Wanda Wallace
500 episodes listed below
Practical leadership beyond the expert role.
Out of the Comfort Zone treats leadership as a set of difficult conversations, not a collection of slogans. Wanda Wallace and her guests work through delegation, trust, gender dynamics, global teams, and the habits that keep capable leaders stuck in the weeds.
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Out of the Comfort Zone is a business leadership show about the moments when competence stops being enough. Wanda Wallace frames leadership as the work of moving beyond expertise, control, and familiar habits into conversations that build trust. The show is interview-driven, but not passive. Wallace regularly restates an idea, tests it against a management problem, and asks what a leader should actually do next. That gives the episodes a coaching-room feel. Recent conversations focus on delegation, speaking up, gender dynamics, global teams, team culture, people-first performance, and leadership lessons from high-pressure sport. The recurring problem is simple and hard. Leaders know what they are supposed to do, but their incentives, fears, accountability, and desire to help often pull them back into old patterns. The show spends time inside that tension. In a conversation with Chris Clearfield, control becomes more than a bad habit; it becomes something with emotional and organizational rewards. With Betsy Kauffman, speaking up is treated as a skill that depends on facts, timing, purpose, and clarity about what is being asked. Jennifer McCollum’s episode looks at men and women at work through pressure, anxiety, expectations, and culture. Josh Block brings the people-first argument into an operating story about performance and care. Bruce Mayhew’s discussion of trust turns toward self-awareness, defensiveness, and seeing colleagues as whole people. Other episodes draw from sailing, global business, and humanitarian leadership to widen the frame without leaving practical management behind. The pacing is patient. The questions are concrete. The best episodes are useful for listeners who have outgrown simple advice but still need language for hard leadership choices. Out of the Comfort Zone works because it treats growth as something observable in meetings, decisions, delegation, feedback, and the conversations people avoid until they matter too much.
Made for: For managers, leaders, and high-responsibility team members who need better ways to delegate, build trust, speak up, and lead through ambiguity.
What sets it apart: The show turns familiar leadership advice into specific conversations, tradeoffs, and behaviors. It is less about polished inspiration and more about the hard middle step between knowing the principle and using it well.
There is no growth in comfort and no comfort in growth. Business today typically values and promotes leaders for their subject expertise. Leaders who have command of the details and execute based on knowledge and experience are highly respected. However, to grow as a leader you have to get out of your comfort zone – that means learning to lead without just being the expert. Learn to gain the trust and respect of a team that might know more than you do. Get comfortable with ambiguity and with not having all the information. Develop the skills and confidence to lead in a...
Based on 4 episodes we listened to · September 2026
Wanda Wallace turns familiar leadership advice into specific questions about trust, delegation, accountability, and the systems behind team performance.
Wanda Wallace keeps pulling leadership advice out of slogan territory and into the decisions managers face at work. Her guest conversations examine how people speak up without losing credibility, build trust across difficult relationships, and loosen control when accountability…
Delegation becomes a control problem, giving you more than another breezy command to let go.
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Short reviews from the PlayNext desk, based on the episodes we processed.
A useful reset for leaders who need to manage tension instead of grabbing every problem.
This episode looks at the habit some leaders have of staying too close to every problem. Wanda Wallace and Chris make the case that delegation alone does not fix that pattern, because control can feel useful even when it turns into a bottleneck.
A practical conversation about candor, timing, and the mechanics of collaboration.
Speaking out is the center of the episode: how leaders make room for candor, and how individual contributors decide when to raise a problem without putting their standing at risk.
A steady look at trust, self-awareness, and the work of leading before you feel ready.
Wanda Wallace and Bruce Mayhew keep the discussion grounded in the uneasy part of leadership: the moment when trust is thin and the speaker is still figuring out the terrain.
Performance sharpens when leaders stop confusing effort with leverage.
The discussion treats super performance as a systems question, not a test of stamina. Wanda Wallace and George Pazansky keep returning to leverage: how leaders create impact, how teams earn trust, and why strong results depend on noticing the system behind both problems and…
Leadership balance before burnout takes over.
A midweek reset for school leaders.
Delegation is not the easy fix.
Wanda Wallace interviews Betsy Kauffman, an executive leadership coach with over 25 years of experience and author of a TED Talk on speaking up, about the tactics required to surface and address organisational silence.
Wanda Wallace interviews Jennifer McCollum, president and CEO of Catalyst, about her book Men at Work: The Roadmap to Gender Partnership and the workplace pressures affecting men and women.
This episode features an interview with Josh Block, author of People Matter at Work, discussing how putting people first leads to strong results in leadership and organizational culture.
Wanda Wallace opens by framing leadership as the point where comfort gives way to growth.
This episode explores how lessons from sailing and sports can be applied to business leadership, featuring Conrad Humphreys who has raced around the world three times.
Host Wanda Wallace discusses leading global teams across cultures with expert Dean Foster, focusing on building trust and navigating cultural differences.
Host Wanda Wallace discusses how to delegate effectively to get out of your comfort zone and improve leadership impact.
Host Wanda Wallace discusses how to prepare for and succeed on top executive teams, with guest Gina Jardine sharing insights from her C-suite experience.
Host Wanda Wallace interviews body language expert Martin Brooks about using body language to gain attention, build relationships, show empathy, and detect deception in professional settings.
Host Wanda Wallace discusses the importance of core values for leaders with guest Robert Glaser, founder of Acceleration Partners.
Host Wanda Wallace discusses how to thrive outside your comfort zone with guest John Rosenberg, author of a guide to breaking old patterns and finding meaning.
Host Wanda Wallace interviews cultural psychologist Michael Morris about how tribes drive change and culture in organizations.
Host Wanda Wallace interviews researcher Zach Mercurio about how leaders can create a culture where team members feel they matter, leading to higher motivation and performance.
Host Wanda Wallace interviews George Pazansky, a 30-year veteran of operational excellence and executive coaching, about the principles behind his forthcoming book 'Super Performance.' Pazansky argues that organizations over-index on measuring failures and lagging metrics while ignoring the root causes of their successes — a gap he illustrates with a leaky bucket analogy.
Host Wanda Wallace discusses how to foster innovation in teams and build a culture of innovation with guest Ben Binsal, a professor of technology management.