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The strongest companies are not built on talent alone. They are built on the alignment between what a company says it values, how its people actually behave, and how its...
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The strongest companies are not built on talent alone. They are built on the alignment between what a company says it values, how its people actually behave, and how its leaders show up when it counts. When that alignment breaks, culture erodes, good people leave, and performance quietly slides, often before anyone can name why. Value-Powered Leadership, hosted by Stacey Chillemi, brings you David Cohen, global consultant, author, and trusted advisor on ethics, leadership, and organizational culture. The show cuts through corporate fluff to get at what actually drives sustainable success. David draws on more than 30 years helping organizations around the world, including healthcare systems, Fortune 500 companies, startups, and government agencies, uncover and realign their core values. You'll hear:
show less
- Real-world case studies
- Contrarian insights
- Practical strategies
- How to hire for the perfect fit
- Leading with authenticity
- How to preserve company culture during change
- The ethical challenges AI brings to recruitment
Episodes & Posts
Episodes
Posts
Transcribed
2 SEP 2026 · Culture does not break because HR is weak. It breaks the moment leaders are allowed to ignore the values everyone else is expected to live.
Rosie Allan, CHRO at Eurasia Group, argues for a tougher version of HR, one that speaks business instead of process and stays visible enough to be believed.
She unpacks with David Cohen how to address bad behavior with a CEO in a way that actually lands, why the best CHROs keep a running log of concerns, and how to handle leaders who call values touchy-feely.
📩 Contact Rosie Allan: rrallan@zoho.com • 301-266-2188 • https://www.linkedin.com/in/rosie-colandreo-allan-083ba06/ ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
🔗 CONNECT WITH DAVID COHEN
🌐 Website: https://sagltd.com/
💼 LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/david-s-cohen-0b0191/
📚 Leadership Courage Series: Part 1 – Having the Courage to Live Your Values: https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/part-one-having-courage-live-your-values-worth-david-s-cohen-ncdqc/
Part 2 – Building the Courage to Live Your Values:https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/part-two-building-courage-live-your-values-david-s-cohen-lm7nc/
📩 Email: david@sagltd.com
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Transcribed
19 AUG 2026 · A seat at the table means nothing if nobody trusts what you say at it.
David Cohen hosts HR leadership veteran Fernando Vescio, whose career spans commerce, finance, boards, CEOs, public and private companies, and even some rock & roll! He explains how HR earns credibility rather than assuming it.
Fernando walks through how to stay visible and accessible while protecting confidentiality, how attrition, retention, surveys, and focus groups surface problems long before they surface on their own, and how to tell a senior leader the truth when they treat the company values as aspirational.
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CONNECT WITH FERNANDO VESCIO!
💼 LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/fernando-vescio-41ba607/
📧 Contact: fernandovescio@gmail.com ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
🔗 CONNECT WITH DAVID COHEN
🌐 Website: https://sagltd.com/
💼 LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/david-s-cohen-0b0191/
📚 Leadership Courage Series: Part 1 – Having the Courage to Live Your Values: https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/part-one-having-courage-live-your-values-worth-david-s-cohen-ncdqc/
Part 2 – Building the Courage to Live Your Values:https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/part-two-building-courage-live-your-values-david-s-cohen-lm7nc/
📩 Email: david@sagltd.com
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Transcribed
3 JUL 2026 · Discover how rewarding high performers can damage organizational culture.
Leadership expert David Cohen reveals why confidence and results can be misleading, masking toxic behaviors that erode trust. Learn strategies to align actions with core values for sustainable success.
