Beyond Leading

with Alec Pearson. Before you start setting targets and making plans for 2027, how much have you really learned from 2026? For some leaders, it's been a successful year. For others, a considerably tougher one. But do the results tell the whole story? In this episode of Beyond Leading, Alec Pearson challenges senior leaders and business owners to look beyond the numbers and reflect on the decisions...

with Alec Pearson and Jude Jennison. What does a horse know about leadership? Quite a lot, as it turns out. Jude Jennison works with senior leaders and executive teams using a herd of horses to expose something that's much harder to see in the meeting room: our default patterns of behaviour. A horse doesn't care about your job title, experience or intentions. It responds to what you're actually co...

with Alec Pearson and Claire Ryan. A business can be successful and still reach a point where the way it has always worked is no longer enough. The systems may be creaking. Too much may still depend on the owner. Different parts of the business may be working in isolation. And now AI is adding another layer of pressure — and another set of decisions. So how do you know when the business needs to c...

with Alec Pearson. What happens when everyone follows the process, does exactly what they are supposed to do, and the problem still isn’t solved? That is where ownership gets interesting. In this episode Alec Pearson explores what happens when responsibility is spread across teams, functions and organisations, but nobody is truly accountable for the outcome. A recent experience with a serious mech...

with Alec Pearson. What happens when everyone around the leadership table has a perfectly reasonable case and the business still can’t move? Sales wants growth. Finance wants to protect cash. Operations is already stretched. HR is looking at capability. Risk wants stronger controls. Nobody is obviously wrong, but that is precisely the problem. Alec explores one of the harder realities of senior le...

with Alec Pearson, Joseph McGuire. Joseph McGuire has spent a career learning to read people — three decades as a therapist before moving into executive communication, behavioural profiling and leadership development. Through his company, Clearsight Communications, he now helps leaders understand human behaviour, build trust, and hear what's really being said. We tend to think communication is abo...

with Alec Pearson and Dr Calvin Lightbody. In Part 1, Alec and Calvin took apart the comfortable version of wellbeing - the fruit bowls, the tick-box initiatives - and named the warning signs leaders are so good at driving past. This time it gets personal. Because there's a harder question sitting underneath all of it: what's really happening to the high achiever who keeps pushing long after the t...

with Alec Pearson and Dr Calvin Lightbody. Every organisation says it takes wellbeing seriously. The fruit bowl, the yoga session, the mindfulness app someone signed everyone up to. And yet the people carrying the most keep quietly running on empty. Not because the perks aren't pleasant, but because almost none of it touches the thing that's actually wearing them down. What if most of what your or...

with Alec Pearson. After 19 honest conversations with leaders, founders and coaches working in very different worlds, the same themes kept appearing. Questions about identity, energy, trust, change and what really happens when leadership becomes personal. Why do some leaders know exactly what needs to change, yet still do nothing about it? And what are the questions that leadership keeps asking, r...

with Alec Pearson, Tiffany David and Graham Da Costa Change is no longer a one-off event, it's the constant backdrop of working life. New technology, shifting client expectations, the rise of AI. And yet most change programmes still fail. Not because the strategy was wrong, but because of something far more human. What if the real problem is that your people don't think there's a problem at all? Y...

with Nick Sellers, Tiffany Barnard and Ellen Putz. In this episode of Beyond Leading, Nick Sellers takes the host's chair and is joined by Tiffany Barnard and Ellen Putz. The topic: team leadership. And the conversation goes a lot further than the textbook version. Because the way teams are led has changed. The old hierarchical, fear-based, command-and-control playbook is being replaced by somethi...

with Alec Pearson and Lucy Nicholson, Registered Somatic Movement Educator and Movement Analyst. In this episode of Beyond Leading, we explore an approach to leadership that most people have never come across, and once you hear it, you will not be able to unsee it. Somatic leadership. Most leadership development focuses on what we think, what we say and how we behave. Very little focuses on what o...

with Alec Pearson, Nick Sellers and Tiffany Barnard. In this episode of Beyond Leading, we tackle something every leader, manager and professional quietly struggles with, but rarely talks about honestly - Procrastination. This conversation challenges some of the most common assumptions people make about why they put things off. It is not about laziness. It is not about poor time management. And it...

