The Leadership Enigma

Stuart Cash is the CEO and co-founder of Y TREE. This episode explores the meaning, value, purpose and myths surrounding money. Stuart grew up in London and studied law at Cambridge University spending a short period as a lawyer to then moved into investment banking as this fuelled his insatiable curiosity to know why businesses did things in certain ways.   During his early years with financial s...

Diana Markaki is the founder of The Boardroom , the first private members club for women executives who aspire to become board members. Diana is originally from Greece (Athens) and began her professional life as a corporate lawyer working in New York and London. After a number of years she decided to transition into business and secured her first board appointment at the age of 34. Diana actually...

Mohammed Qahtani is a World Champion in public speaking having won the Toastmaster's event competing against 30,000 people from 100 countries.   Mohammed was born and raised in Saudi Arabia and didn't speak until he was 5 years old. He used to stutter when talking and reading and he remembers a teacher smacking him across the face and asking him if he was stupid due to his inability to read out lo...

Nick Jonsson is the founder of the Executive Global Network (EGN) in South East Asia and author of 'Executive Loneliness.' Three CEO's during conversations for this podcast have used the phrase 'It's time to take the mask off', the issue of extreme vulnerability is very real. Nick began his career in advertising and has always had challenging and demanding jobs. His own personal struggles led him...

Tim Creswick is the founder and CEO of Vorboss , a telecommunications company which he set up 17 years ago and now employs over 400 people. He is also the newly appointed Chair of the Board of Directors at the Institute of Telecommunications Professionals. This is a courageous, vulnerable and inspiring episode of success,  challenge , divorce, therapy, mental health and never stopping in the pursu...

Carol Day is the Business Operations Manager for Stuart Pearce (former England Captain) and also spent over 14 years with the Football Association working with the England Men's Teams throughout a number of European and World Cup Competitions including Team GB during the London Olympics.  Mitchell Feldman is the co-founder and CMO of the award winning technology company Xrai Glass who are continui...

This week LaunchPod Studios pulled together a highlights episode featuring Stuart Pearce , former England Captain, World Cup hero, manager, coach and pundit. Jack Sullivan,  Director of West Ham United who have just won the Europa Conference League Trophy, Caroline Pill , Partner at Heidrick & Struggles and Mitchell Feldman who is a co-founder of Xrai Glass.   Enjoy this episode as an array of inc...

Welcome to an opportunity for you and I to chat and reflect on over 150 episodes from leaders all over the world.  In this short episode i take a moment to remember when and why I started The Leadership Enigma. Who knew after over 150 episodes we would be globally ranked, with one award, added to the MBA reading lists of prestigious business schools and recording all episodes from LaunchPod Studio...

Yulia Barnacova is a Metaverse, Web 3 and Gen AI Strategist at Accenture, a Ted X speaker and Microsoft MVP. As technology continues to change and adapt at the speed of thought, leaders and businesses also need to adapt and ensure that the speed of change externally does not exceed the speed of change internally.  Yulia is a technology experimenter and is always probing the art of the possible.  I...

Sapna Gopalakrishnan is Legal Counsel for one of the world's largest pharmaceutical companies. She got her dream job in early March 2019 and then everything changed as she almost lost her life and doctors gave her a 0-5% chance of survival.  Through a freak incident in 2019 in Mumbai, Sapna contracted Sepsis which is the body’s extreme response to an infection. It is a life-threatening medical eme...

Lady Indiraa has had three Top 10 singles in the UK Dance Charts. She is an amazingly compassionate Indian born, London bred electro pop sensation who broke into music in her 50's and is now proudly approaching her 65th birthday. Indiraa is all about 'Breaking the Mould' in an industry who uses Avatars for her music videos to mask the fact that she is of an age demographic that most listeners woul...

Jason Nash is a Chief Product Marketing Officer and former Product Manager for Microsoft CRM who presented on stage with Bill Gates in a world of digital transformation. One of the critical questions for leaders is how to proactively seek diversity of thought and ensure that our technology systems do not fall foul to the human tendencies for bias and fixed thinking? Jason explains that he has beco...

Neil Mullarkey is a comedian, author, co-founder of The Comedy Store Players with Mike Myers (Wayne's World, Austin Powers & Shrek) a regular on Whose Line Is It Anyway and member of the iconic Cambridge Footlights. This episode will make you smile and laugh out loud, something we could all do with more of.  Neil shares some incredible stories with me from the days of the Cambridge Footlights, hom...

