Promoted From Within: How to Lead the People You Used to Sit Next To
The announcement goes out on a Friday afternoon. By Monday morning you are running the team you were part of the week before, and the first thing you notice is very small. Somebody stops mid sentence when you walk past. A group chat you have been in for two years goes quiet. Nobody has done […]
Leading Through Restructure: What Your Team Needs From You When Jobs Are at Risk
You have been in the meeting. You know roughly what is coming, you know it will affect people who report to you, and you have been told to say nothing until the announcement goes out. Tomorrow morning you will stand in front of a team who trust you and field questions you cannot answer honestly. […]
Has Leadership Changed Over The Years? Not As Much as You Think
The tools of the job keep moving. The heart of it has stayed exactly where it was. Pick up a book on leadership written this year, then find one written two thousand years ago. Strip away the language and you’re looking at the same argument. Somebody has to work out where a group of people […]
Could Politicians Cut It in Business? It Depends What You Mean by Leadership
Some make the jump look effortless. Others sink without a trace. The difference tells us something useful about leadership itself. It’s a fun argument to have down the pub. Take a senior politician, drop them into a big company, and would they thrive or flounder? People tend to answer it with their politics rather than […]
The Myth of the Born Leader: Leadership is Built more than it is Inherited
We love the idea that great leaders arrive fully formed. The evidence says almost the opposite, and that’s good news for the rest of us. You’ve heard it said about someone. “She’s a natural.” “He was born to lead.” It’s meant as a compliment, and it feels true when you watch a gifted leader at […]
Leadership in a Crisis: What Covid Taught Us About Being Ready and Prepared
Almost overnight, every leader got the same test. Most had no plan for it, and that turned out to be the real lesson. In the space of a fortnight in March 2020, millions of people who lead teams were handed a problem none of them had rehearsed. Send everyone home. Keep the work going. Hold […]
What Is Inclusive Leadership and Why UK Businesses Can’t Afford to Ignore It
Most conversations about inclusive leadership start in the wrong place. They begin with compliance, with legal obligations, with diversity targets and reporting requirements. All of those things matter, but leading with them tends to produce exactly the kind of half hearted, box-ticking response that leaves organisations no better off than they were before. The more […]
What Is Ethical Leadership and Why It’s Becoming a Business Critical Skill
Trust, once lost, is extraordinarily difficult to rebuild. Ask anyone who has worked in an organisation where the leadership said one thing and did another, where corner-cutting was quietly encouraged, where the wrong people got away with things and the right people didn’t get credit for them. The effect isn’t just cultural. It’s visible in […]
Transformational Leadership and Why The Most Effective Leaders Aren’t Who You Think They Are
There’s a version of this conversation that happens constantly in leadership development circles, and it tends to go the same way. Someone asks what transformational leadership actually means, and the answers that come back are almost always about someone else. A legendary CEO. A commander with extraordinary presence. A headteacher who turned a failing school […]
Leadership versus Management: The £84 Billion Pound Questions and what is going on.
Spend enough time around organisations of any size and you’ll hear the same language used for two fundamentally different things. Managers get called leaders. Leaders get handed management tasks. Job titles say one thing, actual responsibilities say another. Nobody really challenges it because, on the surface, the distinction feels academic. It isn’t. And the numbers […]