The Leadership Enigma

Yulia Barnacova is a Metaverse, Web 3 and Gen AI Strategist at Accenture, a Ted X speaker and Microsoft MVP. As technology continues to change and adapt at the speed of thought, leaders and businesses also need to adapt and ensure that the speed of change externally does not exceed the speed of change internally.  Yulia is a technology experimenter and is always probing the art of the possible.  I...

Sapna Gopalakrishnan is Legal Counsel for one of the world's largest pharmaceutical companies. She got her dream job in early March 2019 and then everything changed as she almost lost her life and doctors gave her a 0-5% chance of survival.  Through a freak incident in 2019 in Mumbai, Sapna contracted Sepsis which is the body’s extreme response to an infection. It is a life-threatening medical eme...

Lady Indiraa has had three Top 10 singles in the UK Dance Charts. She is an amazingly compassionate Indian born, London bred electro pop sensation who broke into music in her 50's and is now proudly approaching her 65th birthday. Indiraa is all about 'Breaking the Mould' in an industry who uses Avatars for her music videos to mask the fact that she is of an age demographic that most listeners woul...

Jason Nash is a Chief Product Marketing Officer and former Product Manager for Microsoft CRM who presented on stage with Bill Gates in a world of digital transformation. One of the critical questions for leaders is how to proactively seek diversity of thought and ensure that our technology systems do not fall foul to the human tendencies for bias and fixed thinking? Jason explains that he has beco...

Neil Mullarkey is a comedian, author, co-founder of The Comedy Store Players with Mike Myers (Wayne's World, Austin Powers & Shrek) a regular on Whose Line Is It Anyway and member of the iconic Cambridge Footlights. This episode will make you smile and laugh out loud, something we could all do with more of.  Neil shares some incredible stories with me from the days of the Cambridge Footlights, hom...

Dr Verran Rose is a qualified psychiatrist, therapist and specialist in conscious breath work which allows her to help people identify and alleviate trauma in the body.  Verran is neurodiverse and grew up in a painful set of family circumstances that led to alcohol and drug addiction. Her passion for helping others and her ability of insight are extraordinary.  If leadership is your promise of a l...

Chandran Nair is the founder of The Global Institute for Tomorrow (GIFT), a leading Pan Asia Think Tank that explores and confronts 'The Inconvenient Truth' surrounding leadership and global existential issues facing us all.  Before the start of GIFT, Chandran led and grew Asia's largest environmental consultancy having lived and worked in a number of regions across the world.  Whilst you may or m...

Caroline Pill is a Partner at Heidrick & Struggles with a squiggly career from Law to Luxury. She was born in Antwerp and has lived and worked in London, New York, Shanghai, Amsterdam and Brussels.  At 18 years old Caroline felt overwhelmingly curious about life so decided to move to Brussels to begin her law studies which in turn took her to Yale Law School and then to working as a lawyer in one...

Jack Sullivan is a Director of West Ham United, son of David Sullivan (owner of West Ham), former Managing Director of West Ham Ladies and current entrepreneur including co-owner of  Supply Life.  Jack has always lived in a family of high achievement. His father is a well known business entrepreneur and owner of one of the most iconic London Premier League football clubs. At the age of 17 Jack was...

We all need a coach, even the best in the world! Nick Goldberg is the Founder and proud CEO of Ezra Coaching and Sinead Keenan is a psychologist, behavioural scientist and the Chief Innovation Officer and Head of Ezra Labs.  One of the questions Nick and Sinead are working on is how they can democratise coaching for all, not just the elite and successful?  Nick suffered imposter syndrome when he f...

Stuart Pearce MBE (aka Psycho) is a former England football player, captain, manager, coach and current pundit for Talk Sport. For many Stuart is fondly remembered for his role at clubs such as Manchester City, West Ham United, Newcastle United and Nottingham Forest under the leadership of the iconic Brian Clough. Stuart was also an integral part of the England Team during the 1990 World Cup and 1...

Richard Newman is a global keynote speaker, best-selling author and CEO of Body Talk. Everyone's voice is needed in the world, so this week we ask, how do you have an impact when you communicate and importantly how do you overcome the anxiety of public speaking.  For many, the fear of public speaking is many places above the fear of death! 'If you are asked to deliver the eulogy, you might prefer...