Dr Verran Rose is a qualified psychiatrist, therapist and specialist in conscious breath work which allows her to help people identify and alleviate trauma in the body.  Verran is neurodiverse and grew up in a painful set of family circumstances that led to alcohol and drug addiction. Her passion for helping others and her ability of insight are extraordinary.  If leadership is your promise of a l...

Chandran Nair is the founder of The Global Institute for Tomorrow (GIFT), a leading Pan Asia Think Tank that explores and confronts 'The Inconvenient Truth' surrounding leadership and global existential issues facing us all.  Before the start of GIFT, Chandran led and grew Asia's largest environmental consultancy having lived and worked in a number of regions across the world.  Whilst you may or m...

Caroline Pill is a Partner at Heidrick & Struggles with a squiggly career from Law to Luxury. She was born in Antwerp and has lived and worked in London, New York, Shanghai, Amsterdam and Brussels.  At 18 years old Caroline felt overwhelmingly curious about life so decided to move to Brussels to begin her law studies which in turn took her to Yale Law School and then to working as a lawyer in one...

Jack Sullivan is a Director of West Ham United, son of David Sullivan (owner of West Ham), former Managing Director of West Ham Ladies and current entrepreneur including co-owner of  Supply Life.  Jack has always lived in a family of high achievement. His father is a well known business entrepreneur and owner of one of the most iconic London Premier League football clubs. At the age of 17 Jack was...

We all need a coach, even the best in the world! Nick Goldberg is the Founder and proud CEO of Ezra Coaching and Sinead Keenan is a psychologist, behavioural scientist and the Chief Innovation Officer and Head of Ezra Labs.  One of the questions Nick and Sinead are working on is how they can democratise coaching for all, not just the elite and successful?  Nick suffered imposter syndrome when he f...

Stuart Pearce MBE (aka Psycho) is a former England football player, captain, manager, coach and current pundit for Talk Sport. For many Stuart is fondly remembered for his role at clubs such as Manchester City, West Ham United, Newcastle United and Nottingham Forest under the leadership of the iconic Brian Clough. Stuart was also an integral part of the England Team during the 1990 World Cup and 1...

Richard Newman is a global keynote speaker, best-selling author and CEO of Body Talk. Everyone's voice is needed in the world, so this week we ask, how do you have an impact when you communicate and importantly how do you overcome the anxiety of public speaking.  For many, the fear of public speaking is many places above the fear of death! 'If you are asked to deliver the eulogy, you might prefer...

Mitchell Feldman is the CMO of the brand new start up XRAI Glass who are focused on 'Subtitling the World' and have been shortlisted for several high profile awards.  Mitchell is a serial entrepreneur and remembers fondly his late mother typing on her old computer keyboard using the modem coupler which inspired Mitchell to explore the power of computing and tech from an early age. Mitchell left sc...

Dr Steven MacGregor is an engineer with a PhD in Design Thinking, an Honorary Professor, author and external consultant for McKinsey & Company. Steven has helped improve the workplace health and sustainable leadership of tens of thousands of professionals worldwide at organisations.  Steven and I share an experience from Stanford University d.school and the power of Radical Collaboration and multi...

Sue Conder is an occupational psychologist, business change expert and former partner at Deloitte with over 30 years of experience in people leadership and large organisational change solutions. Sue became fascinated with psychology in her early years when working in a library. Big change programmes need to focus on the people dimension of change and the leaders role to bring vision and clarity to...

Oliver Percovich is the founder of Skateistan which won the Oscar in 2020 for best documentary and a BAFTA. Oliver's story is an amazing example of how one person can create a movement for real change.  Oliver is an Australian who decided to go to Kabul with his girlfriend in 2007 with nothing more than a bag of clothes and 3 skateboard decks.  In 2009, Oliver founded Skateistan, which initially o...

Dr Katie Best is an author, academic, leadership coach and consultant working with leaders on their messiest problems.  Her passion for leadership stems from the role leaders have in creating a world better led for humanity as a whole. Leaders need to find the balance between the here and now with the need to have great foresight and vision. We all have the ability to lead, regardless of role and...