The Perfect Route podcast

Your leadership problem isn't the problem you think it is.

Most leaders come to the table asking for help with change management, team bonding, or meeting efficiency. My guest today says none of that is ever the real issue. The real issue is always something closer to the leader themselves.
In this episode of The Perfect Route, I sit down with Zaher Ibrahim, founder of Eclarity, a leadership development firm working with corporate and government leadership teams on assessment, coaching, and development. Zaher's path ran through civil engineering and organizational development before landing in executive coaching, and it shows in how he talks about leadership: he skips the competency checklist and goes straight to the engine.
In this conversation, we cover:
* Why the leadership challenge a client brings you is almost never the real challenge
* The three fears driving most leadership dysfunction, and why micromanagement is really fear of failure in disguise
* Why trust isn't a switch, and how to actually gauge the strength of trust in your key relationships
* Zaher's car analogy for why competency frameworks fail to change leadership behavior
* Why judgment, not intelligence, is becoming the scarce and valuable skill in an AI-driven workplace
* A different way to define leadership impact, one that follows a leader home


Whether you're leading a team, coaching executives, or building your own leadership development practice, this conversation will change how you diagnose what's really going on with the leaders around you.

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Would you judge a tree for the way it grew around a rock?

Most leaders I talk to think a good coach is someone who gets in the trenches with them, another player on the field calling shots. That is not what coaching is, and getting that distinction wrong is exactly why so many coaching relationships fail to deliver.

In this episode of The Perfect Route, I sit down with Robin Piccione, a business coach with EA Lewis and Associates in Toledo and a former twenty year veteran of national broadcast television. Robin built her coaching practice around storytelling, dialectical thinking, and a philosophy she borrows from Ram Dass: let them be trees. It reframes how leaders judge the people around them, and it changed how I think about the guide role coaches are supposed to play.
In this conversation, we cover:
* Why a business coach should be a guide, not a narrator, and what changes when you get that right
* How to treat emotions as terrain to navigate instead of a destination to avoid
* The dialectical thinking tool that helps you hold two conflicting truths at once
* Why hiring for attitude and work ethic outperforms hiring for resumes and credentials
* The "let them be trees" philosophy, and what it means to lead people without judgment
* Where business coaching is headed as AI reshapes hiring, teams, and the workplace


Whether you are a business owner, an executive, or a coach building your own practice, this one will give you a new lens for how you lead and how you see the people around you.

#BusinessCoaching #ExecutiveCoaching #LeadershipDevelopment #EmotionalIntelligence #Dialectics #ThePerfectRoute #BillSodeman #PodcastForLeaders

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Is your business built on partnerships that boost the numbers but quietly cost you trust?

If your calendar is full and your revenue looks fine, but something still feels off, you're not alone, and you're not imagining it. Your organization might be missing one critical filter: mission alignment.

In this episode, Julia Hage, CEO of The Hage Co, and I unpack:
* Why financially attractive partnerships can still be the wrong move
* What real alignment and authenticity look like in leadership and business
* How to lead a multigenerational team by asking, not assuming
* Why emotional intelligence is a leadership advantage, not a liability

Less ego-driven decisions. More authentic alignment. Real leadership growth.

#businesscoach #executivecoaching #n3ed #billsodeman

The Perfect Route
Episode 51
August 24, 2026

★ Episode details: https://share.transistor.fm/s/07d0b0d4

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Ever feel like your career and your inner life are running on two completely separate tracks?

Most executive coaches steer clear of the word spirituality. My guest this episode built an entire second career around it. Rich Strilowich spent more than forty years in IT leadership, most of it inside IBM, climbing from computer science into project and program management, HR, and eventually a director role owning a P&L. For the last thirty years, he's also walked a conscious spiritual path, and for a long time he kept the two worlds separate. Now, as a corporate sage coach, he's built his entire practice around the idea that they were never separate at all.

In this conversation, we get into what spirituality actually means inside a demanding corporate career, and why it has nothing to do with incense or ceremony. Rich walks me through his four filters for navigating hard moments, surrender, faith, patience, and acceptance, and explains why none of them can be reduced to a project plan. We talk about grace as a working concept rather than a soft one, anchored in the hardest story he shares: his three and a half year old daughter's sudden regression into severe autism, and how the exact resources he needed to get through it showed up at the exact moment he needed them. I push him on the question every skeptical executive is quietly asking, does this make you a softer leader, and his answer, backed by his own experience laying off twenty eight people with compassion, is no. We close on a question that reframed my own coaching practice: should we think of the people we advise as clients, or as partners on a journey?

