What Being Overlooked Actually Looks Like
In my last piece I looked at how organisations decide who has leadership potential — and at a study of nearly 30,000 employees which found those potential ratings didn’t predict who went on to do well. That tells us a group of people is being missed. It doesn’t tell us who they are. This piece […]
The Most Important Score Nobody Checks
In my last piece, I ended with a thought: we’re not bad at developing leaders. We’re bad at spotting them. So this time I want to look at how organisations actually decide who has leadership potential. Not how the policy says it works. How it works in practice. How most organisations choose If you strip […]
Nobody Trusts the Leaders. Including the Leaders.
Here is a number I keep coming back to. In its 2025 report, DDI surveyed 13,000 leaders and HR professionals across more than fifty countries. Not employees – leaders. People who run teams, departments and businesses. They asked them whether they had confidence in the senior leadership of their own organisation. Only 32% said yes. […]
The Six AI Advisors Every Leader Needs
In my last EPIC Insights article, I suggested we stop thinking of AI as one assistant and start thinking of it as a virtual member of our team. The response surprised me. Many people said they had never considered that AI could play different roles. They simply opened ChatGPT, asked a question and accepted the […]
If AI Joined Your Team Tomorrow, How Would You Manage It?
AI is no longer on the horizon. It’s already here. It wasn’t long ago that most conversations were about whether AI would change the way we work. Today, that debate is over. Every week there’s another article predicting how it will transform our jobs, replace roles or completely redefine leadership itself. But I think we’re […]
Everyone Talks About Trust. Very Few Tell You How to Build It.
Recently, an email from Harvard Business Review landed in my inbox with the headline: “People won’t take risks on a team they don’t trust.” It’s hardly a surprising statement. Pick up almost any book or article on leadership, teamwork or high-performing organisations and you’ll find one word appearing again and again. TRUST. It’s described as […]
The Yes That Should Have Been a No
In March this year, we delivered a session on Influence, where we explored one of the biggest influences we can have over our careers: how we ask for what we want or need. During the session, I shared a simple system for asking – one that I’ve been using for years. It’s become something of […]
The Deadliest Mistake on Everest Isn’t the Weather
One of the stories I often share with coaching clients is about Mount Everest. Not because I’m interested in mountaineering. And certainly not because I plan on climbing it. I share it because it perfectly illustrates one of the biggest career-limiting behaviours I see in talented people, particularly introverts. The assumption that what they know […]
Would You Teach a Child to Read the Way We Develop Leaders?
Imagine waiting until a child turns 18 before teaching them to read. For years, they would watch other people reading books, newspapers and messages. They might pick up a few things along the way. They might recognise some words and learn a few tricks for getting by. Then imagine asking them to sit exams where […]
The Day Three Boxes of Wine Taught Me a Career Lesson
One of the things we discuss throughout the Elevate programme is that careers are rarely built on performance alone. We use a framework called EPIC – Exposure, Performance, Impact and Consciousness. Recently, whilst delivering our session on Exposure, I found myself thinking back to a lesson I learned very early in my banking career. At […]