No Bullsh!t Leadership

Moment #19 // To make any serious change requires a change of culture—the way we do things around here—and changing culture is not for the faint of heart.  It takes discipline, perseverance, time, energy, some pain, a bunch of momentum, some tough decisions, courage, influence, collaboration - it’s not at all easy to change a culture. If you want to be a leader who drives change, who creates...

Episode #248 // We still seem to be witnessing some pretty spectacular failures in corporate governance. Every week, the financial press manages to uncover some sort of personal scandal, a sudden and unexpected decline in performance, or a breach of a company’s social license to operate. Even more common now, is the reporting on companies’ handling of workforce issues, like layoffs, and return to...

Moment #18 // How do you know when the right time is to let a poor performer go? Many leaders sit back and just hope that the person will improve. But hope isn’t a strategy. And when you’re dealing with a historically poor performer, it's rarely the case that they lift to meet the minimum acceptable standard.  The most commonly cited regret of great leaders, as they reflect on their careers,...

Episode #247 // Virtually every organization has some form of operational delivery capability for its products and services. More often than not, your ability to compete in the market can be strengthened through operational excellence. But operational excellence is elusive, and many of the programs that companies invest in to deliver improved operational performance only ever realize a fraction of...

Moment #17 // Low accountability cultures are riddled with barriers to performance. The leaders resign themselves to the fact that gaps and overlaps are inevitable, and they rationalize that strong single point accountabilities aren’t really necessary. What are the 5 hidden drivers of low accountability ? And how do you find them before they damage your team’s performance? Everyone deserves to be...

Episode #246 // One of the most widespread and seemingly intractable problems facing leaders and organizations everywhere, is the drive to focus only on short-term results. And this condition doesn’t discriminate between industries, countries, or cultures.   Almost everything that happens in our work lives locks us inside the prison walls of an ever-present, high-demand, short-term focus. Ver...

Moment #16 // Some companies have turned the concept of believing your own bullshit into an art form! It’s really easy to convince ourselves that we are achieving amazing things when, in actual fact, very little is changing. Do you believe your own bullsh!t? For more depth on this insight, listen to Ep.143 of the No Bullsh!t Leadership Podcast : Believing Your Own Bullsh!t . ———————— FREE 5 DAY LE...

Episode #245 // I’m a vocal advocate of strong leadership: the need to stretch people to achieve extraordinary performance, with a single-minded focus on value creation (bearing in mind, of course, that value comes in many different forms: it’s not just financial results). Recently, we’ve seen two cases from opposite sides of the world in which the stated drive for improved performance has resulte...

Moment #15 // The primary function of a leader is to create and maintain a culture that’s conducive to performance excellence… a culture where every individual is committed to giving their best every day.  More often than not, cultures just grow organically, as people learn over time what the expectations and limits of the leader truly are. If you don’t focus, deliberately and explicitly, on...

Episode #244 // One of the toughest elements of leadership is managing your people’s performance. Everyone has to meet a minimum acceptable standard, of course… but beyond that, you also want to be able to lead your best people to perform at their peak. We get an endless stream of questions about the performance management ecosystem, particularly when a team member slips into chronic underperforma...

Moment #14 // On one level, politics can be seen simply as a process of influencing. But more often, it’s a devious, divisive tool used by unscrupulous individuals to further their own standing—it creates a toxic and cancerous culture.  How do you spot a political animal? Office politics can be incredibly destructive, but there's no organization that's completely immune to it. No great leader...

Episode #243 // Whatever you try to achieve as a leader relies, at least to some extent, on your credibility. If you have strong personal credibility, it makes everything you do inordinately easier.  Credibility galvanizes your team… it instills confidence in the people above you… and it ultimately becomes an integral part of your leadership brand. Without it, every yard you manage to move fo...

