No Bullsh!t Leadership

Your top talent doesn't always quit because they're unhappy. Often, they simply can’t see what their next move is. And if that’s the case, it’s not their fault: it’s yours! Every leader I talk to at the moment is obsessed with retention; it feels like it's getting harder for them to hold onto their top performers. Job tenures are declining, but the averages often mask the real story.  In this...

Most job interviews are just friendly chats. They don’t provide any real due diligence. Making the right hiring choice requires a lot more than résumés and reference checks. Even personality profiling has limited utility. If you want to work out whether someone can actually do the job , you need to get good at interviewing. If you want to reduce the risk of hiring a dud, have a listen to Ep.379: I...

Meetings can be a political minefield, and most leaders rely purely on their instinct to get by: which means they get it wrong more often than they realise. This episode cuts through the noise on one of the most deceptively complex leadership skills: knowing when to talk and when to shut up. It sounds simple, but It isn't: and The Economist 's "Babble Hypothesis" proves why getting the balance wro...

Leadership might be hard, but there’s nothing you can’t master with application and discipline. This is why the toughest challenge is often just convincing yourself to start. In this Moment, I show you exactly how to overcome the comfort of inaction, and push yourself to do the things that will ultimately pay off. I don’t care if you’re an introvert, or if you get anxiety… this is about realising...

When we think about high-performing teams, we assume they have superior strategies and top-class talent. But one characteristic we often overlook is pace. And pace doesn’t happen organically: it takes a leader to build momentum into the culture. The best teams have a relentless drive to get things done; a bias for action that cuts through everything they do. A team that has momentum feels entirely...

Team building exercises don’t build teams. Only leadership does. If you’re thinking about investing in time away from the office, think again. These days don’t move the needle on team dynamics, trust, or performance. If you dislike someone before the paintball game, you'll still dislike them after it. So by all means, take your team out for some fun. Just don't mistake it for culture change. For p...

Have you ever sat in a meeting about AI, nodded along, then thought, "I've got no idea what they're talking about, and I'm meant to be leading this"? If so, you're in good company. In this episode, I chat with Em and AI expert James Killick to answer the question every leader is quietly asking. In 2026, does AI get you promoted, or replaced? Here's the truth. AI isn't coming for leaders. It's comi...

Virtually every leader likes to talk about empowering their team. But if you were to ask 10 of them what empowerment actually means, you’d get 11 different answers.  Over the years, the concept of empowerment has been dumbed down to make it vague and aspirational.  True empowerment is neither of those things. It's a core driver of performance, and in this Moment, I give you my number one...

Talented jerks and people who game the system just need to go.  The value they bring through their technical skill is massively outweighed by the damage they do to the rest of the team. You can't motivate them.  You can't inspire them.  You can't lift them. So stop trying! Because while you hold onto the person destroying your culture, your good people are quietly working out that t...

Your best people know they have plenty of options, so if they don’t feel the work they’re doing is valuable, challenging, and impactful, it doesn't matter how much you pay them.  In this Moment, I give you 5 things you need to do to keep them. For practical tips on how to hold onto your talent, have a listen to Ep.101: Keeping the Ones You’ve Got ———————— Is your team performing at the standa...

Most leaders DREAD the formal performance review; because they don’t prepare and they don’t know what to expect. Today I go deep on how to control the dialogue, so that your review becomes a career accelerator, rather than a spirited defense of your failings. Let’s face it: you know your performance hasn’t been perfect, so it’s easy to agonise over how your boss might evaluate you. This makes it t...

Empathy is a critical leadership capability: without it, you’ll never get the best out of your people.  But if you’re not strong enough to hold the standard, that empathy will blow up in your face. Empathy builds trust; sympathy destroys performance. For practical tips on how to stay out of the sympathy zone, have a listen to Ep.135: When Empathy Becomes Sympathy ———————— Have you taken our f...

