No Bullsh!t Leadership

If you want to improve your team’s performance, single-point accountability is the biggest, most impactful lever you can pull. The culture is difficult to create, but once your people experience the virtuous circle of empowerment and accountability, that’s when they find true motivation, self-esteem, and job satisfaction. If you want to get better outcomes from your team, have a listen to Ep.365:...

Most decisions you make as a leader look reasonable on the whiteboard.  But in the real world, you're rarely deciding between black and white options. You're choosing between two things that both matter: and something has to give. That's the dilemma. And how you handle it speaks volumes about the kind of leader you really are. The ability to make trade-offs confidently, separates average lead...

With the benefit of hindsight, I’ve been able to isolate the 3 biggest mistakes that I made in my career as a corporate executive: they really slowed me down! I either underestimated their impact, or didn’t pay sufficient attention to them…and I paid the price. Improving one or all of these will save you years of frustration, and accelerate your career. If you want to fast-track your leadership ca...

Why your direct reports are underperforming and how to turn it around. What happens when you give one manager 50 direct reports and call it innovation?  Chaos. In this episode, I cut through the corporate delusion that flatter structures are better, and I give you the insights to help you confidently build a structure that actually delivers results. I start with the fundamentals: why organisa...

Some people love to be in the thick of the action, making a difference. But the much larger majority are more comfortable watching from the sidelines. If you’re wondering what ingredients create the recipe for success, you need to know that putting yourself out there is a non-negotiable. And all it takes is a simple choice… a choice you can make today. If you want to learn how to position yourself...

Not getting the results you expected? Don’t blame luck, because in leadership, results are rarely random, and the causes are rarely a mystery. You may feel as though you’ve done everything necessary to guarantee a decent level of performance from your team: You’ve hired some good people; You’ve resourced them appropriately;  You’ve put together a work program that’s ambitious but achievable;&...

Virtually every organisation is racing to adopt AI. And, although AI offers the promise of groundbreaking productivity, the projects required to deliver it will suffer from exactly the same problems as every other IT project I’ve seen in the last 40 years. Big projects are hard, whether they’re in construction, infrastructure, or procurement. Tech is no different. But there seems to be a certain…...

Strategy starts at the top, but competitive advantage is built in the middle. Has your boss ever told you that you need to be more strategic?  If you want to demonstrate your strategic ability, you need to understand the role you play in building your company’s competitive advantage. Competition isn’t won or lost based on the strategy that the board sets. It depends much more on how the strat...

A lot of contemporary leadership wisdom on the internet could just as easily be found in a fortune cookie 🥠 The reason the sayings become so popular is that there’s always at least some grain of truth to them. They sound like they should be true. In this Moment, I give you an insight into why you should question everything. If you want to take a deeper dive into how to tell the difference between...

Leaders love blaming HR for bureaucracy, red tape, and generally slowing things down.  But these same leaders have no idea how to use HR properly.  If you get this wrong in the age of AI, you’ll risk destroying one of the most valuable sources of insight in your company. As we sit here in early 2026, AI is about to wipe out around half of what HR does. The leaders who figure how to manag...

Some people simply refuse to rise to the standard you’re setting for the team. Before you decide they need to go, though, it’s important to try different techniques that might ignite their intrinsic motivation. Not everyone rises to the occasion but, if you’re a good leader, you’ll give everyone the opportunity to lift. If you want to take a deeper dive into how you can tap into your people’s disc...

Working for a weak leader is both exhausting and suffocating.  You put in the effort;
you care about the outcome; you try to lift the standard…and still, everything feels harder than it should. In this episode, I break down the four unmistakable symptoms of the spineless boss and, more importantly, exactly what you can do about each one. Because while you can’t control their backbone, you CAN...

You can’t deal with a gap or a weak spot in your performance by ignoring it. Doubling down on your arrogance, as many leaders do, doesn’t help anyone…least of all you. If you don’t face your blind spots, they’ll dent your confidence, eventually becoming a source of fear and paranoia! This Moment will help you commit to taking that first step towards greater confidence, whatever that is for you. If...

