Introducing The Stewardship Table. It's Time I Put My Money Where My Mouth Is

For four years, this podcast has been about a better way to do business, climate and leadership. In this solo episode, Charlene stops talking about it and builds it.

Most of the tools that help people speak honestly, listen well and handle stress never reach business leaders. That's because most leaders would never walk into a therapist's office to fix a problem at work. Charlene shares the performance review where she stumbled onto one of those tools without knowing it, and the conversation with psychologist Deborah Borys, after their moral injury series on the show, that turned into a collaboration.

The result is The Stewardship Table: a small, private group of senior leaders who meet online twice a month to solve real business problems together. One session each month is all business. The second goes deeper, using tools from psychology and neuroscience adapted for business. There are no recordings. It's a place to experiment in private, so you can win in public.

Charlene also makes the case for something most leaders rarely get: time to think. Using a simple picture of a flat world that only ever sees slices, she explains why running a business on a share price or a quarterly target means mistaking the slice for the whole, and why sustainable business leadership starts with seeing differently.

Three things you'll take away:

• Why tools from other fields, including therapy, may be the missing piece in your leadership toolkit
• How The Stewardship Table works, who it's for, and what it is not
• Why the answer to a hard problem is sometimes not pushing harder, but seeing differently

Join the free introductory session: Monday, November 16, 3:00 to 5:00 pm ET, on Zoom. No cost. Membership begins December 3. Save your seat

The 5Cs Podcast connects forward-thinking executives who are building sustainable competitive advantages while driving positive impact. Think of it as an exclusive network of leaders who understand that stewardship isn't just good ethics - it's good business. Becausing addressing business stewardship climate risk and leadership together is in the highest good for all.

Connect with Charlene Norman on LinkedIn, find her at her website, subscribe to our Substack for strategic insights, or download the full series on Spotify and Apple.

Series: The Other Eye Episode: The Elephant Isn't the Problem. The Room Is.

Business runs on three-month cycles. Decisions, budgets, performance reviews. The problems we're facing run on centuries. That gap is why climate science hasn't moved most business leaders.

In this episode, Ryan gives his diagnosis. Everyone is studying the elephant in the room. Nobody is looking at the room itself: how it's designed, who is in it, and what language they're using to talk about the elephant. Until we look at the worldview we're working from, every new solution gets measured with the same ruler that created the problem. That, Ryan argues, is why so many transformation efforts stall.

He explains why systems thinker Donella Meadows named worldview as the most powerful lever for change. He uses a plum pit to show that change isn't something we force; it's a blueprint revealing itself. And he tells a story about the women in his family that shows how the past keeps living in the present. Charlene adds the business version: we haven't changed our operating model since the assembly line. Business runs on three-month cycles. Decisions, budgets, performance reviews. The problems we're facing run on centuries. That gap is why climate science hasn't moved most business leaders.

In this episode, Ryan gives his diagnosis. Everyone is studying the elephant in the room. Nobody is looking at the room itself: how it's designed, who is in it, and what language they're using to talk about the elephant. Until we look at the worldview we're working from, every new solution gets measured with the same ruler that created the problem. That, Ryan argues, is why so many transformation efforts stall.

He explains why systems thinker Donella Meadows named worldview as the most powerful lever for change. He uses a plum pit to show that change isn't something we force; it's a blueprint revealing itself. And he tells a story about the women in his family that shows how the past keeps living in the present. Charlene adds the business version: we haven't changed our operating model since the assembly line. You can find Ryan here, here and here.

Three things you'll take away:

• Why "our approach is the problem" and what that means for how organizations spend on change
• Worldview as the strongest lever for change, and why most systems work stops short of it
• How a family habit passed down through four generations explains why the future keeps looking like the past

The 5Cs Podcast connects forward-thinking executives who are building sustainable competitive advantages while driving positive impact. Think of it as an exclusive network of leaders who understand that stewardship isn't just good ethics - it's good business. Becausing addressing business stewardship climate risk and leadership together is in the highest good for all.

Connect with Charlene Norman on LinkedIn, find her at her website, subscribe to our Substack for strategic insights, or download the full series on Spotify and Apple.

Series: The Other Eye Episode: Hearts Only Have One Colour

Indigenous elders are famously careful about who they share their knowledge with. So what made them trust a finance graduate from Boston?

Ryan's answer isn't about anything he said. It's about how he showed up: curiosity with no attachment to the answer, humility, and a fire to serve something bigger than himself. He shares the lesson a teacher in Hawaii gave him every single day ("What do you want me to say? You already answered your own question.") and why most of the questions we ask in business aren't really questions at all.

Then he names what he calls the unholy trinity of modern thinking: mechanization, reductionism and separability. It built the world we live in, from our computers to our hot showers. It also can't solve the problems it created. Ryan walks through the full picture of Two-Eyed Seeing and explains why chasing solutions one problem at a time keeps producing more problems. You can find Ryan here, here and here.

Three things you'll take away:

• The question test: are you asking, or are you already answering?
• The three habits under most Western problem-solving, what they do well, and where they fall short
• Why getting to the root of a problem means you may not need a solution at all

The 5Cs Podcast connects forward-thinking executives who are building sustainable competitive advantages while driving positive impact. Think of it as an exclusive network of leaders who understand that stewardship isn't just good ethics - it's good business. Becausing addressing business stewardship climate risk and leadership together is in the highest good for all.

Connect with Charlene Norman on LinkedIn, find her at her website, subscribe to our Substack for strategic insights, or download the full series on Spotify and Apple.