149. Csaba Toth - How to Build Teams That Decide Better
0:00 / 37:38Leadership that sells· Listen to Csaba Toth on air
Expert in the Human Side of Digital Transformation, Founder of ICQ Global & Creator of ICF-Accredited Leadership Frameworks
Csaba Toth’s work began with a failure that changed how he understood leadership. He lost his first business after assuming that speaking the same language, having strong qualifications, good intentions, and what seemed like common sense would be enough to lead people well. It was not.
That experience pushed him to examine why intelligent, capable people can still misunderstand one another, why some teams thrive while others quietly unravel, and why so many transformation efforts fail despite significant investment. Having grown up between cultures and worked across very different organisations, Csaba saw how personality, cultural background, bias, motivation, and psychological safety shape the way people make decisions and work together.
He founded ICQ Global after noticing a persistent pattern: organisations were investing in training without data, coaching without diagnosis, and culture change without meaningful measurement. The result was often short-term enthusiasm with little lasting change.
Csaba went on to create the multi-award-winning, ICF-accredited Global DISC™, Growth Zone™, and GameChangers frameworks. Together, they help organisations measure nine key biomarkers of high-performing teams, including personality, cognitive diversity, psychological safety, motivation, and the behavioural patterns that can quietly derail performance. The frameworks have supported more than 900 teams and are now delivered through over 250 certified partners across 51 countries, serving organisations ranging from Fortune 500 companies and national governments to universities and the European Parliament.
He is the author of Uncommon Sense in Unusual Times, a keynote speaker, a member of the Forbes Councils, the Harvard Business Review Advisory Council, and the British Psychological Society, and is completing his fourth master’s degree in Business Psychology.
Based in Brighton, Csaba speaks candidly about leadership identity, AI, decision intelligence, and what he calls an Uncommon Mindset. At the heart of his work is a simple belief: self-awareness remains one of the most underinvested assets in organisations.
As a podcast guest, Csaba helps audiences understand the hidden human dynamics that shape leadership, teamwork, and transformation.
Measuring Leadership Development: baselines for psychological safety, bias and team dynamics
HR and L&D teams are under growing pressure to justify programmes that generate positive feedback but leave no evidence that leadership or team performance has improved. The problem begins when…
Redesigning Leadership Identity for AI: defining the work only you should own
Many senior leaders are responding to AI by learning new tools while privately questioning what their role is becoming. Csaba argues that this is not primarily an AI problem but an identity problem…
Measuring Team Friction: making cognitive diversity productive rather than corrosive
Technology, pharmaceutical, and financial organisations (to name a few) invest heavily in exceptional specialists, then assume collective intelligence will naturally translate into exceptional…
Measuring Cultural Divides Within Teams: cognitive diversity beyond nationality
Cross-cultural leadership is often treated as an international issue, yet some of the most damaging misunderstandings happen between people from the same country, sometimes sitting in the same…
2+ podcast & stage appearances. Remote or in studio, broadcast-grade audio.
