--- title: "Episode 40: Human-Centered Leadership: Face the Feelings You Avoid — with John DeMarco" description: Executive Coach John DeMarco explains why leaders must face the feelings they avoid and how mindfulness builds human-centered, emotionally intelligent leaders. --- [![Velocity Advisory Group](https://www.velocityadvisorygroup.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/05/Velocity-Logo-2023-Wide-1.png)](https://www.velocityadvisorygroup.com/) ☰ Menu - About - [Meet Our Team](https://www.velocityadvisorygroup.com/about/) - [Meet Our Coaches](https://www.velocityadvisorygroup.com/coaches/) - [Careers](https://www.velocityadvisorygroup.com/careers/) - [Speaking Engagements](https://www.velocityadvisorygroup.com/velocity-speakers/) - Solutions - [Culture & Engagement](https://www.velocityadvisorygroup.com/culture-engagement/) - [DISC Assessments & Training](https://www.velocityadvisorygroup.com/disc-assessments-training/) - [Employee Experience](https://www.velocityadvisorygroup.com/employee-experience/) - [Executive Coaching](https://www.velocityadvisorygroup.com/executive-coaching/) - [Family Business](https://www.velocityadvisorygroup.com/family-business/) - [Leadership Development](https://www.velocityadvisorygroup.com/leadership-development/) - [Sales Training](https://www.velocityadvisorygroup.com/5cs-of-selling/) - [Strategy & Implementation](https://www.velocityadvisorygroup.com/strategy-implementation/) - Resources - [Activating Greatness Podcast](https://www.velocityadvisorygroup.com/podcast/) - [Blog](https://www.velocityadvisorygroup.com/blog/) - [Case Studies](https://www.velocityadvisorygroup.com/case-studies/) - [News and Announcements](https://www.velocityadvisorygroup.com/news-and-events/) - [OrderDisc](https://orderdisc.com/) - [Upcoming Events](https://www.velocityadvisorygroup.com/upcoming-events/) - Industries - [Construction](https://www.velocityadvisorygroup.com/construction/) - [Financial Services](https://www.velocityadvisorygroup.com/financial-services/) - [Life Sciences](https://www.velocityadvisorygroup.com/lifesciences/) - [Contact](https://www.velocityadvisorygroup.com/contact/) Activating Greatness Podcast Episodes August 3, 2026 | Episode 40 # Human-Centered Leadership: Face the Feelings You Avoid — with John DeMarco ## You Can't Go Around Your Feelings: John DeMarco on the Emotions Leaders Avoid **In this post:** *Executive Coach John DeMarco explains why human-centered leadership starts with the feelings leaders avoid. He shares how mindfulness, sharper questions, and an inquisitive mirror help leaders move through ambiguity, burnout, and AI uncertainty instead of around them.* A client once told John DeMarco that artificial intelligence is "super powerful." The client said it twice. Then came the follow-up: "But I only use AI for boring stuff like copying and pasting." DeMarco, an Executive Coach who works with Velocity Advisory Group, stopped the conversation there. "Tell me more," he said. "You say AI is super powerful. What does that mean to you?" The question forced the client to consider whether the copy-and-paste habit was a way to manage anxiety about the technology. Moments like that one sit at the center of DeMarco's approach to human-centered leadership. Over the past year, in his coaching and on LinkedIn, he has been pulling on one idea: the feelings leaders avoid, and what that avoidance costs. "You can't operate to the other side of your feelings," DeMarco said on *Activating Greatness*, the leadership podcast from Velocity. "You have to go through them." ## It Always Begins With Me DeMarco is in his 21st year of coaching, a career he notes is the same age as his youngest child. He coached full time in healthcare and at T-Mobile before working independently through Velocity and other partners. The theme grew out of his own growth, losses, and mindfulness practice. When the phrase "one of the things I'm unwilling to feel" surfaced, he turned it on himself first. "How am I using humor as my own defense mechanism?" he asked. "What thoughts am I avoiding and what are the proxies?" If he was avoiding feelings, he realized, so was everyone else. ## The Cost of Staying Busy Employees at every level, DeMarco said, face ambiguity, fear, disruption, uncertainty, and overwhelm, with AI reaching into all of it. Leaders have a responsibility to lean into those feelings in themselves and recognize them in their people. The common alternative is avoidance that looks like productivity: busyness, transactional conversations, pep talks, an obsession with speed, and handing more critical thinking to AI. The consequences compound. "I think we have leader stagnation, which necessarily leads to employee stagnation," he said. That erodes the employee and client experience, then drives attrition. "Our words have meaning. Our words have impact." The stakes are highest with younger employees. DeMarco coaches many of them and has three daughters in their early 20s. "They want more of the human touch," he said. "They don't want to just step into the same grind." ## The Inquisitive Mirror Coaching, DeMarco said, is for people who are already good or great, not a remedy for someone on a performance plan. "I think the key thing I try to do is be this inquisitive mirror, to hold up my clients' words to them, and shift the angle just enough so they can see their language," he said. One leader called younger employees "confused and disengaged," then added, "but it's probably just a leadership communication problem." DeMarco pressed: What tells you they are confused? The fix is rarely a better email or all-hands, he said. Leaders have to engage people directly. Another client predicted AI would eliminate 80% of the jobs on their team within five years, "but I'll be part