Episode 11 : Redefining Leadership – Mind the Gap Between Intention and Impact with Jeremie Brecheisen

In our episode today, Jeremie Brecheisen joins us to talk about redefining leadership. As Managing Partner at Gallup – the global analytics and advisory firm known for its decades of evidence-based research into human behaviour and performance – he brings both data and his own lived experience as trainer and coach to the discussion.

Jeremie makes a simple but often-missed point: the greatest leaders know who they are, and perhaps even more importantly, who they’re not – and then surround themselves with people who fill the gaps.

He describes this as a ‘strengths philosophy’. Everyone’s strengths are different, so trying to model yourself on someone else’s version of leadership is, at best, limiting. From there, he reframes leadership more fundamentally. Not by what leaders intend – but by what people actually receive. Leadership is defined through followership: the extent to which people get what they need from those leading them, and how that impacts their lives.

Gallup’s global research has shown what people really do need from leaders. Four things consistently emerge: trust, compassion, stability and hope.

But they don’t carry equal weight.

Using life evaluation data – how people rate their present and their future – Jeremie explains that hope is the factor that most clearly distinguishes those who are thriving from those who are struggling.

What makes hope real is where it shows up: in how goals are set – with people, not for them; in whether managers are actively behind what’s being asked – whether that’s day-to-day work or something new like AI – rather than simply passing it on; and in whether what people are being asked to do feels genuinely possible.

Leadership, then, is less about you and more about what people believe is possible because of you.