After a two-year pause, we’re thrilled to relaunch The PeopleSmart Podcast, building on the success of our original Leadership Luminaries Podcast created and hosted by Michael Banks in 2020.

Our renewed focus? Thoughtful, long-form conversations with people who create, build, test, and prove new ways of working. We’re delving into the questions we’re exploring, the insights worth sharing, and the realities leaders navigate in complex organisations today. It’s informal but informed, curious but grounded – designed for anyone who wants to understand not just what we do, but how and why we do it.

We explore what leadership, change, and commercial excellence really look like in practice. From innovative approaches to culture and performance to the decisions that drive real behaviour, we hone in on insight over hype and substance over slogans. After our first season of 57 episodes, the podcast returns with a sharper lens: honest reflection, considered ideas, and practical intelligence for anyone striving to lead well – commercially and humanly.

And we’re excited to open Season 2 with a powerful first conversation.

Episode 1: “The Stories We Tell Ourselves at Work” with Ricardo Troiano

Ricardo Troiano – co-founder of Concio, the leadership advisory firm built for organisations tired of “polite conversations” and change programmes that look great on slides but don’t shift real behaviour — joins us to explore why the stories we tell ourselves at work matter far more than we think.

Drawing on behavioural science, neuroscience and systems thinking, Ricardo brings a perspective shaped by a career that has spanned engineering, global consulting roles (including PwC and IBM), and senior leadership positions in organisational development and change. Having lived and worked across three continents, he offers a sharp view on how culture, power and group dynamics shape what people actually do, not merely what they say.

He is also a contributor to Bee Wise, a leadership book using the beehive as a metaphor for modern organisational life – complex, interdependent, and occasionally chaotic.

In this episode, we dig into how individuals and groups think, why change gets stuck, and what it really takes to shift the habits and assumptions that quietly drive performance.