Episode Details

What if leadership isn’t primarily about what you intend to communicate—but about how other people experience you when the stakes are high?

Today’s guest is Alan McLaren, co-founder of Strata Originals, a five-time CEO, and former international chair of YPU. He grew from a career in sales, marketing, training, and communication into executive leadership, turnarounds of public companies, and entrepreneurship.

Alan says he has worked with more than 600 CEOs across 18 countries, studying what happens when leadership is tested in the rooms that matter.

In this conversation, we explore:

• Why Alan believes leadership is fundamentally about leading humans
• The difference between knowing leadership principles and actually applying them
• What Alan means by “leadership signal”
• Why people can form impressions of us before we even speak
• How trust and safety are assessed at a subconscious level
• Why leaders often can’t see how they are being experienced by others
• What happens when pressure enters an important room
• Alan’s framework around identity, credibility, and authority
• Why attacks—real or perceived—can trigger automatic reactions
• What Alan calls “autopilot”
• How defensiveness, speaking faster, and trying to prove yourself can affect trust
• Why a difficult question isn’t necessarily a personal attack
• How pressure can create friction and fractures in trust
• Differences in leadership styles across cultures
• Command-and-control leadership and hierarchical environments
• Why Alan believes leaders need to understand how they actually land with other people
• The importance of reading the room
• Why leadership development needs to move beyond simply reading books
• How leaders can become more aware of the signals they send
• What it means to build clarity, alignment, and trust in high-pressure environments

At the center of Alan’s philosophy is a distinction that is easy to understand but difficult to master:

Your intention is not necessarily the experience other people have of you.

And when the stakes are high, that difference can determine whether people trust you, align with you, or begin to pull away.

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🌐 Connect with Alan

Strata Originals

Strata Originals⁠

Alan explicitly gives strataoriginals.com in the interview as the place to learn more about his work.

💼 LinkedIn

Alan says LinkedIn is probably the best place to reach him.

He specifically says he prefers to use LinkedIn to communicate and build relationships, rather than simply sell.

He also says listeners can tell him that they heard him on Thought Atlas.