No Bullsh!t Leadership

Moment #44 // If you’re in it for yourself, your people will never be in it for you. Ever.  Self-seeking leaders can’t bring out the best in their people, because it’s almost impossible to rally them to a higher purpose.  One of the keys to unlocking your people’s discretionary effort, and stretching them to perform at the next level, is that you have to subordinate short-term considerat...

Episode #273 // In order to convey the No Bullsh!t Leadership principles concisely, I explain them in quite categorical terms—it has to be that way so that you can understand the principles sufficiently well to implement them. But, as with everything in life, nothing is just black or white… there are exceptions, there are judgment calls, and there are 1,000 annoying shades of gray! A CEO who I’m q...

Moment #43 // We generally talk about stress like it's a bad thing. Putting people under stress is something that many leaders try to avoid. Why? Because, if you put people under stress, then maybe they won't like you anymore.  Instead, we choose to lean into our well-developed power of rationalization, and do everything we can to give ourselves a reason to not ask our people to stretch.&nbsp...

Episode #272 // According to LinkedIn , 70% of the global workforce isn't actively job searching, but 87% are open to new opportunities. This reflects a universal truth in the professional world – many are passively open to new job opportunities, yet they rarely actively pursue them. It's a common trap that we see even the most ambitious leaders fall into: passively waiting, relying on people in t...

Moment #42 // Have you ever questioned your boss about a particular task, and at the end of a brief exchange, he simply says: “Look, just do it, OK?”  Although I’m sure no one sets out to become a Nike boss, sometimes it’s simply the product of a leader being overworked… or not having sufficient information about why something needs to be done… or because explaining would be difficult and tim...

Episode #271 // In today’s evolving world of business, there’s an ever-increasing focus on employee wellness. Mental health, which was a taboo subject until fairly recently, now has to be front-of-mind for every leader. A leader’s duty of care for their people used to be confined to the workplace. Now, there’s an increasingly broad interpretation of a leader’s obligations to look after their peopl...

Moment #41 // It can be a little daunting to take on a new role, especially when it's at a higher level than the roles you've previously held.  Whether you’ve been promoted internally, or appointed from outside the company, you need to set strong expectations right from the get go. It's really important to stamp your mark on a new role early.  People need to know what to expect from you…...

Episode #270 // Innovation is key to sustained performance. Whether we look at it from a company perspective, or at the level of countries and global economies, innovation fuels productivity and growth.  We’ve seen this over and over throughout the centuries, where a technological or scientific breakthrough has driven new levels of prosperity that were previously unimagined.  We now live...

Moment #40 // Simplicity goes hand-in-hand with focus. We all try to do too much, for all the right reasons, and with the best intent. But, more often than not, this is incredibly counter-productive.  As a leader, value, performance, and forward momentum all rely on having a crystal clear focus on the right things. But this is hard to achieve, because perfectionism hides in complexity. Even t...

Episode #269 // One of the positive (and virtually inevitable) outcomes of improving your leadership confidence and capability is that your opportunities for promotion start to come thick and fast. And there’s a reason for this: as your leadership skill improves, so do the results that your teams achieve. But when you've already achieved best-in-class performance, you’re expected to know what you'...

Moment #39 // Formal education is important to establish a baseline for your career. It’s like buying a ticket to the dance. But management and leadership education comes later in your career, and it’s often valued very differently, depending on where you live.  In Australia, an MBA is entirely optional… in the US, it’s essential if you’re serious about progressing to the heights of corporate...

Episode #268 // We know that every individual is unique, and despite all the conventional wisdom about how to motivate people, everyone is completely different in regard to what drives them.   In my experience, you never really know what’s going to switch the lights on for someone. You just have to keep trying, over and over, to reach every single person. This means you have to use different...

Moment #38 // Is the virtually limitless supply of cheap, instantaneously-accessible information making it easier for us to make decisions? And are those decisions any better than the ones we made 20 years ago? Malcolm Gladwell says, “ We clutter our decision-making process with extraneous information in the hope that it makes us better off in the end. It's a fool's game .” This moment reminds us...