Tune in to protect your organization's future. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
🔗 CONNECT WITH DAVID COHEN
🌐 Website: https://sagltd.com/
💼 LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/david-s-cohen-0b0191/
📚 Leadership Courage Series: Part 1 – Having the Courage to Live Your Values: https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/part-one-having-courage-live-your-values-worth-david-s-cohen-ncdqc/
Part 2 – Building the Courage to Live Your Values:https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/part-two-building-courage-live-your-values-david-s-cohen-lm7nc/
📩 Email: david@sagltd.com
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Transcribed
19 JUN 2026 · You did not make one big mistake. You made a hundred small ones that felt reasonable at the time — the hire who hit the numbers the wrong way, the behavior you overlooked because the quarter was tight, the standard you let slide once and never quite recovered. Culture does not collapse. It erodes. And by the time you notice it the people who cared most are already gone. David Cohen has spent his career helping companies like Michelin and Boehringer build cultures that actually hold — and his own path through ADHD, dyslexia, and cancer gives every lesson the weight of someone who has fought for what matters. What he shares about hiring for values, rewarding how people get results, and refusing to trade long-term identity for short-term numbers is the most important leadership conversation you are not having loudly enough inside your organization. Culture is not what you announce. It is what you allow. This episode shows you the difference. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
🔗 CONNECT WITH DAVID COHEN
🌐 Website: https://sagltd.com/
💼 LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/david-s-cohen-0b0191/
📚 Leadership Courage Series: Part 1 – Having the Courage to Live Your Values: https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/part-one-having-courage-live-your-values-worth-david-s-cohen-ncdqc/
Part 2 – Building the Courage to Live Your Values:https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/part-two-building-courage-live-your-values-david-s-cohen-lm7nc/
📩 Email: david@sagltd.com
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Transcribed
5 JUN 2026 · You have heard it in every meeting. The millennials want flexibility, the boomers resist change, Gen Z has no work ethic. It feels like useful shorthand for managing people. It is actually one of the fastest ways to misread your team and push your best people toward the door. Because birth year predicts almost nothing about how someone performs, and when you lead by the label instead of the person, the people who do not fit the stereotype stop feeling seen and start looking elsewhere. David Cohen, founder of DS Cohen and Associates and author of Selecting the Best, sits down with Lisa Urbanski to dismantle the generational myth and replace it with what actually drives performance. You will learn why generational labels backfire on the leaders who use them, the difference between traits and behaviors and which one actually predicts results, why life stage tells you far more than birth year ever will, how stereotyping quietly drives out top talent, and why trust and respect are not the same thing even though leaders treat them as interchangeable. Stop managing the decade someone was born in. Start managing the person in front of you. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
🔗 CONNECT WITH DAVID COHEN
🌐 Website: https://sagltd.com/
💼 LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/david-s-cohen-0b0191/
📚 Leadership Courage Series: Part 1 – Having the Courage to Live Your Values: https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/part-one-having-courage-live-your-values-worth-david-s-cohen-ncdqc/
Part 2 – Building the Courage to Live Your Values:https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/part-two-building-courage-live-your-values-david-s-cohen-lm7nc/
📩 Email: david@sagltd.com
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Transcribed
25 MAY 2026 · The engagement scores came back strong. On paper, your team looks committed, satisfied, bought in. So why are your best people quietly checking out, doing the minimum, and updating their resumes on the side. Here is the blind spot. Engagement measures how people feel about their work in a moment. Experience is what it actually feels like to work for you every single day, and a high engagement number can sit right on top of a deeply broken experience without ever showing it. David Cohen, an organizational consultant and author, sits down with Lisa Urbanski to separate the two ideas most leaders treat as one, and to explain why confusing them is quietly draining your culture, your retention, and your bottom line. You will learn why strong engagement scores can mask a workforce that is barely holding on, how surveys get gamed and what the numbers are really telling you, the experience pyramid that actually drives loyalty and performance, why this problem belongs to leadership and not HR, how AI is quietly isolating the people on your team, and the five pillars of employee experience you can start applying today. The score is not the truth. The experience is. This episode shows you how to finally see the difference.
📍 Catch David live at SHRM 2026 — Pre-Conference Workshop, Orlando Tuesday, June 16 · 8:00 AM–12:00 PM EDT Register: https://registration.events.shrm.org/flow/shrm/shrm26/public-catalog/page/catalog/session/1768332959523001Vxhq ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
🔗 CONNECT WITH DAVID COHEN
🌐 Website: https://sagltd.com/
💼 LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/david-s-cohen-0b0191/
📚 Leadership Courage Series: Part 1 – Having the Courage to Live Your Values: https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/part-one-having-courage-live-your-values-worth-david-s-cohen-ncdqc/
Part 2 – Building the Courage to Live Your Values:https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/part-two-building-courage-live-your-values-david-s-cohen-lm7nc/
📩 Email: david@sagltd.com
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Transcribed
8 MAY 2026 · The candidate looked perfect on paper. Polished resume, tailored to your job description, hit every keyword. And there is a real chance a significant portion of it was written by AI in about four minutes. The hiring crisis most companies are not talking about yet is not a talent shortage — it is a signal problem. When every resume looks optimized, the traditional screening process stops filtering for fit and starts rewarding whoever used the best prompts. David Cohen has spent his career studying what actually predicts whether someone will perform in a role — and his core finding cuts through every resume, AI-generated or not: the difference between someone who can do the job and someone who will do the job is where most hiring processes completely break down. This episode will change how you screen, how you interview, and how you make the call that determines whether your next hire becomes your next problem. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
