The 5Cs

Hosted by Charlene Norman

Business Entrepreneurship Science

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Episodes

196

Latest episode

Aug 2026

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About the show

A podcast on business, climate risk, and leadership, exploring what happens when companies choose stewardship over the old systems. Imagine the profit. Imagine the impact. Imagine if every business led this way.

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60 recent

August 15, 20262 min

See You September 5th

Season four closed with a three-part series that asked more of us than most of what came before. Before diving into what's next, we're taking a short, deliberate pause. Three weeks, no new episodes, back on September 5th with a brand new season five, a fresh focus, and guests you haven't heard talk about business, climate, or leadership before. In the meantime, revisit the back catalogue. Nearly 200 episodes are there, and most of them still hold up. See you in three weeks, refreshed and ready to keep going. The 5Cs Podcast connects forward-thinking executives who are building sustainable competitive advantages while driving positive impact. Think of it as an exclusive network of leaders who understand that stewardship isn't just good ethics - it's good business. Becausing addressing business stewardship climate risk and leadership together is in the highest good for all. Connect with Charlene Norman on LinkedIn , find her at her website , subscribe to our Substack for strategic insights, or download the full series on Spotify and Apple .

August 8, 202618 min

What We Build Now

We Found Each Other. What We Build Now The season four finale. Charlene names what four years of this work has actually taught her, and retires the framing the show started with. Compassionate capitalism served its purpose. It no longer fits what this work has become. The 5Cs remain, but the words change. She explains the reasoning behind each one, names where she has fallen short of what the show has asked of others, and commits publicly to what comes next. This episode closes with an ask: find one person this week, and tell them something true you've been keeping quiet. That's how the distributed knowing stops being distributed in silence. Final episode in a three-part close to season four. The 5Cs Podcast connects forward-thinking executives who are building sustainable competitive advantages while driving positive impact. Think of it as an exclusive network of leaders who understand that stewardship isn't just good ethics - it's good business. Becausing addressing business stewardship climate risk and leadership together is in the highest good for all. Connect with Charlene Norman on LinkedIn , find her at her website , subscribe to our Substack for strategic insights, or download the full series on Spotify and Apple .

August 1, 202617 min

The Map Of The Distributed Knowing

We Found Each Other. The Map Of The Distributed Knowing. Charlene started this podcast wanting to blame someone. A generation, an industry, a set of executives. What she found instead, across four years and dozens of conversations, was harder to sit with: a system so embedded in laws, institutions, and how we teach children to think that most people inside it don't know it's there. This episode walks through the conversations that changed her mind: on economics, on recycling, on nuclear energy, on indigenous knowledge, on moral injury versus PTSD. It lands on the idea that has quietly run under every episode of this show: you are not alone in what you know. The knowing is everywhere. The question was never whether enough of us see it. The question is what we do now that we've found each other. Second in a three-part close to season four. The 5Cs Podcast connects forward-thinking executives who are building sustainable competitive advantages while driving positive impact. Think of it as an exclusive network of leaders who understand that stewardship isn't just good ethics - it's good business. Becausing addressing business stewardship climate risk and leadership together is in the highest good for all. Connect with Charlene Norman on LinkedIn , find her at her website , subscribe to our Substack for strategic insights, or download the full series on Spotify and Apple .

July 25, 202611 min

The Girl From The Town Of Twenty Thousand

The Girl from the Town of Twenty Thousand Before the podcast, before the platform, before she had words for any of it, Charlene knew something was wrong. This episode goes back to where that knowing started: a small town, a business career that took her from internal audit to the C-suite, and a moral bind she tried to ignore for thirty years while working in chemicals, plastics, and industries she knew in her bones were doing damage. She stayed longer than that moral bind wanted her to. The bonuses were good. The system eventually collected its debt anyway, in the form of a health crisis that cost her more than half of everything she'd built. This is the story of what she found when she came back up with nothing left to lose by listening to what she'd always known. First in a three-part close to season four. The 5Cs Podcast connects forward-thinking executives who are building sustainable competitive advantages while driving positive impact. Think of it as an exclusive network of leaders who understand that stewardship isn't just good ethics - it's good business. Becausing addressing business stewardship climate risk and leadership together is in the highest good for all. Connect with Charlene Norman on LinkedIn , find her at her website , subscribe to our Substack for strategic insights, or download the full series on Spotify and Apple .

