#1: Upgrade Your Leadership Operating System: The Secret to Leading Under Pressure

The best leaders don’t just learn, they upgrade how they lead!

 

Welcome to the MPWR Podcast, where leadership is redefined—not as a title or position, but as your daily influence and impact. I’m your host, Eric Pfeiffer, CEO of MPWR Coaching. In this episode, I’m joined by Dawn Neldon, our Director of Content as we explore what truly separates thriving leaders from those who crumble under pressure.

We’re pulling back the curtain on why traditional leadership development often falls short—and what to do about it. You’ll learn why simply reading books and attending conferences won’t make you a transformational leader, and how upgrading your internal operating system is the key to showing up with clarity, confidence, and resilience.

✔️ Why most leadership training doesn’t stick
✔️ How to recognize and reprogram outdated leadership behaviors
✔️ Why every leader feels imposter syndrome—and why that might be a good thing
✔️ The power of the Leadership Operating System and how it can transform your day-to-day influence

This is your blueprint for growth, not just as a leader—but as a human being navigating real challenges with real people.

👉 Follow along over the next few weeks as we break down each tool in the Leadership Operating System—short, impactful episodes to upgrade how you lead in every area of life.

 

---

Are you ready to unlock your full potential and lead with purpose, clarity, and conviction?

The MPWR Podcast, hosted by Eric Pfeiffer, CEO of MPWR Coaching, is your go-to space for transformational conversations, powerful insights, and practical strategies to help you step into the next level of your leadership journey. Whether you're scaling your business, seeking greater alignment in life, or stepping into your calling—this podcast will challenge, inspire, and empower you.

Want more tools to accelerate your growth? Head over to mpwrcoaching.com where you'll find free resources, game-changing books, and programs designed to elevate your mindset, build resilience, and transform the way you lead—from the inside out.

🔥 Subscribe to the MPWR Podcast on your favorite platform.
📲 Follow Eric Pfeiffer across social media (links available on the website).
🌐 Access our free mini course here! 

🔗 .css-j9qmi7{display:-webkit-box;display:-webkit-flex;display:-ms-flexbox;display:flex;-webkit-flex-direction:row;-ms-flex-direction:row;flex-direction:row;font-weight:700;margin-bottom:1rem;margin-top:2.8rem;width:100%;-webkit-box-pack:start;-ms-flex-pack:start;-webkit-justify-content:start;justify-content:start;padding-left:5rem;}@media only screen and (max-width: 599px){.css-j9qmi7{padding-left:0;-webkit-box-pack:center;-ms-flex-pack:center;-webkit-justify-content:center;justify-content:center;}}.css-j9qmi7 svg{fill:#27292D;}.css-j9qmi7 .eagfbvw0{-webkit-align-items:center;-webkit-box-align:center;-ms-flex-align:center;align-items:center;color:#27292D;}

Episode Transcript

eric (00:00):
Welcome to the Empower Podcast. I'm your host, Eric Pfeiffer, CEO of Empower. Coaching leadership isn't about titles or positions. It's actually about the influence and impact we have on our environments. This is where we get to learn how to operate well under pressure, lead with confidence, and drive meaningful results.

(00:01):
Think about the best leader you've ever worked with. Now think about the worst. What's the difference? The best knew how to lead under pressure. While the worst crumbled leadership isn't about luck, it's about having the right tools, and that's exactly what we teach at Empower Coaching. I'm your host, Eric Pfeiffer, and I'm here today with Don Den as we explore what it looks like to take our leadership to new heights.
So. I remember when I was younger and I first got into the conversation around leadership because I wanted to become a better leader. Uh, I read all the books and started listening to podcasts and going to conferences, and yeah, I, I often experienced there was a significant gap between the theory, the academic, the ideas that I was learning, and the ability to actually integrate those ideas into my everyday life.
Mm-hmm. Um, and the practical daily, how to I integrate this into my activities.
I went through college, I did a master's degree. I actually did a master's, you know, in part of my study was in organizational leadership. And here's what, here's what's interesting to me. If, if we understand leadership, not as a title and a position within a company, but as a measure of our influence and impact in any environment.
, but, but also I think for most people. Because they've not had much training. We're, trying to catch up like we're behind the eight ball. Once we find ourselves in those roles and responsibilities that are traditionally thought as leadership positions, and at that point, man, we, have a lot to catch up on and we normally feel overwhelmed, underg gunned, , really ill-equipped.

