Why Talented Leadership Teams Still Fail | Phillip Curran

Great strategy, talented leaders, and the business still isn't firing on all cylinders. Leadership system architect Philip C. Curran joins Deevo Tindall to explain leadership drift, the Drift Tax it puts on a company, and the eight promises from his book The Hidden Emotional Contract. If you lead a team of any size, this is the conversation to have before your next leadership meeting. This episode of The Branding Laboratory is supported by Chemical Free Body. Detox and superfoods made with natural ingredients. Learn more at www.chemicalfreebody.com What we explore: 1: Why leadership works on two levels: the interpersonal and the enterprise 2: The Hidden Emotional Contract and the eight promises leaders either honor or break 3: Leadership drift and its three most common causes 4: How one company's 12 executives gave 8 different answers about their own strategy 5: The Drift Tax, and what leadership misalignment actually costs 6: Why culture is the lived experience of employees interacting with their leaders About Philip C. Curran: Philip C. Curran is the founder of Rinnovare, a senior advisory firm that works with CEOs, CHROs, and private equity partners on leadership and human capital systems. He calls himself a leadership system architect. Phil created the RQ™ System and the Hidden Emotional Contract framework, and he is the author of The Hidden Emotional Contract: The Eight Promises That Build Trust, Culture, and Performance. His career spans nearly 40 years in consulting, including 13 years at Mercer, leading the HR consulting practice for the western U.S. at PricewaterhouseCoopers, and serving as a chief human resources officer, including in a health system. Guest Links: Rinnovare: https://www.rinnovarehr.com Rinnovare Insights (Phil's articles): https://blog.rinnovarehr.com The Drift Tax™ Explained in Under 3 Minutes: https://blog.rinnovarehr.com (June 30, 2026 post) Philip C. Curran Advisory: https://pccadvisory.com The Hidden Emotional Contract (print): https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0H9P29X9X The Hidden Emotional Contract (Kindle): https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0H9Z6JY1X LinkedIn:   / philipcurran   Resources mentioned: 1: The Hidden Emotional Contract by Philip C. Curran 2: Peter Drucker's work on management and leadership 3: Good to Great by Jim Collins 4: Simon Sinek's work on leadership Chapters: 00:00 Cold open 00:44 The thread: how leadership lives in your people 01:16 Deevo on the many kinds of leadership 02:06 Leadership is a relationship 02:23 Two levels: interpersonal and enterprise 03:00 The explicit contract and the unwritten one 03:43 The Hidden Emotional Contract 04:23 Leadership as an operating system 05:05 When success depends on heroes 06:07 The human dynamics underneath 07:21 What good leadership looks like 07:46 What leaders are too close to see 08:45 "Great strategy, talented team, something is off" 09:16 Fire the coaches? 10:03 Leadership drift 11:21 What drift costs 12:04 Deevo's thesis: unconscious leadership 12:42 The three causes of leadership drift 13:21 Employees feel the relationship 14:10 Teams that dislike each other can still work 14:51 Operating rhythm and decision rights 15:31 Role clarity, turf wars, and orphaned issues 16:41 What teams learn when leaders duck issues 17:25 Leaders model expected behavior 18:15 Phil's journey 18:34 40 years in consulting 19:24 Mercer, a CHRO role, and PwC 21:01 Pulled into leadership work 21:38 The man in the mirror 22:36 "I don't want this guy raising my children" 23:16 His teachers: Drucker, Collins, Sinek 24:52 His father's advice on managers and leaders 26:11 Leadership system architect 27:23 Five domains, 20 sub-dimensions 28:04 The RQ score 28:48 The Drift Tax 29:25 90-day and 12-month corrections 29:36 Learned or intuitive leadership? 30:29 The eight promises 33:18 Deevo: is leadership systems or emotion? 34:07 The short answer is both 35:58 The emotional application layer 37:19 What Phil was missing at 31 38:35 Where is consistency? 39:11 Deevo's own consistency check 41:00 Boiling it down to eight 41:58 The hidden cost of bad leadership 42:04 Stop relitigating decisions 43:04 12 executives, 8 answers 44:50 The results six months later 46:13 Why healthcare 46:47 Decision fatigue in the CEO's chair 48:58 Deevo's hospital client 49:38 Everybody agrees culture matters 50:11 Culture is the lived experience of employees 50:43 Deevo's takeaway 51:14 Where to find Phil 51:54 Outro About The Branding Laboratory: The Branding Laboratory is where founders and leaders bring the business, decision, or tension they are actually wrestling with and put it on the table. Deevo Tindall, Founder Business Architect and Strategic Advisor, follows the thread underneath the obvious problem to explore how identity, leadership, operations, positioning, relationships, and strategy shape what happens next.