Turning Resistance Into Resilience in the Age of AI with Sue Bethanis

In this episode, Sue Bethanis shares what nearly three decades of executive coaching have taught her about leading people through disruption, and why AI adoption is as much a human challenge as a technical one. Sue is CEO and founder of Mariposa Leadership, author of Leadership Chronicles of a Corporate Sage, and host of Wise Talk and Wise Space.

She has coached more than 400 executives at companies including Amazon, Apple, Cisco, LinkedIn, and PayPal, and co-teaches a course on moving from director and VP roles into the C-suite. She and Andy discuss what she calls the uncollar economy, why knowledge workers feel more exposed by this wave of change than any before it, and how fear and overwhelm are showing up in her coaching conversations at every level, including among leaders themselves.

Sue walks through the three pillars of her framework, role, mindset, and practices, and makes the case that leaders need to consciously take on the role of change agent rather than letting change happen to them. She shares her sandpile metaphor for expecting disruption, the shift from blame to aim when teams push back, and why executives modeling their own learning, including the mistakes, matters more than any mandate.

The conversation then turns to executive presence and influence, where Sue offers a practical framework for being heard in meetings, advice on interrupting gracefully, and her view on what actually separates leaders who get promoted from those who stall.

I hope you enjoy it! As always you can learn more and connect with me on my website (andystorch.com) or LinkedIn. And you can find my books - Own Your Career Own Your Life and Own Your Brand, Own Your Career - on Amazon.

Connect with Sue Bethanis: LinkedIn | mariposaleadership.com