pattern Check

For more information about me go to: chethirani.com

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#BurnTheRules #LeadFromWithin #ReturnToOffice #RTO #RemoteWork #Leadership #HybridWork #ExecutiveLeadership #Podcast #OrganisationalCulture #Trust

Most high performers aren't stuck because they're not good enough. They're stuck because they've outgrown the version of themselves that got them there. And the system keeps rewarding the old version.

Anam Irfan has spent 16 years inside the GCC's most complex organisations leading HR for 37,000 people at Majid Al Futtaim, shaping AI hiring as CPO at Bytespark, and now advising leaders and talent on how to navigate the market and build real pull.

In this conversation, she says the things the HR world usually keeps quiet: that great talent doesn't always rise on merit, that the traditional hiring funnel is a trap, and that AI isn't coming for leaders who think it's coming for the ones who were never really leading.

▶ IN THIS EPISODE

• Why great talent doesn't always rise on merit and the two things that actually determine who gets promoted in the GCC
• Access mapping: Anam's methodology for navigating career growth from 'what jobs are available' to 'who are the decision-makers and how do I get in front of them'
• The expat pressure nobody talks about and why it changes how people behave at work in ways that don't serve them
• The worst thing you can do for your CV and what a top recruiter actually wants to see instead
• How AI has changed what gets you noticed and what gets you filtered out before a human ever sees your name
• What high performers need to unlearn and why the system rewarding your current behaviour is the exact thing holding you back
• Why vulnerability was the skill she learned last and what finally changed when she stopped needing to have all the answers

Connect with Anam: LinkedIn

Chapters:

00:00 - Introduction and Personal Updates

03:37 - Navigating Career Growth in the GCC

05:55 - The Importance of Relationship Building

08:49 - Challenges of Expat Life in the GCC

11:27 - Career Transitions and Personal Growth

14:03 - The Role of AI in Recruitment

16:34 - Visibility and Access in Career Advancement

19:09 - Leadership in the Age of AI

22:01 - Strategies for Career Growth

24:44 - Networking and Relationship Building

27:04 - The Value of a Strong CV

31:01 - Crafting a Standout CV

36:07 - The Importance of Visibility and Communication

39:26 - Navigating High-Stakes Decisions with Empathy

43:42 - Embracing Vulnerability in Leadership

50:56 - Leveraging AI in the Hiring Process

54:47 - Taking Action: Building Your Personal Brand

01:01:19 - Redefining Leadership

01:01:47 - The Practice of Leadership

More on me:
Take the Pressure Pattern Check

For more information about me go to: chethirani.com

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I want to tell you about the worst thing I ever did as a leader.
I was running a global payments transformation. High stakes. Executive oversight. Something went wrong, targets slipped, and I was under pressure. So I called a team meeting and I lost it. I called out each person individually. In front of everyone. No coaching. No questions. A performance interrogation.

The room went silent. Not the productive kind. The kind where you can feel people shutting down in real time.

After that meeting, my team stopped pushing back. Stopped challenging. Stopped bringing ideas. They just complied.

And I mistook that compliance for alignment. For months.

That's what this episode is about. Your team might be compliant. Your team might be hitting targets. Your team might be saying the right things in meetings. And they might still be quietly breaking. The question is would you even notice?

IN THIS EPISODE
- The data that should keep every leader awake and why the gap between what the C-suite perceives and what's actually happening on the ground is the real crisis
- My first leadership role in 2007 how I nearly destroyed a high performer by looking at spreadsheets instead of the person sitting right in front of me
- The three words that changed everything and why the most powerful leadership question isn't a framework
- Four signs your team is quietly breaking and you're completely missing them compliance, silence, checked-out high performers, and the open door nobody's walking through
- The rebuild at the bank in the Middle East what actually works when trust is gone and how long it takes to earn back
- Why you cannot demand trust, mandate psychological safety, or email engagement into existence
- Three moves you can make this week and why the first one will tell you everything about the temperature you've been setting

Chapters
00:00 The Worst Leadership Mistake
00:28 The Silence in Meetings
00:56 Breaking Trust and Safety
01:25 Compliance vs. Alignment
02:18 Global Engagement Data
03:12 Manager Disengagement and Burnout
04:35 Personal Reflection on Leadership
06:56 Signs Your Team is Quietly Breaking
08:20 High Performers Giving Up
08:46 The Last to Know
09:40 Emotional Inconsistency
10:37 Rebuilding Trust and Culture
12:37 Practicing Reflective Questioning
13:33 One-on-One Feedback
14:29 Measuring Honesty Over Output
15:16 The People State in Leadership
16:15 Taking Action as a Leader

