"The worst thing they can do is leave you... but they're still showing up on your payroll." — Quinn Harwood

Corporate trust just hit 17%. Most executives read that number and think about their brand, their PR, their retention numbers. Quinn Harwood thinks about something narrower and more uncomfortable: the specific moment a leader stopped being a coach and started being a scorekeeper — and every disengaged employee still clocking in downstream of it.

Quinn is a professional certified coach, speaker, and author of Growth Time: A Coaching Fable — The Clear Path to Unlock Your Best Life and Leadership. His path runs through professional basketball, two decades in corporate leadership, and thousands of one-on-one coaching sessions — which is where he identified the exact three-part breakdown behind almost every trust failure he's coached leaders through.

In this episode, Quinn breaks down:

• The three components — care, commitment, trust — and which one is missing when a team goes quiet without you noticing
• Why "they might leave if I invest in them" is the wrong fear — and what actually happens when leaders don't invest
• The real story behind Google's decade-long Project Oxygen study: what teams say they want most from a leader, and it isn't results
• A specific leadership shift he made overseeing 11 locations that turned "how are your numbers" into "how are your people" — and why performance went up, not down
• Why the scarcity mindset around developing talent is self-defeating, and what the abundance version actually looks like in practice

#H2H #HumanConnectionPodcast #StartupLeadership #CompanyCulture #B2BRelationships

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You can connect with Quinn Harwood here:

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/CoachQharwood

LinkedIN: https://www.linkedin.com/in/quinn-harwood-455517108/

Instragram: https://www.instagram.com/coachq44/

Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@coachQ44

Website: CoachQharwood.com

You can connect with Karl Pontau here:

www.vouchedconnections.com

www.thehumanconnectionpodcast.com

https://www.linkedin.com/in/kpontau

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCUbf_bDWwB9KVrFn5Sj3u2w?sub_confirmation=1

Please like, subscribe, and share this episode with somebody you care about!

"We've created a workplace filled with efficient strangers." — Thom Singer

Your team hits every metric. Projects ship on time. Nobody's underperforming. And you still can't answer a basic question: if half your people quit tomorrow, would anyone outside your walls notice or care? Thom Singer has a name for the gap — and it's not a culture problem, it's a math problem that shows up the moment you have to make a layoff list.

Thom is a keynote speaker and "conference catalyst" who's spent 15+ years helping organizations build real human connection in an increasingly AI-driven world. He's the CEO of the Austin Technology Council, a longtime podcast host, and the author of 12 books — and his core message is disarmingly simple: all opportunities come from people.

In this episode, Thom breaks down:

• Why "efficient strangers" — teams that get work done but don't actually know each other — quietly cost companies more than they realize
• The real reason two employees with similar performance get treated differently on a layoff list
• Why gatekeeping client relationships from your own team usually backfires
• A simple exercise from a pandemic-era client check-in that turned a cold Zoom call into genuine connection — and is still used years later
• The three-word audit — community, collaboration, conversation — for whether your culture is real or just a values page

#H2H #HumanConnectionPodcast #StartupLeadership #CompanyCulture #B2BRelationships

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You can connect with Thom Singer here:

https://thomsinger.com

You can connect with Karl Pontau here:

www.vouchedconnections.com

www.thehumanconnectionpodcast.com

https://www.linkedin.com/in/kpontau

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCUbf_bDWwB9KVrFn5Sj3u2w?sub_confirmation=1

Please like, subscribe, and share this episode with somebody you care about!

"A team of average players with great core values will outwork an all-star any day." — Eliot Vancil

Most executives say they hire for culture fit. Then they keep the toxic top performer for one more quarter because the numbers are good. Eliot Vancil built two companies the opposite way — and the second one, Fuel Logic, doesn't have a turnover problem anymore because of it.

Eliot is a Texas-based entrepreneur with 25+ years scaling businesses across telecom, tech, and energy logistics. He's founded and exited multiple companies, including Network Logic, and now leads growth at Fuel Logic, a nationwide fuel delivery company serving fleet, construction, industrial, and data center clients. He also built the company that told him — to his face — that he'd plateaued as a leader because he didn't develop people.

In this episode, Eliot breaks down exactly what he changed:

• Why "org chart" and "accountability chart" are not the same document — and why only one of them actually works
• The test for whether your core values are real: if you've never fired someone for violating one, they're probably not values, they're a poster
• How a brand-new employee held him accountable to his own standard — and why that moment mattered more than any leadership training he'd taken
• Why "delegate to elevate" only works once you've documented the five things you actually expect from the seat, not the person
• The real cost of protecting a high-performing "all-star" who makes the rest of the team look bad

#H2H #HumanConnectionPodcast #StartupLeadership #CompanyCulture #B2BRelationships

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You can connect with Eliot Vancil here:

www.fuellogic.net

www.gofuelmonkey.com

You can connect with Karl Pontau here:

www.vouchedconnections.com

www.thehumanconnectionpodcast.com

https://www.linkedin.com/in/kpontau

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCUbf_bDWwB9KVrFn5Sj3u2w?sub_confirmation=1

Please like, subscribe, and share this episode with somebody you care about!