with Alec Pearson and Rich Carter, Chief Growth Officer and President of Advanced Programs at Albers Aerospace. In this episode of Beyond Leading, we sit down with a leader who operates at the sharp end of one of the most fast-moving, high-stakes industries in the world: aerospace and defence. The world leaders are operating in right now is faster, more complex and more unpredictable than anything...

with Alec Pearson, Tiffany David and Graham Da Costa. Emotional intelligence. Two words that have been talked about, trained, workshopped and plastered on LinkedIn until they mean almost nothing. So why are we talking about it? Because most of what you've heard about EQ only scratches the surface. It isn't a personality type. And it definitely isn't something you either have or you don't. In this...

with Alec Pearson, Tiffany Barnard and Nick Sellers. In this episode of Beyond Leading, we explore a question that sits at the heart of leadership, growth and change: Can we gain from pain? When does discomfort lead to progress, and when does it simply wear us down? How much of what we call “pain” is really fear, stretch, uncertainty or anticipation? And what happens when the very thing we are avo...

with Alec Pearson, Nick Sellers and Gemma Dawe. When you hear “starting a business during Covid”, it’s easy to assume it was a brave leap. But sometimes it isn’t a leap at all, it’s being kicked off a cliff and choosing to build on the way down. In this episode Alec and Nick speak to Gemma, a business owner who launched a specialist relocation and buying-agent service in September 2020, right in t...

with Alec Pearson. In this solo episode, Alec reflects on something many leaders are quietly feeling but struggling to name - why leadership feels heavier, even when nothing is technically “wrong”. Drawing on his recent Aftershock Era series on The Strategic Leader on Substack, Alec explores how accumulated pressure, rather than dramatic crisis, is shaping decision-making, energy and strategic cla...

with Alec Pearson, Tiffany David and Graham Da Costa. When pressure hits, most of us think we’re responding logically. But often, something else is running the show. In this episode Alec is joined for the first time by R Tiffany David and Graham Da Costa to explore what happens internally when stress builds, decisions feel heavier, and that familiar inner voice starts to comment on everything we d...

with Alec Pearson, Tiffany Barnard and Nick Sellers. Relevance is a question many people don’t ask until something shifts. A role changes. Technology accelerates. Expectations move, quietly at first, and suddenly what once felt solid doesn’t anymore. In this episode Alec, Nick and Tiffany have a candid conversation about relevance, not as a buzzword, but as a lived experience in today’s workplace...

with Alec Pearson, Lizzie Cousins and Chelsea Dickinson. In this episode, Alec Pearson speaks to Lizzie Cousins and Chelsea Dickinson from C&D Debt Recovery to uncover how a moment that could have stopped their careers instead sparked a bold new chapter. After finding themselves redundant, Lizzie and Chelsea took a leap many think about but few commit to — building a business of their own. Wha...

with Alec Pearson, Ellen Putz and Nick Sellers. In this episode, Alec is joined by Nick Sellers and owner of EP Talent Search and Executive Coach Ellen Putz, from the Netherlands, to explore the real and often hidden pressures of leading from the top. In this conversation we explore: Why imposter syndrome shows up even when you wear the CEO title How leaders handle the pressure to appear confident...

with Alec Pearson, Nick Sellers and Tiffany Barnard. In this episode, we explore why patience — something we’re taught to value — can sometimes get in the way of progress. We look at the moments where waiting becomes hesitation, where caution becomes procrastination, and where leaders unintentionally stall their own momentum. In this conversation, we explore: The fine line between patience and pro...

with Alec Pearson. As we step into 2026, many leaders aren’t lacking ambition — they’re carrying sustained pressure. Motivation has dipped. Clarity feels harder to access. And simply pushing harder no longer works. In this short solo episode, Alec Pearson invites you to pause before you plan. Not to retreat — but to reset how you lead. Drawing on recent conversations with senior leaders and his ow...

with Alec Pearson, Harrison Ward and Nick Sellers. In this episode, Alec and Nick are joined by Harrison Ward — known to many as Fell Foodie — whose journey from addiction and depression to hiking, outdoor cooking and public advocacy has inspired thousands. We delve into the real story behind his transformation: the hidden struggles, the turning point that changed everything, and the steady, inten...