Stepping into your true voice often requires letting old versions of yourself die. In this episode, leadership coach Maximos Lih unpacks how identity, culture, and courage intersect so leaders can stop playing small in rooms where they were meant to lead.

In this episode, Kevin and Maximos Lih discuss:

• Navigating multiple identities and cultures as a leader
• Transitions as “resurrection moments” in career and life
• Disengagement, anxiety, and the real cost of poor leadership
• Building influence, allies, and psychological safety in the room
• Creating culture through self-awareness, conflict, and curiosity

Key Takeaways:

• Leadership grounded in self-awareness frees people from self-consciousness, making it possible to truly serve others instead of performing for approval.
• Major transitions demand an identity shift; clinging to who you used to be can block you from stepping into your next level of purpose and impact.
• Disengagement is one of the most expensive costs in any organization, often fueled by anxious leaders who never address their own fears, biases, or blind spots.
• Influence scales through people, not performance; building allies and relationships before the meeting creates the safety to speak boldly in the room.
• Culture always takes its cues from leadership—what leaders actually model and resource will shape whether conflict sharpens people or quietly burns everything down.

"If you find yourself being the only person in the room, and it's a challenge to be bold, find a way to recruit one other person to be on your team, and it's your team that will actually generate the success." - Maximos Lih

About Maximos Lih:

Maximos Lih is an Executive Coach and founder of Emboldened LLC, where he helps small teams scale without losing their edge, and leaders grow with purpose and trust. His leadership philosophy was shaped by his grandfather—a self-taught orphan who became a four-star general—who taught him that true greatness is measured by how you make people feel. After immigrating to the U.S. and graduating from UC Berkeley, Maximos joined Google, where he specialized in recruiting top engineering talent before moving to Google Ventures. There, he guided hundreds of founders through rapid growth, witnessing companies like Uber and Flatiron Health scale at remarkable speed. Today, he draws on those experiences to coach the next generation of leaders in building mission-driven, high-performing teams.

Connect with Maximos Lih:

LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/maximoslih

Connect with Kevin Neal:

Website: https://drkdneal.com

Book: https://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/B0C47RZDSS

https://www.amazon.com/Guided-Greatness-Mentorship-Developing-professionals-ebook/dp/B0FGBH1VNS

Email: coachkd63@gmail.com

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/coachkd63

From classroom simulations to real-world risk, explore a practical blueprint for building resilient, agile leaders who thrive on uncertainty.

In this episode, Kevin and Todd Inouye discuss:

• Nonlinear journey into business and higher education
• Critical thinking is the core leadership skill
• Curiosity, risk-taking, and dealing with uncertainty
• Applying classroom learning to real-world business challenges
• Emerging leadership, integrity, and doing the work others avoid

Key Takeaways:

• A leadership path doesn’t have to be linear; embracing a mix of industry experience, entrepreneurship, and education can create a powerful foundation for leading others.
• Critical thinking—learning how to apply knowledge to unfamiliar situations—is a timeless advantage in any business environment.
• Curiosity and a willingness to question assumptions open the door to better decisions, more creative solutions, and real personal growth.
• The most valuable learning often happens in applied, competitive, and simulated settings where mistakes are safe but lessons are real.
• Stepping up to do the difficult, unglamorous work that others avoid is one of the most reliable ways to build influence, opportunity, and long-term leadership credibility.

"It's the person's own responsibility to prepare themselves for a world that's going to be rapidly changing, highly uncertain, and those who can think faster and make better decisions quicker will be the successful ones, right?" - Todd Inouye

About Todd Inouye:

Dr. Todd Inouye serves as the Director of the College of Business and Economics at the University of Hawaiʻi at Hilo. With a foundation in Psychology and specialized certificates in Student Success Analytics, Ethnic Studies, and International Management, Dr. Inouye brings a deep, local, interdisciplinary perspective to his work. His academic journey also includes an Executive MBA and a PhD in Business Administration from the Shidler College of Business at the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa, complemented by an MS in Sport Management from Niagara University in 2020. Dr. Inouye’s primary research interest lies at the intersection of competitive context and firm-level strategy for small and medium-sized enterprises. Highlights of his career in private industry include five years of program management and consulting in adult and child mental healthcare, serving on multiple non-profit boards, and the founding of a local soccer club operating now for over 20 years.

Connect with Todd Inouye:

Website: https://hilo.hawaii.edu/faculty/toddinouye/

LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/in/todd-inouye

Connect with Kevin Neal:

Website: https://drkdneal.com

Book: https://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/B0C47RZDSS

https://www.amazon.com/Guided-Greatness-Mentorship-Developing-professionals-ebook/dp/B0FGBH1VNS

Email: coachkd63@gmail.com

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/coachkd63