Moment #13 // Do you have decision fatigue? During the course of every day, our brains are forced to make thousands of decisions, big and small. The cumulative effect of all these decisions is mental fatigue, which can result in poor judgment and irrational decision making, even when faced with relatively simple decisions.  But using the decision fatigue label provides an excuse for not deali...

Episode #242 // The question we used to ask only occasionally has now become more frequent… “ how old is too old? ” While most countries still regard the retirement age for the average citizen to be somewhere in their early to mid-60s, one of the big societal trends in wealthier countries is the aging population. As the population ages, many people will choose to work for longer, either to satisfy...

Moment #12 // Blaming others when something doesn’t go to plan is one of the most insidious leadership behaviors. It’s a cancer in your culture that has to be eradicated. When a leader tolerates the blame game, excuses become the norm, and organizational politics thrives.  You have to learn how to deliver bad news, even when your boss doesn’t want to hear about it. Equally, you have to encour...

Ep #241 // It’s always been a tough ask to get your boss to provide additional resources, whether it’s money, people, or assets. And it’s certainly not getting any easier in the current environment. Businesses in virtually every sector of the economy are being squeezed with rising costs, high interest rates, and a bear labor market.  The mantra of doing more with less has never been more pron...

Moment #11 // One of the most important roles that a leader plays is to set the right standards for performance and behavior. Sometimes, we think we're setting an appropriately high performance standard, but the exceptions we make indicate otherwise. How do you actually set the standard? And if it’s higher than people are used to, how do you communicate what you need from them? Never walk past an...

Episode #240 // We’ve all come across people during our careers who are really good at what they do, but are just awful to work with. They seem to think that their superior performance gives them the license to behave in any manner they see fit, and they don’t observe the usual social protocols that are essential in maintaining a stable team. Talented jerks come in many different shapes and sizes:...

Moment #8 // If you need to be liked, and you have aspirations of being a leader, you’re going to find yourself in trouble pretty quickly. Virtually everything you do as a leader puts you into a potential conflict situation. Seeking popularity will stunt your leadership growth, dull your decision-making, and feed your tendency to procrastinate. Popularity doesn’t matter… respect does, which is why...

Episode #239 // The proverbial high performing team has become a leadership cliché, and I can’t count the number of leaders who claim to have built a high performing team (often, despite objective evidence to the contrary). But what if the culture you’re leading in is actually a low performance culture? We get lots of questions from leaders about the difficulties they have applying basic performan...

Moment #9 // Many leaders claim to have built high-performing teams but, in my experience, most can’t even clearly articulate what a high-performing team is! And if you really want to build a high performing team—then there’s going to be some pretty tough leadership work ahead. Many leaders fall at the first hurdle: high-performing teams are comprised of high-performing individuals : no passengers...

Episode #238 // Leadership drives culture, culture drives performance. Today, we look at a few very common team culture dynamics, and give some perspectives for how you might be able to handle these situations, when you find yourself in the middle of them. The first is the incredibly common phenomenon of the supposed star performer who ‘manages up’ brilliantly, but doesn’t actually deliver… and th...

Moment #8 // Permissive Leaders Make People Unproductive AND Unhappy I've seen the devastating effects of laissez-faire leaders. They seem to think that if you keep people happy , they’ll naturally give you their best work. In my experience, this is almost never the case. Worse still, these leaders often mistake a constructive culture, to mean you can only say positive things to people. &nbsp...

Episode #237 // If you feel as though you’re struggling to hire the right people at the moment, this episode will rebuild your faith in the process, despite the current labor market dynamics. Unfortunately, a few poorly-timed or unexpected resignations can leave critical gaps in your capability. And this feels even worse when you place an ad on an online job board expecting an influx of high-quali...

Moment #7 // Building a Diverse Organization Isn’t Simple If it was easy to build a diverse organization, everyone would have already done it. There's a couple of limiting factors that I've learned from experience make this incredibly difficult. Historical disadvantage, subconscious bias, and a lack of forward thinking all contribute to this vexed problem. So where do you start? You can take a dee...