Think hands-on leadership is a strength? You might just be the problem on your team. What's the one leadership behaviour that makes your team's heart sink when your name pops up in their inbox? The one that kills discretionary effort, drains initiative, and keeps you buried in low-value work? That would be…micromanagement! In this episode, I go deep into the difficult trade-off between getting the...

Onboarding isn't admin. It's where standards, trust, and performance begin. When someone new joins the team, it’s easy to take it for granted that they’ll know what to do. But, no matter who they are, they need a comprehensive onboarding process. The onboarding process consists of two distinct parts: the administrative elements (most of which apply only to external hires); and the leadership eleme...

Every executive wears two hats. Most only know how to wear one! Are you currently part of your organisation’s senior leadership team (SLT)? Or are you just watching from below, wondering what the hell they’re doing?  In this episode, I look at how SLTs actually work, as opposed to how they should work. I cover off on the things that make the most difference to SLT culture, and I take a deep d...

If you have ambitions to achieve excellence in anything , it’s important to tap into the wisdom of people who’ve been there before you…to stand on the shoulders of giants!  Leaders are learners, and in this moment I give you key three lessons from some of the world’s most accomplished CEOs. If you want to take a deeper dive into what you can learn from those who’ve already walked the path, ha...

BONUS 🔥 You can't get promoted out of a team that can't function without you. This is the final bonus episode of our Leadership Reset Workshop, and if you've made it to Day Three, you've already done more honest reflection than most leaders do in a year! Over the last two days, you reset your standards and closed the accountability loop. But here's what happens next for a lot of leaders: everythi...

BONUS EPISODE 🔥 Here's the truth: you can reset your standards, communicate them clearly, and feel great walking out of that conversation. But the moment someone misses the mark, that's where leadership actually starts. In this episode, Marty and Em cover: Why most leaders don't fail because they lack vision, they fail in the split-second moments when standards get tested The difference between e...

When your team gets comfortable and performance slides, that's leadership drift. Here's your reset. In this episode, Em and I give you 7 Ways to Reset your leadership standards, and get your team back on track. Leadership drift doesn't announce itself. It creeps in slowly and quietly until one day you realise your team isn't performing the way it used to, and the uncomfortable truth is that they w...

You’re constantly being asked to do more with less . But that only increases your likelihood of burnout! Instead, your goal should be to reduce your load by eliminating low-value work entirely, and concentrate solely on delivering value. A culture of Simplicity and Focus will enable your team to deliver the things that matter most, and ignore the noise of low-level distractions. If you want to tak...

Most leaders don't struggle because they're bad at leadership. They struggle because leadership is the only critical job on Earth that people are expected to just figure out (well, that and parenting!). No training. No playbook. No feedback loop. If you've ever thought, "I don't know what I don't know", that's not self-doubt. That's the system working exactly as designed. Most leaders learn by cop...

Smart leaders fail when they can’t read the numbers, so don’t let data illiteracy hold you back! Is your inability to understand and analyse the numbers holding you back? If you can’t make sound decisions using complex data, you may have already built your own glass ceiling. But, if you’re a non-finance leader, how do you get good at the numbers? In this Moment, I reveal the best way to quickly cl...

Tired of being the glue holding everything together? Learn how to build a team that can handle the pressure, even when you're not there! You might be resilient, but that won’t stop your team from crumbling at the first real sign of pressure.  When you’re a leader, building your personal resilience is a given… but do you know what it takes to build resilience into your team ?  How do you...

Are you struggling to lead older workers? Learn how strong leaders bring out the best in legacy employees. It’s not uncommon to have more experienced workers, who’ve become part of the organisational furniture, reporting to you… and that can be quite intimidating. Even though you may feel like you have to treat older workers differently, you shouldn’t. Just like anyone else on your team, you have...