Leadership Behind the Scenes

Self-trust expands when you stop trying to be perfect and start trusting yourself to adjust. In this episode, I explore why the pressure to "get it right" often stems from fear and how releasing that pressure can help you build deeper self-trust. Humans are wired for survival, which makes us naturally fearful; but most modern leadership challenges are not about life-or-death situations. When we’re...

If you want to unlock your full potential, you have to be willing to take risks, try new things, and sometimes get it "wrong". After almost two years away, I'm back with new content for Leadership Behind the Scenes! In this episode I reflect on why I left the podcast to focus on Female Inner Power—and why coming back now feels so right. This episode is all about the power of experimentation. I sha...

It’s the final episode! After three and a half years the Leadership Behind the Scenes podcast is coming to an end. But I’m definitely not going anywhere – a brand new podcast is coming! (And the Leadership Behind the Scenes episodes will continue to be available, so you can still go back and listen to earlier ones). The Female Inner Power podcast: inspiration from strong women leaders is launching...

What does ‘playing small’ mean?  It means being less than what is possible for you. We can all get complacent as we get older. At school we get used to relying on others tell us how or where to grow, but there are fewer expectations on us to grow and develop once we leave school. Unless we challenge and motivate ourselves to grow, there’s no guarantee that we’ll keep expanding. When we’re not...

How often do you praise yourself? Compliment yourself? Point out all the things you admire about yourself?  Or are you afraid of being ‘full of yourself’? Getting complacent? Most people love getting great feedback from others. But what about from yourself? Why does praising yourself make you a better leader? In this episode I share three reasons why praising yourself is an important element...

Do you like to feel like you’re in control? What do you fear might happen if you’re not in control? Are you holding life tightly – and shutting yourself off from surprises and new possibilities, ideas, innovations? Our world is fast. As we’ve learned over the past couple of years, anything could happen at any moment. We can’t control what’s on the outside of us. But we can learn to feel in control...

If you’re part of an executive team, where does your loyalty lie within your company or organisation? Do you think of yourself as head of your department first? Or as an executive team member? In this episode I talk about how when leaders think of themselves FIRST AND FOREMOST as senior leadership team members, everything shifts and the whole team becomes more productive and impactful. Because you...

Why is forgiveness important in leadership? Forgiveness is often something that’s kept for therapy, not the workplace. So what’s the connection? When you’re holding a grudge or you’re angry at a previous boss or organisation for a past situation (such as the way something was handled, redundancy, being passed over for promotion, unfair dismissal) feeling sad, angry or disappointed is a normal resp...

Why do some people seem to love their life so much more than others – no matter what it looks like? In my experience there are four very simple things you can do to start loving your life more, even if it’s not perfect.  1. Tell yourself you love your life Find your happiness from the inside out: what you tell yourself has a huge impact on whether you love your life or not.  2. Be presen...

What do you do when you need answers and can’t find them? Perhaps answers to big life questions. Or just answers that will help get you through the day or onto the next stage. When you can’t find an answer, what do you do? Questions and answers come from very different energy; the frequency of an answer will be very different from the frequency of a question. So to receive an answer you have to sh...

There’s often an assumption that if you’re employed, your organisation will tell you ( or even teach you) everything you need to learn. But a lot of the learning we need is deeply personal and depending on your organisation they might offer something appropriate or not. And some organisations offer nothing at all. It’s all too easy to get complacent, lazy, reactive with your own learning journey....

Anger can be helpful. It can move us into action. Like all emotions, it’s healthy to let ourselves feel it, not squash it down.  But what about the anger that doesn’t go away? Staying mad doesn’t serve us, and it can be toxic to hang on to anger.  So what can we do? In this episode I talk through my process for releasing anger and moving forward. You can just listen – or, if you’re exper...

Do you avoid having awkward conversations? As a leader, what comes to mind when you think about, for example, making someone redundant?  I’ve had so many leaders ask me “ What if they cry? ” or “ What if I open a can of worms and don’t know what to do? ” In this episode, I tell the story of what happened when I coached one large retail organisation through massive organisational change, and I shar...

What happens when women brag? Have you noticed how women often connect around the lowest common denominator? Even underplay and undersell themselves to each other?  There’s a good reason for that. Throughout history, woman have needed each other for safety and survival. So outshining other women never felt like a good idea – it seemed safer not to shine than be fully in our power.  But by doing th...

“ I’m so busy. I don’t have time to think !” Whenever one of my clients says that, my alarm bells go off.  Because if that’s your belief, you are probably overwhelmed, lost in the weeds and you can no longer see what’s important. And if you’re saying that you don’t have time to think, you’re probably spending your time doing all the wrong things.  In this episode we explore the questions...

When something seems difficult, we easily spend oceans of time thinking about it, procrastinating, building it up in our head… So much energy and time wasted. Mostly, much more time & energy than what it would have taken to just do the thing or to have the conversation! But there’s a magic trick for this. For making everything easier. Whether it’s a work task, a conversation, a  new habit you...

What does good work/life balance really look like? In this episode I dispel some of the myths around work/life balance, and talk about four key ideas to take on board if you want to achieve extraordinary results in life and work ‒ without getting burned out. 1. Balance is not static. The things you need to prioritise, and the time you need to spend on them, will fluctuate day to day, week to week,...

Would you like a boss who gets the very best out of you? A boss who makes you feel confident, be courageous and show up radiantly, while having a massive impact and creating all the right results? (And not just for the short term, but for the long term. And it being in full integrity with who you are and what you want to create in your life.) Sound good? In this episode I talk about how to become...

So you're trying to figure out how to find and choose a coach? Maybe you've had coaching in the past, and it didn’t feel like a good fit. Maybe you've never had coaching.  Now you're wondering how you will know if someone is a good coach for you. It's a big leap, and it's a big investment (whether it's your company's money or your own), so you want to make sure you choose the right coach for...

If you want to have an impact, whether as a leader who is employed, or whether you're running your own business, how to inspire and be inspiring is incredibly important.  So often clients come to me wanting some quick tricks and tips on how to to be inspiring and how to inspire others. People show up saying, “Tell me the steps I need to know to be inspiring! Is there a book I can read? How do...

What’s the most common block to trusting and following your intuition?  When you have a strong intuition, you are more powerful, you make decisions more confidently, and you make them faster. You're not so reliant on others; you are more tapped into your inner power. It's just more joyful, and there's more ease. You can trust yourself in your decision making process. And that feels...

Are you connecting with your peers? Do you support and challenge them? Are you inviting their connection, support and challenge in return? How can you leverage powerful peer support in your life? In this episode I dive into your most undervalued resource in terms of future career success: your peers. And share three reasons why you really want to look at your peer relationships if you want to have...

When you don't have inner power, it's like you are at the mercy of whatever is going on around you. Your confidence and your feelings about who you are in the world plummet. But when the power is inside of you and you can tap into it, you can feel your power, no matter what goes on around you. There are plenty of people who manage to be successful, that don't do their inner work. Bu...

It’s a year since COVID began in the UK. It’s been a tough year for some, an amazing year for others, and for many a year of ups and downs. But there have been so many really rich learnings from this time. In this episode I share my learnings from the year of COVID. As you listen, I’d like you to notice which lessons are true for you - and what else have you learned or noticed about yourself? For...

You’ve noticed a colleague might need some help with something. Maybe they’ve missed something or haven’t spotted a problem that’s obvious to you. You know you can help! You have the answer. But when you offer your help, they don’t thank you for it - and they ignore your advice. You wonder where you’re going wrong. Maybe you start to think you had better just stop trying to help your colleagues. ...