We are excited to share with you the next interview in our “Beyond the Page” series featuring Newell Eaton.
Some conversations feel like a deep breath you didn’t know you needed. This one does more than name the chaos of hybrid work—it gives you a clear, humane way through it. We sit down with leadership coach and facilitator Newell Eaton to unpack how trust becomes the operating system for modern teams, especially when time is tight, change is constant, and the room is mostly a grid of faces.
We start with the realities leaders face: training windows that shrank from days to minutes, rapid team turnover, and the quiet drift of proximity bias that privileges people in the office over those on the screen. Newell offers practical fixes you can ship tomorrow—design 50-minute meetings with a real pause, open with a quick check-in, close with appreciations, and equalize hybrid calls by having everyone join from their own space. He makes a strong case for in-person anchors like twice-yearly gatherings and face-to-face onboarding to establish the human channels that carry nuance and empathy when work gets tough. Along the way, we explore the “vulnerability paradox”: why measured honesty from leaders strengthens psychological safety and how a CEO’s choice to step back for family transformed his team’s confidence and cohesion.
We also talk boundaries at home, retirement as an identity shift, and the unglamorous habits that power great leadership: sleep, breath, movement, and presence. Expect concrete strategies to counter proximity bias, boost trust on hybrid teams, and design meeting norms that actually work. If you’ve been looking for leadership advice that respects both performance and people, you’ll find a toolkit here—simple, repeatable, and backed by lived experience.
In this episode, I talk with Newell about his article published in our September 2025 issue.
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