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Sheila Pride is the CEO and Co-Founder of The Moksha Group, where she works with organizations and executives worldwide to create conscious leadership and transform toxic workplace cultures. As both a therapist and organizational consultant, she specializes in using neuroscience-based approaches to build psychological safety, improve communication, and help teams stay connected despite their differences. In this conversation, she reveals why most workplace culture efforts fail and shares practical frameworks like the “depletion vs. renewal grid” and structured dialogue techniques that actually work.
This episode is essential for CEOs, team leaders, managers, and anyone struggling with workplace dysfunction, difficult conversations, or toxic team dynamics. Listeners will learn evidence-based strategies for creating psychological safety, facilitating productive meetings, handling feedback effectively, and building teams that thrive under pressure. By applying Sheila’s neuroscience-backed methods, you’ll transform not just how you show up at work, but how you communicate in every relationship—creating ripple effects that improve your leadership, reduce stress, and help you build the collaborative, high-performing culture you’ve always wanted.
00:00 – Introduction and Welcome
00:49 – What is Moksha Group?
02:13 – Why Culture Work is Still Needed
02:28 – The War Brain vs. New Brain
04:43 – The Spillover Effect of Workplace Stress
05:07 – Depletion vs. Renewal Framework
07:16 – Multiple Entry Points for Change
10:19 – The Business Case for Team Development
11:25 – Live Exercise: Great Leadership Qualities
16:31 – The Neuroscience of Belonging
19:08 – Bad Leadership and Its Impact
22:06 – The Tsunami Story: Psychological Safety in Action
26:24 – Why Difficult Conversations Are So Hard
32:14 – When Good People Leave and Teams Go Silent
36:08 – Leading from Any Level
40:17 – Staying Connected Despite Differences
43:18 – The Universal Need to Be Seen and Heard
45:49 – Live Demonstration: Structured Dialogue
54:24 – Skills We’re Never Taught
55:52 – The Importance of Repair Processes
57:00 – The Challenge of Apologizing
01:00:10 – Creating Safe Spaces for Mistakes
01:03:02 – Teaching the Fundamentals
01:05:39 – Being Real, Open, and Vulnerable
01:08:07 – The Need for Coaches and Continuous Learning
01:11:58 – Self-Compassion as Foundation
01:13:27 – Living Practice vs. Dead Practice
01:14:08 – How to Connect and Work Together
01:15:12 – Closing Gratitude and Reflection
Content Notice
This podcast and all She Lift Project content represents the opinions of Cynthia Kirkpatrick and her guests. The content here is for informational purposes only, and should not be taken as professional advice – financial, legal, medical, or otherwise.
Views and opinions expressed in the podcast and across all She Lift Project media channels are our own and do not represent that of our places of work. While we make every effort to ensure that the information we are sharing is accurate, we welcome any comments, suggestions, or correction of errors.
“But sometimes when you prove yourself and people don’t see your value, you need to remove yourself, which is what I did. And was it hard? Yes. Was the pay cut difficult? Yes. That first year was challenging. But I knew where I wanted to go and I knew I wasn’t going to get there by staying.”
“And I always say creativity dies in the courtroom, and I love creativity in cases. And I love people having the ability to have the power to decide what their parenting plan looks like, what their settlement’s going to look like. Judges don’t get that much say. They kind of have boxes they have to stay within.”
“I got to a point in Frank’s office where I realized there was kind of a ceiling. People that I had come in after me, I was training, were now moving up. And my ego got to the best of me. This is the dream job. Like, what happens after Frank Gehry? What could possibly be next after that?”
We’re catalysts for better conversation. And we know at Filament that the teams that we work with are not looking for the right answer, because there’s no such thing as the right answer. There is the next best answer to the questions that we’re asking.
“Research actually shows when there’s this lack of trust in a relationship, this lack of connection, the same part of our brain that processes physical pain gets activated when there’s an emotional pain. Right? And so if I’m feeling rejected or I’m feeling like I’m not part of the team or I’m not valued in any way, that part of our brain activates and says, like, pain. And so if you think about it in that way, think about the number of people who are walking around your office every day in pain.”
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