Let's talk Transformation : The business leaders podcast #157 Beyond the Bias: Expansive Leadership for a New Era with Jodi Vandenberg-Daves
Leadership isn’t about a position; it’s a lifelong practice.
This perspective highlights the strategic use of informal networks and collaboration to drive systemic change. For decades, we have had the narrative focused on “fixing women” to fit leadership moulds rather than addressing systemic biases and looking at how to fix the system.
In this conversation we explore how the very skills often dismissed as "soft"—context awareness, emotional agility, adaptive thinking, collaborative workload management—are exactly what drives systemic change. Research backs this up: women managers disproportionately champion DEI initiatives and build stronger teams. Yet these skills remain undervalued.
Why? Because we haven't disrupted the power dynamics that determine what "leadership" looks like.
Real change happens when we: Build cross-functional coalitions; Make implicit power structures more explicit; Consciously leverage privilege to create space for different approaches ;Use informal networks intentionally & strategically to create momentum
This isn't about adding more women to broken systems. It's about redesigning the systems themselves.
Jodi generously shares her research, insights and experience as weexplore how leadership, courage, and values converge—and how factors like caregiving, generational wisdom, and a career-long view can transform how we lead today.
The main insights you'll get from this episode are :
- Leadership is about collaborating, creating better workplaces/community environments, and bringing together courage and values - caregiving, generational wisdom and a career-long view of impact can transform leadership.
- It takes courage to transcend hierarchy - leadership is not a title or position, but a lifelong practice to overcome the fear of retribution; finding moments of clarity aligned with our values makes this easier to withstand.
- Integrity and clarity bring courage and confidence; we always have agency, which can become leadership capital and have a lasting legacy – the need for women to constantly codeswitch between multiple identities brings many skills, e.g. communication, holding space, EQ, context intelligence, etc.
- The skills to navigate complexity involve mental and emotional agility; we can use these skills to disrupt systems and biases to leverage strategic thinking and relationships - formal leadership provides a platform and greater sphere of influence (to bring about change).
- It is important to seek allies in a network of champions and create our own spaces - being effective is an act of disruption and diplomacy, and positioning goals in the context of the mission and organisation appeals to people’s decency.
- The informal nature of power dynamics makes values-driven leadership difficult to maintain against a backdrop of value clashes – a career journey will wax and wane in terms of value alignment, but courage comes from the collective, by building a diverse and cohesive team in an effective space for shared values.
- Younger generations see leadership differently, and have more interest in racial justice, feminism, LGBTQ rights, etc. - different experiences give rise to new questions and subsequently new thinking.
- Smart organisations will capitalise on the knowledge and ideas of young people and bring it to the leadership - intergenerational experiences count and should also counter age and learning humility in both directions.
- Courage in an (AI-)augmented, hybrid world will still have the same values and practices but there will be a need to create more space for human interaction, for listening, creating feedback loops, and learning about others.
- It is essential that we develop deeper self-connection and self-trust in the face of buffeting forces – the human operating system doesn’t really change; we must still put people first and recognise our own courage by finding our voice, taking a stand, paying attention to our behaviour in the moment and being generous.
Find out more about Jodi and her work here :