July 18, 202622 min

Clear Eyed; Not Hopeless

Clear Eyed; Not Hopeless This is the finale of the five part series Shell Shocked: Moral Injury and the Leaders Carrying It With special guest Dr. Debra Borys , a clinical psychologist licensed in California with long-standing interest and concern for nature and the environment. She is co-founder and co-chair of the LA County Psychological Association Eco-Psychology Special Interest Group, an active member of the Climate Psychology Alliance of North America and a trained Climate Café leader. You can find Dr Borys here and you can get on her wait list here in order to gain access to the workshops she and Nikyta Palmisani created. The hardest conversation of the series. And the most important one. In this finale episode, Charlene Norman and Dr. Debra Borys go to the place most podcasts won't. What does it mean to look honestly at where we are — the climate crisis, the collapse of institutional trust, the poly-crisis unravelling in real time — without flinching, without denial, and without false hope? And what does it mean to keep going anyway? Three things you'll take away: Why grief and joy are not opposites. What happens when you stop defending against one to protect the other? J em Bendell's six R's of deep adaptation. A framework for anyone who has accepted that the road ahead is genuinely uncertain and wants to know how to orient themselves anyway One simple sensory practice that costs nothing, takes minutes, and reconnects you to the world you're trying to protect The 5Cs Podcast connects forward-thinking executives who are building sustainable competitive advantages while driving positive impact. Think of it as an exclusive network of leaders who understand that stewardship isn't just good ethics - it's good business. Becausing addressing business stewardship climate risk and leadership together is in the highest good for all. Connect with Charlene Norman on LinkedIn , find her at her website , subscribe to our Substack for strategic insights, or download the full series on Spotify and Apple .

July 11, 202618 min

The Business of Not Giving Up

The Business of Not Giving Up The most committed people in any room are often the ones closest to the edge. This episode is about what leaders can actually do about that. Before it's too late. With special guest Dr. Debra Borys , a clinical psychologist licensed in California with long-standing interest and concern for nature and the environment. She is co-founder and co-chair of the LA County Psychological Association Eco-Psychology Special Interest Group, an active member of the Climate Psychology Alliance of North America and a trained Climate Café leader. You can find Dr Borys here and you can get on her wait list here in order to gain access to the workshops she and Nikyta Palmisani created. In this episode, the discussion is around the practical reality of doing meaningful work inside systems that weren't built for it. From the warning signs most organisations miss entirely, to a two-hour intervention any leader could run with their team next week, to the honest answer to the hardest question in this space. What actually changes when you do this work and then walk back into the same system? Three things you'll take away: The organisational warning signs of moral injury that get mislabelled as performance problems and what to look for before good people quietly disappear Stress inoculation. What it is, how it works, and why two hours with your team naming their actual fears could prevent months of dysfunction down the road The most honest answer to the long game question: What changes when someone does this inner work and walks back into the same structure that contributed to the injury in the first place? The 5Cs Podcast connects forward-thinking executives who are building sustainable competitive advantages while driving positive impact. Think of it as an exclusive network of leaders who understand that stewardship isn't just good ethics - it's good business. Becausing addressing business stewardship climate risk and leadership together is in the highest good for all. Connect with Charlene Norman on LinkedIn , find her at her website , subscribe to our Substack for strategic insights, or download the full series on Spotify and Apple .

July 4, 202630 min

From Moral Injury to Moral Realignment

From Moral Injury to Moral Realignment With special guest Dr. Debra Borys , a clinical psychologist licensed in California with long-standing interest and concern for nature and the environment. She is co-founder and co-chair of the LA County Psychological Association Eco-Psychology Special Interest Group, an active member of the Climate Psychology Alliance of North America and a trained Climate Café leader. You can find Dr Borys here and you can get on her wait list here in order to gain access to the workshops she and Nikyta Palmisani created. Three things you'll take away: Panu Pihkala's three-part coping framework, emotional expression, restorative time-out, and values-based action, and why all three have to be present, in the right balance, for any of them to work How the From Moral Injury to Moral Alignment program actually runs — what happens in the room, why the group design is not accidental, and what participants consistently say when it's over What one of the world's leading ecopsychologists does personally to stay viable while working inside the weight of all of this. AND the one organisational practice any leader could start tomorrow Resource mentioned: Panu Pihkala The 5Cs Podcast connects forward-thinking executives who are building sustainable competitive advantages while driving positive impact. Think of it as an exclusive network of leaders who understand that stewardship isn't just good ethics - it's good business. Becausing addressing business stewardship climate risk and leadership together is in the highest good for all. Connect with Charlene Norman on LinkedIn , find her at her website , subscribe to our Substack for strategic insights, or download the full series on Spotify and Apple .

