Eighteen years ago, Mike Moreau went through a short survey and sat down with a stranger who told him things about himself he had never said out loud.

That moment led him into the business he runs today, and to a question he is still answering. Why doesn't every manager understand this about their people?

In this episode, Mike explains how personality shapes performance, and why the right person in the wrong seat will struggle no matter how talented they are.

He shares his belief that jobs have a personality of their own, why he builds the role around the person when he can, and how he decides when a good person is no longer the right fit, illustrated with a hockey-team analogy you will not forget. He also makes a grounded case on AI, using it to speed up recruitment while protecting the human conversation that actually builds trust, and why easy and right are rarely the same thing.

Mike Moreau is the President of Concord Consulting, a people and performance strategy firm powered by TRAITS, a psychometric assessment platform that reveals how people are naturally wired to work. For two decades he has worked alongside founders, executives, and leadership teams, helping them make better decisions about who they hire, how they lead, and how they build teams that last.

If today's conversation made you curious about how you or your team are wired to work, take the TRAITS assessment. It takes about 15 minutes, and from there you can book a complimentary 30-minute debrief with one of Mike's consultants: https://app.traits.com/survey/2827368a-80a3-4f44-9757-62f5952b6f77

Connect with Mike Moreau:
Concord Consulting: https://www.concordconsulting.com/
TRAITS: https://traits.com/
Mike on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/mikejmoreau/
Concord Consulting on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/concord-consulting-corporation/
TRAITS on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/traits-tools/
TRAITS on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@TraitsToolsStudio

About UNLEASHED: UNLEASHED is the podcast for business owners building companies that last in a decade no one is prepared for. Host Mickey Anderson talks with founders and operators about what they are building, the decisions behind it, and what they are betting on next.

Subscribe to UNLEASHED for new episodes every Thursday.

Jorge Chavez asks business owners a simple question that tends to land hard. What did your last bad hire cost you? The answers run from twenty thousand to five hundred thousand dollars, and almost no one has a budget line for it. His whole business exists to help owners stop guessing at that decision.

In this episode, Jorge explains why hiring right starts with a clear job description and a screening process that tests for both culture fit and real skill. He makes the case that great selling is closer to listening than pitching, why a culture of excuses is the top reason strong performers leave, and how he uses AI to prepare for conversations while keeping the human presence that actually closes them. He also shares the family story behind the company, from co-founding with his wife to building something his sons can carry forward.

Connect with Jorge Chavez at Topaz Sales Consulting: https://topazsalesconsulting.com

Download the free Ultimate Guide to Prospecting: https://www.topazsalesconsulting.com/prospecting/

About UNLEASHED: UNLEASHED is the podcast for business owners building companies that last in a decade no one is prepared for. Host Mickey Anderson talks with founders and operators about what they are building, the decisions behind it, and what they are betting on next.

Bryce North built a PR agency by breaking every rule of cold outreach, and his reply rates run five times the industry average. His bet for the next decade is simple. While everyone races to automate, he is investing in the one thing AI still cannot fake, which is human trust.

In this episode, Bryce explains why trust now matters more than talent, how his story-driven cold emails clear ten percent reply rates, and why he slows his own growth on purpose so quality and retention hold. He also shares the comeback behind it all, including being a million dollars in debt at thirty and rebuilding from there.

Connect with Bryce North and check your free Media Authority Score at Don't Be a Little Pitch: https://dontbealittlepitch.com

About UNLEASHED: UNLEASHED is the podcast for business owners building companies that last in a decade no one is prepared for. Host Mickey Anderson talks with founders and operators about what they are building, the decisions behind it, and what they are betting on next.

Subscribe to UNLEASHED for new episodes every Thursday.

I broke my ankle at CrossFit doing legless rope climbs. Three minutes after I got home, my husband got the call to deploy. He left the same day for three and a half months. The house was on the market, I was leading operations full-time at a fitness company, and we had a new puppy. The partner who carried half the logistical load of everything in my life was gone.

That week made me a different kind of leader.

In this episode of UNLEASHED, I walk you through the seven moves I ran with our team inside that week, what came out of it that I had not planned for, and what I am building today because of it. I share the trap I almost rebuilt years later inside a different company, the real role I think a leader plays, and where AI actually fits in the work.

