LevelUp Leadership | Executive Coaching, AI and Management

Learn how to develop genuine leadership judgement in younger people without removing the formative experiences that build it. AI is removing the grunt work that once taught people how organisations actually function. That is useful, but it carries a cost: we risk producing technically capable people who lack the judgement to know when and why to use the tools they have. This episode, timed for Wor...

Learn how to protect your specialist offer from market pressure before commercial logic forces you to become indistinguishable from every competitor. Most businesses do not decide to abandon what makes them special. Market pressure makes that decision for them, gradually and without fanfare. In this solo episode, Lee uses the story of a coffee shop that moved from syphon to French press to flat wh...

Discover how to support at-risk employees through early intervention and better leadership conversations. This episode tackles one of the most difficult leadership realities: how to respond when someone in your team is struggling with their mental health or at risk. Steve Phillip shares practical ways leaders can act earlier, handle difficult conversations, and avoid unintended harm. The conversat...

Learn how to identify the real bottleneck in your organisation and stop wasting resource on activity that looks like progress but compounds the problem. Most organisations under pressure do more of what is visible rather than what is actually constraining performance. In this solo episode, Lee introduces the Theory of Constraints and explains why well-intentioned effort, extra headcount, bigger ca...

Learn how to use deliberately contrasting podcast content to sharpen your leadership judgement and challenge the beliefs that are quietly limiting your growth. If every podcast you listen to already agrees with you, your thinking isn't growing, it's just being confirmed. This episode recommends three shows with contrasting styles and philosophies, because the friction between them is where...

Learn how to diagnose the real drivers of underperformance and build the conditions that produce lasting results. When performance is lagging, most leaders jump straight to managing outputs: reviewing numbers, setting tighter expectations, and increasing reporting. This episode challenges that instinct and draws a clear line between performance as an outcome and the conditions that shape it. Lee c...

Learn how to separate decision quality from outcome quality so you can lead with confidence, build a process you can defend, and stop letting hindsight rewrite your record. A well-reasoned decision can still produce a poor outcome. When it does, two powerful psychological biases, outcome bias and hindsight bias, distort how you and everyone around you evaluate what happened. The result is a narrat...

Discover how to reframe a hidden difficulty as the source of your strongest leadership capability, and what it means for the neurodiverse talent on your team. Every year on the third Thursday of May, Global Accessibility Awareness Day asks a direct question: who is being left out by the way we design things? This episode takes that question into the workplace and makes it personal. Lee shares the...

Find out how to identify vanity productivity in your organisation and build a culture that rewards genuine collective value over quick, visible wins. The 'work smarter, not harder' image is a leadership fixture. But the person rolling a stone ball didn't find a smarter method; they destroyed a useful block, generated waste, and left the consequences for others. That pattern, prioritisi...

Global Accessibility Awareness Day is on 21 May. I'm Lee, a dyslexic author and leadership coach, and I'm dedicating a full episode of LevelUp Leadership to the topic closest to my heart: how AI has made reading, writing, and leadership accessible to me in ways I never thought possible. The full episode drops in time for GAAD on 21 May. Follow the podcast now so you don't miss it, and...

Learn how to diagnose and redesign team structure so your groups consistently outperform collections of individual talent. Most leaders coach the individual when the real problem is the group. Dr Colin Fisher, Associate Professor at UCL School of Management and author of The Collective Edge, argues that composition, goals, tasks, and norms determine team performance far more than the talent of the...

Learn how to lead long-term organisational change without letting visible progress anxiety override the foundational work that actually makes it stick. When someone asks how long your transformation will take, the honest answer might be 'I don't know.' This episode explores why that answer can reflect strong leadership rather than a weak strategy. Lee unpacks the difference between mea...

Learn how to build a team where different strengths are a feature, not a problem, using the principles that make great jazz bands consistently outperform groups of equally talented individuals. Most organisations build teams as if similarity is a strength. Dr. Colin Fisher, Associate Professor at UCL School of Management and author of The Collective Edge , argues the opposite: difference is the po...

