Teams That Swear

You have inherited a team. On paper, they are capable. The meetings happen. The work gets done. The results may even look fine. And yet, something still feels off. In this episode of Teams That Swear, Adrian Baillargeon shares the story of a senior leader who inherited a technology leadership team that looked solid from the outside, but was not working well enough together. The issue was not capab...

What can leaders learn from working 25 straight days at the Olympic Games? In this episode of Teams That Swear , Adrian Baillargeon sits down with Vanessa Lee, Director of Communications and Media Relations for the Canadian Olympic Committee. Vanessa shares what she learned supporting Team Canada at one of the world's biggest sporting events, why every role matters, and how leaders can make in...

Before July, most teams review performance, budgets and strategy. But very few review how they are actually working together. Before July, your team will probably review its performance, financials, strategy and priorities. But there is one conversation most teams never schedule. The honest conversation about how the team is actually working together. In this practical episode of Teams That Swear,...

Silence is not alignment. This episode puts a commercial cost on assuming your leadership team is fine without properly checking. The team that worries Adrian most is not the one that is struggling. It is the one that assumes it is fine. In this episode of Teams That Swear, Adrian Baillargeon challenges one of the most expensive assumptions senior leaders make: that because nobody is complaining,...

Your people might be performing. But is your team actually working well together? This episode helps leaders spot the quiet gaps that individual performance can hide. Most leaders have a view of how their team is working. But is it the same view the team has? In this episode of Teams That Swear, Adrian Baillargeon unpacks one of the most common risks inside leadership teams: when everything looks...

What team analytics expert Ben Darwin teaches leaders about talent, growth and shared understanding. A Formula One engineer was poisoned by the wrong coffee machine, and the wrong tyres started going on the car. That story came from my latest conversation with Ben Darwin, team analytics expert and co-founder of Gain Line Analytics. It sounds ridiculous at first, but Ben’s point was sharp. Small ga...

Personality profiles can help you understand your people and the differencesin strengths, weaknesses, initial reactions, and natural tendencies. But theydo not always show you the gaps in how your team actually works together. In this episode of the Teams That Swear™ podcast, Adrian Baillargeon explores the difference between individual insight and team-level insight, and why teams need more than...

If you lead a team, you will recognise this moment when the result falls short and the energy in the room shifts. I recently sat down with Michael Crooks, who helped prepare TeamAustralia for the World Baseball Classic. They just missed the World Baseball Classic finals, yet the group grew closer. That outcome says a lot about the standards inside a team and the leadership behaviours that keep peo...

I don't know about you, but to me, it feels like the world is going crazy.  Crazy wars. Crazy petrol prices. AI impacts and AI stories. Crazy increases in the cost of living. And craziness on ice. When has Canada ever lost gold medal games at the Olympics to the U.S. in the women's, men's, and Paralympic ice hockey teams? Never. Until now. This is not ideal. Whether we notice it or not...

Pressure doesn’t usually create bad leadership. It simply exposes habits we haven’t refined yet. That was one of the biggest takeaways from my conversation with Glenn Flood on the Teams That Swear podcast. Glenn spent more than thirty years working in high performance kitchens across Australia, Canada and the UK. Hetrained in Michelin-star environments, worked with Jamie Oliver and Tobie Puttock a...

If you’re a senior leader stuck in the tug of war between “include everyone” and “just make the call”, this Teams That Swear episode is for you. Because here’s what I’m seeing alot of: pressure from above to move faster, pressure from below to involve more people, and you’re trying to keep the work moving without leaving people feeling blindsided. In this episode you get insight into breaking down...

Ex-sniper Brett Pennell on training, expectations, and the moments teams remember. In the latest Teams That Swear episode, I sat down with Brett Pennell, former NSW Police Tactical Operations sniper, to talk about what pressure does to people and teams. Brett has spent more than 20 years in policing, including specialist roles where information is incomplete, time compresses, and decisions cannot...

If you lead a senior team, you’ll know this moment. You come back into the year or hit a pressure point mid-stream, and something feels off. People are busy but not connected. Priorities feel fuzzy. Conversations take more effort than theyshould. And everyone quietly hopes things will magically settle. They won’t. Senior teams don’t reset by accident. They reset by design. In this episode I break...

