Leading with integrity: Leadership talk

The descent down a mountain is often more dangerous than the climb to the summit. There is, of course, a metaphor for leadership and your career here and to explain how that fits together, I'm joined by my next guest, James Miller II. James tells us about his journey from a farm in Indiana to successful CEO and board advisor. We talk about embracing failures, the loneliness that comes with leaders...

What are some of the warning signs that you can be looking out for as a leader that your people maybe aren't doing so well? What can you reasonably do to support the health and wellness of those people that you lead? This week my guest is Vicky Midwood, human performance strategist and creator of the Whole Human Method, helping business owners and leaders to understand how their body, brain, ident...

Why might it be a good idea to think twice before you have that breakfast beer at the airport on a business trip? Or avoid the glass of wine the night before a big presentation? And how that extrapolates to an alcohol free life and the performance advantage you could gain are the central topic this week as I'm joined by founder of Clear Edge 90, Fred Auzenne, to share his journey from counterintel...

Ever feel like you're stuck on a hamster wheel in business, career or life? My guest on Leading with Integrity this week is Peter Boolkah, Coach, Bestselling Author and creator of The Hamster Wheel Trap®. We'll be talking about why success so often costs your freedom, what to do about it and how Peter helps founders/leaders create effective businesses and teams that work without them. We also chat...

Accountability is a word we throw around a lot in leadership and management, but few of us stop to think about what it actually means and how it looks when we get it right (although it's pretty easy to identify what it doesn't look like...). This week on Leading with Integrity I'm joined by Marc 'M.K.' Hoffman, author of 'Rant: The true story of one individual's campaign against the big banks in a...

I didn't plan it this way, but as a happy accident for the 250th episode this week, my conversation with Brian Beck was a fun opportunity to talk about two of my favourite things: we kicked off with some nostalgia, reminiscing about our earliest gaming experiences, from playing Zaxxon on the Commodore 64 (that's right kids, we remember when video games used to come on cassette tape ...) through Ha...

Productivity, rightly or wrongly, gets a lot of attention in the field of management (and leadership). As do efficiency, effectiveness, prioritisation, etc. So this week on Leading with Integrity I'm joined by Abigail Barnes, productivity and procrastination expert, to talk about all of these words and more as well as, crucially, what they each mean, how to do them and what effective leadership is...

If you've never heard of NLP, or if you have but you don't know what it means, or if you know exactly what it means but you want to learn more about it, then this is the right episode for you. Because we're going to hear all about it from this week's wonderful guest, Vanda Varga. Vanda also shares her journey from neural rehabilitation to becoming the Tour Guide to Your Mind, we explore how NLP ca...

What if the reason you're burnt out isn't about your personal resilience? This is the question being explored in this episode of Leading with Integrity, as I'm joined by my next guest, Ashley Gibson. Ashley is a psychotherapist and former marketing executive, she is a Licensed Resident in Counseling and the Founder of Meaning in Practice, as well as being an expert on burnout and identifying the p...

Here's a potentially surprising concept for you: great leaders are a lot like great teachers; curious, adaptable, focused on helping others feel seen, heard and trusted so they can think boldly and do their best work. This week Dr Katie Trowbridge joins me to discuss this parallel between great teachers and effective leaders. We talk about the 'thought crisis' and why valuing thinking in the workp...

Do you truly understand your people? Or any people? How well you understand human nature and how people work both as groups and individuals is an aspect of leadership we regularly touch on, but rarely is it a lesson learned through such a unique set of experiences or such highly demanding circumstances as the ones we'll be hearing about this week. Because my guest is recently retired FBI Agent and...

What is it about a workplace, a company or an employer that makes you feel like you fit in, like the culture is the one for you? For a lot of people, it's down to trust, and you can easily make the argument that this where a good culture begins. I'm joined by employment law & culture strategist, Natalie Holder to help unpack what good and bad cultures look like, the signs to look for and what...

