What if fear isn’t weakness - but data? In this episode I’m joined by Susan Asiyanbi to explore what fear looks like in leadership - and what becomes possible when we stop pushing it down.
Susan is a strategist, pattern recogniser, and the person senior leaders call when facing their biggest leadership challenges. As CEO and founder of The Olori Network®, she and her team study what the strongest executives do differently - capturing the principles, practices and pitfalls of leadership - and bring those insights to bear in real time with CEOs and their teams.
Together we unpack how fear can hide in plain sight - in busyness, control, people-pleasing, or the pressure to prove you’re enough - and how those patterns ripple through teams when they go unnamed. Susan shares what shifts when leaders begin to treat fear as information, rather than weakness.
We discuss:
- How fear disguises itself as productivity and performance
- Why high achievers stay stuck longer than they should
- What it takes to make the undiscussable discussable
- How leaders can create space for honest, real-time dialogue
- Why seeing fear as data can change how we make decisions
If you’re feeling stuck as a leader - this conversation will help you understand the patterns shaping your leadership and your team and offer a more freeing way to lead.
About Guest
Susan Asiyanbi is an executive advisor and operator with more than two decades of cross-sector leadership. She helps CEOs and senior teams navigate complexity, accelerate alignment, and strengthen the systems and relationships that drive performance.
Before founding The Olori Network®, Susan served as Chief Operating Officer at Teach For America, where she led operations across 51 regions and stewarded more than 2,000 staff — building high-performance teams capable of driving results while maintaining a strong culture, even amid significant change.
Earlier in her career, she held strategic and operational roles at Boston Consulting Group and Sears Holdings Corporation. Through The Olori Network®, Susan brings together everything she has learned: that strategy and culture must move together, and that leadership is ultimately about relationships, trust, and clarity in action.
Find out more at www.olorinetwork.com
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/susan-asiyanbi/
The podcast was produced by pronkproductions.com