If you've ever hit a goal you worked years for and felt strangely unsatisfied once you got there, this episode will give you a new way to think about why.

The Perfect Route
Episode 50
August 18, 2026

★ Episode details: https://share.transistor.fm/s/b5f70e30

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Is your HR team still measuring activity instead of impact?
If your training calendar is full but your turnover isn't moving, you're not alone, and you're not doing it wrong. You might just be tracking the wrong signals.
In this episode, I sit down with Heather Mallette, president of Nora and a 20-year HR veteran across healthcare, manufacturing, and private equity, to unpack:
* Why "activity without impact is an expense," and how to tell the difference in your own HR function
* The leading indicators that predict turnover before it hits your financials
* How top organizations are using AI as a strategic thought partner, not just an admin tool
* Why succession planning has to happen before the crisis, not after
* What it really means for HR to be "disciplined and deeply human" at the same time


Less firefighting. More foresight. Real strategic partnership.
Ready to turn your HR function into a business accelerator instead of a support department?

The Perfect Route
Episode 49
August 10, 2026

★ Episode details: https://share.transistor.fm/s/94c58266

★ Additional episodes: https://theperfectroute.transistor.fm

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If you think of HR as paperwork, compliance, and a necessary cost, you're not alone, and you're not wrong to want more from it. But most companies are missing the bigger opportunity: HR as a strategic growth partner.

In this episode, Dr. Michelle Griffin, founder of Griffin Resources and a PhD in industrial organizational psychology, joins me to unpack:
* Why HR gets treated as a "necessary evil" instead of a growth driver
* The metrics, like revenue per head and turnover by department, that turn HR into a strategic partner
* The AI risks most companies haven't priced in yet, and how to build policy before it costs you
* Why promoting your best performer into leadership without training them to lead is one of the most expensive mistakes a company can make


Less compliance theater. More strategic partnership. Real HR leadership.

#BillSodeman #Coaching #theperfectroute

The Perfect Route
Episode 48
August 3, 2026

★ Episode details: https://share.transistor.fm/s/395f536e

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Is your HR team working harder than ever, but still being left out of the room where strategy happens?

You are not alone, and you are not doing it wrong. But there is a gap between where most HR leaders are operating and where the C-suite actually needs them to be.
In this episode, I sit down with talent strategy leader Kelly Turow to unpack exactly what that gap looks like, and more importantly, how to close it.
We dig into:


* Why being too focused on people can actually hurt your credibility with executives
* The hidden signals your HR metrics are missing before they become a crisis
* How Kelly built an AI-powered career mapping tool in 2 to 3 hours that would have taken months the old way
* The three things that will define HR's next chapter: business fluency, technology, and measurable impact


If you have ever felt like the work you are doing matters but you cannot prove it in a way leadership responds to, this conversation is for you.
Less reacting. More strategizing. Real executive influence.

Ready to make the shift from transactional to strategic?

The Perfect Route
Episode 47
July 27, 2026

★ Episode details: https://share.transistor.fm/s/b218f226

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Is your best employee struggling now that they are a manager?
If your newly promoted managers are overwhelmed, your teams are disengaging, and you cannot figure out why, you are not alone. And the answer is probably not who you promoted. It is how you prepared them.
In this episode, we are unpacking:
* Why promoting without preparing is one of the costliest mistakes a growing company makes
* What manager effectiveness actually looks like and how to measure it
* How trust between a manager and their team builds slowly and breaks fast
* Why your middle managers need a coach, not just a title


Less guesswork. More intentional leadership development. Real results for your team and your organization.
Ready to close the manager effectiveness gap in your company?

The Perfect Route
Episode 46
July 20, 2026

★ Episode details: https://share.transistor.fm/s/be9593b7

★ Additional episodes: https://theperfectroute.transistor.fm

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Is your culture actually what you think it is, or just what you've written down?
You've got the values statement. The mission on the wall. But if the behaviors in your meetings don't match it, your real culture is somewhere else entirely.
In this episode, HR veteran and executive coach Sheila Eason joins The Perfect Route to unpack:


* Why your best performer might struggle the moment you promote them into leadership
* The real reason silence during a change initiative backfires on you
* What it actually means when culture is defined by "the worst behaviors you tolerate"
* Why communication and emotional intelligence are the two competencies leaders can't afford to skip

Less guessing. More self-awareness. Real leadership growth.
Ready to see what your culture is actually communicating?

The Perfect Route
Episode 45
July 13, 2026

★ Episode details: https://share.transistor.fm/s/a9448663

★ Additional episodes: https://theperfectroute.transistor.fm

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