The Learning To Lead Show with Mark J. Cundiff
The Learning to Lead Show with Mark J. Cundiff
Helping Good Leaders Become Great—One Practical Insight at a Time
You’re busy. The demands are real. But your desire to grow as a leader hasn’t gone anywhere.
That’s why The Learning to Lead Show is designed for leaders like you—driven, growth-minded, and always on the go. Hosted by Executive Leadership Coach Mark J. Cundiff, this podcast delivers practical leadership insights you can use today, not someday.
Each week, you’ll get:
- Short, focused teaching episodes packed with real-world lessons from decades of leadership experience, bestselling books, and proven frameworks.
- Authentic interviews with front-line leaders who share how they’re navigating challenges, building teams, and leading with purpose, right where they are.
Whether you’re commuting, working out, or grabbing a few quiet minutes between meetings, this show helps you invest in your leadership without adding to your already busy schedule.
Because great leadership isn’t about having more time—it’s about using the time you have to lead on purpose.
This show is for growth-minded professionals who want more than titles and tactics. It’s for those who want to lead with purpose, develop a legacy, and make their future bigger than their past.
So whether you're leading a team, a business, or yourself—tune in, take notes, and let’s grow together.
The Learning To Lead Show with Mark J. Cundiff
#41 Leadership Insights from my Conversation with Debbie Simmons
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In this episode of The Learning to Lead Show, Mark Cundiff reflects on his powerful conversation with Debbie Simmons, exploring a fresh and challenging perspective on leadership and trust.
Debbie introduces the idea that trust is not just relational—it’s structural. Under pressure, leaders don’t rise to the occasion—they fall to their defaults. And those defaults reveal what we truly trust.
Through both practical insight and personal experience—including her journey as a mother of nine adopted children—Debbie shows how pressure exposes gaps in our leadership foundation and why sustainable leadership requires rebuilding trust from the inside out.
🔑 Key Takeaways
- Pressure reveals your true leadership foundation
What you trust shows up when things get hard. - Trust is more than a value—it’s a structure
Strong leadership depends on what you rely on internally. - Your default patterns are shaping your leadership
Control, urgency, overfunctioning, and silence often drive behavior under stress. - Healthy organizations don’t depend on one leader
Sustainable teams are built on shared responsibility and clear structure. - Performance gets results—structure sustains them
You can hustle to succeed, but you need alignment to last.
💡 Why This Episode Matters
If you’re a leader who is:
- Performing well but feeling stretched
- Respected but internally exhausted
- Carrying more than you should
This episode will challenge you to rethink how you build trust—and help you create a leadership foundation that holds up under pressure.
🎧 Be sure to check out the full conversation in Episode 40 and download the LeaderNotes for practical application steps.
Free Learning To Lead Resources
🔎 About LeaderNotes
LeaderNotes is a quick-hit companion to each episode of The Learning to Lead Show. In just 5–10 minutes, Mark Cundiff recaps the top leadership insights, frameworks, and action steps from each interview, designed for busy, growth-minded leaders who want to review and apply the episode’s biggest takeaways on the go. It’s like the highlight reel + playbook—all in one.
