Power always produces a return—but that return is not necessarily positive.

Dr. Sharalyn Payne, founder of Return on Power™, joins Joey Pinz for a revealing conversation about leadership, accountability, influence, and the unseen consequences of executive decisions. She explains why organizations measure revenue, retention, engagement, and employee performance while frequently failing to measure the effectiveness of their most powerful leaders.

Sharalyn introduces “leadership debt”: the accumulated cost of tolerating poor performance, destructive attitudes, wasteful decisions, and leaders who damage people while still delivering acceptable business results. She also shares how caring for people and holding them accountable are not opposing ideas. Strong leaders can do both.

The conversation becomes deeply personal as Sharalyn reflects on her special-needs uncle, the loss of her father, and why those experiences taught her to look beyond appearances and recognize that someone may be fighting a battle nobody else can see.

The episode also explores her fascinating relationship with dreams, spiritual insight, truth-telling, workplace power, daily habits, and the responsibility leaders accept when they influence another person’s life.

🌟 Top 3 Highlights:

⚖️ Why every leader should be measured by the value—or cost—their power creates

📉 How unresolved decisions, tolerated behavior, and weak accountability create leadership debt

❤️ Why seeing employees as complete human beings improves both culture and performance