Mitchell Feldman is the CMO of the brand new start up XRAI Glass who are focused on 'Subtitling the World' and have been shortlisted for several high profile awards.  Mitchell is a serial entrepreneur and remembers fondly his late mother typing on her old computer keyboard using the modem coupler which inspired Mitchell to explore the power of computing and tech from an early age. Mitchell left sc...

Dr Steven MacGregor is an engineer with a PhD in Design Thinking, an Honorary Professor, author and external consultant for McKinsey & Company. Steven has helped improve the workplace health and sustainable leadership of tens of thousands of professionals worldwide at organisations.  Steven and I share an experience from Stanford University d.school and the power of Radical Collaboration and multi...

Sue Conder is an occupational psychologist, business change expert and former partner at Deloitte with over 30 years of experience in people leadership and large organisational change solutions. Sue became fascinated with psychology in her early years when working in a library. Big change programmes need to focus on the people dimension of change and the leaders role to bring vision and clarity to...

Oliver Percovich is the founder of Skateistan which won the Oscar in 2020 for best documentary and a BAFTA. Oliver's story is an amazing example of how one person can create a movement for real change.  Oliver is an Australian who decided to go to Kabul with his girlfriend in 2007 with nothing more than a bag of clothes and 3 skateboard decks.  In 2009, Oliver founded Skateistan, which initially o...

Dr Katie Best is an author, academic, leadership coach and consultant working with leaders on their messiest problems.  Her passion for leadership stems from the role leaders have in creating a world better led for humanity as a whole. Leaders need to find the balance between the here and now with the need to have great foresight and vision. We all have the ability to lead, regardless of role and...

Giovanni Masala is a senior leader and DE&I lead for VMware based in Italy. His leadership approach and passion is all about kindness and this was pulled into sharp focus when he suffered a coma for 2 months following a road traffic accident on his motorbike.  He vividly remembers when he woke up from the coma that those he was expecting to see were not there but surprisingly others he had not exp...

This episode was created in collaboration with Heidrick & Struggles.  I chat to a panel of young leaders to discover what they want from their leadership and culture and what kinds of leaders they aspire to become in order to shape a World Better Led. The panel includes Sarah Sage, Floris Hondmann, Lea Evers and Jacob Vincent with huge thanks to TA Mitchell and Luisa Muse. This is an important epi...

Matt Abrahams is the host of the globally ranked Podcast 'Think Fast, Talk Smart' and lecturer at the world famous Stanford University Graduate School of Business in California.  Matt is passionate about helping people hone and develop their communication skills.  Think Fast, Talk Smart started many years ago where Matt began helping students at Stanford to be able to deal with questions from facu...

Adrian Simpson is the co-founder of Wavelength and in this episode we discuss the global research that has highlighted ‘Foresight’ as a critical skill for CEO’s and senior executives for a world in constant change. What does the term ‘Outside-In’ mean for future leaders and why is it important for individual and collective success? Adrian describes ‘Outside-In’ as the discipline of learning from p...

Chris Grant OBE has worked at the most senior levels across sectors including Chair of the Chip & Pin Programme for all the banks and retailers, he served on the Board of Sport England and currently as The Chair for British Basketball Federation . Chris received his OBE for services to Sport from the late Her Majesty in 2021 and has worked with great musicians, business leaders, athletes, and spor...

Anthony Stephen Malone is a former 5th Generation soldier with the British Army, author of 5 books and was taken hostage by the Taliban for 190 days.  Anthony Joined the Paras at age 17 and served in multiple locations across the world. He has dedicated his life to various intelligence and security agencies which in turn led to his period in captivity having been taken by the Taliban for 190 days....

Kate Waterfall-Hill is a leadership coach and consultant with a passion for people development. This episode explores the challenges for all those individual contributors and small consultancies that serve to provide products and services to the largest organisations on the planet. This is all about David meeting Goliath and how leaders try and have it all, whilst doing it all without losing it al...

Dr Jonathan Reichental is a Founder, Professor, author and former Chief Information Officer for the city of Palo Alto, Silicon Valley.  Jonathan has recently released his new book 'Data Governance for Dummies' which is an Amazon No1 best seller.  83% of CEO's want a data driven organisation yet only 32% are realising this result.  47% of data created has critical errors within it that impacts work...