The leadership conversation nobody else is having.

Most leadership content tells you what to do.

This show asks you to look at who’s doing it.

Every week Jen Ostrich goes beneath the surface of leadership — into the patterns, the blind spots, the unconscious strategies, and the stories leaders tell themselves — to explore what it actually takes to lead well from the inside out.

With honesty, humor, and a sharp dose of emotional clarity, each episode brings you insights from coaching, the Enneagram, and lived experience that you can apply immediately to how you lead, how you show up, and how you understand yourself.

This isn’t about fixing yourself. It’s about finally understanding yourself.

Jen Ostrich with shoulder-length light brown hair, wearing a white blouse and dark pants, sitting on a white tufted chair, holding a black microphone, with her right hand resting against her face.

New episodes drop every Wednesday at 6am EST.

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All episodes below

Jen Ostrich Jen Ostrich

Ep 17: Exploring Your Life Chapters | The Cycle of Renewal

What if we looked at our life in full chapters instead of by age or decade? How might that shift how we see our current chapter or ready us for our next? 

In this episode I discuss a model that's near and dear to my heart, created by the Hudson Institute of Coaching, and it's called The Cycle of Renewal. Understanding that this cycle is a full life chapter and it's made up of 4 different phases. We can toggle between Phase 1 and 2 for many years before dropping into Phase 3-4. Sometimes we may only complete this cycle once in a lifetime, for others, twice. This is a wonderful episode to listen and tune inward to identify where you are on the cycle. 

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Ep 16: Navigating Stress + Growth Through The Enneagram [Part 2]

What if you knew how to travel along the Enneagram map to manage your stress and to integrate new ways of being? 

Picking up where we left off in Ep 15 - Part 1, we are talking about looking at the Enneagram map and learning how to leverage both your Lines for growth and stress management. Your main type is only a prison if you choose not to grow and leverage the pathways of the map. The entire model is designed to help you grow and integrate beyond what your core motivation wants you to do so you are managing your motivation and it's not managing you. This episode, Part 2,  you'll learn how the Enneagram map works and then we'll look closely at the Head  (5,6,7) and Body (8,9,1) types [refer to Episode 15, Part 1 for the Heart Types (2,3,4). 

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Jen Ostrich Jen Ostrich

Ep 15: Navigating Stress + Growth Through The Enneagram [Part 1]

Have you ever been in a meeting and suddenly felt tense, misunderstood, or even shut down without really knowing why? This will make sense of that moment. 

When uncertainty or conflict puts us in “threat mode,” our brains can sabotage trust and connection. In this episode, we’ll explore the SCARF model and learn simple strategies to shift out of threat and into reward—so you can lead, communicate, and respond with clarity instead of reactivity. SCARF = Status, Certainty, Autonomy, Relatedness, Fairness. These are 5 domains that influence human social interactions and can trigger a threat or reward response in the brain.

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Jen Ostrich Jen Ostrich

Ep 14: Moving Your Brain From Threat to Reward State

Have you ever been in a meeting and suddenly felt tense, misunderstood, or even shut down without really knowing why? This will make sense of that moment. 

When uncertainty or conflict puts us in “threat mode,” our brains can sabotage trust and connection. In this episode, we’ll explore the SCARF model and learn simple strategies to shift out of threat and into reward—so you can lead, communicate, and respond with clarity instead of reactivity. SCARF = Status, Certainty, Autonomy, Relatedness, Fairness. These are 5 domains that influence human social interactions and can trigger a threat or reward response in the brain.

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Jen Ostrich Jen Ostrich

Ep 13: The Communication Patterns You Don’t Even Notice.

What if the way we speak, listen, and interpret has less to do with intention and more to do with our wiring? 

This episode is an invitation to become more dialed in to how you move through communication, how you listen, and what your tendencies are for interpreting others words or actions. Understanding your own communication lens is part of building that awareness and doing the work of you. Noticing when and why communication breaks down is also important. We can also assume the way we are wired to communicate is how others are wired. This can lead to misunderstandings – when I subconsciously assume that you are motivated by the same things that I am. OR that you instinctually listen for the same things that I do to ensure clarity, control, safety, or connection.  This episode is about understanding your own communication patterns so they don't derail your message or your relationships.

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Ep 12: Building Your Leadership Brand

What if a story you told yourself wasn’t true? What impact are the stories you tell yourself having on how you live and lead? 

In this episode Jen explores how the stories we tell ourselves shape our reality—and often get in the way of truth, trust, and connection. She dives into what are stories, a framework called Ladder of Inference, real-life examples, and self-coaching prompts to help manage your own stories. When we don’t have all the facts, our brain fills in the gaps with a story. This happens almost instantly — and unconsciously. We rarely realize we’re doing it. Then add emotion and it really sticks. Our brains prioritize emotionally charged narratives because they feel more “true” and memorable — even if they’re based on assumptions rather than facts. Then we start selecting data that supports our story and ignoring data that doesn’t — reinforcing the same belief loop. This is when the story starts to feel like the truth, even when it’s not at all grounded in facts -- and that's when it causes trouble. 

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Ep 11: The Stories We Tell Ourselves

Why building your leadership brand is an inside-out job. 

Think about a brand you absolutely love — maybe it’s a coffee shop, a clothing label, or even your favorite airline. Got it? Now… why do you love it? Is it the quality? The way they treat you? The way you feel when you interact with them? This information is helpful to understand because it works the same for your brand -- your leadership brand. Whether you realize it or not, you already have a leadership brand — it’s how people experience you, what they expect from you, and the consistency (or inconsistency) they’ve come to count on. And just like with the brands you love, that brand is built — or broken — in every single interaction. This episode covers why your leadership brand matters and how to define your own brand experience through Jen's framework -- building your leadership brand house. 

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Ep 10: The 3 Instincts That Shape Your Enneagram Type

Unpack the hidden drives that shape how your Enneagram type shows up in life and leadership. 

Have you ever met someone who shares your Enneagram type but acts nothing like you? You might have thought, ‘Wait — are we even the same type?’ That’s the magic of instincts. Instincts explain why two people of the same type can have totally different priorities, fears, and energy. This is another powerful aspect of doing the work of you – both your core motivation and your dominant instinct act automatically, like how patterns can work as we discussed in ep 4. The drive of your motivation is there to protect you and your instinct works similarly – it’s an unconscious reaction – operating like an animalistic instinct. Both your motivation and instinct can take over and run your life if you’re not aware and don’t learn to manage them…so it’s critical to understand which is your dominant instinct and then how to tame it. Be sure to check out Episode 5 to learn more about the Enneagram model and how it works.

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Because the hardest person you’ll ever lead…is you.