Most leaders believe they have built an open, safe, equitable team. The team usually disagrees. The gap between those two things is where this whole conversation lives.

Trudi Lebron has spent 20 years as an equity practitioner, starting in education and youth development before making a deliberate move in 2017 to bring this work into the coaching and online business world.

Adrienne worked with her in back in 2020, and they have been crossing paths ever since. This time they sit down to talk about what equity actually means inside a company, and why so much of it comes down to power and how you use it.

What they cover:

• Why "we're not creating oxygen" became a guiding principle, and how it changes the energy a whole team runs on

• Why equity is so much bigger than race, and how it shows up in onboarding, work hours, and the structure people actually need to succeed

• The real reason most leaders stay quiet: not kindness, just fear of getting it wrong

• Why letting things slide is an abdication of responsibility, not good-boss behavior

• The difference between wanting to lead and wanting to be in charge

• Why power is neutral, and what owning it actually unlocks instead of avoiding it

• The restraint problem: what you steal from your team every time you jump in

• How middle managers become the dam, and what happens to the whole team when it breaks

• The psychological safety test: if no one pushes back, assume they do not feel safe

Trudi Lebron, MS, is a highly skilled executive coach and facilitator with over 20 years of experience helping public and private institutions, entrepreneurs, solopreneurs, and founders build equitable businesses, workplaces, and learning environments. She is the founder of The Institute for Equity-Centered Coaching, the author of The Antiracist Business Book (Row House Publishing, 2022), and a PhD candidate in Social Psychology.

Find Trudi at trudilebron.com, on her weekly email Working Hypothesis, and on her podcast, where Adrienne appears in the episode "I Had To Shed This Skin."

Time Chapters

00:00 How Adrienne and Trudi met

02:00 Why Trudi chose equity work

03:50 Equity is bigger than race

04:50 Equity meets capitalism

07:40 Never becoming the boss you hated

09:20 We're not creating oxygen

11:05 You can't teach people how to be free

12:45 Onboarding for how someone actually works

15:05 Equity serves the business too

17:25 Doing nothing for fear of getting it wrong

20:30 The expectation you never actually set

22:45 The power dynamic you don't want to admit

24:50 Power is neutral

27:00 Authority is given, not taken

29:00 Restraint as a leadership skill

30:40 Why you really jump in

32:40 Middle managers as the dam

40:05 Speaking up needs safety

41:50 How to know it's not safe

43:25 Where to find Trudi

44:50 The AI conversation they saved for next time