🎙️ with Gifty Enright - author, speaker and expert on women's leadership
Summary
In this episode of The In-Between Trust Podcast, Eva Simone Lihotzky sits down with Gifty Enright - author, speaker, and women’s leadership expert - to unpack a tension many of us feel but rarely articulate:
In a hyper-visible world, we are more “searched” than ever, and yet we feel less seen.
Gifty exposes the invisible emotional infrastructure that holds workplaces together - the labor of noticing, soothing, anticipating, and absorbing complexity - work disproportionately done by women and almost never acknowledged as expertise.
Together, Eva and Gifty explore why trust is less about performance and more about relational safety, how leaders can cultivate embodied awareness in an age of tech, and why empathy can’t be automated — even by the most advanced AI.
The conversation moves from gendered trust patterns to the redesign of leadership for the AI era, offering a grounded reminder: Your body knows the truth long before your mind catches up. If you lead teams, build tech, or are navigating emotional load at work, this episode will challenge how you think about trust, resilience, and the limits of technology.
Takeaways
Trust is shifting from task-based to relational — people follow leaders who create emotional safety.
Technology blurs boundaries and accelerates burnout unless paired with embodied leadership.
Emotional labor — often carried by women — is a hidden operating system of organizations.
AI can pattern-match, but it cannot feel; empathy remains a human capability.
Leaders must regulate their internal systems to earn trust externally.
Women are socialized to earn trust; men are often socialized to assume it.
Stillness is not a luxury — it’s a leadership technology.
Trust grows in the pause; speed erodes nuance.
Tech should augment humanity, not override it.
Soundbites
“Tech can predict patterns, but it can’t feel your pain.”
“Women aren’t trusted by default — they’re conditioned to earn it.”
“Stillness is a leadership tool, not a luxury.”
“The pause is where trust breathes.”
Chapters
00:00 — What Trust Really Means in Today’s Workplace
02:06 — Tech Acceleration & the Cost to Human Wellbeing
04:28 — The Hidden Burden: Emotional Labor in Organizations
07:50 — Why AI Can’t Replace Empathy
12:17 — Embodied Intelligence: Leading from the Body, Not Just the Mind
15:59 — Self-Trust vs. System Trust
18:55 — Gendered Dynamics of Trust and Power
22:02 — Rethinking Leadership for the AI Age
24:07 — Human Evolution, Work, and What Comes Next
Keywords
trust, emotional labor, leadership, AI limits, embodied intelligence, workplace wellbeing, gender dynamics, empathy, psychological safety, organizational culture, women in leadership