Contact Mark at: mark@markjcundiff.com
hello. Welcome to the Learning the Lead Show where our mission is to encourage, equip. And inspire growth-minded leaders to take their leadership to the next level. I'm your host, mark Cundiff and if we have not met before, I want to welcome you in to our learning environment where today we're going to share some leadership insights from my previous conversation with Debbie Simmons, the title of that episode number 40, was the Architecture of Trust, redefining. Leadership and legacy. It's a unique approach In a discussion about trust, Debbie joined me on the learning the lead show to challenge one of the most common assumptions in leadership. Trust is not just relational, it's structural, and this powerful conversation. Debbie shares the architecture of trust framework, which he is working on turning that into a book, she helps leaders understand that what they truly trust is revealed under pressure, not in calm, controlled moments. She unpacks how many high performing leaders are succeeding externally while quietly breaking down internally defaulting to patterns like control, urgency over-functioning and silence. These patterns may yield short term results, but they are not sustainable. Debbie brings a deeply personal and practical perspective sharing how pressure, leadership, responsibility, and life challenges expose gaps in her own personal structure and how rebuilding it from the inside out changed everything for her. One of the most incredible things that I found about Debbie when I was researching about her and in our discussion is that she is the mother of nine adopted children that came from trauma backgrounds, and she shared in this episode how many of her relationships with those children over the years revealed. Where she put her trust and exposed her under pressure and under stress, and it taught her how to build this architecture of trust. This episode is a wake up call for leaders who are successful but stretched. Respected, but exhausted, performing well, but filling the strain underneath. If you want to build a leadership foundation that holds up under pressure, stress, and challenging circumstances, this episode is a great resource for you to learn how to build structure around your trust. This conversation will challenge and equip you. Here are some of the key topics we discussed. Why trust must be understood as a structure, not just as a virtue how pressure reveals what leaders actually trust. The most common leadership defaults are control, urgency over-functioning and silence. The difference between relational trust and structural trust, how misaligned leadership structures create stress across teams and organizations. What a healthy trust structure looks like inside a team. Why do many unintentionally build dependency instead of sustainability? How to rebuild trust without creating chaos. The connection between trust, legacy, and long-term leadership impact. Again, if you haven't had a chance to hear our full conversation, go back to episode 40 and download that Today I'm gonna give you five key takeaways that I pulled out of our conversation. One, what you trust is revealed under pressure. You don't discover your leadership in calm moments. You discover it when things get heavy. When pressure rises, leaders don't rise to the occasion. They fall to their defaults. Get that again. When pressure rises, leaders don't rise to the occasion. They fall to their defaults. Leadership lesson, your default response under pressure reveals your true foundation. Key takeaway number two, trust is not just a value, it's a structure. Most leaders think of trust as something you build with others. Debbie flips the lens. Trust starts with what you rely on internally When things get hard, listen to that again. Trust starts with what you rely on or trust in eternally. When things get hard, you can lead with integrity, inspire with confidence, be respected by others, and still be structurally misaligned. Leadership insight, trust as a virtue sounds good. Trust as a structure holds strong. Take away. Number three, your defaults are driving more than you think. Under pressure, leaders tend to default to patterns like control. Which means tightening the grip when uncertainty arises. Urgency speeding up when clarity drops. Overfunctioning carrying more than they should silence avoiding hard conversations. These aren't character flaws. They're learned patterns of behavior. The key leadership lesson here is patterns reveal what you trust and what you trust shapes your leadership. Key takeaway number four, a healthy organization doesn't depend on you. If everything works. Only when you're at a hundred percent you don't have a system, you have a bottleneck. Healthy trust structures include clear roles, defined decision making processes. Sustainable pace, early tension resolution, and shared responsibility, leadership insight. Great leaders don't hold everything together. They build something that holds without them. So one of the key tests of a great organization is when the leader is gone, can that organization survive and even thrive when they're not there? Are you building leaders or are you building followers? If you're building leaders, your organization will sustain long after you're gone. Key takeaway number five, sustainable leadership requires alignment, not just performance. You can hustle your way to success, but you cannot hustle your way to sustainability while it got you here, won't take you to the next level leadership lesson. Performance may get results, but structure determines longevity. What happens to too many leaders is they get in the hustle culture and they build something, but they don't make it sustainable. And over time things crumble because they haven't built a structure of support, haven't built leaders around them to support it and drive the organization into the future. And it collapses under the weight of stress. I hope that you got some great value out of our conversation with Debbie Simmons. She's an extraordinary leader who has provided some great insights for us. Make sure you go and download the leader notes that'll give you the outline of what we discussed during that conversation and some key takeaways. It will also give you some application steps to put into practice so that you can practice what you heard. Also, if you got value out of our conversation, please go and subscribe. Share it with a friend, and also make sure to go and give us a rating so more people learn about the Learning Dele show. We so much appreciate you being with us and being a part of the Learning to Lead community. We have now been heard in over 35 countries and over in 265 cities and 38 states. That's all because of you helping us spread the word, sharing it with your friends, sharing it with those on your social media contacts. It helps us get the word out. And we thank you. Now, make sure that you go out this week and learn, grow, and lead, taking your organization to the next level.