of the 20%." DeMarco praised the confidence, then asked how the client planned to earn that place. Burnout has its own script: "Things are just really busy right now. I don't have a choice." He asks about the choices a client is ignoring. "Tell me about the agency that you may be disregarding," he said. Host Alec McChesney, who has burned out at three organizations, recalled realizing he would fail at any new job in the same state of mind. DeMarco summed it up: "We can change the brand, but if we don't change our personal narrative, we end up getting those same kinds of results." > "You can't operate to the other side of your feelings. You have to go through them." > > *John DeMarco, Executive Coach, Velocity Advisory Group* FREE ONE-PAGE CHECKLIST ### The Inquisitive Mirror Checklist Use these prompts before your next one-on-one to hear your own language and ask the question you have been avoiding. [Get the free checklist](https://coaching.velocityadvisorygroup.com/leadership-library/inquisitive-mirror-checklist) ## Human-Centered Leadership Does Not Mean Soft DeMarco describes his practice as growing human-centered leaders, and he anticipates the skeptics. People hear the phrase and assume "it's just about being soft," he said. "It's not holding people accountable. It's not focusing on results, when in fact it's just the opposite." He grounds the term in human-centered design, a discipline that emerged in academia in the 1950s and 1960s and reached industry in the 1990s through IDEO and Stanford's design school. The process starts with a leader who listens to pain points without predetermined solutions, which "necessarily requires no multitasking whatsoever," he said. Leaders then invite those people to co-create, prototype, and iterate. That listening builds the psychological safety where employees share their best ideas, "or even their lousy ideas." ## Breath, Body, and Head DeMarco's main tool for building those competencies is mindfulness, a word he admits risks becoming cliche. "It's only a cliche if it's not seen through," he said. His practice moves through three areas. - **Breath:** Noticing each in breath and out breath calms you and restrains impulsive reactions. It can be "this quiet sort of insurrection that's happening inside of you," he said. When the mind wanders, you start again. "The breath is forgiven, the breath does not hold a grudge." - **Body:** A body scan moves attention from head to toe, checking for a pit in the stomach or tightness in the throat. That is where feelings live, he said. - **Head:** With those signals in view, leaders can examine the stories they tell themselves and the assumptions they make about others. The practice strengthens emotional intelligence, which drives curiosity. Together they form what DeMarco calls learning agility: the habit of seeking discomfort and learning from it. For more on this inner work, hear Laura London on how to [calm the chaos](https://coaching.velocityadvisorygroup.com/activating-greatness-podcast-episodes/ep-24-calm-the-chaos-laura-london) and Christine Miller on [keeping humanity at work in the era of AI](https://coaching.velocityadvisorygroup.com/activating-greatness-podcast-episodes/ep-38-leading-in-the-era-of-ai-christine-miller). ## Rapid-Fire Leadership Lessons - **Daily habit:** Before every conversation, asking what intentions, biases, and assumptions he brings, what the person truly needs, and how he will stay "as present as possible for whatever comes." - **Do more of:** "Pay more attention to your emotions and the things you're feeling and grapple with them so that you can be more self-aware and help others." - **Do less of:** "Pushing employees to do all things AI without giving them some context, some training, some coaching, and taking that journey with them." - **Best advice:** The three T's from his late father, Frank DeMarco: things take time. "That's never been proven wrong in my life," he said. HOW VELOCITY HELPS ### Velocity Executive Coaching DeMarco describes a coach as an inquisitive mirror, someone who reflects a leader's words back from a new angle so blind spots come into view. Because no leader can be fully objective about their own gaps, that outside perspective matters. Velocity's Executive Coaching pairs leaders with a Velocity Coach for confidential one-on-one work on the thinking, habits, and avoided conversations that hold them back. As DeMarco puts it, coaching is for people who are already good or great. [Explore Executive Coaching](https://www.velocityadvisorygroup.com/executive-coaching/) ## The Takeaway: Things Take Time DeMarco closed with a plain wish for leaders. "Let's all just try to be better humans," he said. "Everybody ultimately wants the same thing in life. People want to suffer less and be happier. We can help make that happen as leaders." The path he describes has no shortcut. You cannot text or message your way past a feeling you would rather avoid. Breathe, notice where the feeling sits in your body, question the story you are telling yourself, and then have the harder conversation. As his father taught him, things take time. Leaders who do that work first give their teams permission to do it too. ## Listen to the Full Episode Hear John DeMarco's full conversation with host Alec McChesney on *Activating Greatness*. [Find it on YouTube](https://www.youtube.com/@VelocityAdvisoryGroup), or listen on [Spotify](https://open.spotify.com/show/4LcgAut0KyYiGyDhFvMjPD) and [Apple Podcasts](https://podcasts.apple.com/podcast/id1868386871). FREE GUIDE ### The Nervous System Check A short self-check for leaders who push past exhaustion and overwhelm, so you can notice what your body is signaling and lead from a steadier inner state. 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