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Welcome back to House of Leadership. We explore what it really takes to grow and lead successfully in a fast-paced, high-performance environment.
We publish every Thursday and Sunday.
Thursdays are deep and tactical, practical frameworks, real examples, and leadership tools you can use immediately. Sundays are calm and reflective, with one book, one visual, and one question to sharpen how you think. Thursday builds your capability; Sunday builds your perspective.
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What did we learn this week?
Why AI Isn’t Replacing Affiliate Marketing After All
“AI will make affiliate marketing irrelevant.”
Our new research shows the opposite.
Levanta surveyed 1,000 US consumers to understand how AI is influencing the buying journey. The findings reveal a clear pattern: shoppers use AI tools to explore options, but they continue to rely on human-driven content before making a purchase.
Here is what the data shows:
Less than 10% of shoppers click AI-recommended links
Nearly 87% discover products on social platforms or blogs before purchasing on marketplaces
Review sites rank higher in trust than AI assistants
📖 One book to read this weekend
Radical Candor — Kim Scott
The big idea:
Great leaders don’t choose between being nice and being honest.
They do both, at the same time.
Kim Scott calls this “Care Personally, Challenge Directly.”
Most leadership failure lives in the gaps between those two things:
Care without challenge → nice, but ineffective
Challenge without care → brilliant, but toxic
Neither → political, passive, dangerous
Radical Candor sits in the only box that actually scales: you give people the truth because you genuinely want them to succeed.
The key takeaway
The fastest way to build trust is not praise, it’s useful truth delivered with respect.
High performers don’t want protection. They want accuracy.
The best people on your team are quietly asking:
“Tell me what I’m doing that’s holding me back.”
Most managers never give them that gift.
Why you should pick this up
If you lead smart, ambitious people, especially in pressured environments like Tech, Product, or Finance, this book will:
Make feedback easier, not heavier
Reduce politics and hallway conversations
Increase ownership and pace
Turn performance conversations into growth moments
It gives you a simple, practical framework you can use in:
1:1s
performance reviews
difficult conversations
and senior leadership rooms
You don’t need to become harsher.
You need to become clearer.
🗞️ Things worth checking out
Creativity + Science = Ads that perform
Join award-winning strategist Babak Behrad and Neurons CEO Thomas Z. Ramsøy for a strategic, practical webinar on what actually drives high-impact advertising today. Learn how top campaigns capture attention, build memory, and create branding moments that stick. It’s all backed by neuroscience, and built for real-world creative teams.
🧠 One visual to sit with
Most leaders think they’re being kind by staying in the bottom left. In reality, they’re just postponing a harder conversation.
❓One question for you
Who on your team is good enough to deserve more honesty than you’re currently giving them?
That’s usually where your biggest leadership opportunity is hiding.