The Lift: Executive Leadership for Organizational Change cover art

The Lift: Executive Leadership for Organizational Change

The Lift: Executive Leadership for Organizational Change

Written by: Ben Brooks
Listen for free

For CEOs and senior executives, and the leaders they're counting on to make change happen.

Host Ben Brooks is himself a CEO, working with other CEOs and their executive teams after a career as an SVP of HR, a management consultant, and an executive coach. Each week, he brings his own experience and a network of accomplished leaders.

You challenge your team, your peers, your board. But who challenges you? Very few people feel safe bringing bad news to a senior executive, or telling one they're wrong. So the best ones go find that challenge somewhere else. That's what this is.

The Lift is a weekly show about leadership and organizational change, and what jams up executives trying to drive the performance expected of them: why the obviously right thing is so maddeningly hard to get an organization to actually do, and how to get it moving.

Knowing what to do is rarely the problem. What gets in the way is the how, and the why it isn't happening: the politics, the emotions, the past, the misalignment, the fear, the sheer complexity of changing something this big.

The Lift is a conversation, and the issues we take on come from the executives we work with every day. Real things real leaders have not figured out yet. How to drive real accountability without damaging the relationship. How to get more conflict into the room, not less. How to get your leaders upgrading talent before they're forced to. How to stay committed to a vision that will take years. Why your managers are worse than your engagement scores say.

You probably don't have time for another conference or three-day program, and you know how those go: you come back fired up, and three weeks later, nothing has changed. This is thirty minutes a week, on a commute or between meetings. A habit, not an event.

The focus of change is the organization. The agent of change is you. Listen for yourself first, then share it with your team.

© 2026 PILOT Inc. Economics Leadership Management Management & Leadership
Episodes
  • Holding your team accountable without burning the relationship with OPENLANE EVP James Coyle

    Holding your team accountable without burning the relationship with OPENLANE EVP James Coyle
    Oct 13 2026

    Your manager has been telling you for three years that your work is excellent. Then one day you're let go. Nobody saw it coming except the person who signed your reviews. James Coyle has watched this play out more times than he can count. His take: that's not a performance problem. That's a leadership failure.

    Topic Highlights:

    – Why avoiding the hard conversation is always more expensive than just having the hard conversation

    – The ethos behind the “tell me how people get paid” principle

    – What basketball taught James about self-awareness (and why most players always think they're one of the best two on the team)

    – The three-bucket framework for deciding what to do with underperformers

    – The difference between an average employee and a great employee

    Guest Bio:

    James Coyle is the EVP, President Marketplace of OPENLANE, a leading digital marketplace for wholesale vehicles, and a former senior leader at Amazon during its most aggressive growth years.

    Episode Links:

    OPENLANE

    James on LinkedIn

    How To Fire People Properly: When Waiting Too Long Goes Wrong

    Connect with Us:

    theliftpod.com

    Let’s stay in touch

    Subscribe to The Lift

    Find Ben online: LinkedIn | Instagram

    See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.
    Show More Show Less
    43 mins
  • The Points Guy, Brian Kelly: You’ve done enough research, now make the decision

    The Points Guy, Brian Kelly: You’ve done enough research, now make the decision
    Oct 6 2026

    You know the feeling of researching a hotel for three hours and still not booking it? The Points Guy Brian Kelly has made a career out of knowing exactly when to stop doing research – on flights, on investments, on the decision to quit your job – and just make it happen. For Brian, it's about knowing when you have enough information to move.

    Topic Highlights:

    – How Brian made the biggest decision of his life with no mentor, no banker, and no blueprint

    – Why the worst-case scenario you're afraid of almost never exists

    – What corporate boardrooms and bad travel decisions have in common

    – How to take a great leap without burning the bridge you might need later

    – Why he thinks many executives aren't using AI enough to see what's coming

    Guest Bio:

    Brian Kelly is the founder of The Points Guy, New York Times bestselling author of How to Win at Travel, and one of the most-visited travel media personalities in the world.

    Episode Links:

    The Points Guy

    How to Win at Travel

    point.me

    seat.aero

    insuremytrip.com

    Hetrick-Martin Institute

    Rainbow Railroad

    Connect with Us:

    theliftpod.com

    Let’s stay in touch

    Subscribe to The Lift

    Find Ben online: LinkedIn | Instagram

    See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.
    Show More Show Less
    46 mins
  • It's all about management, baby: The unglamorous skill that determines everything else

    It's all about management, baby: The unglamorous skill that determines everything else
    Sep 29 2026

    Ben Brooks usually asks the questions. This week, he's the guest, and The Lift's Executive Producer, Steph Colbourn, takes the host chair to dig into the nitty-gritty of management.

    Leadership gets the TED Talks while management gets the eye rolls. But here's the inconvenient truth: 70% of the employee experience is determined by one thing - the quality of their manager. Problem is, we've been talking around management for years.

    Topic Highlights:

    – The Pilot Six: Ben’s framework to define what good management actually looks like

    – Why “getting promoted to manager” is too often Latin for “I'll make more money” but no one tells you about what you're actually signing up for

    – The story behind the employee who stuffed papers between the keys of Ben's keyboard just to get his attention

    – What Ben's own 360 feedback revealed about where he's still a mediocre manager (and what he's doing about it)

    Guest Bio:

    Ben Brooks is a leadership strategist, career innovator, executive coach, founder of PILOT, and host of The Lift. He loves traveling, making new friends, and of course, his dog, Jetson.

    Episode Links:

    The Lift

    PILOT

    Connect with Us:

    theliftpod.com

    Let’s stay in touch

    Subscribe to The Lift

    Find Ben online: LinkedIn | Instagram

    See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.
    Show More Show Less
    42 mins
adbl_web_anon_alc_button_suppression_t1
No reviews yet