dawn (00:06):
I will even add that in my master's degree, which was about how to go in and lead organizations. Really, they didn't actually teach the nuts and bolts of how to be a good leader, right. Which is shocking. , so what's at stake would you say for these individuals? , I know for me personally, when I first got into leadership, , I felt like the emperor with no clothes.
, and by the way, anytime we're learning anything new, we should probably feel a little bit of, we are inexperienced and ill-equipped. We are, so we should have a little bit of the imposter. I think the imposter syndrome is actually appropriate and healthy. Mm-hmm. Um in, in those early stages. And yet I think what's at stake, here's what I've seen more often than anything else, that people are promoted to various.
And so in, in very few companies I've ever worked with have really intentional. Developed programs to train and to equip people toward leadership, and we're not just talking about. , how do you run a meeting and how do provide performance reviews and how do you determine whether someone should get a promotion or a bonus?
, a few times or, or we can just simply recognize, gosh, you know what? We probably need to invest a little bit more time, energy, and resource into figuring out how can we create a leadership culture. Mm-hmm. A culture where people are intentionally being trained, develop, they're being equipped with different tools and skills so that they can bring a better version of themself to the, to the workplace more often, and that their influence and impact is seen more as an asset than a liability.
Why you have developed the leadership operating system. . Talk to us a little bit about how the leadership operating system can really change the game for leaders who are in the trenches just tr trying to make it through every day, every week with their team.
, and in many ways we as human beings, I think oftentimes forget that we have all through our lives developed our own personal operating system. In other words, the prevailing attitudes and behaviors that govern the way that we engage, respond to any situation in life, right? And so, , some of the operating system that we've inherited from parents, uh, family, extended family, friends, uh, school teams, coaches, whatever.
, but. I learned that. So when I was first raising my kids, my kids who are now adults, but when they were little, that's what I inherited. Like when they were acting out, the only way I knew to control the environment, right? The, , code that I knew how to run was yell, be aggressive, be physically intimidating, and scare the crap out of them until they behaved in an appropriate way.
But that's our journey as human beings, we've, we've inherited or acquired an operating system. But we gotta do the work to continually upgrade our operating system. And so all I've done was spend years under other mentors leaning on and standing on the shoulders of people much smarter than me, and taking all of the best core leadership principles and practices and saying, gosh, if we could distill these down into a set of simple visual tools that represented the very core of, if I'm gonna.
The problem is, if we're not paying attention to our internal operating system, if we're not upgrading that operating system, , then we're bound to be operating in ways that is, are dysfunctional, toxic. Harmful both to ourselves and to the people around us. And so for that reason, we're constantly inviting leaders to say, it's time to upgrade your leadership operating system so that you can lead yourself and your environment far more effectively.
And then I got to a point in my life where I was still running this old operating system and the new apps would not cooperate with the old way of being.
My view of money, my view of myself. And then as we had kids and as a parent, you know, I realized, oh my gosh. My operating system is not delivering. My ability to engage either my spouse, my kids, friends, , coworkers in ways that was really beneficial. And, , again, I, I tell leaders all the time in the same way that our phones naturally nowadays, they just kind of automatically update the operating system, , you know, at night while we're sleeping.
Yeah. And that is exactly what we are going to be laying out here on this podcast over the next several weeks, right? We are going to teach people the exact tools to upgrade their operating system. , we're gonna keep 'em really short for you because we know that everybody is super busy. So follow along here for the next several weeks as we teach every single tool in the leadership operating system.