June 27, 202618 min

The Poly-Crisis Is Not a Climate Problem

The Poly-Crisis Is Not a Climate Problem With special guest Dr. Debra Borys , a clinical psychologist licensed in California with long-standing interest and concern for nature and the environment. She is co-founder and co-chair of the LA County Psychological Association Eco-Psychology Special Interest Group, an active member of the Climate Psychology Alliance of North America and a trained Climate Café leader. You can find Dr Borys here and here You can get on her wait list here . Key highlights are: -Burnout vs. Moral Injury: Why the Distinction Matters -Recognizing the Signs: How Moral Injury Manifests -The Cost of Suppression: Why Leaders Must Address Their Own Distress -Naming Moral Injury: The First Step to Healing -From Moral Injury to Moral Alignment: Actionable Steps The 5Cs Podcast connects forward-thinking executives who are building sustainable competitive advantages while driving positive impact. Think of it as an exclusive network of leaders who understand that stewardship isn't just good ethics - it's good business. Becausing addressing business stewardship climate risk and leadership together is in the highest good for all. Connect with Charlene Norman on LinkedIn , find her at her website , subscribe to our Substack for strategic insights, or download the full series on Spotify and Apple .

June 20, 202618 min

You're Not Broken; You're Morally Injured

Shell Shocked: Moral Injury and the Leaders Carrying It There's a name for what you've been carrying. And it isn't burnout. In this first of five episodes, host, Charlene Norman draws a distinction most leaders have never heard between moral injustice (the event that hits you) and moral injury (what it leaves behind). Drawing on three decades inside extractive industries, her own 2008 recession story, and research that emerged from the aftermath of the Vietnam War, she maps five ways moral injustice shows up in business and makes the case that naming what's actually happening is the first step toward something better. Three things you'll take away: - The difference between moral injustice and moral injury and why that distinction changes everything about how you understand your own exhaustion - Five specific ways ethical rupture shows up for business and institutional leaders, with real examples from the inside - Why the question isn't whether you're broken. Its whether you have the right words yet Next week: clinical psychologist Dr. Debra Borys joins the conversation on what moving forward actually requires. The 5Cs Podcast connects forward-thinking executives who are building sustainable competitive advantages while driving positive impact. Think of it as an exclusive network of leaders who understand that stewardship isn't just good ethics - it's good business. Becausing addressing business stewardship climate risk and leadership together is in the highest good for all. Connect with Charlene Norman on LinkedIn , find her at her website , subscribe to our Substack for strategic insights, or download the full series on Spotify and Apple .

June 13, 202618 min

The Leader of Tomorrow

The Leader of Tomorrow In this episode with Rashmir Balasubramaniam of https://rashmir.net/ we bring the series home with the question that has been sitting underneath every conversation: what does the leader who can actually do all of this look like? Rashmir names five roles the leader of tomorrow needs to be able to play. We end with a reframe of leadership built not on authority, not on vision, not even on competence — but on humility and the radical act of giving others permission to lead. The key highlights are: The five roles for tomorrow's leader and why each one requires a fundamentally different orientation than the leadership models most of us inherited Why no single person can sustain all five roles, and what becomes possible when we stop expecting them to Why permission is the missing ingredient for most changemakers Links and notes for show: Rashmir's Authentic Leadership Program for women Lao Tzu / Tao Te Ching The 5Cs Podcast connects forward-thinking executives who are building sustainable competitive advantages while driving positive impact. Think of it as an exclusive network of leaders who understand that stewardship isn't just good ethics - it's good business. Becausing addressing business stewardship climate risk and leadership together is in the highest good for all. Connect with Charlene Norman on LinkedIn , find her at her website , subscribe to our Substack for strategic insights, or download the full series on Spotify and Apple .