The biggest problems inside your business are usually already solvable by the people inside your business. The answers live in the people closest to the work. Your job as a leader is to facilitate the room that gets to those answers.

If you are running a team and the load only stays up because you are carrying it, this one is for you.

FREE OPERATIONS FRICTION DIAGNOSTIC

Take the free 5-minute, 15-question diagnostic at loyaltyops.com/friction to see where your team is losing the most coordination time right now.

SUBSCRIBE for new episodes of UNLEASHED every Wednesday.

There's a quiet pattern in the return-to-office debate that nobody is naming.

Workers resisting RTO know exactly what they're resisting: going to an office to do the same parallel work they were already doing from home.

The leaders pushing RTO are picking up on something real that's missing inside their teams. The fix they're picking is the wrong one. A building won't build the structure that turns capable individuals into a team.

In this episode, Mickey walks through why remote, hybrid, and onsite teams all face the same underlying problem. She names the game of telephone that strips context out of every priority moving from leadership down to the people doing the work, the psychology of why teams default to "not my circus, not my monkeys" and stick their heads in the sand, and the leadership decision-making bottleneck that builds up when teams can't solve problems without context.

She covers what force multiplication actually means with the example of a marketing, sales, customer service, and engineering leader in a room together diagnosing a customer journey breakdown in fifteen minutes.

She walks through the difference between accountability meetings (most of which could be an email) and collaboration meetings (which most leadership teams only run quarterly), the exact structure of a collaboration meeting that produces shared plans and named commitments, the five principles that make it work, and a specific homework you can run every two weeks to start unlocking what your team is actually capable of.

The decade ahead will be decided by whether you built the structure that lets your team collaborate. Where they sit while they do the work is downstream of that.

Take the free Operations Friction Diagnostic at loyaltyops.com/friction to see where your team is losing the most coordination time right now.

Five minutes, fifteen questions, free.

How you put it together is the real competitive advantage. The recipe and the secret sauce that most organizations skip in the race to add AI.

In this episode, Mickey breaks down why most AI implementations stall six to twelve months in: the team and the organization haven't built the foundation that lets AI actually pay off. A

I accelerates whatever the team is already doing. When the standards are clear, the team is aligned, and ownership is named, AI speeds up real work. When the team has grown faster than the foundation, AI speeds up the inconsistency.

Mickey walks through what it takes to make AI actually deliver. She covers the four things that need to be in place across the people side of the company before AI can pay off, the five-question AI Amplification Test you can run from your seat on any piece of work AI is currently doing, and why investing in your people is what will separate the businesses that win the next decade.

Plus, an exciting update at the end about what's coming for UNLEASHED.

Take the free Operations Friction Diagnostic at loyaltyops.com/friction to see where the gaps in your business are sitting right now.

Five minutes, fifteen questions, free.

The most expensive moment in a fast-moving business is when your team stops describing a problem and starts solving it before anyone has agreed on what the problem actually is.

Most of what's hitting your desk is a symptom. The real cause sits one level deeper, and nobody on the team has named it yet.

In this episode, Mickey breaks down the mistake at the heart of every costly restructure and every six-month rebuild: jumping to solutions before diagnosing the actual cause.

Mickey walks through how leaders end up spending months on a solution that addresses a symptom while the actual problem keeps surfacing somewhere else.

She covers why we skip the diagnosis step, how to slow down and listen to the quiet functions that almost always hold the missing piece, the five pressure-test questions that surface whether your proposed direction is based on a real diagnosis, and a specific homework to run this week on one decision you've been sitting on.

The next decade will reward the companies that build their foundation strong enough to support the growth they want. Slowing down to diagnose is how you prepare for a future no one else is prepared for, where the old playbooks no longer work.

Take the free Operations Friction Diagnostic at loyaltyops.com/friction to see where the gaps in your business are sitting right now.

Five minutes, fifteen questions, free.

Every show has a heartbeat.

This is ours.

Before the episodes, before the businesses, before the conversations about what makes organizations thrive through uncertainty — there was this belief.

A slow, heavy blues-rock track built around one idea: capable people, given the right structure, move further than they ever imagined.

This is our theme song.