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Listen to this week’s podcast episode, Ep.238 Fashion Tech, Sustainability and the Founder’s Journey; Pulling the Threads of Leadership, with Lacey Cadieux-McLean, click here to listen now.

Have you ever put much thought into the very clothes you wear to work and the potential harm they might be doing to your body or the environment?

On the surface, it doesn't sound like a typical leadership topic, but lately on the podcast, I’ve been fascinated by the unexpected crossovers between health questions, workplace safety and the actual design of our corporate environments. When we look closely at the choices we make as consumers and organisers, we begin to see that short-termism is a pattern that breaks down our physical health just as fast as can break down our team cultures.

When I recorded this week’s episode with Lacey Cadieux-McLean, the CEO-Founder of the sustainable fashion-tech company Rhubaia Ventures, this correlation between systemic health and strategic leadership took center stage. Like many founders and entrepreneurs I’ve met, Lacey didn't take a straight line to get where she is today. Her career path is a collection of side quests, moving from a degree in business economics to a sixteen-year career leading global IT projects. Along the way, she took time off to write novels, competed in fitness competitions and eventually stepped into entrepreneurship.

Our conversation pulled back the curtain (or pulled on the loose thread… pun intended) of a highly traditional industry that's only just beginning to reckon with technology and ecological impact. It also brought to the fore some of the core mindsets required to guide a team through complex, high-pressure environments. Whether you’re trying to eliminate toxins from professional apparel or navigating a difficult corporate reorganisation, the fundamental rules of effective leadership remain exactly the same.

Lacey shared some alarming realities about the modern garment industry that completely blew my mind. Globally, the world handles a staggering ninety-two million tons of textile waste every year. Most of these clothes are synthetic, heavily reliant on polyesters and plastics that take up to two hundred years to break down in a landfill.

When they finally do decompose, they don't return to the earth naturally; they break down into microscopic plastics that infiltrate our waterways, pass into marine life and ultimately make their way right back into our bodies. Even worse, these synthetic fabrics shed invisible fibers while we wear them, meaning we breathe them into our lungs every single day.

Lacey's husband, a career firefighter, triggered her journey into this space. Through his work, he faces constant exposure to extreme workplace toxins and carcinogens, making him deeply protective of his health outside the Fire Station. When they realized that standard corporate attire is drenched in unlabelled chemicals, like formaldehyde and stain-resistant coatings designed for easy care, they knew someone had to offer a healthier alternative.

A lot has been in the headlines in recent years about food sustainability and health risks, but we rarely hear clothing mentioned even though we’ve similarly traded health for cheap convenience. Because fast fashion looks good and avoids wrinkles… (I’ll be honest, I can’t really identify with either the ‘look good’ or ‘avoid wrinkles’ things, I’ll throw on whichever T-shirt is nearest and cleanest without even thinking about whether it’s been ironed… but apparently these things are important to other people 😅).

Similarly to the food industry, it’s a classic corporate problem: transparency is bad for the bottom line of mass production, so systems remain intentionally opaque. To challenge this, Lacey’s company uses natural materials like organic cotton, bamboo, eucalyptus, cork and banana fabrics. They also use digital tools, creating an AI-driven virtual closet app where people can manage digital clothes on their custom avatars. Because the average person only wears an item seven to ten times before discarding it, tech helps professionals "shop their closets" and extend the lifespan of what they already own.

It’s a perfect example of looking at an old, manual process and using intentional strategy to fix a systemic failure and we don’t have to look to hard to find leadership & management lessons from that perspective.

Transitioning from an individual technical role into management is one of the toughest moments in any professional career. It’s a shift that caught me off guard when I first had to do it and it’s a constant theme among the new managers I speak with. Lacey summarized this beautifully from her years in project management: as an individual contributor, your personal success is measured entirely by your own output. But the second you become a leader, your impact is measured solely through the growth and performance of your team.

As an entrepreneur or project leader, there’s a hard ceiling on what you can accomplish by yourself. You can never scale an operation or deliver a complex project without relying on the collective inputs of the people around you. This means you have to step away from the keyboard, stop obsessing over your personal task list, focus on building clarity and communication channels for everyone else.

I’ve long believed that the main reason we see so many micromanager bosses in the world is because people fail to make this psychological adjustment. They get promoted because they were great at doing the manual work, so when stress levels spike, they instinctively default to controlling the tasks instead of supporting the individuals.

True leadership requires letting go of that control and accepting that your primary job is now to remove roadblocks, not execute the work yourself.

Every team faces difficult days. In project management just like in any tech startup, there’s almost always an unexpected fire to put out or an operational crisis that threatens to derail your timeline. In those moments of high anxiety, people don't look to a leader expecting to see panic; they’re looking for a steady, predictable environment where they can safely operate.

