Latest Essay
Most important relationship you didn’t choose
You can probably name your best boss and your worst without a second's thought. Someone on your team will remember you just as instantly.
Read More 
Lead Like a Human
Leadership mkes perfect sense on paper.
Listen. Build trust. Give honest feedback. Make good decisions. Have the difficult conversation. Repair things when they go wrong.
Then another human being turns up.
With history. Ego. Fear. Ambition. A bad day. So do you.
And there’s a job to do.
Targets to hit. Decisions to make. Problems to solve. Change to lead. Risks to manage. Something that needs to be achieved, usually with other people and increasingly under pressure.
Lead Like a Human is where I write and speak about what happens when those realities meet.
The inner work of outer leadership: trust, judgement, relationships, repair, power, politics, emotion, performance, and the often considerable gap between what you meant and what landed.
It’s informed by thirty years inside and alongside organisations, working with people from first-time managers to senior leaders. And by a continuing fascination with what happens to us, and between us, when the pressure is on.
I’m interested in the things that don’t fit neatly into a leadership framework. The doubt you don’t admit to, or the conversation you know you need to have but keep finding reasons to postpone. The frustration sitting underneath a perfectly reasonable response. What happens to the trust you’ve worked so hard to build after you get it wrong. How you stay kind while still holding someone to account, or remain part of something without losing yourself in it.
None of it happens separately from the work. The human stuff around the work can consume extraordinary amounts of energy, or it can free people up to put that energy into doing good work. How we lead has a lot to do with which way that goes.
Whether you’re leading a team of ten, an organisation of thousands, or building something of your own, you don’t graduate from this work. The context and stakes may change considerably, but human beings don’t suddenly become less complicated because your job title has changed.
And knowing what good leadership looks like doesn’t necessarily make us good at it.
That’s what interests me.
What happens to our judgement when the pressure goes up? Can we recognise when our own fear, ego or ambition has entered the room? Can we repair something after we’ve got it wrong?
This is the human reality in which performance has to happen. People still need to make decisions, solve problems, create things, hit targets and get good work done.
The more clearly we can see what’s happening — in ourselves, between people and around us — the more choice we have about what happens next.
Leadership mkes perfect sense on paper.
Listen. Build trust. Give honest feedback. Make good decisions. Have the difficult conversation. Repair things when they go wrong.
Then another human being turns up.
With history. Ego. Fear. Ambition. A bad day. So do you.
And there’s a job to do.
Targets to hit. Decisions to make. Problems to solve. Change to lead. Risks to manage. Something that needs to be achieved, usually with other people and increasingly under pressure.
Lead Like a Human is where I write and speak about what happens when those realities meet.
The inner work of outer leadership: trust, judgement, relationships, repair, power, politics, emotion, performance, and the often considerable gap between what you meant and what landed.
It’s informed by thirty years inside and alongside organisations, working with people from first-time managers to senior leaders. And by a continuing fascination with what happens to us, and between us, when the pressure is on.
I’m interested in the things that don’t fit neatly into a leadership framework. The doubt you don’t admit to, or the conversation you know you need to have but keep finding reasons to postpone. The frustration sitting underneath a perfectly reasonable response. What happens to the trust you’ve worked so hard to build after you get it wrong. How you stay kind while still holding someone to account, or remain part of something without losing yourself in it.
None of it happens separately from the work. The human stuff around the work can consume extraordinary amounts of energy, or it can free people up to put that energy into doing good work. How we lead has a lot to do with which way that goes.
Whether you’re leading a team of ten, an organisation of thousands, or building something of your own, you don’t graduate from this work. The context and stakes may change considerably, but human beings don’t suddenly become less complicated because your job title has changed.
And knowing what good leadership looks like doesn’t necessarily make us good at it.
That’s what interests me.
What happens to our judgement when the pressure goes up? Can we recognise when our own fear, ego or ambition has entered the room? Can we repair something after we’ve got it wrong?
This is the human reality in which performance has to happen. People still need to make decisions, solve problems, create things, hit targets and get good work done.
The more clearly we can see what’s happening — in ourselves, between people and around us — the more choice we have about what happens next.
Essays
