Shows
The Orange Twist - Shake up your thinking on leadership, culture, and change in 10 minutes.Episode 13: The Consent Shift — Decision-Making for Grown-Up TeamsMost teams are stuck in outdated decision-making — swinging between command-and-control or endless consensus. The result? Confusion, delays, and decisions that sound aligned… but fall apart in practice.In this episode, Giovanna D’Alessio introduces a transformative alternative: consent-based decision-making. It’s fast without being forceful, inclusive without getting stuck. And most importantly — it builds mature teams that know how to navigate complexity together.You’ll learn:Why traditional decision-making often masks disengagementHow to use objections as fuel for wiser choicesA step-by-step process for making “safe enough to try” decisionsHow consent builds real commitment — not...
2025-11-2509 minThe Orange Twist - Shake up your thinking on leadership, culture, and change in 10 minutes.Episode 12 — Depth, Not Just Development: The New Journey of Leadership GrowthLeadership development is everywhere — and yet, many leaders quietly confess: “Something’s still missing.”In this episode, Giovanna D’Alessio explores the untold side of leadership growth — not the horizontal climb of skills and certifications, but the vertical descent into identity, meaning, and maturity.We meet Lara, a capable leader who has ticked every developmental box… but feels emotionally undernourished. Her question, “Who am I becoming as a leader?” opens the door to a deeper journey — one that many professionals feel but rarely name.This episode invites coaches, HR partners, and organisational leaders to pause the race fo...
2025-11-1809 minThe Orange Twist - Shake up your thinking on leadership, culture, and change in 10 minutes.Episode 11 - From Control to Co-Creation: The Maturity Shift No One Talks AboutWe rarely talk about leadership as a question of psychological maturity — but what if that’s the missing conversation?In this episode, Giovanna D’Alessio explores a quiet but profound shift: from leading through control to leading through co-creation. It’s not about changing your leadership style — it’s about evolving your relationship to power, trust, and responsibility.Through the contrasting stories of Matteo and Tami, we unpack what really separates high-performing teams that feel flat, from those that feel alive. And we ask the deeper questions most models skip: What are you protecting when you take...
2025-11-1109 minThe Orange Twist - Shake up your thinking on leadership, culture, and change in 10 minutes.Agentic Leadership: When AI Meets the Human HeartIn this episode of The Orange Twist, Giovanna D’Alessio leads us into an unexpected pairing: ancient oracles and artificial intelligence. From the smoky riddles of Delphi to the sleek dashboards of today, we explore what happens when leaders look to technology for answers—and forget to listen to themselves.Episode 10 introduces the idea of Agentic Leadership: leadership that remains human, present, and awake in an age of algorithms. It’s not about rejecting AI, but about using it without outsourcing our sense-making.Through two powerful stories—one from a financial institution, one from an...
2025-11-0408 minThe Orange Twist - Shake up your thinking on leadership, culture, and change in 10 minutes.The Empty Chair and the Cost of PretendingIn Episode 9 of The Orange Twist, Giovanna D’Alessio shares a striking moment inside a Dutch boardroom: a sleek space, a leadership retreat, and an empty chair placed—deliberately—for the Customer. That silent gesture becomes the thread that pulls us into a deeper exploration of purpose: not as branding, but as an operating system.What happens when purpose is real? What happens when it’s fake?Drawing on examples from Patagonia, Wells Fargo, Volkswagen, and McKinsey, this episode challenges us to examine the gap between the values we claim and the actions we take. That gap...
2025-10-2809 minThe Orange Twist - Shake up your thinking on leadership, culture, and change in 10 minutes.The Employee Experience Is a Soul JourneyWe talk a lot about employee experience as if it were a design problem: tools, processes, perks, and touchpoints. But beneath the systems lies something more delicate — the emotional and spiritual landscape people walk through every day at work.In this episode, I tell the story of Luca, a rising star who, despite success on paper, felt like a ghost in his own career. We’ll explore why so many employees silently ache with disconnection, why engagement numbers remain stubbornly low, and why no tech stack can substitute for presence, meaning, and care.You’ll also d...