Lacey pointed out that a great leader must provide a sure place to land. To build that stability, you have to be completely realistic about your team’s strengths and weaknesses. Exceptional management means identifying where someone excels, placing them in a position to leverage that strength and then helping them produce at two or three levels higher than their usual standard. Most people operate best under encouragement, working alongside an inspiring visionary who keeps the big picture clear when the daily grind gets tough.

However, that doesn't mean a leader should rely on empty praise. One of Lacey's most practical insights was that different personality types require different communication styles. While some individuals thrive on constant positive reinforcement, others find excessive praise completely unhelpful. They don't want a cheerleader; they want straight-shooting, unvarnished honesty so they can fix the root of a problem. Adapting your approach to meet those individual needs isn't being inconsistent, it's actually a core skill of modern leadership, recognizing that treating people like identical cogs destroys psychological safety and dampens performance and that leading real humans means understanding and accommodating their individuality.

If you enter a leadership position hoping to please everyone, you’re going to struggle. In a leadership role you’re often the lightning rod for criticism when things go sideways, so if you don't possess a sturdy sense of self-confidence, that blame becomes an incredibly heavy burden to carry.

An effective leader has to let go of trying to control how others think and feel about them. You can't dilute your strategic decisions or compromise your core values just to protect your popularity (lessons here for politics, probably… #nocomment).

True confidence means staying anchored in your long-term vision, even when the immediate choices are unpopular. This is exactly why it’s so critical to surround yourself with a capable team that functions as a strong foundation, allowing you to focus on the ultimate goals instead of fighting internal political battles.

And just to underline that point, towards the end of the episode, when I asked Lacey to name her ultimate leadership hero, she chose Queen Elizabeth I. Operating in a brutal historical era of religious and political conflict, Elizabeth faced immense pressure to marry and produce an heir, to behave as a ‘traditional woman should’ in a time when power often changed hands by assassination or marriage (sometimes both?). Queen Elizabeth I actively resisted those societal expectations because she knew a marriage would compromise her independence and her capacity to protect the realm. She was also frequently criticized for taking her time with massive decisions (such as the execution of her rival, Mary Queen of Scots) but she stood firm against the opinions in her ear.

While that’s an extreme historical example, it reminds us that true leadership requires incredible grit and the willingness to endure isolation to protect the integrity of your purpose.

New leaders often fall into the trap of believing that when lessons learned begin piling up, they must be failing. But the truth is that every successful project and every healthy business operates on a mountain of setbacks, these challenges aren't a sign that you're on the wrong track; they’re simply part of the normal process of growth.

Lacey shared a core memory from her seventh-grade classroom, where she sat feeling completely overwhelmed and lacking self-confidence because she deeply struggled with spelling. She felt leaps behind her peers and said that if she could go back in time, she’d tell that young girl that those early hurdles don't define her potential, that she would go on to publish a book, lead international teams and build companies.

The differentiator in a successful career isn't a lack of friction; it's grit. It's the willingness to look at a difficult situation, communicate an authentic path forward and give your team a steady space to execute.

As you lead your teams this week, focus on your long-term vision, let go of the urge to control every task and focus on providing a reliable place to land.

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An enjoyable and educational one this week, for me at least! It’s always fascinating to learn more about an industry and business I know little about, and I hope you also found it enlightening and entertaining. If you’d like to hear the full episode then you can find it on your preferred podcasting platform or use the web-player at this link: https://smartlink.ausha.co/leading-with-integrity/ep-238-fashion-tech-sustainability-and-the-founder-s-journey-pulling-the-threads-of-leadership-with-lacey-cadieux

If you prefer video then you’ll find it on YouTube too: https://youtu.be/v1A4OGo9w5Y

Join me again next week when we’re talking AI Strategy, Transformation, Leadership, why poor leadership is being exposed by new technologies, and more… with my next guest: Patrick Bell. Hope to see you there!

And as always: THANK YOU for reading, for listening, for supporting Leading with Integrity. There’s no show or newsletter, no future of leadership without each and every one of you.

Be a Leader Not a Boss,

- David

In case you don’t know me that well, I’m David Hatch and I’m here to help you lead more like a Starfleet Officer and less like a Sithlord.

If you’re a new manager or first-time leader in a tech, expertise or specialist driven workplace and you’re feeling lonely, stuck, overwhelmed, or simply ready for your next chapter in leadership, the Integrity Leaders Community offers conversations, courses, resources and support to help you grow one step at a time. If you have a healthy love of sci-fi and want to learn more about leadership, then this is the community for you! Solopreneurs also welcome. 😉