Most leaders think high turnover is a retention problem. But it’s not; it's a leadership problem. And the fix is the exact opposite of what most leaders do. Staff turnover is still widely misunderstood. And most leaders operate from a place of fear, responding to it defensively. They tiptoe around their people, lower the standards, and tolerate poor performance so they don't rock the boat. But, ir...

If you think great leaders don't need to be great managers, you've probably got a blindspot…and it's costing you more than you know. To lift performance, you have to put desirable leadership attributes aside, and learn to manage better. To access my 6 key levers of execution excellence, have a listen to Ep.371: How I learned to Produce Exceptional Results ———————— Have you taken our free Leadershi...

When CEOs cut management layers, they often kid themselves that they're building leaner, faster companies.  But what they're actually doing is destroying accountability and weakening performance. Hiding behind fads like player-coach leadership can’t change that fact. The tech sector loves a management fad and over the years, they’ve tried them all. But the unquestioning adoption (and eventual...

In business, it’s an indisputable fact that stronger competition results in better outcomes for everyone. Why are we so reluctant, then, to increase competitive pressure within our teams? One of the most critical performance levers of leadership is differentiation between people; and creating a merit-based, competitive environment within your team benefits every stakeholder… especially your people...

Charisma is sold to us as a divine gift that you’re either born with… or not.  We bandy the word around quite a bit… and even though charisma comes with some negative connotations, most of us wish we had more of it. Describing the things that make up charisma can be difficult: It’s quite an intangible concept, which is why it’s so easy to fall back on observable, physical attributes , like he...

When there’s a failure to comply with the rules, everyone’s first instinct is to look at their compliance regime. They create more rules… more controls… more safeguards… A highly motivated person driven by self-interest will find a way around even the tightest procedure. History has proven that, repeatedly. The key to achieving better performance is strong leadership, clear accountability, and a d...

Your people aren't struggling because the work is hard. They're struggling because they can't predict you . Inconsistent leadership doesn't just frustrate teams; it debilitates them. We all think we’re pretty consistent. And any time we aren’t, we’re expert at rationalising any inconsistencies. The fundamental problem is that we judge ourselves by our intentions, whereas our people judge us by our...

What if you stopped rewarding people for being busy, and instead focused only on the value they produced? Your team would be night-and-day different. Busy is the enemy of productive . As long as you give your team a free pass for being busy, performance will elude you. If you want to go deeper on how to eliminate busywork, have a listen to Ep.366: Replacing Busywork With Real Results ———————— Have...

What does it actually take to build a top-ranked leadership podcast from scratch, and keep it going for 400 weeks in a row? 8 years ago, Em convinced me to walk away from my role as CEO of a multi-billion dollar business to build a micro-startup with a simple premise: give away your very best insights for free on the podcast, and trust that the impact will follow. Our purpose became: to improve th...

Companies that are really good in a crisis are often poorly managed: their people get addicted to the adrenaline rush that comes with constantly being in firefighting mode. The best way to manage a crisis, by far, is to avoid it altogether… which takes a lot of boring, proactive work.  But well-run businesses are proactive. If you want to go deeper on how to lead when the crisis does hit, hav...

What if the single biggest lever for creating value in your business wasn't actually in your business at all? What if it was an alliance forged with another company? The inspiration for this topic came from an episode of the Acquired podcast, which took a deep dive into the Formula One motor racing business. F1 isn’t just a sport: it's a compelling case study in how to create value through allianc...

I’ve advised many CEO / Founders over the last 5 years. My first job is often to convince them that the family culture they treasure so fondly is the biggest impediment to performance improvement. In this Moment, I explore the four biggest drawbacks to family culture. But they are by no means the exclusive domain of family businesses: they’ll sound familiar to those of you who work in large listed...

Most leaders do enough to get by. A select few do extra. And that gap is almost the entire difference between a career that stagnates and one that accelerates. If you want to reach the pinnacle of your personal potential, it starts with your decision to do more than the next person. In this episode, I give you 6 ways to focus your extra effort so that it pays you back in multiples. A friend of min...