The Resilient Workplace Podcast is for CEOs, HR leaders, and managers who are slowly losing their people patience (and pretending they’re not). Sure, your people might be part of the problem. But more often than not, we find it’s a leadership skill gap. Kellie & Joy bring neuroscience-informed, snark-included real talk on leadership development, workplace culture, and the messy people stuff, plus tools your team can actually use.
Publisher
Kellie Tinnin, M.A & Joy E. Davis, (Recovering Social Worker)
This Taught Me That: The Story Behind Kellie’s Book
Season 3, Episode 1: This Taught Me That (Kellie Wrote a Book!)
What do you do when your business partner writes a book? You interview her and get all the tea. ☕
To kick off Season 3, Joy trades co-host mode for interviewer mode to talk with RWI co-founder and Chief Strategy Officer Kellie Tinnin about her first book, This Taught Me That: Bitter Truths, Transitions and Transformations. No questions shared in advance.
What we cover:
* Where the title came from and the “taught me that” philosophy behind it
* What it looked like to stop pretending to be who she thought she should be
* The writing process: which stories made the cut, which almost didn’t, and how many drafts it took
* The hardest parts to write honestly, and what she had to protect to finish while running RWI
* What nobody warns you about promoting a book
* What she hopes readers do differently 48 hours after the last page
Why it matters: Everything we teach on this podcast about resilience and authentic leadership, Kellie didn’t just write about. She lived it. This Book is niot just another Business book it is rich with human experiences that make us resilient and how we can carry those lessons into the businesses we run.
This week’s homework: Pick one “that” from your own story, one hard thing that changed how you show up, and write a single paragraph about it. You don’t have to publish it. You just have to stop pretending it didn’t teach you anything. 🍋
📖 This Taught Me That is available now. https://kellietinnin.com/ and on Amazon.
1 Jun 2026
Season 2 Recap
We're wrapping Season 2 with the three biggest themes leaders can't afford to ignore heading into the second half of 2026. Fresh off WorkHuman — including a live session with Dr. Amy Edmondson — Joy and Kellie break down why AI adoption without human development is failing organizations, why psychological safety is now a performance strategy (not a "soft" one), and why the employee engagement crisis has quietly become a full-blown epidemic. Manager engagement is at an all-time low. Succession pipelines are drying up. And most organizations are solving for the wrong thing. This episode will challenge how you think about leadership, your team, and what it actually takes to build a resilient workplace. See you in September for Season 3!
18 May 2026
Conflict Avoidance Is Not a Strategy
"Great point. Let's revisit that." "We'll take that offline." Sound familiar? If your meetings are full of polite agreement and nothing actually changes — you don't have a harmony problem. You have a conflict avoidance problem.
In this episode, Joy and Kellie tackle one of the most expensive habits in leadership: mistaking silence for peace. From the team members everyone knows can't stand each other, to the issue that's been "tabled" three times, to the quiet disengagement of the person who stopped speaking up — avoided conflict doesn't disappear. It invoices you later. In turnover. In burnout. In the HR call that could have been a five-minute conversation six months ago.
Joy and Kellie get personal about the hard conversations that shaped RWI's own growth — stepping away from work that no longer aligned with their mission, choosing private sector focus, getting clear on tiered services and pricing, and saying no to things that didn't fit. Walking away from a lane, they'll tell you, isn't weakness. It's clarity. And clarity requires uncomfortable conversations — even (especially) at the founder level.
They break down the neuroscience behind why leaders avoid conflict — threat response, fight/freeze/fawn defaults — and how that avoidance sets the emotional tone for the entire team. If founders have to have hard conversations to grow, why would you expect your managers not to?
In this episode:
Why "keeping the peace" is often just resentment loading.
The real-life conflict patterns killing team momentum.
How Joy and Kellie navigated their own strategic pivots and hard calls at RWI.
What leaders get wrong: confusing being liked with being clear.
The neuroscience of conflict avoidance — fight, freeze, and fawn in leadership.
How avoided decisions slow momentum while clear decisions build confidence.
Frameworks for having the conversations your team is waiting for you to have.
The bottom line: Avoided conflict always invoices you later. The question is whether you pay now or pay more later.
Reach and audience
Public platform figures. Ratings count people who left a rating, not total listeners.
Apple Podcasts (US)
5.0 / 5
1 ratings
Podcast Authority Score: 11 / 100
A composite of feed quality, social presence, YouTube performance and engagement. Read the methodology.
Quality
21
Social presence
0
YouTube
0
Engagement
0
Contact Resilient Workplace PODCAST
Guest appearances
Does not typically book guests
Based on episode analysis; this does not confirm that the show is currently accepting guests.
Questions about Resilient Workplace PODCAST
Who hosts Resilient Workplace PODCAST?
Kellie Tinnin host the show. Published by Kellie Tinnin, M.A & Joy E. Davis, (Recovering Social Worker).
How often do new episodes come out?
The show publishes bi-weekly, based on its RSS feed.
Does Resilient Workplace PODCAST take guests?
The show does not typically feature guests, based on episode analyses.
Host of Resilient Workplace PODCAST?
Claim your podcast to manage its listing and keep your show details accurate.
Pod Engine is an independent podcast discovery and analytics service and is not affiliated with or endorsed by this podcast. Artwork and show content belong to their owners. Full legal notice.
Explore this show Podcast research with Pod Engine
