The International Society of Automation (ISA) podcast, Podomation, curates and shares insightful discussions from top thought leaders in automation and industrial cybersecurity. Keep reading for a recap of one recent episode, Podomation 008: Leadership Lessons from Bees.
What Is Podomation?
Podomation is ISA's official podcast featuring top subject-matter experts in the industrial automation community. Its guests speak on wide-ranging topics that matter to automation professionals, including industry 4.0, digital transformation, manufacturing and machine control, instrumentation, connectivity and cybersecurity for operational technology (OT) and continuous and batch processing.
Some episodes are recorded live during ISA events, and others are recorded in studio. No matter where the conversation takes place, each episode highlights the role of automation in making the world a better place — and the impact our community has across industries.
Podomation Episode 008: Leadership Lessons from Bees
In this episode, we sit down with Leigh-Kathryn Bonner, founder and CEO of Bee Downtown. Bee Downtown installs and maintains beehives on corporate campuses across the southeastern United States while providing year-round employee engagement and leadership development programming for many of America’s leading companies.
Leigh-Kathryn’s session at the 2025 ISA Automation Summit & Expo became a word-of-mouth favorite among attendees, thanks to its unexpected angle: what automation and engineering leaders can learn about high-performing teams from honeybees.
From Beehives to Boardrooms
Bee Downtown thrives at the intersection of sustainable agriculture and leadership development. The company helps rebuild pollinator habitats while translating beehive activities into object lessons for teams.
In her conversation with ISA, Leigh-Kathryn focuses on the BDT Leadership Institute: a set of programs that use honeybees — one of nature’s best examples of a “super social species” — to illustrate how high-performing teams behave. Humans are also a super social species, she points out, which means we can learn a lot from the hive about how to lead and collaborate more effectively.
Rather than arriving as the “expert” with all the answers, she invites teams to learn alongside her from a species that has thrived for around 100 million years. How can we build human teams that are just as adaptive and resilient? That’s the question at the center of Leigh-Kathryn’s work.
Getting It Right vs. Getting Along
A major theme of the episode is how to lead in what Leigh-Kathryn describes as a VUCA (volatile, uncertain, complex and ambiguous) world. Leaders today must help their teams adjust and adapt quickly in ever-shifting environments.
Within that context, she explores a specific “tension of competing goods:” getting it right versus getting along. Leaders often feel torn between telling the hard truth and preserving harmony on the team. Drawing on both her experience and the bees’ behavior, she argues that leaders are ultimately duty-bound to “get it right” for the health of the organization — even when that means having uncomfortable conversations.
Her practical approach:
- Notice the tension: When your gut tells you something isn’t right, that’s a signal you may need to prioritize getting it right.
- Name the moment: At Bee Downtown, leaders frame these as “courageous conversations.” They begin by saying, “I am here to get it right and hopefully get along.”
- Invite a choice: Team members can engage constructively, or they can be combative — but the leader is still responsible for the decision.
Over time, handling these moments consistently can increase psychological safety. When employees know that “courageous conversations” are honest, fair and focused on improvement, they’re less likely to fear feedback and more likely to see it as part of how the organization grows.
What Bees Can Teach Us About Change
Honeybees are masters of rapid adaptation. As both an indicator species and keystone species, they can register small pressure changes in the environment faster than humans can — responding quickly to protect the hive. For example, if rain is coming, forager bees will abruptly return to the hive, even from a seemingly calm, sunny field, to avoid being caught in a storm far from home.
For leaders in automation and industrial environments, this offers a vivid analogy. Organizations that insist on “doing things the way we’ve always done them” struggle when circumstances shift. The teams that thrive are the ones that sense change early and adjust together, just as honeybees have done over millions of years.
Embracing “Bee-ness” at Work
The episode closes with the concept of “bee-ness:” embodying core characteristics of the hive in our own work. For Leigh-Kathryn, that includes:
- Working for the long-term good of the community as a whole
- Doing your job well and trusting others to do the same
- Building high-performing, efficient teams rooted in trust
If you can live like the honeybee, she suggests, that is a life well-lived. And if your company can operate like a healthy bee colony, it will be well on its way to success.
Listen to the Full Conversation
To hear the complete interview with Leigh-Kathryn Bonner — including more stories from the hive and practical leadership advice — visit www.isa.org/podcast or search for “Podomation” wherever you listen to podcasts.
Ready for the Next Episode of Podomation?
To see new episodes as soon as they’re ready, make sure to subscribe on your podcast platform of choice. Podomation is available on Spotify, Apple Podcasts and many more.
If you enjoy these conversations, please leave us a review on any of these platforms. You can also play back episodes at www.isa.org/podcast any time.
