The Hidden Skill Every Executive Ignores with Ken Roberts and Jamie Ramsden

What separates a great leader from a merely competent one? According to Ken Roberts, President of Atlas Roofing (and a 30 year veteran of Masco Corporation), and executive coach Jamie Ramsden, the answer isn't intelligence, charisma, or having all the answers. It's humility.

In this episode of A Podcast About Leadership, host Jonathan Kirschner sits down with Ken Roberts, president of one of North America's leading building materials manufacturers, and CEO coach Jamie Ramsden, author of Let's Go: How Great Leaders Shape the Future, to talk about why humility is the leadership skill most executives overlook, and why it's so often mistaken for weakness.

Ken shares the story of the hardest decision of his career: a gut call made during the COVID supply chain crisis with zero hard data behind it. That moment taught him a lesson that's stuck with him ever since. If you're the smartest person in the room, you probably haven't built a great team.

Ken and Jamie get into:

• Why real humility means staying open to being wrong, not staying quiet
• The difference between delegation and abdication
• How to avoid getting pulled into "triangulation" and build genuinely collaborative teams
• The courage it takes to make high stakes decisions without complete information
• Why energy management, not time management, is the skill nobody warns you about
• How self awareness and coachability separate leaders who keep growing from those who stall out

Whether you're a first time manager or a seasoned executive, this is a grounded, real world conversation about how humility, self awareness, and courage add up to stronger teams and better decisions.

Topics covered: executive leadership, humility in leadership, decision making under uncertainty, team building, executive coaching, energy management, servant leadership, CEO advice.