Positive Leadership
Positive Leadership has the power to change the world. By focusing on trust, empathy, authenticity and deep collaboration, leaders can energize their teams to achieve success for individuals, their organizations, and society as a whole. Yet, it remains relatively unknown outside positive psychology and neuroscience circles.
Join Jean-Philippe Courtois, former member of the Microsoft senior leadership team alongside Satya Nadella and co-founder of Live for Good, as he brings Positive Leadership to life for anyone in a leadership capacity—both personally and professionally. With help from his guests, Jean-Philippe explores how purpose-driven leaders can generate the positive energy needed to drive business success, individual fulfillment, and societal impact across a range of industries—from technology and social enterprise to sports and coffee.
Most importantly, you’ll learn practical tips to apply in your own life—so you can start making a positive difference in the world.
Positive Leadership
Dr Donna Hicks: Every Conflict Hides a Dignity Wound
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Donna Hicks spent three decades at the world's hardest conflict tables and found one hidden injury beneath them all: a violation of human dignity. From the Middle East to Northern Ireland, she watched negotiations stall not over policy, but over something no one in the room had named. This episode is the word that changed everything, and the model she built around it.
Dr Donna Hicks, author of Leading with Dignity and Associate at the Weatherhead Center for International Affairs at Harvard University, spent her career as a third party in unofficial diplomacy across the Middle East, Sri Lanka, Colombia and Northern Ireland. She co-facilitated the BBC series Facing the Truth alongside Archbishop Desmond Tutu, and her earlier book, Dignity, reshaped how the world understands conflict, connection and leadership.
This one runs close to home for me. As a young boy from a Pied-Noir family — French people of European origin who had left Algeria after its independence — newly arrived in Nice, I was once told by a schoolmate to “get out of here.” I came home devastated. My father’s answer, that I should be proud of where I came from and that I had something real to give, was dignity restored long before either of us had a word for it.
In our conversation, we explore:
→ Why respect is earned but dignity is not, and how leaders who confuse the two quietly damage their teams
→ The ten elements of dignity, and the single one that 80% of employees say is violated most at work
→ What happened when the BBC sat victims and perpetrators face to face, and why healing did not require forgiveness
→ Why Donna now teaches dignity to eight-year-olds, and her advice to young leaders entering a harder world
→ Mandela consciousness: the three connections that rebuild dignity in any team, family or boardroom
"I don't believe we need to find common ground. I believe we need to find higher ground."
- Dr Donna Hicks, Harvard University
If you have ever watched a meeting derail over something that was never really about the agenda, this conversation hands you the missing word, and a practical model for what to do next.
🎧 Related Episodes:
- Amy Edmondson on psychological safety, the dignity element 80% of employees say is violated most at work: https://www.buzzsprout.com/1798971/episodes/15687150
- Stephen M.R. Covey on trust as the foundation of culture, and what sits beneath even trust: https://www.buzzsprout.com/1798971/episodes/12252258
- Barbara Fredrickson on Love 2.0, and why dignity is the fastest path to genuine connection: https://www.buzzsprout.com/1798971/episodes/9437036
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