No Bullsh!t Leadership

Lots of things sound like they should be true. And when a leader utters them, we all nod in agreement. But deep down, we know it’s bullshit! Most leaders have learned exactly what they’re expected to say… but their teams know what’s really going on. People watch your feet, not your lips, and no amount of virtue signalling can bridge that gap. If you want to take a deeper dive into how to walk the...

If you put a bounty on dead cobras, you may end up with more live cobras. And if you attach a big bonus to a KPI, you’ll get the same outcome in your business. If they’re not chosen carefully, KPIs can do more harm than good. Many KPIs are one-dimensional; they’re disconnected from the real value drivers; the targets get lowballed; and (when money’s involved), they’re susceptible to gaming. In thi...

Imagine if one of your people was delivering more value than eight of their peers: leading them the same way you lead everyone else would be a complete waste. I’ve often said, “ Your high performers don’t give you 10% more than the average employee… they give you 200% more. ” But even that grossly underestimates the impact of the highest performers. In this Moment, I give you five ways to ensure y...

How many times have you sat in a room full of senior people, thinking about making a great point, but never actually speaking up? In this episode, I show you how to take that step without sounding arrogant, making it personal, or risking your credibility. You have to do your homework, find a small insight that drives a big improvement, and bring it into the room in a way that gets heard… without p...

If your workload is out of control, your best people are leaving, and you feel alone and unsupported, it might be that you're working for a weak leader. In this Moment, I give you four telltale signs to look for, and some hard questions to ask yourself to work out if you’re able to stick it out. If you decide to continue working for a weak leader, you can find some techniques for improving you...

You never know what to expect when mentoring CEOs. Some run the most boring businesses you could imagine, but they generate enormous value. Other companies may seem sexy on the outside, but struggle to make ends meet. One CEO watched his revenue fall off a cliff with the stroke of a bureaucrat’s pen. Today I’m sharing eight lessons from eight years of mentoring CEOs; and you don’t need to be in th...

In leadership, difficult conversations come with the territory. So, if your goal is to make everyone happy… go work in a donut shop! If you want a career that lives up to your potential then, paradoxically, your ability to handle the hardest conversations is an entry-level skill. In this Moment, I share three tips to help you stop bargaining with yourself, and step into any conflict with confidenc...

The hardest thing I ever tried to do as an executive was to stop the sh!t that had already started: it gets a life of its own. On top of that, new work is being dreamt up all the time, further adding to your prioritisation nightmare. A recent article from The Economist argued that too many people are shockingly bad at prioritisation, and that the root cause isn't process; it's behaviour. I...

When was the last time you told one of your people exactly where they stood? If you can't remember, this Moment's for you. Your people deserve the truth, even when it's the last thing they want to hear… and the last thing you want to tell them. If you want to take a deeper dive into why you should tell your people what they need to hear, have a listen to Ep.329: Don't Feed Your Peo...

Most transformations don't transform all that much. They cost a lot of money, they suck a huge amount of the organisation's time and energy, and no one really checks to see if the benefits were ever delivered. If you're not on the executive team, the whole thing just happens to you. But in reality, you're not as powerless as you might think. In this episode, I dig into what transfo...

You may think that rolling up your sleeves and doing your team’s work is leading from the front. But it’s actually a bad habit that’s diluting your people’s capability. Every time you get involved in the nitty gritty of your people’s work, you’re trading away the opportunity to build capability for achieving a fast, high-quality result. The job at every level is different. You need to be clear on...

Airbnb CEO, Brian Chesky says he doesn't believe in one-on-ones. I couldn’t disagree more, so in this episode I show you why sometimes, even the best CEOs get this one wrong.  Chesky says the 1:1 model is flawed. Not only does he not do them, but he asserted that almost no great CEO does either . To support his point, he quoted Nvidia CEO, Jensen Huang, backing a similar view.  Here's th...

