Leadership Backstage: Conversations Uncovering Blind Spots & Breakthroughs

Leadership Backstage invites you behind the curtain of leadership, far away from polished bios and perfect LinkedIn posts and into the real, unfiltered stories that shape today’s most impactful leaders. This podcast digs into the hidden moments, blind spots, turning points, and cultural shifts that define the journey of modern leadership.

Hosted by Claudia Williams, award-winning attorney turned leadership coach and creator of frientorship®, the show brings together CEOs, founders, executives, thought leaders, and culture-builders who have weathered scaling pains, tough decisions, team crises, and the emotional challenges of leading people.

Here, conversations get honest. Vulnerability meets strategy. And leaders share the lessons they rarely talk about publicly, the setbacks, gratitude moments, rebuilding phases, and the breakthroughs that changed everything.

🔥 Why Listen to Leadership Backstage?

Because leadership isn’t a title, it’s a backstage experience filled with pressure, uncertainty, decisions with consequences, and moments that define the future of teams. Claudia creates space for leaders to speak candidly about the messy middle: building culture, failing forward, and navigating change when the spotlight isn’t on.

From these conversations, you’ll learn how leaders:

• Identify and overcome blind spots that limit growth
• Build cultures that act as strategic advantages
• Lead through rapid scale, mergers, and shifting expectations
• Spot future leaders and elevate mid-level talent
• Make high-stakes decisions under pressure
• Balance performance with empathy, gratitude, and connection

🎙️ What to Expect From Each Episode

Leadership Backstage brings you raw, practical, and deeply human insights through conversations that matter:

• Leadership in Real Life: Lessons from failures, resilience, and hard-won wins
• Culture Builders: How leaders create environments where people thrive
• Scaling Stories: The reality of going from regional to national growth
• Talent Insights: Spotting blind spots and developing next-gen leaders
• Future of Work: Navigating shifting roles, expectations, and workforce changes
• Personal Journeys: The people, mentors, and moments that shaped great leaders

Whether you’re an executive, an aspiring leader, a founder in growth mode, or someone passionate about culture and people development, Leadership Backstage gives you the conversations every leader wishes they heard earlier in their career.