In this conversation, leadership and performance facilitator Richard Gordon Kelly explores the invisible beliefs we carry about who we need to be, and how those beliefs, more than the work itself, create pressure and burnout. The discussion covers where these beliefs originate, why pressure acts as “expensive fuel,” and what happens when a thought is noticed rather than believed.
It closes on presence and slowing down as a way of staying close to what is actually true in the moment.

Richard Gordon Kelly is a leadership and performance facilitator working with executives, leaders, and teams across Europe. For more than 25 years, Richard has worked with people and organisations to explore what allows individuals and teams to perform at their best while staying connected to what matters most. He often notices something simple in his work: people are rarely struggling with work itself as much as with how work is being experienced internally — through pressure, thought, and the meaning we attach to what is happening.

Through conversations focused on trust, presence, and human connection, Richard helps people see their experience more clearly in real time. And when that clarity emerges, things often begin to shift naturally. Less pressure. More awareness. Better conversations. More sustainable performance. Not because something new is added, but because people reconnect with what was already there.

References:

Richard Gordon Kelly LinkedIn profile

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Cecilie Steenbuch Traberg joins Stepsero to discuss her co-authored paper, “AI is turning research into a scientific monoculture.”
The conversation covers how reliance on the same AI tools drives convergence in language, methods, and questions, plus a productivity paradox, where individual gains in output create more collective work rather than less.
It also touches on leadership overconfidence in AI leading to less oversight, and the risk of losing purpose and skill development when the effort behind work is handed to AI.

Cecilie Steenbuch Traberg is a Dr in Psychology from University of Cambridge and an assistant professor of digitalisation at copenhagen business school, where she conducts research on the intersection between psychology and technology.

References:

Cecilie Steenbuch Traberg LinkedIn profile

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In this episode, Olga Solovyeva explains why AI adoption inside organizations is so uneven, often coming down to leadership.
Some leaders give teams freedom and time to experiment; others pause and “park” AI altogether. That caution has a cost. When leadership restricts AI, employees often turn to personal accounts instead (what Olga calls shadow AI use) which strips away any oversight the organization would otherwise provide.
The conversation then turns to risk: data leaks from sensitive information entered into AI tools, and hallucinations that have already damaged reputations at major consulting firms. Olga closes on a subtler one: as AI makes longer reports easy to produce, those reports get AI-summarized on the receiving end too, leaving discussions built on content no one’s actually read, and no one’s accountable for.

Olga Solovyeva, PhD, works at the intersection of technology governance and strategic communications. She advises boards on AI governance and risk at Chairwell Partners, and writes on the human side of AI adoption. Her doctoral research examined how tech companies wield political power — a thread she’s now pulling through a book on the transformation of one of Russia’s largest tech firms under state pressure.

References:

Olga Solovyeva LinkedIn profile

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