Essays, perspectives, and ideas from the frontier of executive coaching and leadership development.
We pour enormous resources into developing the outer skills of leadership — communication, strategy, decision-making. But the research is clear: the leaders who sustain high performance over time are not distinguished by these skills alone. They are distinguished by a deep and accurate knowledge of themselves.
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Safety and performance are both necessary — but they require very different conditions, and optimising for one without the other is one of the most common leadership mistakes I see.
Most leaders enter a new role with a performance mindset. The ones who succeed long-term enter with a learning mindset — and understand the difference between the two.
One of the most insidious patterns I see in senior leaders is the gradual erosion of identity outside the role — and the psychological fragility that follows when the role is threatened.
Real confidence in a leader is not the absence of doubt — it is the capacity to hold doubt without being destabilised by it, and to remain open to challenge without experiencing it as threat.
The gap between stated values and lived culture is one of the most reliable indicators of organisational dysfunction — and one of the most important things a leader can close.
The advice to “keep emotions out of the boardroom” has done enormous damage. The most effective senior leaders are not those who feel less — they are those who feel, and choose.
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“The question is not whether you lead. The question is whether you know yourself well enough to lead well.”From the forthcoming book →
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