2025-10-2110 minThe Orange Twist - Shake up your thinking on leadership, culture, and change in 10 minutes.Through the Fire: Conflict as a DoorwayConflict in teams is often treated as something to avoid, control, or quickly resolve. Yet beneath the discomfort, there is usually something more: a deeper truth waiting to be heard.In this episode, I explore how conflict can become a doorway to transformation rather than a sign of dysfunction. Drawing on the lens of Deep Democracy, we look at conflict not as a breakdown but as the system speaking—offering intelligence that might otherwise remain hidden.We reflect on what happens when teams bypass tension, the practices that can help them pause and listen differently, an...
2025-10-1410 minThe Orange Twist - Shake up your thinking on leadership, culture, and change in 10 minutes.The Two Loops of TransformationEvery organization, every system, even every person, moves through cycles of growth and decline. As one way of working begins to lose energy, new possibilities quietly start to take shape—often small and fragile at first. The Two Loops Model, developed by Margaret Wheatley and the Berkana Institute, offers a simple yet profound way of seeing this dynamic.In this episode, I explore how the model can help us recognize when a system has reached its limits, notice the early signs of what wants to emerge, and navigate the uncertain space in between. Rather than treating change as...
2025-10-0710 minThe Orange Twist - Shake up your thinking on leadership, culture, and change in 10 minutes.The Many Roles We PlayWe often think of roles as fixed: titles, job descriptions, places on the org chart. But in this episode, we explore a radically different view — one inspired by the work of Arnold Mindell and Process Oriented Psychology.Here, roles are fluid. They move between people. They rise and fall depending on what the system needs. Today you’re the visionary. Tomorrow, the skeptic. Sometimes, you hold the energy of joy. Other times, you carry the quiet voice of resistance no one wants to name — but everyone can feel.This episode is an invitatio...
2025-09-3008 minThe Orange Twist - Shake up your thinking on leadership, culture, and change in 10 minutes.The Emotional Understory of ChangeWe talk a lot about change in organizations — restructuring, rebranding, reimagining the future. But underneath the Gantt charts and strategy decks, something quieter — and more powerful — is unfolding:Emotions.Today, we explore the emotional undercurrents that shape every change effort — often invisibly. The fear of loss. The hope for renewal. The grief that no one names. And the subtle courage it takes for leaders to hold both clarity and vulnerability.Drawing on the insights of Barry Oshry, Otto Scharmer, Richard Barrett, and others, we’ll ask:How do we stay present in the storm...
2025-09-2307 minThe Orange Twist - Shake up your thinking on leadership, culture, and change in 10 minutes.The Team Is Not the Problem: It’s the Space BetweenToday, we’re stepping into the invisible. Into the subtle field that shapes every team interaction, every meeting, every moment of collaboration — whether we notice it or not.You know the feeling. You walk into a room with smart, kind people… and something just feels off. Tension lingers. Energy drops. Blame bubbles up. And we wonder: Who’s the problem here?But what if it’s not who… but where? What if the challenge — and the opportunity — lies not within individuals, but in the space between them?In this episode, we explore...
2025-09-1609 minThe Orange Twist - Shake up your thinking on leadership, culture, and change in 10 minutes.The Invisible Architecture: How Worldviews Shape Organizational Life.Every organization has an architecture—but not all of it is visible.In this episode of The Orange Twist, we explore the unseen frameworks that shape how we lead, collaborate, and respond to change. These hidden structures aren’t found in org charts or strategy decks—they live in our assumptions, our worldviews, and the stories we unconsciously tell about what leadership means, how power works, and what change requires.Without realizing it, we’re always operating through a lens. Some of us lead from urgency and control. Others from trust and emergence. But until we notic...
2025-09-0909 minThe Orange Twist - Shake up your thinking on leadership, culture, and change in 10 minutes.Leading in complexityWhat does it take to lead in a world that won’t slow down, won’t simplify, and refuses to fit neatly into strategic plans?In this opening episode of The Orange Twist, we explore what it means to lead in complexity—not just navigate it, but truly inhabit it. When the systems around us feel stuck, when change seems endless and clarity elusive, the impulse is often to tighten control, drive harder, or retreat altogether. But what if the invitation in complexity is not to master it—but to transform within it?Giovanna D’Alessio of...
2025-09-0209 min