Soft leadership styles can help CEOs build trust, increase accountability, and create healthier teams without sacrificing performance.
In this episode of The CEO Project Podcast, host Jim Schleckser speaks with visionary entrepreneur, inventor, and movement leader Staci Wright about how workplace expectations are changing and why traditional leadership models are struggling to keep up.
Staci explains how trust, collaboration, emotional intelligence, and psychological safety can replace rigid command-and-control leadership. She also discusses why compassionate leadership must still include clear expectations, honest feedback, and accountability.
You’ll learn how to:
• Build trust without abandoning performance standards
• Create psychological safety while maintaining accountability
• Recognize how stress affects decision-making and productivity
• Support employee wellbeing without becoming responsible for employees’ personal lives
• Address a struggling or toxic workplace culture
• Measure cultural progress through retention, feedback, and employee behavior
• Use soft leadership styles to create healthier, more resilient teams
Staci also introduces a new way to think about organizational structure. Instead of placing leaders at the top of a pyramid, she describes them as the roots of a tree, creating the conditions employees need to thrive and the business needs to produce results.
If your team is experiencing burnout, turnover, distrust, or declining performance, the answer may require more than another employee benefit or team-building exercise. Listen to this conversation to learn how soft leadership styles can help you build a culture where people feel supported, accept accountability, and perform at their best.
Why Soft Leadership Styles Matter Today
1:18: Jim Schleckser introduces Staci Wright and the idea that business can be a force for good, strengthening people and communities while still producing meaningful results.
3:42: Staci explains how younger generations are changing the relationship between employees and employers by prioritizing purpose, collaboration, and wellbeing over traditional job security.
6:35: Simply adding empathy to an old command-and-control model can cause performance to decline. Effective soft leadership styles combine compassion with structure and accountability.
8:14: Staci introduces the image of a tree as an alternative to the traditional leadership pyramid, with leaders serving as the roots, employees as the leaves, and profit as the fruit.
10:26: Trust begins when leaders see, hear, and value their employees. Staci discusses replacing parent-child workplace dynamics with respectful adult-to-adult relationships.
Creating a Culture of Trust and Accountability
11:48: Psychological safety does not mean protecting employees from consequences. It means setting expectations, communicating clearly, and ensuring performance decisions are never a surprise.
15:02: Staci explains how chronic stress can limit employees’ ability to think clearly and why soft leadership styles help create an environment where people feel safer and perform more effectively.
18:36: Supporting employee mental health does not require leaders to diagnose personal problems. It begins with creating a workplace grounded in consistency, care, trust, and compassion.
23:42: Leaders looking to repair a toxic culture should begin by managing themselves, assessing what is happening across the organization, and then implementing a consistent leadership system.
28:17: Burnout is more than having too much work. Staci explains how ongoing societal stress affects the nervous system and why soft leadership styles can help teams become healthier and more resilient.
About Staci Wright
Staci Wright is a visionary entrepreneur, inventor, and movement leader whose work centers on social impact and the power of business to create meaningful change. With over 20 years of experience, she has founded multiple companies, secured 28 patents, and led ventures that blend innovation, humanity, and purpose.
Across all of her work, the common thread is a commitment to building businesses that serve people, strengthen communities, and support inner and collective transformation. Known for her heart-led leadership and systems-level thinking, Staci believes business can—and must—be a force for healing, sustainability, and hope.