🔗 CONNECT WITH DAVID COHEN
🌐 Website: https://sagltd.com/
💼 LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/david-s-cohen-0b0191/
📚 Leadership Courage Series: Part 1 – Having the Courage to Live Your Values: https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/part-one-having-courage-live-your-values-worth-david-s-cohen-ncdqc/
Part 2 – Building the Courage to Live Your Values:https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/part-two-building-courage-live-your-values-david-s-cohen-lm7nc/
📩 Email: david@sagltd.com
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Transcribed
20 MAR 2026 · You asked all the right questions. Tell me about a time you faced a challenge. Where do you see yourself in five years. What is your greatest weakness. And you still made the wrong hire. Those questions are not broken because they are hard to answer. They are broken because they measure how well someone interviews — not how well they will actually do the job. David Cohen has spent his career studying the gap between interview performance and real-world results — and the behavioral interviewing framework he walks through in this conversation is the single most practical shift any hiring manager can make to start predicting performance instead of just assessing polish. This episode will change the next interview you run. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
🔗 CONNECT WITH DAVID COHEN
🌐 Website: https://sagltd.com/
💼 LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/david-s-cohen-0b0191/
📚 Leadership Courage Series: Part 1 – Having the Courage to Live Your Values: https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/part-one-having-courage-live-your-values-worth-david-s-cohen-ncdqc/
Part 2 – Building the Courage to Live Your Values:https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/part-two-building-courage-live-your-values-david-s-cohen-lm7nc/
📩 Email: david@sagltd.com
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Transcribed
18 FEB 2026 · Nobody looks forward to performance reviews. Not managers who dread the awkward conversations. Not employees who feel blindsided by feedback they are hearing for the first time. The process that was supposed to improve performance is creating anxiety, defensiveness, and a loss of trust that takes months to rebuild. David Cohen has spent his career studying what actually makes people perform better — and what he shares about why surprise kills trust, how switching from feedback to feedforward coaching changes everything, and the simple 90-day check-in structure that replaces the annual review ambush will make you wonder why anyone is still doing it the old way. Performance conversations should not feel like a verdict. This episode shows you how to make them feel like a partnership instead. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
🔗 CONNECT WITH DAVID COHEN
🌐 Website: https://sagltd.com/
💼 LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/david-s-cohen-0b0191/
📚 Leadership Courage Series: Part 1 – Having the Courage to Live Your Values: https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/part-one-having-courage-live-your-values-worth-david-s-cohen-ncdqc/
Part 2 – Building the Courage to Live Your Values:https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/part-two-building-courage-live-your-values-david-s-cohen-lm7nc/
📩 Email: david@sagltd.com
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Transcribed
26 JAN 2026 · Everyone is busy. Everyone is trying. And somehow work keeps falling through the cracks, blame quietly circulates, and good people start disengaging without anyone being able to explain exactly why. The culprit is almost never effort. It is role clarity — or the absence of it. When people are unclear about where their responsibilities end and someone else's begin, the result is not just confusion. It is burnout, resentment, and the kind of low-grade dysfunction that survives every team meeting and offsite because nobody ever names the actual problem. David Cohen has spent his career studying what actually aligns teams — and the four-question role clarity exercise he walks through in this conversation creates more alignment in one session than most organizations achieve in a year of performance reviews. Clear roles do not constrain people. They free them. This episode shows you how to build that freedom into your team starting this week. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
🔗 CONNECT WITH DAVID COHEN
🌐 Website: https://sagltd.com/
💼 LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/david-s-cohen-0b0191/
📚 Leadership Courage Series: Part 1 – Having the Courage to Live Your Values: https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/part-one-having-courage-live-your-values-worth-david-s-cohen-ncdqc/
Part 2 – Building the Courage to Live Your Values:https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/part-two-building-courage-live-your-values-david-s-cohen-lm7nc/
📩 Email: david@sagltd.com
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The strongest companies are not built on talent alone. They are built on the alignment between what a company says it values, how its people actually behave, and how its...
show more
The strongest companies are not built on talent alone. They are built on the alignment between what a company says it values, how its people actually behave, and how its leaders show up when it counts. When that alignment breaks, culture erodes, good people leave, and performance quietly slides, often before anyone can name why. Value-Powered Leadership, hosted by Stacey Chillemi, brings you David Cohen, global consultant, author, and trusted advisor on ethics, leadership, and organizational culture. The show cuts through corporate fluff to get at what actually drives sustainable success. David draws on more than 30 years helping organizations around the world, including healthcare systems, Fortune 500 companies, startups, and government agencies, uncover and realign their core values. You'll hear:
show less
- Real-world case studies
- Contrarian insights
- Practical strategies
- How to hire for the perfect fit
- Leading with authenticity
- How to preserve company culture during change
- The ethical challenges AI brings to recruitment
Information
| Author | Stacey Chillemi |
| Organization | Advisor Global Media™ |
| Categories | Management , Careers , Self-Improvement |
| Website | sagltd.com |
| david@sagltd.com |
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