A performance psychologist reveals why experienced teams stop improving and what helps them adapt. Capable teams don’t stall because people stop caring or trying. More often, they stall because the way the work is set up no longer helps people learn or adapt. In the second part of my discussion with Jeff Simons on Teams That Swear, a performance scientist who has spent decades in elite sport and h...

The start of the year is meant to feel fresh. But if you’re a senior leader, January often feels like you’re driving two speeds at once. Half your team is still away, the work is piling up, and the pressure from above is already building. In this episode, I unpack why so many leaders hit February already worn down, and what the smartest leaders do differently in the first thirty days. You’ll walk...

If you’ve ever walked out of a team meeting feeling clear and confident your team is on board, only to find yourself having the same conversation again three months later, this episode of Teams That Swear will feel uncomfortably familiar. In Part One of a two-part conversation on the Teams That Swear podcast, I sat down with Jeff Simons , an applied performance scientist and kinesiology professor...

If every decision, approval and escalation still flows through you, even though your team is smart, capable and experienced, this episode is for you.   In my latest Teams That Swear podcast, I unpack what happens when leaders let go the right way, drawing on David Marquet’s Turn the Ship Around . Marquet transformed the worst-performing submarine in the US Navy into the best bythrowing out command...

If you think leadership means speaking first, staying tough, and being the expert in your area, this Teams That Swear episode, featuring Lucy Liu’s head chef Jenna North, might challenge that. In our latest conversation with non-corporate leaders, I sat down with the Head Chef of one of Melbourne’s busiest kitchens. She leads a team of 20+ chefs, taking a non-Gordon Ramsay approach to cursing, wit...

You might not have caused the dysfunction, but you're responsible for shifting it. Your team reflects what you allow, what you reinforce, and what you let slide. If your leadership team feels a little off, if there are too many side conversations in chats or in the meeting after the meeting, or the conversations that need to be had aren’t happening… this episode might be exactly what you need....

What leaders can learn when you or your teams aren’t at their best. Cirque du Soleil head coach Lee McDermott has rebuilt more than high-performing teams,  he’s rebuilt himself. He’s won gold medals, led global performers at Cirque du Soleil, and knows what it’s like to be stuck between what’s expected and what you actually have the energy to give. When he took over a team at Cirque that had stopp...

Ever had a moment that completely changed how you lead? In this episode of Teams That Swear , I share two of mine. One came from a trip to Cameroon. The other? A piece of brutal feedback I never saw coming. Here’s what I unpack: Why discomfort is often the best teacher What leading in Cameroon taught me about perspective The difference between feedback that helps and feedback that hurts Why some l...

Leadership sounds easy when it’s written in a book. It’s very different when you’re sitting across from someone whose career or livelihood is about to change. Pat Howard has been in that chair more than once. At Cricket Australia, he was the one who had to tell Steve Smith, David Warner and Cameron Bancroft what sanctions they faced after the ball-tampering scandal. At MSL Solutions, in his very f...

Are you burnt out, or are you just buried? In the latest episode of Teams That Swear , I talk about something I’m seeing in almost every conversation with senior leaders right now. They’re not disengaged. They still care deeply about their teams and the work. But they are buried. Buried in meetings, buried in emails that start with “Can you just...”, and buried inwork that no longer needs them. Bu...

If you think confidence means being louder, you need to meet Lizzy Geremia. She leads over 100 people across brand, communications, and the Breakthrough Innovation Group innovation at Reece Group, one of Australia’s biggest suppliers in trade, plumbing and bathroom products. In our latest Teams That Swear episode, we sat down for a proper, honest conversation about what leadership looks likewhen y...

What’s something you avoided for way too long, but once you finally tackled it, it changed everything? For me, it was reading Mindset by Carol Dweck. I’d referenced it, nodded along in conversations, even quoted it. But I hadn’t actually read it . Now I have and it’s reshaped how I think about leadership, learning, and what it really takes to build teams that swear by each other, not about each ot...