Manage Self, Lead Others

Nina Sunday holds a CSP designation and a spot in the Speaker Hall of Fame, and she brings that same precision to her podcast about emotional intelligence in management. The title says it all -- you have to manage yourself before you can lead anyone else. It is a principle that sounds obvious until you watch most managers do exactly the opposite. With 189 episodes and a perfect 5-star rating, the format is refreshingly consistent: weekly interviews with leadership experts that clock in around 22 to 27 minutes. Recent guests have covered compliance culture, AI integration in professional services, and the art of having genuinely difficult conversations without destroying relationships. Sunday has a knack for drawing out practical advice rather than letting guests coast on buzzwords. What makes this show particularly useful is its focus on the middle-management space that gets overlooked by most leadership podcasts. She is not talking to CEOs about vision statements. She is helping the team lead who just got promoted figure out how to handle emotional challenges during a project deadline. The emotional intelligence angle stays grounded in real workplace situations -- performance reviews, ethical gray areas, team dynamics when people are stressed. If you manage people and want to get better at it without sitting through another corporate training video, this is worth your commute time.