Learn how to lead courageous conversations that clear tension, sharpen performance, and build a culture where honesty becomes the norm. Most leaders know the conversations they're avoiding. The unaired tension with a colleague, the performance truth that keeps getting softened, the feedback that's been delayed so long it's almost irrelevant. This episode examines McKinsey's 2026 ar...

Learn how to delegate decision-making rights without creating dependency or losing accountability across your organisation. If every decision in your organisation requires your sign-off, you haven't built a team, you've built a dependency. Lee and returning guest Chris March cover why leaders struggle to let go, how to set clear delegation frameworks, and where decision authority should ac...

Find out how to manage shadow AI in your organisation before it becomes a data and compliance risk. A pulse survey of over 40 professionals revealed that 90.7% are already using AI at work, yet only 12.8% are using officially approved tools. Nearly 70% are unsure whether their tools are sanctioned, and 59% simply do not care. Microsoft and Gartner data confirm this is not a niche problem: it is a...

Learn how to improve leadership communication and build the critical thinking habits needed to make better strategic decisions in this episode preview. Many leaders rush decisions and rely on assumptions, which increases execution risk. By slowing down and applying rigorous critical thinking, you can improve your strategic judgement. This short preview highlights three foundational habits for exec...

Learn how to use productivity frameworks and specialised applications to eliminate administrative friction and reclaim your mental energy. SUMMARY Leadership is not merely about philosophy; it is about the practical management of one's own output. While free tools provide a solid foundation for those starting out, scaling your impact often requires a transition to more robust, specialised syst...

Learn how to spot and correct passive leadership before it quietly dismantles your team's performance and wellbeing. This episode explores the hidden costs of disengaged leadership in an AI-driven world and why doing nothing can often be more damaging than making the wrong move. Lee unpacks the research behind passive and laissez-faire leadership, from the British Journal of Management to Fron...

Learn how to use mediation as an early intervention tool to resolve workplace conflict, rebuild communication, and retain your best people before a dispute becomes a crisis. Most leaders only think about conflict resolution when things have already broken down. In this episode, Lee speaks with Alice Matthews, Chief Executive of Mediation Plus, about how to use mediation to reduce workplace grievan...

Learn how to escape decision overload and why chasing more projects, more initiatives, and more ideas can quietly erode your impact as a leader. Research on the 'less-is-better' effect shows that people often value a smaller, higher-quality set of items more than a larger, mixed-quality one, because our brains default to simple, easy-to-judge cues rather than raw quantity. The same pattern shows u...

Learn how to use AI without losing your ability to think. This episode explores the concept of metacognition: the discipline of thinking about your own thinking. Discover how overreliance on AI can create 'plastic thinking' - work that looks sharp but lacks depth - and how leaders can reclaim the reflective edge that fuels real judgement. You’ll hear about a simple but powerful technique called th...

Learn how to design your leadership with empathy and foresight, transforming small frustrations into seamless experiences. Explore how leaders can anticipate their team's challenges, remove hidden friction, and build trust through thoughtful, context-aware support. This episode breaks down three core principles of intentional leadership: contextual empathy, frictionless support, and implicit trust...

Learn how to use neuroscience, storytelling, and the psychology of attention to lead more effectively, communicate with greater impact, and stop multitasking from quietly destroying your team's productivity. Most leadership communication is forgettable. In this episode, Lee speaks with Alex Moffat, a keynote speaker and former Fortune 500 leader who spent three decades as a professional magici...

Learn how to turn process ownership into AI fluency and make your leadership bionic. This episode builds on the conversation with Gabriel Milland and the McKinsey report on domain leaders: the missing link between AI strategy and real business value. Find out how the ‘three Cs’ of clarity, capabilities, and capture work as a practical framework for leaders navigating AI transformation. You’ll hear...