Episode #267 // Every so often, we produce an episode of No Bullsh!t Leadership that challenges conventional leadership wisdom. I call them my ' myth buster' episodes, and in the past, I’ve taken on some of the most widely accepted axioms:  Are happy workers really productive workers? Why is leading from the front a bad idea? Why do consensus-based decisions deliver inferior outcomes? Why is...

Moment #37 // There's no doubt that systemic bias exists in hiring - but sometimes, even with the best intentions, it's really difficult to improve diversity. Quite often, you’re simply dealing with a shallow pool of talent.  Entrenched beliefs and attitudes at lower levels of an organization act as a barrier to progress - not just for women, but for any minority group that's not the typical...

Episode #266 // Some of the most impactful transformation work that I saw in large industrial firms came as a result of McKinsey’s involvement: everything from procurement to capital productivity, and operational performance. Last year, three McKinsey partners published a book titled, CEO Excellence: The six mindsets that distinguish the best leaders from the rest .   After examining more tha...

Moment #36 // Well-run businesses can be boring. They don't experience frequent crises and they don't encounter surprises at every turn. Why? Because the leaders understand risk, and they plan accordingly, avoiding the majority of disasters that other companies routinely face.  Poorly-run companies thrive on crisis management and firefighting. Once this becomes the predominant culture, people...

Episode #265 // Em and I work our butts off every day to produce high-quality, practical leadership content that you can apply immediately, to improve your team’s capability and performance.   And, even though we talk about the emotional, psychological, and mental barriers that have to be overcome to achieve leadership excellence, what I don’t often talk about is the personal investment in th...

Moment #35 // There are many ways to end up in the C-suite. You can just choose to work hard, and wait for your promotions.  But, in larger organizations, this can take many years. And, at each new layer, you're in competition for the next spot above you with a bunch of other smart, ambitious people from both inside and outside your organization. Even though I’d never hold up my own career pa...

Episode #264 // I read an article in the MIT Sloan Management Review, titled The Art of Balancing Autonomy and Control , which outlines how to get the best results from the innovation activities your company undertakes. The moral of the story is, nose in, fingers out! This led me to think more broadly about the concept of autonomy v control, in particular how it relates to optimizing both performa...

Moment #34 // They say that the best disinfectant is sunlight, and I'm a huge believer in that principle. If my direct reports in CS Energy heard it once they heard it a thousand times: transparency is everything.  But just how much transparency should you give to your people? Issues of trust, accountability, confidentiality, and context all play a part in how much transparency it’s reasonabl...

Episode #263 // After speaking to a group of Executive MBA students last week, I had pause to reflect on my career journey, my educational choices, and what I considered to be the determinants of my modest success to date. If I really distilled the key things that have helped me to grow rapidly over the years, what would they be? I’ve often said that leaders are learners, but you could spend a lot...

Moment #33 // Why is it so difficult to get over the need to be liked? Because it’s completely ingrained… it's programmed into all of us. It's part of our DNA and it's controlled by our reptilian brain. It's an instinctive response.  But, counterintuitively, to be a competent leader you have to overcome that fundamental evolutionary urge.  Putting Respect Before Popularity requires a hug...

Episode #262 // Really good people get stuck in their careers, for all sorts of reasons. Sometimes, it’s obvious why it’s happening to them, and other times it’s a little more perplexing.   We get questions from our leadership community all the time relating to career progression, and they come from all levels—even C-suite executives who want to break into their first CEO role:  What do...

Moment #32 // I went through some incredibly disruptive events during my corporate career - and it's fair to say that some of them pushed me to the edge of my personal capacity.   Despite the personal toll, when I look back I’m so grateful that I was able to experience those situations. I never felt that there was anything I couldn't ultimately handle, and the accelerated learning that I...