You may think that rolling up your sleeves and doing your team’s work is leading from the front. But it’s actually a bad habit that’s diluting your people’s capability. Every time you get involved in the nitty gritty of your people’s work, you’re trading away the opportunity to build capability for achieving a fast, high-quality result.   The job at every level is different. You need to be cl...

During my tenure as CEO at CS Energy, we took EBITDA from $17m to $441m: we more than doubled the company’s earnings for four consecutive years. Along the way, I had to dig deep into two distinct toolkits: my business acumen, and my leadership capability.  When it comes to career advancement, there’s no substitute for building a strong track record of achievement. Performance is the undeniabl...

Some leaders remain uncorrupted, despite the fact that they move into increasingly powerful positions. But there are others who, at every turn, leverage whatever power they have to further their own self-interest. A leader who abuses their power wasn’t corrupted by it: they’re just using the power they have, in a way that’s entirely consistent with the person they’ve always been. If you want to ta...

Your ability to give quality feedback is one of the biggest predictors of leadership success. But many leaders never master the art of difficult conversations.  Like many things in leadership, business, and life, nothing beats taking consistent, focused action.  In this Moment, I give you 6 tips to get you off the starting line, and build your confidence quickly.  If you want to tak...

You may think that you’re highly resilient, an expert at staying calm under pressure… but your team could be experiencing something completely different. They're the ones who see your lack of composure. If you panic, that leaks onto your team. And every minute they spend managing your mood is a minute they don't spend delivering results.  This is the final instalment in our 7-part series, rec...

When you hesitate on an important decision, it’s rarely due to missing data or insufficient consultation. It's more likely because you're afraid of getting it wrong. And as long as you delay, your people have to wait. There may be a whole string of decisions below you that can’t be made until you make yours… and if your people have to wait too long, they may just stop chasing you. This is Day 6 of...

One of your critical jobs as a leader is to absorb the ambiguity that you’re facing, and turn that into certainty for your people. If you can’t do that, your team will freeze; and a frozen team just looks like an underperforming team. This is Day 5 of a 7-part series, recut from a live workshop I ran called Stop Rescuing Your Underperformers . I'm looking at one leadership blind spot each day. The...

When you reward long hours, instead of rewarding the results that make a difference, you're paying for effort instead of value. You can't hold someone accountable for delivery, when you've never told them what's worth delivering. This is Day 4 of a 7-part series, recut from a live workshop I ran called Stop Rescuing Your Underperformers . I'm looking at one leadership blindspot each day. There's a...

When you rewrite one of your people's reports at 9pm, you're not just compensating for their weakness. You're reinforcing it. That report was their chance to learn how to do it properly. You took it on because you wanted it done right. This is Day 3 of a 7-part series, recut from a live workshop I ran called Stop Rescuing Your Underperformers . I'm looking at one leadership blind spot each day. Th...

When you have an underperformer on your team, but you haven’t given them specific performance feedback, you're reinforcing their underperformance.  They may think that no news is good news, and they don’t need to do anything different. This is Day 2 of a 7-part series, recut from a live workshop I ran called Stop Rescuing Your Underperformers . I’m looking at one leadership blind spot each da...

Somewhere on your team right now there's a person who isn't delivering. You thought of their name before you got to the end of that sentence. Over the next seven days, I'm going to show you they're probably not your problem. They're a symptom of it. This is Day 1 of a seven part series, recut from a live workshop I ran called Stop Rescuing Your Underperformers. One leadership blind spot a day, for...

When you feel swamped and overwhelmed, it’s easy to go home and kick the cat.  But if you learn to compartmentalise, you’ll find it much easier to leave the stress of work at work (and vice versa). In this Moment, I give you 3 tips to build greater resilience, by developing your compartmentalisation skills. If you want to take a deeper dive into how to compartmentalise successfully, have a li...

We asked 800 leaders one question. What's actually hard about leadership right now? The answers were so good we decided to answer them live. No prep. No script. Em fires the questions, and I get two minutes on each. These are real questions from real leaders in our free Skool community, the No Bullsh!t Leadership Hub (https://www.skool.com/nblh). 16 questions, 16 answers. And every one of them com...