🎙️ 24 episodes of Beyond Leading are now live.
I launched Beyond Leading in December 2025 with a simple aim: to have honest conversations about the reality of leadership.
Through conversations with business owners, senior leaders, coaches and others working in leadership development, we explore the realities of leadership: the people challenges, pressures, competing priorities and difficult decisions that sit behind the role.
Across the first 24 episodes, we have explored subjects including:
• leadership visibility and why doing good work is not always enough
• burnout, energy and the pressure carried by high performers
• identity, self-awareness and the impact we have on others
• trust, emotional intelligence and team dynamics
• mental fitness and how we respond under pressure
• leading through change and uncertainty
• organisational culture and performance
• staying relevant as technology and expectations change
• decision-making, judgement and the realities of senior leadership
Our four most recent episodes have continued to explore some of those challenges.
Episode 21 – The Wellbeing Lie: Wellness Isn’t Wellbeing
Dr Calvin Lightbody and I challenged whether many of the things organisations label as “wellbeing” actually address what is wearing people down.
Episode 22 – The Wellbeing Lie: When High Achievers Break
We continued that conversation by looking at what happens when capable, committed people simply keep pushing — and why working harder is not always the answer.
Episode 23 – Listening Skills for Leaders: How to Hear What People Aren’t Saying
With Joseph McGuire, we explored a leadership skill that is talked about constantly but rarely examined properly: listening. Not simply hearing the words, but noticing the tone, gaps, body language and what may not be being said.
Episode 24 – When Everyone’s Right and Nothing Moves
My latest solo episode looks at one of the harder realities of senior leadership. Sales wants growth. Finance wants to protect cash. Operations is stretched. HR is looking at capability. Risk wants stronger controls. Everyone has a perfectly reasonable argument. So how does the leadership team actually decide?
That is what Beyond Leading is about: going beyond generic leadership advice and exploring the judgement, tensions and human realities that leaders, directors and business owners actually face.
Going forward, I’ll share a post here every fortnight as each new episode goes live, together with some of the questions and ideas we explore.
Which of these leadership challenges are you seeing most often in organisations right now?
🎧 Beyond Leading is available on Spotify, Apple Podcasts and Amazon Music, or you can find all episodes here:
Senior leaders and founders rarely struggle because they lack ability. They struggle because the…