This week we're exploring the journey of the first time leader as I'm joined by Benas Leonavicius, a founder currently growing his first business, hiring and leading a team for the first time. Benas shares his journey from freelancer to founder, we talk about his technical expertise in SEO and about his company, a personal branding agency called Avium. Benas is very candid about his journey and th...

When was the last time you truly connected with someone without having your phone in your hand? Whether that be virtual or in person, it's a question a lot of people struggle to answer. We're going to tackle this and other questions about connection and community in this week's episode of Leading with Integrity; and if you don't know what a 'third space' is, then listen now to find out! To help (b...

What's one thing that links our health, stress, productivity an even happiness at work? The answer may surprise you (it did me)... There's been a recurring theme of health, mental health & wellbeing this year on Leading with Integrity, and this week we're continuing that trend from a slightly different angle as I chat with Amanda Whitehead, founder of Purposefully Nourished and expert in nutri...

What's your North Star? What values or principles guide you as an individual and (by extension) in your career or business? Not having clarity on these can make every work decision more complicated and difficult. Sounds simple, but it's not always so easy and perhaps this is why so many of us struggle with it, especially when first starting out. Enter this week's guest on Leading with Integrity, F...

What does 'AI' look like when it's implemented well? What are the benefits to businesses and (more importantly) the end user? To help us try to find the answers, this week I'm joined by Patrick Bell, an AI transformation partner and doctoral AI researcher. We (mostly Patrick) dissect the operational friction behind corporate artificial intelligence adoption, why so many technical rollouts fail int...

A key topic of this week's episode is sustainability in fashion, fair to say, I'm about the least fashion-conscious person you know. So I'm opening this description with a thank you to this week's guest, Lacey Cadieux-McLean, for 1. patiently answering my silly questions on the subject, and 2. teaching me quite a few things I didn't know and had never thought about when it comes to something as si...

Today we're testing a few of the assumptions of entrepreneurship and leadership, from "fail fast" to "leaders have all the answers" and more, we might even be debunking and refuting some of these ideas, and discussing why they're actually a little bit toxic. I'm joined by guest, Joel Miller, co-founder (with his twin brother) of The Sky Floor, LLC. A marketing agency of two, which has a slightly c...

If your team's definition of productivity requires running on empty while ignoring or stigmatising health (mental or otherwise), it’s time to rewrite the rulebook! This week I have a conversation with Lesley Waldron that completely reframes how we look at health at work. Lesley is a fantastic health coach tackling the oft-ignored realities of workplace wellness head-on. We discuss the critical gap...

This week, my guest is Kurt Bush, a leadership coach and podcaster, and he shares some thoughts on the often-overlooked aspects of leadership, from understanding trauma to the differing challenges of leading volunteers and employees. And from the all-too-common struggle with the inner critic to more intentional decisions. We also talk about authenticity, alignment and core values in leadership, pr...

Personal development is an undervalued defence against burnout, it's also one of the keys to self-efficacy, which we'll be hearing more about in today's episode of Leading with Integrity because my guest is Mickey Fitch-Collins, human skills specialist, leadership development expert and self-efficacy advocate. We'll be discussing the meaning and importance of self-efficacy, professional developmen...

One of the things I wish I'd started doing earlier is building networks. Particularly ones full of supportive, people-oriented people. Early in my career I was, at best, suspicious of the term 'networking' because I didn't really understand the concept and thought it was just a pushy sales thing... So imagine my surprise when I first joined ONLE Networking! It's the complete opposite of every bad...

A lot of the time, the biggest challenge in a company is trying to balance the many competing priorities and as leader-managers in those businesses, we've probably all faced those frustrating trade-offs, like how do I systemize without losing people's buy-in and engagement? One key way is to involve those people in defining the way you do things, and we'll hear more examples in today's conversatio...

Are you leading a stressed out team? Are you a stressed leader? Do you operate in a stressful workplace? If you answered 'yes' to any of these, give this episode a listen, because I'm talking with Fire Captain and Author Mark Andrew as he shares insights from his 30+ years in firefighting and paramedicine, including what it's like to lead in high-stress environments and some strategies for managin...