The Five Lenses Of High Stakes
How are we in May? Seriously. The year is flying, and every senior leader I am speaking with is saying the same thing, that there is no time to breathe, […]
Eight Things I Keep Coming Back To…
I’ve been delivering leadership mentoring for 25 years, and recently, having also spent a significant amount of time in conversation with exceptional leaders as research for my book, I found myself returning to the same eight observations I have been considering for most of my career. They are not new, but they are still true, largely unaddressed and still quietly costing senior leaders and teams more than they realise. What struck me most is how consistently the same gaps appear regardless of sector, seniority or the size of the organisation. The faces change, the patterns don’t. So, in this article, and in the spirit of giving back, I am sharing them with you. The 8 Principles of High Performance These eight principles sit underneath everything when it comes to success or struggle as a senior leader. The role clarity that gets skipped, the self-trust that gets overlooked, the recovery that gets sacrificed and the leadership identity that never quite gets deliberately built. 1. The leadership development industry is obsessed with WHY, and it is leaving HOW unattended. I gave a TEDx talk about this, because I was genuinely frustrated watching brilliant leaders get sold purpose as the answer when the real gap was always in the execution. Knowing your why matters, but I have sat across from hundreds of leaders who know their why perfectly well, and yet are still struggling, because nobody has ever helped them get underneath HOW they actually lead. 2. Assumption is the single biggest saboteur of high performance at senior level, and nobody talks about it. When you reach the C-suite, everyone around you assumes the foundations are in place; Role clarity, Emotional regulation, sustainable Energy, a deliberately defined Leadership style. But, I am yet to meet a senior leader who has genuinely mastered all four without deliberate focus and work. Nobody checks and the higher you climb, the less support you get to strengthen them. This is exactly where performance quietly starts to erode without anyone quite being able to name why. 3. Most senior leaders cannot confidently answer the question “what’s your job?” Not the title, not the vague brief from three years ago, but what they are really there to deliver, and what rhythm genuinely serves their performance. When I ask this question (and I ask it a lot), voices drop and body language shifts, because what comes back is something that is being constructed in the […]
The HOW Of Leading Well (And Living Well): They’re Not The Same Thing
The leaders I sit across from every week are, almost without exception, very good at their jobs and quietly exhausted by their lives. Not broken, not failing, just running two […]
What if HOW you react under pressure is costing you?
Ever paused to notice what happens in your body when you read the words “high stakes?” Do you feel a pull of energy, that positive rush before something important? Or […]
What Are You About To Say Yes To That You’ll Regret By March?
As the year kicked off I am sure your inbox and LinkedIn were overflowing with well meaning (but still grating!) advice from a plethora of coaches, experts and advisors? I […]
Remember To Celebrate
Right now, if you read the news and follow industry press the world feels very heavy. And for good reason. We have political unrest, economic challenge and disruption knocking on […]