More on me:

Take the Pressure Pattern Check

For more information about me go to: chethirani.com

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Burn The Rules Here

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#burntherules #leadfromwithin #leadership #TeamPerformance #psychologicalsafety #employeeengagement #executiveleadership #management #burnout #podcast

When you present something important and the room goes quiet most leaders feel relieved. They read the silence as agreement. They're wrong.

Susanna Romantsova is the creator of the Safe Challenger Method™ a framework built at the intersection of psychological safety and high performance. She's a Forbes 30 Under 30, TEDx speaker, and former DEI leader at IKEA, with a track record inside Deloitte, ABB, DHL, Puma, and ING.

In this conversation, we get into why psychological safety has nothing to do with comfort, why a quiet room is a warning sign and not a calm one, and the single behaviour she discovered in practice never in any book that determines whether your team ever brings their real thinking to you again.

She also burns the golden rule. The one most leaders would defend with their lives.

One of the best conversations we've had on this show.

IN THIS EPISODE

• What Susanna notices in the first five minutes of walking into any senior leadership team and what most people completely miss
• The pressure nobody sees from the outside: how to balance credibility with deep empathy while challenging people at the same time
• Growing up across three countries and speaking four languages and how that kind of background changes how you read a room
• The Matthew Effect: how the initial advantages people receive early in their careers distort how leaders assess potential and what to do about it
• The silence question: what to ask when a room goes quiet after you've presented something important
• The behaviour no book has written about three ways leaders unknowingly destroy safety the moment someone is first brave with them
• The Safe Challenger Method™: Trust, Insight, Clarity and which one is hardest to hold under real pressure
• Why self-trust is the foundation of everything and how asking 'why don't I trust myself' reveals exactly what your team is missing
• The golden rule she burned and the new one she uses instead
• The leadership paradox: how to stop thinking in opposites and start leading in the tension

Connect with Susanna:
LinkedIn
YouTube
Instagram
Safe Challenger Kit

More on me:

Take the Pressure Pattern Check

For more information about me go to: chethirani.com

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Think about yesterday. Your entire day. From the moment you woke up to the moment your head hit the pillow.

Now tell me how much of that day was genuinely productive? Not busy. Productive.

How many of those meetings actually needed you?

How many of those emails moved the needle?
And how many hours were spent doing things that felt like work but changed absolutely nothing?

Be honest. Because I already know the answer.

Most of it was noise.

This episode is called Being Busy Is Not Leadership. And before you think this is another anti-hustle, work less and meditate conversation it's not. I'm going after both sides today. Because hustle culture is a lie. But so is the idea that doing less is automatically doing better.

Most leaders are trapped somewhere in between. Exhausted and ineffective at the same time.

Let me show you a way out.

▶ IN THIS EPISODE
- The 90-minute inbox trap: how I spent the best hours of every day on other people's priorities and called it a good start
- Why hustle culture is self-destruction with a motivational quote on top and what the research actually says about productivity past 55 hours
- Why the anti-hustle movement has a problem too and why 'protecting your energy' has become code for avoiding discomfort
- The season everything fell apart: the business, the personal challenges, the decision to get busier instead of facing what was real
- The five-minute morning practice that rebuilt my clarity, my focus, and my sense of direction and why it works when nothing else did
- Three signs your busyness is noise and not leadership: you're the bottleneck, you're confusing presence with impact, and you're using busyness to hide
- Three moves you can make this week and why the time audit result will shock you

▶ KEY MOMENTS
00:00 The Illusion of Productivity
03:46 The Dangers of Busyness
06:30 Finding Alignment in Leadership
09:42 Identifying the Bottlenecks
12:32 Taking Control of Your Time
15:16 Redefining Leadership
15:44 The Practice of Leadership

More on me:

Take the Pressure Pattern Check

For more information about me go to: chethirani.com

Get my Award Winning Bestselling book:

Burn The Rules Here

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Keywords:
#BurnTheRules #leadfromwithin #leadership #productivity #busyness #focus #burnout #timemanagement #executiveleadership #clarity #podcast